A God I Can Believe In

Posted on March 12, 2005 in Depression Myths & Mysticism

When a granary falls atop the head of an Azande who happens to be sitting in its shade, he suspects witchcraft. Among the depressives and bipolars that I know, bad things and the pain of the lows belong to God. For these, God is the destroyer, the wracker, the bringer of pain. He punishes through the mind and through the body for trivial sins such as flirtations, impure thoughts, bad words, grudges, or resentments against people who have harmed us. This God is a sadist, a monster quite separate from and insensitive to human experience. Many people believe that they suffer because God hates them.

I haven’t found solace in the belief that God the Separate Personality really loves us, that He doesn’t give us more than we can handle, that there is a Divine Plan. I just don’t see the evidence. Who can handle sudden death for example? Some point to the Book of Job (as amended by an unknown scribe) and say that the just will be rewarded. My experience, on the other hand, shows that the Just may not receive their reward and that the wicked may go unpunished. Stalin died in bed, for example. So many good people perish poor.

If I think the world is wreaked by a God, I grow angry. I want to kick the leg of the giant that torments me. If only I could find it. The obsession of avenging myself on when I believe that there is this Person created in our image who determines our fate and pokes at us like prairie oysters on a griddle. The view is too much like that of Karma — an Eastern doctrine which I also reject. For my own peace of mind, I reject the certainty of a personified God and a just Universe.

It has given me sanity.

On our way to dinner out tonight, I mentioned my anger and rejection of the notion of a God who makes or allows us to suffer. She replied “I believe in a God who suffers with us.”

As we entered the tunnel of live oaks beyond Cook’s Corner, I conceded to her that, maybe, that was a God I could believe in.