This essay is another in the “What’s the Point” series. It’s the most basic religious question, really. Rather than talk about whether God exists, today’s post is about why we humans have a belief in God, given that a search for God yields results that are not universally accepted as truth. Here are some possibilities to consider.
God as Moral Authority
Some view a belief in God as necessary to know the difference between right and wrong. It’s one of the reasons that we as a country have never elected an openly atheist President, and to disavow God is usually the shortest route to not getting elected to any office in the US. The majority of Americans are at least agnostic if not religious believers, and often highly skeptical of an atheist’s ability to live a moral life, assuming their lack of belief in God makes them amoral. For those who hold this view, God is the moral authority in a person’s life: no God, no morality.
Karl Marx considered religion and God to be human tools to control others, claiming “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” We’ve been binge-watching The Americans, the series about KGB agents in the 1980s living and working illegally in the US during the 1980s. One theme the series explores is the difference, and more importantly, the similarities, between the Americans’ religious fervor and the KGB agents’ patriotic fervor. Our anti-heroes are fervent patriots, soldiers in the cold war who despise religion, but when their daughter becomes interested in religion, they also don’t want to alienate her. It puts them in a bind. Over time, they try to mold her spiritual curiosity and personal values into a “higher” (political) purpose that aligns with their own views. Her father even uses prayer (pretending religious devotion) to get out of an unsavory assignment while still being able to manipulate his target.
These secret agents see a belief in God as weakness while at the same time they are often blind to the weakness inherent in their patriotism. Late in the series, an exchange between Philip and Elizabeth (the married KGB agents) reveals their growing disillusionment with the KGB:
Philip: You’ve always done exactly what they’ve told us to do. I was trying to get you to think. Yes. To ask questions. To be a human being about us.
Elizabeth: You don’t think I’m a human being?!
Philip: That’s not what I’m saying. I would do anything for you. I always did. I just did. But not anymore. You do whatever you want, but please, some of these things? We believed in something so big. They tell us what to do and we do it, I get it, that’s how it works. But we do it, not them, so it’s on us. All of it.
This illustrates the weakness of outsourcing one’s morality to an entity or organization that exists outside of one’s own internal conscience or values. Without that kind of gut check, we can be convinced by humans who claim higher authority to do things that conflict with our own internal moral compass. To fail to do so is to be cast as a traitor.
God as Creator
How did we (humanity) get here? How did our souls or consciousness come to be? What separates us from the other animals?
Another reason people believe in God is to explain how Creation happened, how to understand the origin of humanity. Even accepting evolution as the process by which beings develop traits to survive and thrive as a species, this doesn’t explain when or how we developed a soul or the ability to become people who live by our minds and not just our physical strength and ability to procreate.
For many, God is the origin story of humanity. Divine intervention was required to make primates something more. The story of Adam and Eve’s creation in Genesis, and the Greek myth of Prometheus encapsulate the idea of this divine spark that bettered humanity. In Genesis, we are told:
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
In Greek mythology, Prometheuscreat was a Titan who turned coat and sided with the Gods. He created mankind out of clay to stand upright and function and look like the Gods. His patron Goddess Athena completed his creation by breathing life into his creations.
These are but two of the dozens of creation stories found scattered throughout human history.
God as Protector
In 2007, we visited the ancient city of Carthage in modern day Tunisia. One of the highlights of our trip was to a Phoenician graveyard that had been discovered right in the middle of the city, basically in someone’s backyard. It contained hundreds of graves of children sacrificed to Baal. If there was a famine or a dangerous storm in this seaside town, the citizens believed that only divine intervention could save them. The storm or famine might be a sign of divine judgment or disfavor, and the people would respond by making a sacrifice to the gods, to convince them to intervene on their behalf.
Eventually, the graves of children were replaced by graves of pets that were sacrificed, which believe it or not prompted an audible outcry among our group of tourists who had heard about child sacrifice with an unsettling level of stoicism. Ancient people from around the world saw these natural life-threatening events that were beyond their control as beyond their power. Powerlessness led to a series of rites intended to control what was out of their control. Anything that was so much more powerful than humans must be a “higher” or superior power, and their aim in believing in gods was to persuade that power to be benevolent rather than malevolent.
