The Corruption
When you see the word god, what feeling first arises in you?
The Catholic way, to a young boy: hushed tones, darkened churches, men (only men, always men) in layered robes, sauntering from the back room to the altar before a service. God is Love the priest says later in his sermon, as if that clears up anything. It’s like saying Zero is One, a mathematical proof that is somehow supposed to convey some grand mystic truth but in fact conveys only ignorance.
Better, much better to say We Don’t Know but that’s an entirely different god. That would require the priest sit low on the steps and say I’m a human just like you, boy. And we are all in the dark.
That would feel real. That would feel honest.
But at that point I didn’t yet know the extent of the corruption. Or, actually, that’s not quite it. I should say I didn’t yet realize adults were capable of such corruption, that anyone had it in them to orchestrate such a grand and awful farce.
In college I took a physics course and they taught all the usual hits. A cannonball fired into the air follows a parabolic path. A ball rolling down a plane accelerates in such-and-such a way. I remember at the time thinking: yes, okay, fine, but…why? Things just want to stick to each other, is that it? Little things like big things? And big things like bigger things?
I was too shy to ask that question. Nobody else seemed to ask it, so I didn’t either.
God is Love. Gravity just Is.
No. You see? It’s not that it’s right or wrong, it’s that it’s a shortcut, a cheat. Just because it’s simpler to say it this way does not make it true. It could be. But you don’t get to own it. You have to prove it. Not hide behind your power.
I wish I could see that word god now without recoiling. But I cannot. They broke it for me, layered so many lies onto it, just like their robes.
How many lies, how much propaganda can you shovel at a young boy? They could have come clean from the start and think what connotations that word could have had. Trust, love, faith, joy, a willingness to accept and explore. So many possibilities. But, no.
The good news is, it’s just a word. A human word. And we have so many others to work with that feel so much better. Beauty. Wonder. Mystery. Excitement.
They took a word and tried to own it. A shame. Language has a power of its own. You can rent the words. But they’re not yours to buy.