After All, How Involved IS God?

So... wise and intelligent people like Benjamin Franklin considered themselves deists - believers in the existence of a single god, but not in his direct involvement in our world.  Such a belief can spring from the perception of the non-action of a divine being in teenage years and/or adulthood, while simultaneously feeling impossibilitated, by teachings from one's childhood and the natural and scientific evidence of order and law in the universe, as well as its hard-to-explain beginning, that a creative god must exist, must be a god of order and some level of goodness, but a god utterly distant, a god to whom it does no good to pray and with whom there is no direct relationship - the most we can gain spiritually is an ever-deeper intimate connection with his created beings, human and otherwise.  This person might believe on some level in Gen. 1-2, or at the very least Gen. 1:1, but dismisses all the rest of the Bible as imaginary.

On the other extreme are those who believe in a god or gods that are involved in absolutely everything and are more or less subject to our control - from this belief in an all-encompassing spiritual reality springs numerous religions.  In fact, perhaps the true extreme on this other end is the belief that everything IS god or at least a part of god and god IS everything.  Within the Christian spectrum, the most extreme belief that I know of - and a very common one - is found in some fundamentalist or pentecostal traditions which claim that anything and everything is possible through faith - healing of any sickness or pain at any time; wealth that springs from nowhere or anywhere; freedom from spiritual attack independent of lifestyle; etc.  "If you only have faith", these people claim, "your friend/sister/brother/mother/father/child/etc will be healed".  Naturally if they are not, then its your fault.  After all, it can't be God's, now can it?  Few realize that while rejoicing in God's tremendous power and ability, these people nonetheless subject Him to little more than a slave, available whenever wanted to do their wishes as long as you know how to pull the string of faith and summon him.  The concept of God having a will of His own that does not coincide with ours, and that sometimes it is not bad to experience pain, is either rejected or never imagined until a true experience with God or of unmitigated suffering DESPITE faith sadly knocks down this house of cards.

Thousands if not millions of people are caught in this network of lies, impeded by their beliefs from experiencing the freedom and joy of walking with the Lord who gives peace and strength to make it through suffering and even, in certain cases, embrace it.  These Christ-following groups believe themselves "Biblical" in the sense that they are constantly reciting bits and pieces of the Scriptures.  However, they generally come from the less educated half of the world's population and neither they nor their leaders realize that the words they claim so prayerfully are taken out of context and that the original inspired authors generally intended to communicate something very different than they understand.  It often takes a significant level of theological education for this perception to sink in.

Human experience demonstrates the falsehood of both extremes: if any intelligent and educated group of researchers started to investigate all the nooks and crannies of claims of God's intervention in people's lives, they would probably be astonished at what they would find.  Despite all the fictitious, spurious and fanciful tales of miraculous intervention in the world, the number of documentable real cases is overwhelming once you start to notice it.  In fact, just about any Christian biography will tell of impossible things happening as the protagonist seeks to follow the will of God.  In order to dismiss them, you would have to call thousands of men and women who have contributed invaluably to human well-being in societies across the world, not only liars bur potentially lunatic.  Interestingly, though, the tales of miracles are not limited only to those with a conscious faith in Christ.  Similar difficult-to-deny tales exist throughout the history of almost any religious belief system.  So although this does not prove what invisible force(s) is (are) at work, it provides evidence upon evidence that SOMETHING spiritual really goes on in our world, whether people are alone or together, Muslims, Hindus, believers in Vudu or Satanists, born-again Christians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, artists or musicians, the illiterate or among the academic elite, wealthy south-Asians or poverty-stricken Americans.

The other extreme becomes hard to sustain for various reasons:
1. If god is everything and everything is god, than god must includes all good and all evil and it is hard to explain god inflicting suffering on god.  It also seems to follow that we would know we were gods, as would butterflies and fishies and that we would be far less vulnerable to the apparent winds of fate.
2. Of all the beliefs alternate to monotheism, the idea of various gods external to the physical world with various levels of power and divergent desires and whims seems the most logical.  After all, doesn't it sometimes feel like SOMETHING out there is mad at you and causing everything to go wrong one day, while the next two you float through on a dream before having a so-so one?  The problem is, almost every such belief system that has existed has been shown to be little more than superstition - it can be proved that most attempts to placate the "gods" do very little or nothing in actuality, that what they do accomplish are statistically more coincidental than causal.  But is this always the case?  Undoubtedly not - in some cases it is, once again, very evident that spiritual forces ARE at work in response to religious processes - or at least human senses so indicate.  People work a spell and someone DOES fall sick, a counter-spell is used and they mysteriously get better.  This is most evident in traditional African religious contexts and in places that have been influenced by them, like Brazil.  However, does that mean certain "gods" are real?  How DO we gain a sense of what spiritual forces are at work in the end?

Hmm, I'm out of time.  My lunch break is over and I have a lot to do.  I'll have to continue this one later.

Love and blessings,

Rachel