This thinking puts God in the role of protector, but in the way the mafia is a “protector” when they say “You have a nice store here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” The God described in the Bible is capricious at times, destroying and saving, killing and protecting.
“He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:45
Philanthropists and philanderers alike benefit from his bounty.
God as a Divine Parent
That last reason is similar to one that will sound familiar to most Christians: God as Father.
Our human parents, imperfect though they are, are physically larger and stronger than we are growing up. As children, they protect us from physical harm. They help provide shelter and food for us and other things we need to survive. They may behave in self-sacrificing ways for our benefit. They advise us and mentor us as burgeoning adults. They dispense the wisdom they have acquired in their lives, or at least what they believe to be wise.
Sometimes parents have tempers or commit domestic abuse. Sometimes they are selfish and terrifying. Some human parents are a bad example rather than a good one. Some are narcissists or have other psychological disorders. Believing in a divine Parent erases the potential for these parenting failures, giving us a counter example to those human frailties, a Parent who only dispenses the best wisdom, one who loves us unconditionally.
God as a Boddhisattva
In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who is able to reach nirvana, but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings. The bodhisattva does this out of compassion.
In Christianity, Jesus is viewed as a redeemer, someone divine who is willing to live and die as a lowly human to save humanity, and a Father who is willing to allow this although it grieves him. In 1 Nephi 11 we read of an encounter between Nephi and an angel in a vision:
“And he said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?”
“And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things”
“And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.
“And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look!
“And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.
“And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!”
The condescension of God fosters the belief and hope that humanity warrants saving, and that a divine being is willing to save us despite being debased to our level in the process. God deigns to meet us where we are.
God as Arbiter or Judge
This is related to the idea of God as the moral authority who sets the rules for right and wrong, but it is another facet of that role. What happens after we die? Do we get a reward or a punishment? Who is a good person and who is a bad person?
Victor Frankl, the famous psychologist who was experimented on by Nazis during WW2, observed that every human being has both good and evil choices within, and in every moment we have the ability to choose our actions. He noted examples of people who committed terrible crimes against humanity during the war, only to devote the remainder of their lives to helping those in pain or in need. He also noted those who suffered greatly during the war at the hands of oppressors only to treat others cruelly and callously afterward.
In India, a common dinner conversation starter is “Was Ghandi a good man?” In the western world with our limited exposure to Ghandi, we immediately think of his pacifist contributions, his world leadership, and his quotes full of wisdom that have inspired millions of people. But the dinner conversation also weighs in the balance Ghandi’s indifference toward his own family and his cruelty toward his wife. Was he a good man if he also did bad things to those who were his closest relations?
How do we, as imperfect humans, determine whether a person’s mix of good and evil choices is overall a “good” life? We know our judgments are flawed. We long for a divine being who can make that determination for us. How much do intentions way vs. outcomes? How much should we attempt to resolve our errors, and what is required to make restitution?
The TV show The Good Place explores this premise. I won’t give spoilers here, but a post I did previously may be of interest. In the show, people are sent to the Good Place based on a complicated point system, including things like: letting someone merge in traffic (7329 points), hosting a Syrian refugee family (272,775 points), ignoring a text message while having an in person conversation (1076 points). There are negative points as well for things like: steeling copper wire from a decommissioned military base (-16 points), overstating your connection to a tragedy that has nothing to do with you (-41 points), committing genocide (-433,115 points), using Facebook as a verb (-5.5 points), and blowing nose by holding one nostril closed and blowing through the other (-1.4 points).
God as Exalted Human
This is one Mormons will recognize that is fairly unique to us. Joseph Smith taught, in a breath-taking epiphany, that God was embodied, just like us, and that he had lived a human life and progressed to the point of divinity, becoming an exalted person over time.
Theosis, though, wasn’t an entirely unique idea in Joseph Smith’s day. Theosis is either defined as a human becoming divine or as a human becoming one with God. Anthropomorphism is perceiving God as a being in human form, recognizing human qualities in God. Joseph Smith revealed a hybrid of these concepts, that God was once a human being, and that human beings can become gods.
The Greek Gods were anthropomorphic. Each of them represented various human traits, and despite their power, they also exhibited human frailties like jealousy, anger, lust, and so forth. They were capricious rather than steady. Humans saw them as more powerful than humans, but otherwise, mostly like squabbling humans with their own personal and political agendas. They could even mate with humans!
