Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, August 19, 2008


We must question the story logic of having
an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates
faulty Humans, and then blames them for his
own mistakes.

- Gene Roddenberry, creator of “Star Trek”,
born on this day, 1921


Bingo. Is it not just so very Human for people to create a “sacred” text, and Myth (Truth-story), and a God whom they can blame indirectly through His faulty character to escape the responsibility for their pathetic failure. (Well; He blames us for our failures ….. but we know who’s really failed!) We Humans are not so stupid after all, are we!

God, in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, is definitely not all-knowing, all-powerful. Theologians have said that God is so – after all, if you are God, what else could You be?? But then we portray God as petty, arbitrary, vindictive, sulky, angry, etc. The two just don’t fit together. If anything proves to me that, in essence, God is Humankind’s creation, the Bible does.

And yet, and yet ….. to me, the great wonder and mystery of the Bible is that, when you read it with (as mystics have said) the mind within the heart, and with a deep longing to understand oneself, others, the World, , with the inner ear truly open and ready to “hear”, the true mystery we call “God” is revealed. At least I have found it so.

I am an unabashed “Trekker”. Where I live, there is a TV channel with no other redeeming features except that it has Star Trek Voyager re-runs on from 4-6 every afternoon. I am glued to it, as is Dennis if he is home. I love them because they are always questioning the logic of things that Humans believe. I agree with Roddenberry: we must question the logic of the often bizarre positions we take. Especially about “religion”. If we don’t, we end up where we are now in the World.

The Star Trek motto is: to explore a strange new world, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

The boldest Journey is Within. It takes the most courage.

Brian+