God and Utopia

by Aubrey

The thing that always made me think was the thought, “What if all these books were destroyed, what if we did not have them? What would our religion be?”

Religion seems dependent on information. I think, “What part of religion does not require information?” When Man was put on this Earth, they did not have any books to read, nor oral teachings taught to them. Man was able to perceive something. Throughout the pre-historic world we find people perceiving something, indifferent to nature around them. Without any teaching or tradition, we find Man living with God (or, gods), ethics and laws. We perceive them on our own; we have had a relationship with God from the beginning, without religion. I am not trying to belittle religion, but am trying to say that God and ethics were, and are, ever-present in the human heart.

So why did we start talking and writing about God? What causes people to be anxious about a supernatural being? Maybe questions like, “Why does is rain?” or, “Why are we here?” Human beings seem bestowed with the burden of wanting to know why. We are obsessed with asking questions and finding answers. Eventually, we would entitle everything to something supernatural. The ‘gods’ would become the cause of everything, even rain. We, for the rest of history, would give our hand at trying to explain God.

Later, a man like Abraham would seem to conceive that as Man learned that the cause of things, like rain, were not supernatural, but natural, there must be One supernatural cause of it all: Elohim, the All-Mighty.

Unlike the animal kingdom, we go beyond survival. We seem to know better and strive for something new. Man seems to have encountered, in them, the ideal Utopia; for me, the very Kingdom of God. Being able to perceive Utopia seems to be a unique gift bestowed on human kind. Because we think things can be better than they are, even perfect.We come up with ethics and laws to try and bring this Utopia to Earth.

These two seeds deep inside the human heart have fueled our very identity in this world. I believe we can feel God and Utopia all the time. Religion, the information, is the utopian man’s record of asking questions and recording answers. But, God, for me, isn’t what religion says God is. But, God in us says what religion is.