IS GOD NECESSARY OR THE ULTIMATE SCAPEGOAT?

By John Maerz BA LMT

     If God is the ultimate scapegoat, we have chosen to fabricate the existence of a being that will absolve us from the responsibility for the creation of our misery, loneliness and our insecurity about the fact that nothing is guaranteed. At best he is an anthropomorphic projection of our need to attribute meaning and worth to a life saddled with, what seems to be a pointless and endless, until death, struggle for survival. We are trapped in these bodies that require constant attention in order to alleviate the pain incurred by our persistent desire for the peace of oblivion. Yet, we are afraid to take our own life for fear of the unknown quality of that oblivion. Our reasoning is that it is better to deal with the “devil” we do know rather than contend with the fear of what we may not be able to handle. Hence, we distract ourselves with the details of that struggle so we don’t have the opportunity to ask the unanswerable question, “Why am I here?” We write “books” of laws generating a history or genesis that will give us the illusory comfort in “knowing” that we are here for a “purpose” established by an outside deity and claim that this deity has written them. The ideals put forward by these “books” are impossible to achieve as they require us to deny the instinctual and intuitive side of our nature except as something being less than human. Those instincts are the urges for survival, pleasure and reproduction. By their nature, these urges are selfish. Our guilt about having these urges is overwhelming in the face of the demands that our clan has placed on us requiring our behavior toward one another to be as outlined in these ideals. But it is our clan that has chosen to accept the belief in these “books” and ideals and in order to belong to the clan we must agree. This generates tremendous internal conflict. In order to distance ourselves from the unanswerable question we promote an attitude and expectation for each other’s behavior, that “life is good” and “it’s better than the alternative.” How can we know? We collude in our conversation to keep those aspects of our instinct and intuition repressed in the subconscious. We have, effectively, relegated these inherent characteristics to the “shadow” side of our nature and deny any assertion that they are part of our “true and personal” nature. This compounds the buffer between us and our truth; denial and collusion to keep it well below the threshold of awareness. To keep this in place we create defense mechanisms that distract from questioning the reason for our existence and focus on our clan’s needs and accepted ideals. We must now “play the game” and remain within the borders of these subjects of conversation. This, effectively, removes the mirror. We are, now, safe and in grace with the clan. To deny these ideals is to suffer excommunication and, consequently, banishment from the clan.

     Conversely, if a God is necessary, regardless as to whether he is fabricated or not, he will serve as a governor on a hedonistically and anarchistically driven engine for personal survival and pleasure. Even if impossible to achieve, what if we had no ideals to live by? What if there were no rules? Could we relate to each other? We need a physical, emotional and mental language to communicate with and co-exist with each other. God, religion and society serve as that language for relating in more than just a survival and pleasure oriented fashion. God represents our imagined ideal image of ourselves given our current understanding of the universe. It becomes a very slippery slope, however, when we get too involved in the semantics of debating what those ideals represent. Our ideal image must remain as a personal choice not as a group requirement. In an ideal world we should be capable of regulating and governing ourselves, however, since our animal selves, which includes our instinctual and intuitive nature, are only part of who we are, we need “guidance” as a reminder to let us know when we become too absorbed within that personal nature and are acting on our own needs and desires at the expense of others. That guidance is our perception of God. Yet, to persuade ourselves that we are not at all instinctual or intuitive, and that we are devoid of any inherent animal characteristics as some religions and moral codes attempt to do, we would be fooling ourselves and remain just as out of balance as the anarchist. It’s a very delicate balance that changes moment to moment.

     My suggestion is that a god is necessary, as the personification of conscience, in order to keep us from killing each other while we pursue our survival and pleasure. However, to deny our animal nature and the need for survival and pleasure in order to bury ourselves in a fabricated assumption of a pre-existing purity, in the name of God, is self deceptive and lends itself well to using God as a scapegoat in order to set ourselves above participating in the necessities of life.

     Additionally, man cannot live on spirituality alone (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, etc.). The eastern civilizations devalue the physical and have done it for thousands of years. They still live in abject poverty. Man cannot live on bread alone (Machiavelli). The western capitalistic ideal has led many who participate to an empty feeling of anti-catharsis once their stomachs and pockets were full. To allow both sides of our nature, instinctive and ideal or animal and spiritual, is necessary to perceive that we are something more than just the sum of our polarized natures. There are intermittent times when we’ve all been able to “step back” in our perception and feel this larger picture at one time or another.  In doing so we’ve had the sense that we are witnessing our own actions, as if from a distance. The question now becomes who is doing the witnessing?

     Lastly, we can ask ourselves which is worse; living a fabricated myth and being accepted by the clan or living our own personal truth and being ostracized? But be aware that to choose one denies the other and continues the tension between them. This tension is the essential fabric of life. Both qualities serve as a reference to define the other. We must not choose. We must hang in the balance with our awareness switched on. This is the essence of what is called choiceless awareness. This is the essence of witnessing.