God

THERE MUST BE A GOD because (a) since the beginning of history, the most variegated majority of people have intermittently believed there was; (b) it is hard to consider the vast and complex structure of the universe in general and of the human mind in particular without considering the possibility that they issued from some ultimate source, itself vast, complex, and somehow mindful; (c) built into the very being of even the most primitive human there seems to be a profound psychophysical need or hunger for something like truth, goodness, love, and—under one alias or another—for God; and (d) every age and culture has produced mystics who have experienced a Reality beyond reality and have come back using different words and images but obviously and without collusion describing with awed adoration the same Indescribability.

Statements of this sort and others like them have been advanced for several thousand years as proofs of the existence of God. A twelve-year-old child can see that no one of them is watertight. And even all of them taken together won't convince any of us unless our predisposition to be convinced outweighs our predisposition not to be.

It is as impossible to prove or disprove that God exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about God as it is to prove or disprove that goodness exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about what is good.

It is as impossible for us to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.

All-wise. All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore to death both God and ourselves with our chatter. God cannot be expressed, only experienced.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Gluttony

A GLUTTON IS ONE WHO RAIDS THE ICEBOX for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Gideon

THE BEST THING THE JUDGE GIDEON ever did and the worst mistake he ever made came within moments of each other.

The best was when the Israelites asked him to be their king, and he turned down the invitation. Like the prophet Samuel years later, he knew that the only true king the Israelites would ever have was Yahweh, and he told them so. If he had any secret hankerings for personal power, he managed to squelch them. It was a noble move, and when you consider all the trouble Israel had with kings when it finally got them, it showed amazing wisdom and foresight.

And then the mistake. All the boys were wearing gold earrings that season, and when Gideon asked them to contribute them to the cause, they cheerfully agreed. Somebody laid a coat on the ground, and as soon as the earrings were all tossed in, Gideon added some more golden gewgaws he'd taken from the enemy, things like crescents and pendants and collars for prize camels. By the time he was through, he had a great glittering pile out of which he made an ephod. Nobody's quite sure what an ephod was in this case, but it was apparently some sort of religious objet d'art that Gideon thought would remind everybody who their true king really was. Only that's not the way things worked out.

Gideon's mistake was to forget that the second of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" (Exodus 20:4) and that it's not by accident that it stands that high on the list. As soon as you've got a golden god you can shine up and deck out and push around like a doll in a baby carriage, you start thinking God himself is somebody you can push around too. The next step, of course, is that you think the graven image is God, and by that time it has about as much genuine religious significance as a rabbit's foot or a charm against the evil eye.

Instead of looking at the ephod and thinking about Yahweh, the Israelites started kowtowing to the ephod and hardly giving Yahweh the time of day. After Gideon died, they started kowtowing to the kinds of things you win tossing hoops at a carnival, and Yahweh was all but forgotten.

Poor Gideon. He might almost have done better to let them make him king when they wanted to. At least he would have been able to keep them on the right track that way, and they would have been able to keep their earrings, and Yahweh would have been able to keep in closer touch with his people than for their many long, sad years of god sampling was possible again.

Judges 8:22-28

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Ghost

WHAT KEEPS GHOSTS GOING seems to be usually some ancient tragedy they can't cut loose from or some dramatic event they are perpetually reenacting or some unfinished business they never seem able to resolve. They are so shadowy that it's hard to believe they exist. Some of the more spectacular hauntings—cups and saucers flying through the air, midnight wailings, a haggard face at the window—suggest they may have grave doubts on the subject themselves. It seems to be that if they can only make somebody's hair stand on end, possibly their own even, it helps convince them they aren't just figments of their own imagination. They prefer deserted places because they feel deserted. They disappear at cockcrow because the idea of seeing themselves, or being seen, for what they truly are scares the daylights out of them.

If you want to see one, take a look in the mirror someday when you yourself are feeling particularly haggard and shadowy.

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Gentleman/Gentlewoman

BY ONE DEFINITION gentlemen and gentlewomen are people who have gone to the schools and colleges everybody's heard of, don't talk with their mouths full, avoid using like as a conjunction, don't make scenes in public, and so on. They are apt to turn up in such places as country clubs, the society pages, and restaurants in which proper dress is required. They may commit murder from time to time, but they rarely end up in the electric chair. If a child of yours marries one of them, you figure he or she has done all right. If they're usually no better than other people, they are usually no worse either. Or if they are, it at least doesn't show so much.

But there are gentlewomen and gentlemen in another sense who may be none of the above. They may speak atrocious English and get their clothes at rummage sales. They may leave their spoons in their coffee cups and douse their french fries with ketchup. There are some of them who, if they turned up at a country club, would be directed to the service entrance. Some are educated, and some barely made it through grade school. Some are captains of industry, and some pump gas for a living. But whatever the differences between them, the common denominator is even more striking.

Gentle is the key word, of course. Their table manners may be appalling, but their courtesy is instinctive. They let you take the seat by the window or have first go at the morning paper not because it's in Emily Post, but because it's in their nature. They seem to be born knowing when to come around and when to stay away. If you have them over for supper, they know when it's time to go home. Their wit may be sharp, but it never cuts. Even in private they don't make scenes if they can possibly help it.

They have their hang-ups and abysses and blind spots like everybody else, but when Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek," if it wasn't exactly them he was talking about, the chances are it was people very much like them. 

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words