Theos-Talk Archives (January 2003 Message tt00647)

<stevestubbs@yahoo.com> writes in part:

>
> I still find it difficult to believe a personal deity would
> consciously decide to create a predatory world filled with scumbags
> such as the one we live in. I can. however, imagine an impersonal
> universe which is mysteriously endowed with consciousness evolving
> such a world. It is the latter hypothesis which seems more
> plausible, but the question is so far beyond human comprehension I
> may just be showing what an idiot I am by trying to puzzle it out.
>

Not an idiot, but a true philosopher. Consider these thoughts extracted
from Karl Jaspers' WAY TO WISDOM:

<God never becomes a tangible object in the world. Kant has said that God's
unfathomable wisdom is as admirable in what it gives us as what it denies
us. Instead of the knowledge of God, which is unattainable, we gain through
philosophy a Comprehensive consciousness of God.

>From time immemorial God has been conceived in empirical forms, including a
personification after the image of man. And yet every such conception is at
the same time in the nature of a veil. God is not what we may see with our
eyes [or grasp with our intellect]. Therefore what matters is not our
knowledge of God, but our attitude towards God.

Our true attitude toward God has found its profoundest expression in a few
biblical injunctions. (1) "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
or likness." This means that no symbol or metaphor can describe Him and
none may take His place. All metaphorical representations of God without
exception are myths, meaningful as such when understood to be mere hints and
parallels, but they become superstitions when mistaken for the reality of
God Himself. (2) "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The life of
the man who believes in the one and only God rests on a foundation entirely
different from that of a life with many gods. The quest for the One as the
foundation of his life is an enduring problem for man, as actual as it was
thousands of years ago. (3) "Thy will be done." Bow down before that which
defies understanding, confident that it is situated above and not below the
understandable. Man stands before the godhead as the hidden God and can
accept what is most terrible as His decision, fully aware that in whatever
finite form he expresses this God it is spoken in human terms and hence
false.>

regards,
Bill
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