Pursuing God

It seems to me that God, wisdom and happiness all exist only in the pursuit for humankind. We can never obtain, attain nor truly know any of these. We can only pursue them. And this may uncover one of the difficulties with religion.

In practice, religion is not the same as the scriptures that it follows. Religion that I have seen and known, claims not only to know God but to have Him boxed up, put away and protected from the prying eyes and groping hands of the great unwashed public. There He is communicated with only by proper prayers, given at proper times and in proper ways, by the proper people, or by people that are proper.

Beyond religion is the individual's effort that only the seeker himself/herself can know. Surely we can see the effects or lack thereof in the person's life, but we cannot know easily what causes what in a person's life anymore than we can know tomorrow's weather or know God. Our knowledge is mere probability—an estimate with some expected degree of accuracy. Physics, we can reduce to axioms and algorithms, but metaphysics is still a matter of pursuit, which we will be pursuing until the last thinking human is gone from this world. We cannot even understand people, much less can we know God unless we invent our own god, which I submit, is what we do.

The famous Socrates line goes something like this: "I know only that I know nothing." My translation is that I know just enough to know that I don't know. My experience in technology is that there is a threshold of knowledge about a subject before which a learner knows everything, but after which they become much quieter about how much they know. I've experienced this in myself every time I pursue a new subject area. At some point I think I've got the subject well understood but then I pass a certain point—perhaps I read another book—after which I realize that I know really very little about the subject and have much further to go if I'm to master it. But mastery is elusive. There is almost always more to learn or master.

At almost 50 years of age I've learned enough in this life to know that I will never completely master any subject of any real consequence, but I take solace in recognizing that neither will anybody else. Those thinkers that I've come to admire the most are the ones who have the humility to recognize the vastness that lies ahead of them, yet the courage to speak from their present level of understanding for the good of others, and the curiosity and drive to press on toward goals that they are wise enough to know they will never quite attain.

And so, after decades of weary worn pursuit, and with awe and humility, in the company of atheists, deists, theists and agnostics, I must say that I can't know scientifically if there is a God, but that I hope that there is a Loving, Just and Merciful One for the good of us all. However, if there is not, we should nevertheless live out our lives together pursuing the highest ideals of love, justice and mercy because these are the ideals worthy of our pursuit.

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