Thursday, July 14, 2005

Fragile God

We want our God to be somewhat fragile or frail.
We want our God to be all powerful when we are in need, but we need our God to be a little bit in need of us.

These thoughts were rolling in my head as I observed my way through a catholic funeral today. First of all, it has been quite a while since I have been at a catholic mass. I was almost transfixed at the level of ritual. In the middle of the crowd, I was a distant and separate observer. Many pagan rights and rituals have been programmed into the group. Certain words trigger programmed physical movements. Certain phrases trigger programmed return phrases.
This was a ceremony for and about Pete, but every turn of phrase in the ceremonial part was all about promoting the church. Clearly the church (as with most institutions) exists first and foremost to promote itself.
Ryan left about 2/3 of the way through the funeral. He was all ritualled out.

Something in one of the prayers triggered the thoughts about we need a fragile God. This resonated with stories and movies I have seen lately. Truly we need to feel needed.
Why would God create us if she didn't need us?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

God is desperatly in need of us. That is why worship is pushed so hard (that and it promotes churchs well) I hadn't thought of it as fragile, But I've often wondered why a god that is perfect would care if we believed and worshiped and obeyed it.

Paul said...

God doesn't really need us to worship her. We are the neurons in her brain. It is up to each of us to learn as much about reality as we can. That is what makes God smart.

Round Belly said...

God needs us like we need our children.