A Two-Sided God

I am a big “movie buff” and I love watching movies. New movies are fun, but I am one of these people who likes to see movies over and over. I am a bit of an insomniac and I also seem to have an issue with silence… It seems I always need some noise around me. My favorite is to have movies that I have seen playing on the TV while I work away on my computer or even read a book. If it is a movie I haven’t seen or haven’t seen in a while I will put aside what I am doing and really watch. So I can go through a lot of movies in one week.

Well last night I was watching the second in a series of movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s with “Oh God” in the title. I saw “Oh, God!” about a month back staring George Burns and John Denver (1977). But last night I watched “Oh, God! Book II” starring George Burns (1980).

There was a scene, in this second installment, where a little girl, who could talk to God (George Burns), asks God, “Why do bad things happen?” God replied, “I always had trouble making one sided things.”

He goes on to explain that every front has a back, every light has a dark, good has evil, sickness has health, and so on. What in life does not have an opposing force or opposite side?

So why not the Church?

There has been a lot of scandal in the Church lately. But then you go back in history and that is a standard. In fact you know I speak of the Roman Catholic Church, but really look at any church or religion. Scandal is always there. It seems the more good a church does, and they all do, the more bad that comes out.  In fact I just jumped over to Google to prove my point. If you type in scandal and then a religion (you pick) you get a lot of results. Everyone I typed in had a sex scandal on the first page of results, but there are many other types of scandal too. But why is that? Why is religion not a positive thing? Why can we not find a religion without a scandal? Because God created us. Humans are part of religion.

Another movie reference… “Angels & Demons” had a great quote at the end, “Religion is flawed because man is flawed.” No man or woman is perfect, everyone is flawed, dare I say it… but yes even the Pope is flawed. I will not focus on that in this article maybe another. But if the flaws of a religion are what are keeping you from being more involved with your religion than I ask you… What makes you so perfect? You’re not… (sorry to burst your bubble). And the mere fact that people are involved in religion means that it will be flawed and have scandals… But maybe… Just maybe we can gauge a religion by its scandals…

Let’s look at this from the other side… The stronger a magnetic force the stronger the opposing force needs to be… So the more good something does the more bad happens… but think about it… Why are so many people interested in the scandals? Is it because that they are expecting so much more positive?

So if good begets bad… And bad is a symbol that good is happening… does bad beget good?

Here is where I will lose you…  Bad things can get good results… Now this is not a battle cry for terrorism… Because I think that all the bad things that have happened in this world have been first in response to a good thing. But also, all the bad things have gone on to create good things too. When I say the name Hitler, you will most likely say, “Never again”, or 9/11 you may say, “Never forget”. Now these events are sad… Devastating to humanity…. and I can talk for hours and do other articles on them… But the important thing is that we have learned from them. We have made a decision that these things will not happen again. The line in the sand that should never again be crossed has been drawn. We have learned that we can be better than that and that we must expect others to be better than that too. Even if we must put measures in place to prevent them from doing it again… So in the end did something good happen? Sadly yes. We through the depths of sadness and suffering also know stories that we would never have known. Let me use one example… 9/11. Just the thought of it brings tears to my eyes, anger to my heart, and resolution to my mind. But the emotion instantly changes when I say 9/11 Fire Fighters. And not just them but the other people, Police, Doctors, Reporters, and others that ran into those buildings to help when others were running out. Those that run into harm’s way when every fiber of our natural body is to run away… The emotion is different now… there is joy, respect, admiration, and love. I would never know true honor in my lifetime without thinking of these men and women. They were doing more than just their job…. They were changing our world for the positive and they paid the ultimate price for it.

So yes I believe good needs bad and bad needs good. And Religion needs Atheists to keep it honest. But I also know that there are a lot of things on this earth that are much more small and meager than me… and that means that there is something out there substantially greater than me…