thegodwholeftheaven

i would like to introduce you to the god who left heaven. the deity who rejects the sacred for the profane.

let me explain.

the ancient torah narrative shows us a god who gradually distances himself from the socially constituted nuances of ‘holiness’. the ancient world (including the ancient jewish world) saw sacrifice not only as necessary to control their deity but also as a holy responsibility. in the myth story of abraham and isaac, god alters the global metanarrative (which up to this point assumed the need for brutal sacrifice) by stopping abraham from killing isaac.

in this story, there is a direct condemnation of the cultural assumption that sacrifice is holy.

god distances herself from this as an act that is acceptable. it seems that god alters the assumptions from one end of the narrative to the other. ezekiel, a prophet, is instructed by god to play with animal poop. which earlier in the jewish torah is instructed that to touch such an object is aligning one’s self with the profane. yet, god instructs ezekiel to use the profane object as a dramatic prop to alert the israelite community of their selfish behaviour.

the narrative of god enfleshing himself in human skin (in the traditional theological narrative) is a god who is willing to divorce himself from all the assumed holiness and exchange this holiness for the profane. by jesus leaving ‘heaven’ and distancing himself from all that is holy, jesus rejects the sacred for the profane.

jesus demonstrates to the whole of humanity that to live out of our divinity means to embrace and even die for the profane; by leaving heaven he shows us that life isn’t about finding an idealistic end, but rather finding idealism in the profane moments…

but what if god was doing something even more subversive here?

what if by denouncing the sacred for the profane, god was rejecting the very symbolic order that constitutes our reality. maybe he was dismantling the paradigmatic assumption that we need to be committed to an existence defined by categorical imperatives. what if he was fracturing one reality to create another? isn’t that what the incarnation is really about? one reality invading another. and when one reality invades the other, there is an inherent shift or a displacement that occurs.

where one reality dissolves itself into another.

and i think these realities are meant to co-exist, but rather post-exist their former realities and rest in their temporal existence until another reality invades that one. what if god was indicating to us that when we to reject the categorical imperatives (e.g., ‘this goes here, that goes there’) that beginning we inviting a new reality in, one that denies the need for duality and separation.

the apostle paul seems to posit the same idea when he invites his audience to see that there are no ‘jews, greeks…male or female…’ but rather that ‘christ is in

all’ – that christ is the new reality that invades not just believers, but all of humanity. notice he strips his audience of the language of categorical imperatives and replaces it with a new reality. he strips one symbolic order of its power and replaces it with a new one. so, maybe part of our journey isn’t trying to figure out what person, idea, truth, politique fits in what box, but rather to strip ourselves from the need to have any kind of box.

when new world leaders enter their local and global political contexts, they tend to bring with them a new campaign. a new reality, if you will, and the hope (in most cases) is that there intentions are to leave the world a better place with their new initiatives. but to do so, sometimes they have to either build upon former leader ideas or eradicate others. its the latter that tends to happen. but this is the invasion i am speaking one, where one reality abandons another for the sake of a better one. world 2.0.

so rather than there even being a god who abandons the sacred for the profane, which might sound catchy yet is too simplistic, maybe god is saying she’s just god. god without the categorical imperative. god 2.0.
i think there is also something even more intriguing occuring here when god abandons the sacred for the profane, not only is she introducing us to the economy of reality exchange, but also to the gap.

if god is displacing us from the idea of being slaves to the categorical imperative, then i think what could also be occuring is that god is claiming something more dynamic than most orthodox theology tends to offer. and that is, that if god doesn’t rest in the polarities we tend to implicate in our belief systems, then god might lie in the gaps and spaces of those very beliefs. this why i think the orthodox theological interpretation might need to revisit

things like love, justice, truth, peace, harmony, even reality itself do not rest on either side of the fence, but are the fence itself. it seems the metanarrative we have subscribed to has duped us into believing that sides even exist, when in ‘reality’ there are truly no sides to choose from. but rather that when we all come to stand in this gap, we then can all easily rest in the notion that we are where we are meant to be.