On God, Creation -- and Abraham's Test...(For Whitney...And All Those Who Wish To Escape The Authoritarianism of False Idols...)

And do I know that God created this world?....No...But somebody did....The functionality, the purpose, the integration, the wholism, the unity, the competition, the co-operation -- it is all too brilliant for someone or someones not to have created it... Call this 'God' -- call this anything you wish -- 'intelligent design' with an 'intelligent designer' perhaps -- but don't 'submit to false idols and false authorities' -- think and feel and do for yourself.

I believe in a 'Dialectic Humanistic-Existential God' -- one that built this world integrating and harmonizing opposites, not a 'Dictatorial, Authoritarian, and/or Sadistic God' that treats all people like slaves, servants and/or non-entities. Stand up, Man! Stand up on your own two feet! Treat other people with respect and compassion, as you would wish to be treated by them. Don't be like Abraham -- willing to slash a knife into your own son, your own flesh and blood -- at God's supposed word and command. If this was God's ultimate test to Abraham, then how do we know that it was not an 'existetial -- stand on your own two feet and think for yourself Abraham test' -- a test to stand strong against all false idols and authorities, not to melt like icecream in the hot sun, not to become irrelevant like yesterday's newspaper, not to mold like last week's bread...

'Stand up strong, man! Stand up strong against me, your idolized God!' That was God's message and test to Abraham -- or correction -- my interpretation of God's message and test to Abraham.

And so the test continues. Men and women play God. And men and women play Abraham...And men and women play Isaac. Each and every day, the re-enactment of God's test to Abraham continues...

Men and women, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, employers and employees, husbands and wives, leaders and civilians...each and every day, are forever re-living this test of God. Some fail, and melt like icecream in the hot sun. Worse, some become 'third party victims' like Issac. The strong survive, compensate, modify, and flourish -- 'That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger.' (Nietzsche).

And this, in DGB Philosophy, is what is meant by 'God creating man in his own image' -- or conversely -- man living life in God's image -- dialectically as both a Creator and a Creation each and every day, each and every moment. Creativity is transforming. Creativity transforms man into the image of God. 'Dialectical -- or multi-dialectic -- creativity' brings two or more people into presence and image of God -- at the same time.

Man is both the artist and the product of his art (Erich Fromm, Man for Himself). It is through man's transformation via the act of creativity -- unilaterally, dialectically, and/or mulit-dialectically -- that man approaches, contacts, touches -- God.

dgb, May 28th, 2008.