It’s pretty well known the UConn women’s basketball team is a dynasty. They have won 11 NCAA Tournament Championships, the last four in a row. They have had dozens of All-American players, Tournament MVP’s, players of the year, and each year they recruit the top young women coming out of high school, including the best of the best from our very doorsteps.
They have had a 90 game winning streak and are currently on a 75-game winning streak, including six undefeated seasons. And they don’t just win, they win big, like the blowout of a super Syracuse team in the recent NCAA Tournament championship game. They are a true dynasty, but God is better.
UConn has gone 210 and 13 in its last in its last six seasons. WOW! But notice, they have lost. God never loses. And if you watch closely, the winning UConn players thank God, he doesn’t thank them. In Christian dominionism, that means they must be more worthy than their opponents, who you never see thanking God for keeping them in their place, but that’s another story.
God has a distinct advantage to start with. College basketball plays by rules set by the NCAA. God makes his own rules and changes them when it is to his advantage. Or at least he dictates to those many authors who wrote in the bible a message whereby he can’t lose; heads he wins, tails you lose. The different gods of the three major monotheistic faiths, but especially Christianity and Islam, are, according to their beliefs, “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that means the ONLY way, the ONLY truth, and the ONLY life.
In Christianity, there are estimated to be more than 3,000 separate denominations, and, for the most part, each one of them believes it has THE WAY. So no matter how different they are in belief, ritual, structure and tradition, he’s got it covered. God wins, humans lose, including the violence the differences create.
When tough questions arise, like the problem of evil in the world – made by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God – it’s a “mystery.” According to theologians, popes, bishops, rabbis, ministers, Imans and other such authority figures, we can’t know the mind of God – as they go about telling us just what the bible, or Torah, or koran means about how we are to live, what we cannot and must do, and how we must be obedient to God’s will.
Agnostics are more consistent. They believe we can’t know if God exists or if he does we can’t know his mind, and so they spend little if any time worrying about him. Atheists simply find no conclusive evidence for any god. But God has got this covered too; his emissaries say agnostics and atheists can’t be moral because without God there is no morality. Look around and see how wrong this is, but comfort outweighs truth.
The problem of evil is a major stumbling block in believing in an “all loving” God. But God’s covered here, too. The bible tells us in many verses that suffering is good for us, it makes us stronger, produces endurance and steadfastness, and leads to heaven, where joy will far outweigh earthly suffering.
So why not seek to suffer more? Beyond these rationalizations, when something good happens, that’s God. When something bad happens, that humans. Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters beyond human control are “acts of God” – a loving God, but they make us stronger. This goes for prayer, too. If what is prayed for seems to happen, it’s God. If it doesn’t, God knows best, and we can’t understand his mind. The other kind of prayer, worshipful, is puzzling, as well. Why would the all-powerful God need the worship of failed creatures he purposefully made “in his image”?
Why do humans commit so much evil? Because God thought it necessary for us to have “free will,” as if in his omnipotence he couldn’t make us differently. And if we are “in his image,” what does that say about him?
To the wretched, God’a message is, ‘…wait, and you will receive justice in the next life.’ To the rich, he warns about the eye of the needle but leaves the notion they are being rewarded and that the wretched must obey those in authority.
Got it covered again.