Friday, August 27, 2010

Who is your God?!?!

Who is your God?

We all have a God. Even the atheists and agnostics have a God… a model by which we live, a personification of that which is most important to us…a perfect example of our values and beliefs. With all the online tests out there that can tell us “What kind of kisser” we are, “what famous movie star’ we are most like, and so on, I would love someone to put together questions that would truly reveal who our personal God is. Questions could be asked like…
 Do you believe honesty is a trait that should never be compromised even on taxes and spreading rumors?
 Do you feel it’s okay to lie if it puts your enemy in a bad light?
 Is it okay to tell a white lie if you can gain a few more bucks?
 Do you feel you have a right to change people for the better through anger, intimidation, and threat?
 Do you define yourself by your beliefs, your job, or your sources of pleasure?
 Is it worse to commit a crime or to cover for someone else’s crime?
 Do the ends justify the means?
 Is it worse to kill someone, rape them, or financially ruin them?
 Is it okay to marry for money?
 Can you still feel compassion for those you passionately disagree with?
 With your last five dollars would you buy a gift for someone else, a mocha, donate it, or save it?
 Could you love someone who hurt you?
 When disagreeing with someone do you try to change their mind or do you try to destroy them personally?
 Would you forgive someone’s horrible, even criminal, ‘mistake’ if overall that person is pretty okay?
 Is it okay to work on the Sabbath?
 Is stealing someone’s property or reputation okay if it’s to ‘teach them a lesson?”
 Do you get past difficult times through hard work, faith, government assistance, or friends?

I wish I knew how to put such quizzes together! The possible outcomes would be “The Biblical God Yahweh,” “lucifer, the god of hedonism,” “You, yourself are your own God,” “The Almighty dollar is your God.”

I guess I’m playing with the idea that God isn’t just somebody we visit one day a week, He’s (it’s ) who/what we turn to in our everyday lives, with countless decisions and choices.
 If we’re praying to win the lottery to get us out of our troubles, then aren’t we looking towards money as our savior? Does that not make money our god?
 If we go to church on Sunday… but at work Monday-Friday we stab a coworker in the back so we can advance… aren’t we spending more time worshiping ourselves than the hour we spent worshipping God at church? That’s a 40:1 ratio of worship if you think of it!
 If we daily want to destroy those around us we disagree with… I mean really destroy them… rather than debate, discuss, or communicate with them… can that coincide with worshiping someone who told us to “do unto others…?”
 If we identify ourselves by our car, our fashion, how much we can drink, snort, have sex, or endure… are we deifying hedonism? Are we in fact making pleasure our god?
 If we spend 15 hours a week at the gym focusing-on perfecting our body… aren’t we spending more time worshipping ourselves than God? Does that not make our body in effect our god?

If we look at it in purely and hours-invested and importance-assigned… who would our real God be? I’m as guilty as anyone on this… it’s just a random thought.