Is there a God?

As one who can't chew gum and walk down the street at the same time, this impresses me. 

I took a crack at violin - more than a crack, I lasted nine years - and didn't get too good at it, but I persisted. We're supposed to persist at everything, aren't we? Try, try again - and again - and again, even if nothing is happening.

I guess reality is different. My violin experience was mostly attached to my teacher, who became a spiritual mentor for years. But the beliefs he espoused are so far from what I believe now that I wonder why I lasted so long.

It was just different then. I was not only a churchgoer, but a lay minister. It seems incredible now, as I have completely discarded organized religion and see it as something which did irreparable harm to me. The story of my former church was such a nightmare that I can barely stand to reflect on it. Leadership fell apart to the extent that no one would even admit how awful it was. TV  cameras came in the sanctuary during worship services to raise the profile and further the causes of our minister and his wife, who later appeared on CBC and talked about their  experiences in the bedroom.

If you didn't want your face on TV,  you had to speak up and say so. If you didn't mind it, you had to sign a waiver. Or maybe it was the other way around. A few years back, such an intrusion would have been unthinkable, jaw-dropping. There would have been tremendous protest. It at least would have been discussed and voted on in council. In this case, it was just "done" as a way of  promoting a certain agenda (theirs).

Things had been bad enough for long enough that it was time  for me to go anyway - long overdue, in fact. I made a stab at finding another church, and found a sort of death march of calcified old people who most certainly didn't want me there.

It sometimes occurs to me that I lost God somewhere along the way, and Jesus too. I just wonder when that happened. Those people in my former church shouldn't have bothered, because it wasn't ever about God to begin with. It was about human ego and insularity and bad decisions and conformity and fear of speaking up, in case we triggered another disastrous meltdown.

And so. All this, from a video of a woman playing a violin and dancing! My joy in that place was long gone, but I stayed and stayed, trying to make it work. It was like a bad marriage that I couldn't let go of. When I did finally leave, I was completely shut out. The hole closed over immediately, and it was as if (after fifteen years of intense involvement) I had never been there at all.

It's all very well to say, "Oh, none of that is God. It's human beings with a corrupt or too-limited idea of God." But God who? God what? I no longer believe in any sort of freestanding force that cares about us, that counts the hairs on our head, etc. etc. As a child, I learned the only theological statement worth paying attention to: "God is love."  If there is a God of love at all, we must carry it and harbour it and share it with each other. WE are love, or we are not.

Not exactly an original idea, but it's all I can do on a Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, we have this song - and it was monstrously difficult to find, by the way, and I nearly gave up on it - by a mediocre pop star called Andy Kim. 


Who Has the Answers          Andy Kim

Is there a God? I really don't know,
Does he have a son? I really don't know.
But when I'm down, and things are all wrong
I turn to him, to help me be strong.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.

God made the sun.
At least that's what they say.
The waters and trees.
He made night and day.
But who made the child who's hungry and blind?
And who has the answers that I cannot find?
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.

Oh people everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Politicians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
People cannot find any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
And so they live and search, never find a Church, everyone is fine 'til the final hour.

People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Pray a little louder now children.
Polliticians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
Pray a little louder now children.
People never find, any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
Pray a little louder now children.
People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.
Please let me see.
Is there a God?
Is there a God?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?
Is there a God?
Does he have a son?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?

Post-mortem thoughts. I remembered a few things about this obscure song. It wasn't  played on some radio stations (too atheistic, I suppose). Almost everyone who remembers it, which is not too many, thinks it was sung by Neil  Diamond. And it's true: in almost every respect, it sounds like a Neil Diamond  song, the plaintive tune and yearning lyrics. But it isn't.

I've even had arguments about it. It goes like this:

Oh yeah, I love Neil Diamond.
Um, it wasn't by Neil Diamond.
Oh yes it was! I remember what album it was on. Cherry Cherry.
Um, you can look it up if you l like.
I don't have to look it up. It was Neil Diamond. I remember.
Um, I'm pretty sure it was by Andy Kim.
Who?
Andy Kim.
I've never heard of an Andy Kim. What else did he record?
Umm. . . Shoot 'Em Up, Baby. How'd We Ever Get This Way. Rock Me Gently. Sugar Sugar.
SUGAR SUGAR? 
Yeah, I remember -
(Then, if someone else is sitting  at the table):
No, I remember, it WAS Andy Kim.
Oh? It WAS Andy Kim?
Yeah. It was him.
Oh! Thanks for telling me.

This happens to me all the time, making me wonder why I seem to lack all credibility.

