To: The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Dallas Morning News* 
Date:  March 12, 2004
Subject: The history of religion 
Result: not printed

Dear Editor,

In the old days, before God and Jesus, the gods demanded sacrifices for us to seek their fickle favor and try to avoid their angry outbursts.

Then, when it was time to create the new god, God, all of the traits and behaviors and requirements that had always been assigned and attributed to gods - the general unreasonableness, the infantile need to be praised and worshipped, the wrath that's always waiting on the edge, the arbitrary punishments and rewards, and the desire for barbaric, bloody sacrifice - were all transferred to him.

So the Hebrews, before Jesus, were required to make endless sacrificial offerings, which sometimes involved hundreds and thousands of animals at a time.

Finally God became very efficient and provided Jesus. In one fell swoop, his need for violent blood could be permanently appeased. In fact, after Jesus, all of the things that used to be of utmost importance to God, presented in great detail in the Old Testament, no longer mattered to him at all. It was like he was a whole new God. Even the Jews don't really follow the Old Testament anymore, after Jesus.

The God that Abraham invented, and all that followed from that tradition, including Jesus and Mohammed, is a very small god, with his "chosen people" - whether Jews or Christians or Muslims - and everybody else bites the dust.

But the real and true God, if he exists, is very big. He's infinite. He contains all things, and all things are in and part of him. He could not choose one group of people over any other, and what anybody may happen to believe about him does not concern him in the least. Why should it? Praise and worship of him? For what?  If a person had such an obsessive need for praise and worship, he would be considered mentally unsound.  What's the difference?

As for God's commerce and communication with the world, he does not talk to people or allow himself to be known by them. If he did, he would say the same thing to everybody, including all the primitive peoples who created their own gods. I think that if Great God had come thundering down on those people as the Hebrews said he did with them, all those other people of the world, who all they wanted was a god, would have been very happy to pay him all the homage he desired. They would have been a lot less trouble too, given the recalcitrant history of the Hebrews. Even with all the signs and wonders and prophets and manifestations they had, they still could not stay on track.

No, God does not become involved in human affairs. He does not answer prayers. He does not heal sicknesses. He does not play favorites - as would be unavoidable if he did interact with us. And he does not do stupid things that have no good reasons, like requiring sacrifices, whether of animals or Jesus, or placing any value whatever in whether somebody believes it.

Indeed, the God that most people believe in is not an intelligent being at all. Sure, he was smart enough to design and create everything, but that's the end of it.

Concerning our purpose and why we exist, there is no particular "purpose" for us. It's God who has the purpose, which is basically logistical, which is for us to live our lives inside of him, as part of him, as the means for him to become what he is. He has to become, like all life. He can't just sit there and be. The only purpose we have for our own lives is the one we create for ourselves, or we allow somebody else to create it for us. Whatever we create, that's God becoming himself.

Does God love us? I'm sure he does, though it doesn't really matter. He can't help us. Certainly he is very sympathetic and hopes for the best for us, and he feels all the pain in the world, but he accepts the worst, and knows that everything - all the good and the bad - is inside of infinite him.

Of course, one thing about old God is he is absolutely alone. Nobody to talk to. Nobody understands him. There is no room in the universe for anybody but him, but it's all just the parts that he's comprised of. It would be like me trying to talk to my arm. His existence goes on and on for all eternity, with no question of to be or not to be. It doesn't sound too happy to me.

Just let us rest in peace when it's our time to go, that's what I hope. Otherwise we will never have peace.

Thank you,  John Vehon

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* sent to the Publisher of The Dallas Morning News but not to the editorial department