Superman is a comic book hero (often compared to Jesus) who is like a human being but invincible. He cannot be killed by enemies (yeah, yeah, I know of “The Death of Superman”). Yet he is also (unlike the Greek Gods) superhuman in his personal qualities as well. He is morally superior to human beings. He is self-sacrificing, compassionate, and uses his powers only for the good of others. He doesn’t seek his own glory (well, maybe the cape, or is that for aerodynamics?). He is living among humans, but because of his power, his actions cannot judged by humans. He represents what humans could be, a perfected, greater force for good.
Conclusion
In the movie, The Invention of Lying, Ricky Gervais (an avowed atheist) invents the story of God as a way to comfort his dying mother. His view (as an atheist) is that humans invented God to deal with the unknown–our own mortality, our sense of fear about what comes after we die, our inability to deal with the abyss of our non-existence. His story is flawed, but still comforting. People are angry that the God in his story doesn’t prevent suffering, but they still feel a little better about the prospect of losing the people whom they love. That’s his view on why people “invented” God, although it feels like a very modern perspective.
Historically, people had many more reasons to believe in God. They saw divine miracles in things that we have now explained through science. God brought people closer to each other, and helped them to strive to do better as communities through a shared belief system. God gave inspiration and enlightenment to people in difficulties.
There are many reasons people believe in God. When I ask “What is the point of God?” I don’t mean to imply there is just one point. Like, voting for POTUS, there are different aspects of candidates that we find important: foreign policy, bipartisan appeal (ability to get things done), focus on national security, plans for domestic policy improvements, personal integrity, etc. But different people prioritize different things in addition to assessing candidates’ abilities differently, which is why we have such a great divide in politics.
- What aspects of God do you consider most important and why?
- If you were explaining God, which description would you use?
- Do you think your concept of God is mainstream for Mormons, or is it unique?
- Is there a better descriptor for God than those listed here that works for you?
- Why do religious people fight so much with other religious people?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
This is such a big question, one can hardly respond. I’ll note a few books that bring some insight to the bigger questions for me.
Richard Elliott Friedman (author of the excellent Who Wrote the Bible?) wrote a book titled The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (Little, Brown, & Co., 1995). He shows how over the course of time in the Bible, God tends to recede. There were direct encounters, then enigmatic, veiled encounters; then dreams or visions of encounters, then just angels as delegates for God, then just dreams of angels, and so forth. He’s not making a radical argument, just looking closely at the text of biblical encounters with God over time. Some would argue that in the modern era God has fully receded. The more we as humans grow, the more God shrinks away.
It’s only in the modern era that the existence of God has become a live question rather than a rhetorical one. There are lots of insightful God and science books, mostly written by scientists rather than theologians or philosophers, who had monopolized the God market in prior eras. One I enjoyed is God’s Universe (Harvard Univ. Press, 2006) by Owen Gingerich, an astronomer. Another is The Language of God (Free Press, 2006) by Francis Collins, a biologist. There are several excellent books by John Polkinghorne, a mathematical physicist who became an ordained Anglican priest.
These books and others help to reinforce the idea atheism is not the slam dunk argument that so many noisy moderns hold it to be. It’s a live question, even from a purely secular point of view. For any cosmology, the Universe has to make sense, and for many (even scientists) it just doesn’t make sense without God in it, for some or another purpose. For Kant, that was a moral argument: the Universe and us in it must make sense morally, in terms of goodness and justice, and this requires an afterlife and God to balance the moral books and bring balance to the Force. Something like that.
God as love
Big question, lots of great insight and food for thought. One thing that might be worth mentioning, and an idea that I strongly subscribe to, is the idea of a purposeless God that is nothing more than a cosmic essence (in other words pantheism). I see this idea expressed in ancient Greek philosophies and in many eastern religions. The idea that God is the very cosmos in which we live. God doesn’t have a function or relationship vis-a-vis nature or human life, nor does God transcend nature, but is nature in and of itself. God is nothing but immanent without a transcendent aspect.
There is not point to God, unless we individually decide to put meaning on our concept of God.
If God helps us elevate ourselves, there is a point to it.
If we elevate ourselves without God, there is no point to God.
Nothing others do or say makes God have a purpose for me. Only I make God meaningful to me, or not. We all have a personal relationship to God, or not.
