I do not believe that religious texts are the only places to find, learn about, or struggle with god or religion.
I actually have better luck finding theology in secular texts.
I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, a science fiction book that was published in the 1990s.
In this book, the protagonist Lauren Olamena doesn't understand the loving god, god as parent (even though her father is a Baptist preacher).
I have always struggled with god as parent as well.
As a child, I knew my parents got frustrated with me, and I didn't fully understand what parent love meant.
How you can both hate your child and love your child in the exact same moment?
I've always had trouble wrapping my head around god that loves unconditionally because even though I would die for my children and will love them no matter what, which I suppose means I love them unconditionally, I don't really feel like this is the same love I would want from my god.
I know what I think sometimes about my children; those mean thoughts I keep tucked inside my head.
How angry I get at them, how frustrating they can be, the feeling of resentment that sometimes pulses through me.
How I sometimes think I could literally get in my car and abandon them because being a mother is just so exhausting.
So I put those same feelings on god when I think of god as parent.
And that makes god not so endearing to me and not really anyone or anything I want to determine things about my life or my afterlife.
The other idea that I struggle with is the god of the bible offering his only son.
Again, I realize I'm struggling to not put my human parameters around god, but I cannot fathom this. To sacrifice one of my children (a flesh-and-blood one at that) for the good of my other children (who are kind of jerk heads)?
I can see a Sethe (from Beloved) decision to sacrifice one's own child to keep one's own child from extreme suffering.
(See how I revert back to non-sacred texts.)
Anyway, because the whole god-as-parent thing kinks me up, I found myself drawn to the notion of god as change, which is what Butler suggests in her aforementioned sci-fi novel.
I love this quote:
All that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.
The only lasting truth is change.
God is change.
This is an idea I can understand. God as something pliable, something that I have some control over at times and over which I have no control at times.
God that doesn't wish me ill or well.
I think mine and G's OCD makes this God as change idea really powerful.
OCD wants control and creates ridiculous rules for attempting to establish control.
What the psychiatrist (with my help) is trying to do is to make change and being out of control acceptable to G.
One of my favorite prayers is the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Humans want to feel in control, and the god as parent idea makes that hard.
Parents, as sci-fi writer Alix Harrow says, are plot-spoilers.
Parents want control over their children. And children rebel against this. (Which is why, in novels, having no parents in the picture makes for better stories.)
I have always rebelled around anything and anyone that tries to control me--my body, my thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings.
God feels more workable to me if he/she/it is neutral and malleable and allows me the capacity to exercise control as I can.
I actually have better luck finding theology in secular texts.
I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, a science fiction book that was published in the 1990s.
In this book, the protagonist Lauren Olamena doesn't understand the loving god, god as parent (even though her father is a Baptist preacher).
I have always struggled with god as parent as well.
As a child, I knew my parents got frustrated with me, and I didn't fully understand what parent love meant.
How you can both hate your child and love your child in the exact same moment?
I've always had trouble wrapping my head around god that loves unconditionally because even though I would die for my children and will love them no matter what, which I suppose means I love them unconditionally, I don't really feel like this is the same love I would want from my god.
I know what I think sometimes about my children; those mean thoughts I keep tucked inside my head.
How angry I get at them, how frustrating they can be, the feeling of resentment that sometimes pulses through me.
How I sometimes think I could literally get in my car and abandon them because being a mother is just so exhausting.
So I put those same feelings on god when I think of god as parent.
And that makes god not so endearing to me and not really anyone or anything I want to determine things about my life or my afterlife.
The other idea that I struggle with is the god of the bible offering his only son.
Again, I realize I'm struggling to not put my human parameters around god, but I cannot fathom this. To sacrifice one of my children (a flesh-and-blood one at that) for the good of my other children (who are kind of jerk heads)?
I can see a Sethe (from Beloved) decision to sacrifice one's own child to keep one's own child from extreme suffering.
(See how I revert back to non-sacred texts.)
Anyway, because the whole god-as-parent thing kinks me up, I found myself drawn to the notion of god as change, which is what Butler suggests in her aforementioned sci-fi novel.
I love this quote:
All that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.
The only lasting truth is change.
God is change.
This is an idea I can understand. God as something pliable, something that I have some control over at times and over which I have no control at times.
God that doesn't wish me ill or well.
I think mine and G's OCD makes this God as change idea really powerful.
OCD wants control and creates ridiculous rules for attempting to establish control.
What the psychiatrist (with my help) is trying to do is to make change and being out of control acceptable to G.
One of my favorite prayers is the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Humans want to feel in control, and the god as parent idea makes that hard.
Parents, as sci-fi writer Alix Harrow says, are plot-spoilers.
Parents want control over their children. And children rebel against this. (Which is why, in novels, having no parents in the picture makes for better stories.)
I have always rebelled around anything and anyone that tries to control me--my body, my thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings.
God feels more workable to me if he/she/it is neutral and malleable and allows me the capacity to exercise control as I can.
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