The People Journal

Atheism for Lent – Controlling God

Posted by: Jim Mondry

Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 12:06 pm

I’m more and more convinced that we all attempt to control God for our own purposes. This is far more than just modifying our beliefs to make our behaviour acceptable to us (compromise), or make God in our own image, but goes so far as to attempt to make us the director of God. Freud really was on to something with the following two critiques of how we attempt to control God. The following is a a summary of one of Freud’s critiques as written by Merold Westphal about one way we try to go so far as to control God:

When we combine the goal of magic, which is control of the world, with the magical character of ceremonials, we see that what is at issue in this combination of theory and practice is omnipotence and the human attempt to exercise control over whatever sacred power might exist.

Have you ever prayed to God to help you find something that you lost? I’ve done that over a lost wallet, a lost birth cirtificate, and a lost gold watch (which was my father’s). The first I found with in about 20 minutes (and proceed to thank God), the second took me a weeks to find (it had fallen behind a dresser in my room), and the third was picked up by someone else a few minutes before I got back to where it was lost, and I never saw it again.

Now, those are somewhat flippant uses of prayer, so how many people prayed after they heard about what happened in Haiti? How many prayed after they heard what is going on in Japan? Have you ever prayed for someone with a serious illness or was dying? I don’t want to dismiss prayer, but I am more and more seeing everything I’ve been taught about prayer in a light of trying to control God – God, please do what I want. When ever I pray over these things I really am ”attempting to exercise control over whatever sacred power might exist.” I am looking to use God to face a nature fully out of my control, and bring it back in line with how I think it should be. I am trying to bargin with God – if I am obediant (doing something that I’m called to do, i.e. prayer), please do my will.

Freud also sees a second way we try to control God (again, the summary is written by Merold Westphal):

One of the ways in which the faithful annihilate God’s freedom while purporting to contribute to the divine dignity is through the liturgical equivalent of the demand for orthodoxy. By insisting God be worshipped precisely through the rites that we practice and that these be interpreted only as we interpret them, we transform the covenant formula “I will be your God, and you will be my people” into a vehicle for making God our personal property… We thus become the definition of the good and the saved, making those who differ from us the wicked and the lost. If we are among those who preside over the sacramental rites of our faith we become the dispensers or withholders of divine favour.

I’ve already written how I continually do this, as if I’m the one who is able to define orthodoxy. My life as I live it validates the idea as suggested by Dawkins: “Religious Certainty is the cause of all violence”*. My certainty that I profess leads me to violent responses to those that hold differeing views from me – I try to take away their freedom to have their own ideas and opinions to try and make them believe what I believe. I don’t go so far as being physically violent, but I can certainly be quite verbally aggressive. I just hope that I can learn to hold my beliefs a little more lightly, and not be so certain. This isn’t to say I won’t believe anything, as that is an impossibility, but simply to not be so confident that I’m right, and the other is wrong.

I love how Westphal closes his chapter talking about how we try to control God: “If the god of bargins refuses to bargin, and the god of possessive monotheism refuses to be possessed, what happens to my faith?” When I first read it, I nearly jumped from my seat. I think it describes the very question I’ve been wrestling with over the last ten years – If God won’t respond to my prayers, and I can’t know the “absolute truth of God”, what am I left with? I really wish I had an answer, but I don’t know if there is one. I just hope that I can allow this critique change how I see God, and respond to God.

Is it possible to avoid the habit of trying to control God through bargining (trading obediance for sacrifice, or whatever), or through some claim to knowledge of God’s truth? What would this faith look like?

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*I was at a lecture yesterday where that comment was attributed to Dawkins. I searched the interweb for the actual quote but was unable to find its original source. If I have it wrong, or its actually from someone else, please correct me.