Religious people fight so much with other religions people to establish what they believe in.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what is truth to you, but it can be easier to know what you see others do and say that you know is false.
I can’t tell you for sure what salt tastes like, but I can surely know it isn’t sugar.
Hawkgrrrl: greatly enjoyed reading your post. Great questions—you certainly know how to ask the big ones.
I will first digress to add to your side comment about the unsettling reaction of your tour group that you were with at Carthage, which seemed more upset about pet sacrifice than child sacrifice. I have often been irritated/confused by people who care passionately about pet abuse, and do not seem to have enough emotional energy left over to be interested about child abuse and neglect. There is a reason for this, and I don’t understand it.
On to your questions, a few thoughts:
1. The reason that religious people like to fight so much with other religious people, IMO, is that human beings have a fundamental need to feel superior to other people. I mean, if God is speaking to you and not to me, that gives you a tremendous advantage for you to use as a club—it’s a tool of power. We seem to need to be able to look down on each other.
2. John 3: 16 is for me the best answer of what God is: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. The genius of Mormonism IMO is that it greatly expands the number of those who are “saved,” to include all but the most stubbornly unwilling. Mormonism, with its temples, is almost Universalist in scope.
3. God as protector, moral judge, Bodhisattva, Divine Parent, etc.—yes to all. But to me, God is intensely personal. He made Himself known to me in one unforgettable experience (non-denominational in nature) and many miracles. I came to the Mormon Church because I felt it was the best (NOT the only) fit for Christ’s teachings. The Church often drives me crazy, but there is SOMETHING there. I tend to be rather cynical and skeptic, but God can shine through anything. (End of Romans 8.)
The majority of Americans are at least agnostic if not religious believers, and often highly skeptical of an atheist’s ability to live a moral life, assuming their lack of belief in God makes them amoral. For those who hold this view, God is the moral authority in a person’s life: no God, no morality.
I am really struggling at present with the number of members defending Trump. Trump may not be an athiest, but he gives every appearence of being amoral. If Utah votes for Trump at the end of the year, I will struggle to convince myself that members collectively have a moral compass. Can they be the true church but not have a moral compass?
Sorry to bring politics into this but it is one of the biggest shows on at present. In Australia we are still having climate emergencies, and Trump think we should not let negative things like climate science get in the way of making more money for those who already have too much.
Geoff-Aus: I’ve been reading a book called the Cult of Trump, and in the section about his background I was surprised that he really is sorta religious. There’s a charismatic prosperity gospel preacher who was really influential on his thinking. He preached something like The Secret where you just say what you want to be true, and it will be. In this case, it feels like there’s a fine line between conning yourself and others and blessings from heaven being yours.
I feel like Taiwan Missionary is really on to something with this: “We seem to need to be able to look down on each other.” Sadly, I think the purpose of God and religion is to divide us with exactly that goal in mind. I was reading earlier today about Aaron Rodgers (the Packers quarterback) and how he’s estranged from his family in part because he’s parted ways with the fundamental Christianity within which he was raised. They are apparently so offended by him asking questions about why it’s so important to separate saints from sinners and worry so much about who’s going to hell and why. In my experience (and I think history bears this out), “true believers” are much more likely to see God as a club with which to beat people who don’t believe/behave the same way than they are to see God as a kind of emancipating , loving being who enables connection to others who may or may not be different. That’s not what God is really for, of course, but that’s how most Mormons I know see Him. Most testimonies I hear at church are some version of “well, we really are the true church and I feel so sorry for those who don’t have our truth and how sad for them that they’ll never know the joys that we know.” That’s just a slightly less aggressive version of using God as a club, IMHO.
I think God exists to help people fill the emptiness they experience; it’s just that I think he exists to help them fill that emptiness with love and compassion and many other folks seem to believe that he exists to fill that emptiness with self-righteousness and superiority.
Your entire approach here seems to misunderstand what is entailed in actually believing in a personal God. In fact, asking what God is good for and what God can do for us seems like an ultimate form of idolatry that buys into the Freudian view that we adopt God because of a psychological need of some sort that conjures God. In fact your reference to the wonderful story in the Invention of Lying rather underscores this critique.
