Post #136 "Fear"

We cannot contemplate Reality much less unfold Reality without encountering the God issue. Is God for real? Is all that we have read, and heard, and generally learned about God--true, or not true? Is what we have learned about God, about God, or is it about humanity representing themselves through their representative God. Is there a story about God, or is the story humanity's story. It all seems very confusing. As fear is the basic human quality, is God the cause of fear or is God what saves us from fear?

The evolution of God arose from the need to withstand fear of the unknown. This fear came from nature, from the immediate surroundings of prehistoric man, and his response to what he feared. Nature became personified to early humanity and stories arose around campfires that competed for being the scariest and the most dramatic. Early man was a great storyteller. A person became famous for the best storytelling and the stories of prehistoric man filled the vast emptiness of wilderness. To make the stories more exciting prehistoric, man personified what he saw and what he saw was nature. Trees, rocks, water, storms, volcanoes, and especially, mountains were personified or thought to be inhabited by a special representative spirit. As fear was the basic emotion, the stories involving the personification resulted in creating personalities from the elements of nature. These nature spirits were thought to be capable of causing mischief or great harm. The spirits needed placating. The most effective way of placating these troubling spirits was to get on their good side. Getting on their good side meant extolling their virtue, offering selected gifts, and repenting anything that might be offensive to them. Adoration, sacrifice, and repentance is worship. Worship, basically, is mollifying and placating that which is threatening. Worship was played out to get on the good side of what was threatening. Worship created the god, the gods, and then, God. This evolved when humanity went from hunters and gatherers to agrarian.

Tribes represented themselves as fearless warriors before the dawning of the patriarchal ages. The best way to insure survival was to be powerful. The way to survive was power. The greatest power would have to come from outside of ones self, outside of one's tribe, for one's power was limited. Survival needed unlimited power and this could only come from the other-world---the world of the spirits. How would one buy the power of the spirit world that inhabited nature but through striking up a deal with the god or gods of whatever was seen as powerful. Being human, of course, meant that there was competition between the tribes to see whose god was most powerful. The most powerful God would reign over the most powerful tribe. This tribe would then feel most secure with the protection of the most powerful god. Their God. Their source of power. All characteristic of a patriarch society All needing Power. Power resides in the masculine. It would seem from prehistoric times that god/God was what was needed to provide power for survival. Is this God? Is this God Reality?

And what of God? What identity do I put on God when my God suddenly becomes what I worship to survive? Is it  all about power.... a sports figure, a political identity, a particular religion, money, a trophy wife? All these that are depended on for survival now become God. God is created and this God is depended on for survival. God; all powerful, all knowing, all shrewd, all connected, all wealthy, all famous, all respected........................................