WHAT IF GOD IS YOUR
ENEMY
by
Anthonystjoseph
What do you do if it seems like God is
your enemy? As a young child I
questioned God right off the bat in my awakening into the realities of our
world. I started to look at my mother
and all of the others who professed the idea of an all-powerful and loving God as if they were crazy. Even as a child I could see the atrocities of
the real world. I would sit on the floor
and watch the television reports of the starving children in Africa with flies
actually resting and feeding in their open eyes as these same children stared
into the camera with clear hopelessness and then I would turn to my mother
talking about God and think, ‘you have
got to be crazy’. What kind of all-powerful
God would allow THIS!
I watched the homeless and crippled people
in my own daily travels beg on the streets while all the while a supposedly
‘benevolent’ and powerful being watched over us. What was more astounding to me than watching
someone who was born a quadriplegic struggle through their painful existence
was the assuredness of my mother, Catholic Priest, Teachers and nuns at
Catholic School telling me that God created ALL!
In my young mind I had the intellectual
resolve to say, ‘If this dude, this God, created quadriplegics, starving
children, and children born in horrible situations then this dude was messed
up’. I decided, as that young and aware
child, that there was no such thing as God.
This God that my Catholic School teachers and the rest of the world
lauded was not a God at all. I began to
hate this God for the evils of the world and the idea alone would eventually set me off. I came to what I thought was the obvious conclusion
which was that there was no God at all and the idea was completely foolish.
In my worldly travels I would preach to
anyone at any time about my perception that God did not exist. I would freely tell anyone willing to listen
and discuss the topic that the Aztecs had more proof of their God then we did of ours. I simply and regularly explained that, “The
Aztecs worshiped their God the ‘Sun’ and it came up every day and gave them
light and grew their food. What has your God done for you?’
I was a champion speaker against the idea
of a God or any God at all. I was so
angry at this supposedly benevolent God that when I entered into the Army they
asked me ‘what religion to put on my dog tags’; I told them Atheist. I was adamant. Apparently this God had soldiers in charge of
the U.S. Army because the soldier looked at me and said, “Well I can’t put
that. I’ll put ‘no preference’”.
Flash forward five years or so and my
anger at God was boiling over. I had
left my self-classification of Atheist and changed it to Agnostic because I
found myself in my hard to overcome indoctrination on the topic of a God still
talking to him. Something bad would
happen to me and I would say in my head, “I hate you God!” I would avoid a car accident and find myself
‘thanking God’. I realized that how
could I call myself an Atheist when I was still talking to this ‘God’. I decided in the clarity of truth in my
character that I had to start telling myself and others that I was agnostic as
in I had no idea whether or not God existed at all. But I was still talking and more importantly
complaining to him and everyone else about the world and its inequitable
conditions.
And then, and then, as explained in much
more detail in my memoirs. My hate for
God was really boiling over. I was
simmering at high heat. I could barely
walk through my daily existence in my anger.
And then, and then, it happened.
Something was following me…
Something was trying very desperately to reveal itself to me… Something stalked me… I was found and I was shaken… In the midst of my simmering boil in a hatred
towards God, he or it revealed itself to me…
I was walking down the street cursing him
for a horrible tragic set of events and a specifically horrible occurrence in
my life and then right before my eyes was a book and other things marked ‘free’ just waiting for me. It was the beginning of my freedom from my
hatred towards God, actually it was the middle, because they were on me. I took the
book home and opened it. The book was
written by Earnest C. Wilson; a priest.
I very early came to a passage in the book that said, ‘You show me the
person preaching the loudest that there is no God and I’ll show you the person
preaching the loudest for God to reveal himself to them.’ Well, God was revealing his self or itself to
me and it was overwhelming. I finally
spiritually fell to the ground and realized that yes, there was a God. The thing
that had been spiritually stalking me was this God presence. Yes, something was watching over us.
I began to see why certain people had
certain troubles and why God put us through these various struggles. I began to see. I was able to see. I could see.
This brings me back to my original question,
‘Why does God seem to hate some’ ‘Why does God seem to treat some as an enemy’. I could not imagine being a deaf person and
not being able to hear the joy of music from birth and not even having a memory
of music. I could not imagine being born
into a world and never being able to visually see that world. I could not imagine being born a quadriplegic
and watching others walk through their life with such freedom and choice while
I was confined to a chair and possibly a room.
I could not imagine a God that could do this if this God created ALL! I could not imagine…
I could not imagine suffering in some of
these previously listed ways and not suspecting that this God must hate
me. So what is the answer? The truth?
Is our God a benevolent creature?
Has our ‘supposed’ God turned the Earth and it’s domain over to some
malevolent creature as it says in the Christian Bible? The answer, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing; on that day when
I meet him or it I am going to ask because I can say for sure. Something
is watching over us. I want an
explanation and I don’t want to live through any more horror to try and figure
it out for myself. I am going to hold him,
her, or it accountable for this
world. It better be a good answer!
By
Anthonystjoseph
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