"God is a concept by which we measure our...."

This past Saturday night, Lisette, Louis, Massy, and I were having a chat about God and religion and all that. Louis expressed his dissatisfaction with the Church alongside his continued belief in the existence of some kind of God. Mass and I, however, voiced our doubts about God: the idea of God is an old certainty of mine that's been called into question a little bit over the last few months. Not for any deep emotional reason, but moreso because of the climate of thought regarding faith: Richard Dawkin's has his book The God Delusion and has been sharing his thoughts on talk radio; the proponents of intelligent design have made theism look a bit blind and foolish; and the marxist critique of organized religion (that it's an excuse for building hierarchies) is difficult to ignore.

But despite all the evidence that accumulates as I continue listening and reading and thinking, I still want to believe. I have a few reasons. First, there's always the threat of the big sandalled foot coming from on high to squish you like a bug if you stop believing. But more substantially, God is our idea that pure goodness exists. He's also our idea that there is something ordering the chaos of the universe and our own small world.

John Lennon wrote that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain" (i.e. think of any time that you've been completely anguished and wrenched out the words "oh god, why?"). But in my happier moments, I think God may also be a concept by which we measure our thanks, for the breaths we take, for cups of coffee in the morning, for the songs of birds, etc. That is to say that, as opposed to the Marxist idea that megalomaniacs invented God so they could invoke his power as their own, perhaps we believe in God because we are at times so thankful for life that we need someone to thank. I think this is the impulse that produced the following poem:

Poem in Thanks, by Thomas Lux

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air
I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch
in the woods, the wood for fire,
the light-both lamp and the natural stuff
of leaf-back, fern, and wing.
For the piano, the shovel
for ashes, the moth-gnawed
blankets, the stone-cold water
stone-cold: thank you.
Thank you, Lord, coming for
to carry me here -- where I'll gnash
it out, Lord, where I'll calm
and work, Lord, thank you
for the goddamn birds singing!

(You can find this in Garrison Keillor's great new collection, Good Poems - worth picking up.)