Fifty Shades of Religious Doubt

I sorta-kinda-do remember this song. Didn't know who sang it, and was surprised just now to find out it was Andy Kim, a Lebanese-Canadian (didn't know THAT either) who penned such immortal tunes as Rock Me Gently, Sugar Sugar, and Baby How'd We Ever Get This Way.

He must have been in a mood that day back in '71 or whenever-it-was, because he managed to write something of substance, something that captures the angst that affects millions of people to this day: how do we know there is a God? How do we know "he" loves us, cares for us, counts all the hairs on our heads, etc.? Must we take it on "faith", and isn't that circular logic: in order to believe in God, you must believe (in God)?

The thing that's weird is that for many years I was a "believer", someone who came back to the church after decades of cynicism and even bitterness. Some of my previous posts have dealt with Rev. Russell Horsburgh, the renegade United Church minister convicted of sexual immorality and jailed in the mid-'60s. He just happened to be the minister of my church. My family fled to the Baptists, where more abuse occurred in the form of excruciating fundamentalism in which you were expected to check your brain at the door.

So why did I come back to organized religion at all? It was the particular circumstances of that time, around 1991, which I thought was the lowest point of my life. It wasn't. That came later, in 2005, which was just about the time I began to pull away from the church. Conversion in reverse, I guess. Reversion?

I want there to be a God that loves us tenderly, etc. etc., but I don't feel it any more. I just can't keep it up. It seems too far-fetched in this wretched, dangerous world. I find it hard to believe that when we depart this realm we are borne up on a sort of Otis elevator of pure light to sit on a cloud of virtue for all eternity (but only if we're "good" - a sort of Santa Claus deal, where God "sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake").

But maybe, like birds, trees, earthworms, plankton, we just die. If we are part of nature, how can it be otherwise?

This song would probably not go down well today in the Southern U. S., where "doubting" or wondering "if" there is a God is considered blasphemy. (Besides, the guy's from Lebanon.) Not only is there a God, He is represented by a big fat sweating pig in white polyester swindling the widow out of her precious mite so he can buy himself another Cadillac. A holy boondoggle, obviously, but people who lack the capacity to think critically, people of no means or living on the edge of desperation, will cling to whoever or whatever promises them deliverance from despair.

Much of this "product" (for that is what this manufactured grace really is) concerns itself with money. People are told that if they pray hard, they will receive "a gift" that comes straight from God. So they pray their faces off, put money they can't spare on the collection plate, then - wonder of wonders -one day they receive in the mail, in an unmarked envelope, a $10 bill. Hallellujah! So the $20 they parted with at the evangelical service paid off, after all. They may wait months for another one of God's "free gifts", and eventually they will taper off altogether as they're pressured to keep giving more and more. A sort of Ponzi scheme for God.

Then there are the liberal Christians, and these are the people I fear the most. Oh, they're nice all right, but deep down they're afraid of anyone who is Different. They are instructed to practice compassion, but it's in the sense of charity, which is always tinged with pity. Though they will never admit it and would be offended if you even suggested it, they secretly congratulate themselves on their spiritual generosity and their "tolerance".

But what IS tolerance anyway? What does it mean if I "tolerate" you? It seems to me it means that I can barely stand you, but I'll grit my teeth and stay in your presence, if only to demonstrate to everyone how tolerant I am.

I can't imagine Andy Kim, Mr. Sugar Sugar, known for inventing the genre of bubblegum pop and writing hit numbers for The Archies, sitting down and composing such a moody, even tortured song. It's unusual. We heard it a lot in Canada back in 1971, but the YouTube scuttlebutt is that it didn't get much play in the States. It passed through me then and got stored at the back of the mental closet without my knowledge, and I had no idea who was responsible for it, as it had a sort of Neil Diamondesque sentiment, an angst-filled cry in the wilderness, an I Am I Said shouted into the arid howling wasteland of conventional belief.

Is there, is there balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. . . to heal the sin-sick soul? Or did we will it, wish it, pray it, think it, beg it into being?

                                

Is there a God? I really don't know,
Does he have a son? I really don't know.
But when I'm down and things are all wrong.
I turn to him to help me be strong.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light. 

God made the sun.
At least that's what they say.
The waters and trees.
He made night and day.
But who made the child who's hungry and blind?
And who has the answers that I cannot find?
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see. 

People everywhere living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Politicians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
People cannot find any peace of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar. 
So they live and search, never find a Church, everyone is fine 'til the final hour. 

Is there a God?
Is there a God?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?
Is there a God?
Does he have a son?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm