reflections

TYLER: Our fathers were our models for God. And if our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
...Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen...
JACK: It isn't?
TYLER: Fuck damnation, man. Fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children. So be it!

...etc.


We're watching Fight Club in my film class. Ironic because this is exactly the kind of stuff I've been trying to process through lately.

Supposedly man is God's baby, God's creation, God's prized possession. He creates a perfect world for man... but something goes wrong? Like Jurassic Park? Suddenly he can't control it, can't beat the system, would love to save everyone from their sins but can't? Can't look upon sin, but created the ones in whom sin is the most salient characteristic? Is devastated that most of his creations are rotting in hell forever? The Mozarts, the Lennons, the Ghandis... artists, revolutionaries, truth-seekers...all hopeless...

Either God really isn't in control at all, and is as subject to the system of right/wrong/punishment/redemption as man is, or he knew what would happen to Adam and Eve before he made them.

Does it ever occur to anyone that this is all what he intended? Why do we assume that God is really good at all? Because we want it to be true? Or what? Isn't it Thomas Moore who talked about first making thieves and then punishing them? How is that any different than hell for the punishment of sin? If given a choice, who would choose a sinful nature? If my tendency is to walk away from God, whose fault is that? Mine? Or is it the fault of someone who created me like that?

I am tired of cliche assumptions about faith and revelation and prayer and "love" and "grace" and choice and providence. Buzzwords. Meaning left those words centuries ago until they were nothing but labels for mysteries we can't unravel, illusions that lead us astray from any real and uncomplicated truth.