Turn a whisper to a scream

God be with you

My religious upbringing taught me a number of things about God.

• He is everywhere—omnipresent;

• He knows everything—omniscient;

• He has no name (His name is “I am”);

• He sent his son to save us (I’m a Christian, and that’s what we believe).

Here’s a list of things that Christians believe:

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and Earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
He descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty;
whence He will come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

That is what Christians believe, and any who call themselves Christians who do not believe that, or any portion thereof, are either a fraud or a yes-person—someone who says “yes” without really thinking about the answer.

The reason why some people perhaps say “yes” to all these beliefs without really thinking about it is because they don’t really think believing or not believing in these things has any practical application. It doesn’t really matter whether I believe, say, in the life everlasting because, if there is life everlasting, I will find out soon enough. Believing in it won’t affect whether it actually happens.

To this there are two schools of thought.

1. Belief itself is a constituent element of life everlasting: if you don’t believe, it won’t happen.

2. Life everlasting is not dependent on believing in it; it depends on other elements, such as compassion, love, self-sacrifice and so on. They who devote themselves to humanity without believing in life everlasting (i.e. humanists) will achieve life everlasting anyway.

These schools of thought can be applied to each and every line of the apostles’ creed (viz. the prayer cited above), which invites an interesting question: do those who truly believe in everything that is listed in the creed achieve life everlasting by virtue of that belief, and that belief alone; or does anyone achieve life everlasting who lives a virtuous life, regardless of whether they believe in those things set forth in the creed? And, finally, does belief in the ideas set down in the creed require the believer to understand them?

Take the royal family, of wherever. Those who support the idea of royal families will avow a belief in monarchy. Or take democracy: believers in democracy. Or even the freedom of speech: I believe in the freedom of speech. The question is then whether those people who avow such beliefs—in monarchy, or democracy or freedom of speech—understand what those concepts are, what they mean, what effects they have, and what benefits and dangers might be concealed behind the label. In that sense, is true belief conditioned upon understanding?

There is much in the apostle’s creed (which I must have recited thousands of times) that is superfluous information. For the non-grammarians among you, English relative clauses can be either limitative or non-limitative, and the difference is whether or not a comma is used and whether the word at the start of the clause is, expressly or by implication, that or which. It’s a dying skill these days to use relative clauses correctly, mainly because the sense is usually pretty clear, whichever form you use. The rule does come in useful when expressing relationships, however:

• In 1952 George VI died and the crown passed to his daughter Elizabeth.

• In 1952 George VI died and the crown passed to his daughter, Elizabeth.

The first of these is to be understood as his daughter that (or who) was named Elizabeth, and the second is to be understood as his daughter, which (who) was named Elizabeth. So, which of the two should it be?

The first one is a limitative relative clause: that (or who in this case, because it refers to a person, not a thing) limits the meaning of daughter: it was the daughter named Elizabeth (and not the daughter named Margaret). The second one is non-limitative: which (or who in this case) implies that Elizabeth was the only daughter of George; the reference to her name does not limit the meaning of the word daughter, it simply gives further information about her. The second is therefore wrong, because George did indeed have two daughters, and the second sentence negates that fact.

So, what is added in the apostles’ creed by words like who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried? Is my belief conditional upon my believing each and every fact stated here, or are these limiting clauses, defining who is meant by Jesus Christ? In other words, could I validly substitute who was born in Bethlehem, learned to be a carpenter, was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, was crucified died and was buried? That would still be the same Jesus Christ, would it not? To consider the relative clause as limitative would be to beg the question as to how many Jesus Christs there have been, such that these limiting factors are required to identify the one in question. But, by contrast, if we read the clause as non-limitative, then is my belief conditional upon belief in each and every aspect of this creed?

These considerations apart, I’m not sure how to read:

• he descended into hell;

• whether the communion of saints is restricted to those recognised by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church or any other church, or encompasses those who de facto and objectively were saints, regardless of whether or not they were ever canonised;

• the quick are the living, who will be judged, and that is a frightening prospect, since I had always thought that one has time up until the point of death to repent one’s sins, and therefore that only the dead would ultimately be judged; yet here we say our belief is in judgment during our lifetime. Saint Augustine famously said that he prayed for God to make him good—just not yet. He ended up being canonised, but he’d have been for it if he’d been judged before he’d decided he’d had enough of being bad and now wanted to be good;

• the holy catholic Church. Why the holy Church? Does catholic embrace Anglicanism, or the Church of Scotland, the Jewish faith and Islam? Buddhism and first nation spiritualism (so called paganism)?

