There’s a full horizon out there. It stretches from further than very far left to way beyond extreme far right and if you walk towards it (and you can go in any direction to do this), it simply rolls on over into an endless expanse that for lack of appropriate adjectival terminology seems to fall away from under your feet endlessly as you walk in any direction … . . for ever.
There’s also a full horizon in there. It’s almost exactly identical only it seems strangely to go the other way. Instead of going outwards, it goes on inwards … forever … . .
From a linear perspective it is a vexing suggestion that eternity might go on and on as well as at the same time possibly going back and back, expanding and contracting at the same time … with no beginning or end in sight either way.
From a multi dimensional view it is even more disturbing.
However, the centre of it all seems to be directly in front of you and it’s quite understandable to see that space directly in front of you as the centre of everything. You don’t have to be wise or stupid, evil or good or anything else to assume this. You simply just need two eyes in your head and a brain like we seem to have to take it all in.
On top of this all we seem to have a built-in drive to organise our world and bring order and control to our environment. We do this with both our external and internal environments.
This can also be a somewhat vexing thought.
The biblical narrative has the Creator mandating man to be fruitful, to fill the earth and even to rule over the creation, especially all the living creatures … and here we are, bustling about, doing exactly that … only, not very well it seems …
The first thing that strikes me in all of this is that even though the narrative clearly reveals that we were created in the image and likeness of the collective Creator, there is a clear contrast in all of this in that the Creator is also portrayed as having finished the work of creation and is, or perhaps was, in a state of satisfied rest.
Man on the other hand is mandated to be actively engaged with this stable environment that is later declared as being created for ‘us.’ It was also declared to be good even very good.
However something happened and speaking euphemistically it seems to be somewhat less stable presently.
In the so called New Testament narrative Jesus, referred to as the 2nd Adam, has now been positioned as seated next to God on a great throne in the Heavens. Being seated is a posture that suggests amongst other things, rest, completion, a job well done. It is a position taken up after a good days labour and after having finished the work (of creation?). It could well represent a state of satisfied rest.
Now this centre that is directly in front of us – the thing we walk towards, can also be seen as a neutrality. Well, it’s not radically left or right, it’s straight ahead … so this could lean towards a kind of neutrality… however, to our minds neutrality is also seen as in the centre, neither to the left or the right, but somewhere in-between. In-between love and hate, good and bad, right and wrong, life and death, blessing and curse, etc.
Could we say this of God? Is God neutral?
On a personal note, whose side is God on?
Is it even reasonable to think of God as being on one or the other side?
In our attempt to make sense of the environment in front of us we tend to make judgments. We distinguish between things, between extremes, as well as not so extreme extremes. But isn’t this what got the whole thing destabilised in the first place? Isn’t this why we are confronted with such a vexing set of environmental propositions? Couldn’t this be the reason why we seem to bustle so awkwardly along, stepping into the very holes we ourselves seem to dig?
We can decide one way or the other but there is also other angles we can take – maybe someone says, “let’s suggest another way, say a 3rd angle.” “Maybe we can choose to reconcile instead of divide?”
And if we perhaps do so, maybe it’s both ends at the same time? .. and maybe God is not on either side? Maybe God is neither for nor against anyone?
God may not even be for or against himself.
Perhaps he doesn’t even need to be.
In the biblical narrative he calls himself the “I AM” – or, if you grew up on the more radically creative side of the linguistic tracks, “I IS”.
The way I see it suggested is that God simply is.
I think it fairly reasonable to assume that the creator of an ordered, harmonious, balanced environment is also the origin of the state and condition of that created environment. After all, one of the creative commands in the beginnings was that each ‘seed’ would reproduce after its own kind and the universe can be seen as a kind of ‘seed.’ …
…isn’t it written somewhere, “… the heavens declare the glory of the Lord…..”
Now if we fail to harmonise with the Creator and his creation it is logical that we might experience God as being ‘unkind or even ‘bad’ maybe even ‘against’ us
… and if we find ourselves in resonance with the Creator and his creation we might very easily be led to view God as being kind and even ‘good.’
So perhaps God is neutral but not as we tend to understand these concepts?
To go back to the idea of the endless horizons, perhaps God is not the neutral centre of it all, maybe God is the horizon itself?
the faithful skeptic 