The question is not what God can do for us, but what we can do for God (with apologies to John F. Kennedy). How do we serve and show our devotion and love? How has he called us out of ourselves so that our needs and wants and desires and demands and illusions are not paramount? The entire point is to overcome being self-absorbed in our incessant selfishness that robs us of any chance of encountering the being who is God.
“The question is not what God can do for us, but what we can do for God”
The OP is simply exploring different and often competing concepts of God. And these are incredibly important questions that must be answered before we could even ask what we can do for God. Your comment presumes that we accept the concept of God as laid out by the recent LDS leaders in correlated materials, which is a personal male God who is at the head of the church and whose commands are very clearly made through the words of the leaders. What I have found interesting is that within the Mormon culture at large, there are a number of different concepts of God and even if people accept the concept of God that you speak of, in practice, they emphasize some aspects of God while deemphasizing/ignoring others. For many Mormons, God’s words and commands are clearly understood in their readings of the scriptures and the LDS leaders’ words, but for others, they aren’t immediately clear and what God says and who God is is understood to be more of a mystery with no clear-cut answers.
I see God as ultimately undefinable and outside the human experience. Grace as God’s tool is our best chance at attempting to understand. Everything else is the projection of our own needs and hopes.
John W. you rresponse that somehow my comment accepts a male deity taught by leaders and correlation is both demeaning and just way off. In fact the assertion is laughable. First, I depart merely from the view that God is a personal being (in formal contexts it is called bare bones theism) and reject views that treat God as a commodity, like all of the approaches presented. If you truly believe that somehow I am not aware of various competing concepts of god you are sadly mistaken. I assure you that each of these approaches is extremely common in religious studies courses. What is left out, as I was pointing out, as any God that a theist could accept as worthy accepting. What I fink interesting is that none of these “concepts” actually does justice to any LDS view of God. Moreover, what I suggested does not suggest that God is understandable (quite the opposite) or somehow reducible to a competing view. And how in the hell does my concept presume a view of correlated materials? I would love to see how you support or defend that assertion. Until then, I am just rolling my eyes. In fact, my comments are inspired by Martin Buber, an Hasidic Jew, so I am beyond bewildered at your response.
Dear God, I hope there’s a God. I really do. Is that an innate human longing or spark? Is it socialization?
If there is a way to irrefutably prove or disprove the existence of God, I think we would have heard about it by now. To my thinking, I can’t know, but I still yearn for that Devine Father. The burning in the bosom is how we Mormons are socialized to experience God/the spirit – there are many other traditions ranging from the sublime to the ecstatic.
One thing for sure, to me anyway, is that we don’t know how god works. He/She/They/Is helps Sister Jones find her glasses while innocents the world over suffer horribly and my boys die from cancer in spite of the blessings, temple prayer rolls, and fervent pleadings of loved ones.
I “need” god because sometimes I need somewhere to turn. It centers me even though I have no expectation that there will be an answer or intervention. And I think that god with a capital G doesn’t need my adoration, praise, groveling, and devotion.
So, I embrace the mystery. In feels good and right and enough. So many of history’s atrocities are committed by those who claim to “know” god. The more definitive the “knowledge”, the more it is wielded as a weapon of subjection, control, abuse, and exploitation.
Been there
Amen!
Yes, Been There.
The longer I live, the more I see God as cosmic mystery, beyond definition because I am not yet divine.
I see my role as acceptance, rather than any attempt at control, bargaining or manipulation, or at least that’s what I consciously work on.
I hope for an increase of consciousness in myself, whilst accepting my human nature and working on accepting the humanity of others. I think the Holy Spirit can help me to do this.
What any of that looks like, I have no idea, but I love it when I catch a glimpse of it in others.
In my opinion, everything we need to know about life and how to treat other people is in the Book of James. Everything else is just some extra fluff. Who would know Jesus and his teachings better than his little brother? The great measure in life is what we have done for others; our families and communities. Have we improved the lives of those around us and are our families and communities better because of our involvement. All the rest is nice but doesn’t compare in importance.. We passed through our first estate by being able to distinguish truth from a lie (choosing the Plan of Salvation over Satan) and the test of our second estate will ultimately be “what have we done to help others,”
At least, that’s what think. The intricate details of everything else (WOW, temples, masons, obedience, temple questions and perceived worthiness, etc) are too much.