Power of God
What is the power of God? What are God’s powers?
If I’m in trouble, will God use his power to help me? Will he send down Jesus to die again for my sin? What if it’s past the son of God’s bedtime?
The word, which is supposedly straight from God’s mouth, was writen down my men and not Gods. The word, which created heaven and earth, was conceived and writen of by men. Perhaps they had a direct line to God to distinguish their own word from the word of God.
Can not I do something similar? Can’t I communicate directly with God and write down what he says? Maybe when I think I’m talking to God it is the devil is disguise, and so I shouldn’t write down what I hear, but don’t you think the authors of the Bible struggled with the same self doubt?
They knew what was true and what was false, because they used their human faculties to listen to and observe the world around them. They observed a force that could not be seen, but was there nonetheless. They labled this force God, and from then on forward anything that was unexplainable was labeled as an act of God.
The authors used their word to give power to the unknown, and today we do the same thing all the time. We notice freak coincidences, and we ascribe to them a higher purpose. “That was meant to happen”. Anyway, my point is that God is an abstract concept that did not exist before humans starting talking about it.
The power of God is not outside of us, it is inside us, created by us. We have the power too. We like to think that we don’t, that we can’t, that we shouldn’t, but we must. If we ignore problems and label them as out of our control than all we are doing is diffusing our own responsibility.
Once we come to realization that we are God’s power, than we can start making the changes that we want to make instead of waiting around for some other force to make it happen. You are God, I am God, together we are God. Let’s focus our power, let’s do something right with our word.
If you’re with me, consider joining the WEAREGOD.org movement. It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s a way to feel less damn empty all the time.
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before this statement is read, i would like to say that i feel the same way as you. but you must realize that many people feel a different way, that is totally realistic to them.
so, i think i understand what you mean when you say that god did not exist before we started talking about god. but are you saying that we created god, or labeled god? it is a big distinction you have to address. to say we created god when we spoke of god implies that god is our own creation and we can therefore create whatever we like. however, if you say that we only labeled god, then it would imply that god has always existed and we have only recently found god.
then when you say ‘we are god’s power’ do you mean that we are god’s actions on earth or do you mean it is our faith in god that allows god the power to perform god’s actions. again, this is a distinction that needs to be attended to. if we are gods actions on earth, then it would imply that god is acting through us. meaning either our actions are holy and deserve respect, or that god is in control. this is relating to the debate of free will or causally necessitated actions. however, if you mean that we are god’s power by our faith in god, then it entails a religious connotation that distinguishes actions not based on morals or ethics, but on your faith and belief in scriptures.
so, whether people choose to place their actions in gods control or their own control, i don’t think it affects the realization that what they (we) do matters.
Comment by dude on the couch — On 03-22-06 at 2:42 pm
You picked up on something that I was sort of trying to avoid. Whether we have freewill or our actions are guided by God’s power(fate), like you say, what we do matters. Whether we have full control over our actions or not, it is undeniable that our actions have the same power as God’s actions, since they are one in the same.
As to your other point, whether we created God or just labeled him, it is not so important because from the moment we started talking about him he existed whether that moment created him or just labeled him. The point is that all we can guess about God was created in our heads. So when we talk about God’s power, in a sense we are really talking about our own power.
I think God has always existed, even before our label. When you look up at the sky, or out over the ocean, you get a feeling of the infinite, and I think that is what our label, God, is trying to capture.
Comment by Stately, Plump — On 03-22-06 at 2:54 pm
then what i am left with is a simple yes or no question.
am i alone?
Comment by lazarus — On 03-22-06 at 3:10 pm
yes and no
Comment by Snafu Halitosis — On 03-22-06 at 3:23 pm
maybe i strayed too far too quickly from the original post. but to ask a different question, are our actions one and the same with the actions of god?
i think that it may have been overzealous to say that it is undeniable that our actions have the same power as gods (in post 2). the reason is that we have granted god the qualities only conceivable in imagination. god has these powers because we imagined god to have these powers. for ourselves, the future has these imaginable powers; you may one day have the power to inspire a generation, or have the power to see the future, or the power to lift the heaviest object. the point is that the future, hypothetically, holds infinite possibilities and powers. however, as you observe the future it becomes the present and as you observe the present the infinite becomes the finites; all of a sudden the possibilities and powers of the future become the realities of the present. so while you may claim to be the ruler of the universe in the future, and i may not contest that, as you exist in the present you are to the world what is observable.
and what is observable? the external qualities of a person. and who observes those qualities? other people. this is only to say that the other people are the world, and your external qualities are your mediums of expression. these mediums of expression are our words, but most notably our actions. this is to say that what we are to the world is only external.
relating this to our actions being the same as gods. i would contest that if we are to the world only what is observable, but god is what is imaginable, then our power is only over the present, where gods power is over the imaginable. we are not the same as god, and therefore our actions do not have the same power as gods.
Comment by above my limit — On 03-22-06 at 6:20 pm
I gotta give it up to you. You said all that very eloquently. I especially like your distinction between power over the present and power of the imaginable. Although I still like to think of myself as master of the universe, I take heed to your opinion.
What do you think about the power to organize? If 2 or more people come together and decide they are gong to enact the power of God, do you think they have power over more than the present? Can the coming together of minds somehow expand the reach of our power to more than just the ‘external’?
Comment by Stately, Plump — On 03-22-06 at 10:54 pm
I would argue that we don’t know the full extent of our powers and that we are slowly figuring them out. Everything that you see and experience, all takes place within your mind. You only see a sliver of what’s really out there, if anything is really out there at all. And you have no idea what your body really is. So if everything you’ve ever seen, heard, and imagined exists within your mind, then who’s really in control? Furthermore people have the power to imagine something and then make it exist in the world around them, that sounds like godly power to me.
Comment by Prof. Snafu Halitosis — On 03-23-06 at 3:20 pm
The idea that we are in essence defined by our external behavior seems to leave out a very important part of our existence as humans and that is our internal mental lives. While we all may not be able to directly experience anyone else’s mental lives we have a built in intuition that other people are in fact experiencing the world in a way that is analogous to the way that we experience it. If all we are to the world is our external actions what then is the purpose of our personal experience other then to provide a means through which we communicate action. If this is the case we are no more then functionalist machines who follow complex set of physical instructions without intentionality or free will. This type of man fits very nicely into the idea that all we all are merely what we present to other people. But this is far from the truth. The fact is that people do have internal mental lives and these are what drive action in the real external world. This mental life also seems to be something that is inherently divorced from the physical realm (it does however arise from the physical but that does not mean that it is defined by its physical aspects). This is where humans can be seen to attain some level of godliness. The human mind is not limited by the present. Through our minds we have the ability to exert our control over the imaginable. The power of mind is what allows the humans to extend their reach beyond the external and reach for things that are holy. Things that are holy include the pursuit of science, art, harmonizing human interaction and so on. We are godly because we pursue that which is holy. We pursue that which is holy because we share the universe’s need for self analysis. We are the universe analyzing itself and hence we are that which the universe essentially is.
Comment by Once Again — On 03-23-06 at 4:42 pm
bravo!
Comment by Stately, Plump — On 03-23-06 at 9:15 pm
word up… wearegod
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