God, Gott, Dieu, Yhwh… and Allah.

God by any other name is still Creator. To borrow further from Shakespeare, “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself,…”

According to Genesis mythology God created the heavens and the earth, light and dark, the plants and animals, and then humanity in God’s image and likeness. God toiled for 6 days and then “rested” the 7th day. Perhaps a more accurate description is that God either retired or took a sabbatical because from that point forward humanity took up the task of creating. We created nations, language, and religions… religions that define god in our image and likeness. In my country most call the Creator “God”. My German paternal grandparents named the Creator Gott, and my Lebanese/Syrian maternal grandparents (who were Christians) prayed to Allah. “Allah” is not a word unique to a theology, it is merely the Arabic word for God and the Arabic language predates Islam by centuries.

Humanity created all that divides us and in our division we imagine that the Creator takes sides in wars, politics, and sporting events. We created rituals that we imagine are necessary to communicate and entreat with the gods that we created. If God is universal, all powerful, and all-knowing then I doubt that God is confused by the names that we choose or the manner by which we address or invoke God. I doubt that God favors one archaic ritual over another, one nation over another, one political party over another, or one baseball team over another.

If there is a Universal Creator (a topic for another time), then I pray that God comes out of retirement and begins work on the 8th day to create peace, love, understanding and respect among those God created on the 6th day.

Peace Everyone. Pete

5 thoughts on “God By Any Name

  1. Maxine Harrison says:

    I am not a person who practices religion…I was brought up in a church surrounding but made the decision that it wasn’t for me many many years ago. I think, had I had children, I would have joined a church if only to give the the tools to make a decision for themselves on this subject.
    But in spite of all that, as you know…I do a great bit of stargazing and what I see is so amazing, so fantastically beautiful…like our amazing planet we live on and the interconnections of life…this just can’t be random…this is some strange order to the universe…maybe God doesn’t participate in our lives all the time (this if find so very hard to believe, especially when child have diseases, are killed senselessly in wars or terrorist strike…there is NO logic that can explain that to me…but also, in a way…I hope you are right about the the 6th day…

  2. I think God is a trickster. It starts early. It is said that we arrive here from the Guff (sp ?) and, as we remember our time there, cry; sometimes ceaselessly, as we cannot go back to the warmth and pure love. Colic, indeed. The happiest time of our life is childhood. We depend almost completely on our parents for everything from food to love to clean underwear. Then we reach adulthood. Our textbooks (Mom/Dad) are now out of print. New ones are nowhere to be found. Now we are stuck tripping over our shoelaces, trying to get everything right and commonly failing, with occasionally tragic results.

    I agree with Maxine that deadly childhood diseases, deadly school shootings, wars and terrorism defy any human logic. I don’t know about any 8th day, when we don’t have the tools to love each other. I only pray (yes, I do pray) that we are something more than punchlines.

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