Concepts of God explained

So I’ve had quite a few people contact me privately, as well as a few on my cartoon this morning, asking if I could expound it a bit. I usually don’t explain my cartoons. But since this cartoon is central to what I think is important I thought maybe I would say a few words.

The thought is not the thing. The word is not the thing. The concept is not the thing. So our concepts of God are not God. In this light, therefore, it is not only inevitable but necessary that our past concepts of God go up in smoke. It would follow then that our present concepts of God are those that bring us security, comfort and even passion. And if we can agree on that, then we have to entertain the thought that our future concepts of God will undergo the same fires of purgation.

Some say we have the bible… the Koran, the Lotus Sutra or the Bhagavad Gita… and that’s all we need. Well, that’s not true. What we actually have is our interpretation of these. Whatever they are in all their purity are separated from us by our reading of it. Especially when these readings and interpretations are authorized.

If you find this unsettling, then I think that is good. You have begun your healthy suspicion of the superiority of the intellect and the brain that manufactures it and authority which endorses or invalidates it.

As Calvin once asserted, the brain is an endless factory of idols.

This is what my cartoon means.