Sometimes when I think of theism and its many differing faces, I think of a coin – with its head and its tail. And then the ever-wondering child locked up in my bosom asks if perhaps theism is similarly only one side of the coin and atheism being the other.
In all our human seeking, is it possible that Time will bring us to see that blind man who looks around him and sees the beauty of creation, the wonder of nature and in an awe-struck moment of worship violently avers that there is a God and that he will devote himself to the seeking of him; and that his blind brother who hangs his head in misery from gazing too long on both the misery of his other brothers and the purposelessness of existence, and who in a similar fit of violent passion declares and end to self-pity, vows not to look to any fairy creature for deliverance, but rather work out not only his own salvation, but also that of his brothers in misery; Will Time bring us to see that both men speak the truth? Is God truly beyond our comprehension – for the now? And will it take us further aeons of development before we can be truly ready to grasp him as he truly is? And when we are ready, will we discover that he was a necessary figment of our imagination to help us maintain a semblance of order? A personalized ideal of all that we hold as good, pure and beautiful to guide and keep our errant souls in check like the nurse tending the child until it comes of such an age as to sufficiently grasp reality as it really is?
Will we then discover the emptiness of rules and walk with courage in the freedom earned by knowledge? Will we then recognize that good and evil, right and wrong are all arbitrary marks – like the points of a compass chosen by men to make some sense of the universe? Perhaps this is the heaven that the philosophers have written about – where we have all been purified, our essences cleansed, so that we are truly free and can look God in the face and realize that all along, he had been within us – he had been us.
Or perhaps we will realize that there is a literal concrete God, who can be seen, touched, heard, smelt and perhaps tasted – in another dimension, truly omnipotent and omniscient; tirelessly organizing reality so that it confirms to his plans, and endlessly creating rules to be enforced by his chosen in whose raised hands dangle the whip, threatening and lashing goats into submission.
Perhaps, we could also come to realize that life is not worth the effort of attempting to find some order in the utter chaos of it all and in total exhaustion, we leave it to itself with all its beauty and glory to the destruction for which it was intended anyway; recognizing that there is no escaping the ignominious ending for which we along with it are destined.
And perhaps, we would wake up to another reality and realize that all that we had thought, known and believed were all figments of our imagination: that other reality, some would call death.
12.00am, 30-01-2012
Palm Wine 