APRIL 21, 2019 – Easter: Christianity’s big day—denouement of the Betrayal, the Trial, and the Crucifixion.
My deeply religious mother told me that Easter coincided with spring, longer daylight and the rebirth of life and hope, just as Christmas marked the appearance of light amidst great darkness and despair. As a smart ass, I replied, “Well, that works in the northern hemisphere.”
Years later, Mr. Smart Ass found himself teaching fourth grade Sunday school to a group that included his oldest son. The lesson that Sunday featured Genesis. As I explained the grand concept of Creation, the girls whispered social updates to each other and the boys—my son included—doodled and made paper airplanes out of the notice slips (about a schedule change) they were supposed to take home to their parents.
All of a sudden, my son looked up from his doodling and out of nowhere asked, “Dad, I have a question.”
“Y-e-e-s-s?” I said, warily.
“Who created God?”
Fumbling for a response, I felt surly skepticism crashing down upon my acculturated belief system. I was relieved that none of the other kids seemed to be paying attention. “Uh, well, I think they cover that in seventh grade,” I said. “Hang in there, and you’ll have your answer.”
Shaken, I sought refuge in the Garden of Eden.
Later, as I mulled over my son’s question, I saw how honest and innocent it was. I embraced it as a gift, however divinely—or non-divinely—inspired. It prompted me to think free of tradition, societal norms; beyond a human construct designed to control and placate, soothe and save the human psyche from questions without answers.
A short while later I stumbled across a collection of essays by the late Carl Sagan, famous cosmologist and narrator of the highly popular PBS series, The Cosmos. The deeper I traveled into Sagan’s universe, the more I realized that if “God” did exist, he/she (or most probably, “it”) resided in the laws of math and physics. “God” as a concept, I decided, was a bigger bang than the Big Bang itself. Reducing him/her/it to a force that could give a hoot about humans seemed a quintessentially human idea, not a godly (or Godly) one. How classically egotistical, I thought, for us to think that “God” would give a quark’s care for a group of humans in football uniforms huddled in “prayer” seeking His help in defeating a team that was likewise huddled in “prayer” for His contrary intervention.
A person of faith might say that as a professed agnostic, I’m an atheist too chicken to say so, thus proving that I’m neither an atheist nor truly an agnostic but just a fool, bound for a hot, uncomfortable place upon my last breath.
As my father-in-law said in an eminently pragmatic moment, “Why not believe? What’s to lose?” He had a point, except the catch is how one defines “believe.” For now, I’m going with the belief that whatever God’s makeup, it’s way bigger than human imagination.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
