In Reply to: a thought posted by porceleindoll on August 19, 2004 at 20:39:05:
I think it’s human nature to want to reduce God to formulas and rituals and saying the right words, and Berg took this to its logical conclusion, reducing God to a genii in a lamp. He literally used those words, that God was our genii in a lamp. The thing about a genii is that although it’s a supposedly very powerful spiritual being with amazing magical powers, the poor thing has unfortunately got itself “trapped” in a bottle so now when you go through the right rituals (rub the bottle) it has to come out with arms folded and say, “Your wish is my command.”
By saying that God was “bound by his word” and using a self-serving interpretation of the Bible that said that God had made iron-clad promises that he “had” to keep, Berg reduced God to the status of a powerful magical being, there when we need him but kept locked up when we didn’t. Remember the household and kitchen Brownies in “Harry Potter”? They only existed to serve their masters and were content to cook and sweep all day and be dressed in rags. That’s the kind of god Berg had and it’s wishful religious thinking at its worst.
If you’ve ever read Rudyard Kipling’s book, “Puck of Pook’s Hill” you’ll see a tongue-in-cheek complaint by the faerie, Puck. Shakespeare described Puck as a small woodland spirit in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” so when Puck shows up these two kids say, “Ooooo! A Faerie!” and Puck gets all offended. He says that in the beginning when the Vikings brought him to England in their longboats, he was a powerful, feared god and they made human sacrifices to him. But as England had become Christian and people lost faith in the ancient gods, the old gods were reduced to the status of woodland spirits and finally shrunk down so small that they became cutsie little faeries flitting around.
I don’t know if you read J.R.R. Tolkien, but Tolkien was pretty upset by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Tolkien’s Elves are noble, wise and larger than humans, because in the original Germanic folk tales they were, but Shakespeare reduced them to a few inches tall, and for hundreds of years that’s how people perceived Elves. Tolkien said that what Shakespeare had done to the Elves was "unforgivable."
But that’s what Berg did to God and it’s human nature to want to reduce God (or any gods for that matter) down to a small, manageable size, so that he’s always there when we need him and though he has powerful “magic” he MUST always grant our wishes. This is an incorrect concept of God. Even if you don’t fully believe in God in the Christian or Jewish sense, consider that to truly be “God” he has to be transcendent, higher than all created things, including this world and human beings. His wisdom would have to be so much greater than our wisdom that, like the Psalms say, “his understanding is infinite, and he would be unpredictable, at least from our human view, his ways not our ways and this thoughts not our thoughts. He could not be predictable and basically “under contract.”
God has made promises to protect us and provide for us, yes, and we can petition him and ask him to help us when we need help, but I don’t believe those promises cannot be quoted back to God from the position of a master to a genii trapped in a lamp. Berg had it backwards. If you read the MLs or Family pubs like Word Basics, you’ll see that prayer has been reduced to lists of promises and the right conditions you have to meet to “get things from God.” Whereas true prayer begins with meditation and understanding who GOD is and who WE are in relationship to him. Psalms says, “Be still know that I am God,” and to me, being quiet and still means to meditate.
In my own experience, I have found that a lot of my prayers don’t get answered, for whatever reasons. I’m not sure why because I’ve been “in it” just as much as I’ve been “out of it” when petitioning God, so you couldn’t just say it was sin in my heart and he didn’t hear me. But I HAVE found out that when I am really seeking God intently with all my heart, that the statistics of prayers actually getting answered takes a dramatic jump. That verse really does come alive: “When you search for me with all your heart, you will find me.” But my problem is I’m lazy and inconsistent in prayer, so the situation has to get a bit tough before I’m motivated to really seek God like that.
In the meantime, I’ve much given up half-heartedly quoting promises and insisting he fulfill verses I pull out of the Bible. I figure God didn’t “sign a blank check” and give it to me to fill it in, and he certainly didn’t sign his name to an entire wad of checks and give them to me. But he is there when I need him.