You can argue the toss about so many aspects of biblical scripture. Did Jesus really walk on water? Change water into wine? Did the curtain in front of the Ark of the Covenant really tear upon his death, when the heavens clouded over in darkness? So many questions, but only three of them are contained within the creed. What Christians believe in derives from the bible but is not dependent on a literal, word-by-word analysis of the Bible. Instead our belief arises not from the Book but within ourselves. If you make belief dependent on the accuracy or otherwise of every last assertion set down in biblical scripture, then no one would believe. We all have our doubts about some aspect or another. And even those who, like me, have on thousands of occasions avowed the belief set forth in the apostles’ creed nevertheless remain firm in the belief set out in the creed’s first line: I believe in God. Is there then anything that can reconcile all these disparate elements—some of which we truly believe in and others of which we regard askance—which constitute our belief?

The cynic has a ready answer to belief: they believe in them, in number one, in getting ahead of the game, in looking after themselves. They have belief, no question. Just, it’s not in God. So, when a Christian, on the other hand, believes in God, as per the creed, do they not also believe in themselves? The cynic takes the view that any goodness they manifest comes out of their own volition, and is not impelled upon them by a deity. For the cynic who goes one further, and denies all aspects of benevolence towards others, their stance is somehow understandable, if repugnant: they believe in putting themselves above all others. Who doesn’t do that, at least from time to time? Even saints were not always saints, and I don’t just mean Augustine. Ironically, I think it’s only logical that Satanists believe in God, since Christians of necessity believe in the Devil. What is it, then, that worshippers of God or a god believe in? What is this thing God?

All I know is what I’ve been sold,
You can read my life like a fortune told,
I’ve seen the dream, there ain’t no land of Oz,
But I got my brain and I got a heart,
And courage built, yeah, I won’t let go:
What we need right now is soul.

I can’t do this, you can’t do that.
They feed us lines but I won’t act
And all good things will come to pass
But the truth is all you have to have.
And would you lie for it?
Cry for it?
Die for it?
Would you?

I believe, I believe,
With every breath that I breathe.
You and me can turn a whisper to a scream:
I believe, I believe.

You gave it all, then you gave more,
Yeah, you know what you came here for,
You’ll pay the cost,
Like it’s your cross to bear:
Are we the ones that put it there?
Would you scheme for it,
Scream for it, bleed for it,
Would you?

I believe, I believe.
Believe we’re still worth
The fight; you’ll see,
There’s hope for this world tonight;
I believe, I believe. Yeah!

Don’t look up to your movie screens,
Your records or your magazines.
Close your eyes and you will see
That you are all you really need.

I believe, I believe,
With every breath I breathe,
You and me can turn a whisper to a scream:
I believe, I believe.
Three, four!

Whoa (whoa),
Yeah (yeah),
Yeah (yeah),
I believe, I believe.

I once had my photo taken with Jon Bon Jovi. Well, it was his wax effigy, actually, at Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks Museum in London, but it looked pretty convincing. Except it wasn’t. Anyway, what does Jon believe in? Well, it’s there in his song. He believes in the need for soul, he believes we’ll pay the cost for what we came here for, that we have a cross to bear, he believes we are worth the fight, that there’s hope for the world, that we can turn whispers into screams. He seems to believe in pre-destiny (you can read my life like a fortune told). He doesn’t believe in the land of Oz (which, according to Wikipedia is a hidden fairyland cut off from the rest of the world—by which Buongiovi perhaps means he doesn’t believe in heaven …?). He challenges us on whether we would lie for it, cry for it, die for it, scheme, scream and bleed for it, it being the truth, which is all you need to have. Jon Bon Jovi was raised a good Catholic, and perhaps that shows through in this lyric from 1993. It’s rollicking good arena rock ‘n’ roll, but there is a reality in this lyric, if you look beyond the outer casing; and I think there is a reality in God if you look beyond His outer casing as well.

God is a conception that I repeatedly encounter in other bloggers’ work, usually with a small “g”. It’s as if there is a large helping of non-belief among these writers, but that they can’t quite bring themselves to dismiss His existence outright, for whatever reason: deference to part of their readership or perhaps an element of self-doubt, maybe even so as to ensure paid subscribers don’t waltz off in a huff. Nonetheless, in an empirical world where evidence and proof stand paramount in attesting to the existence of anything, the insubstantive, ineffable God has a hard time. He is commonly dismissed on two grounds: the first is a lack of documentary proof (so it can be argued); and the fact that those who profess His existence do so out of selfish reasons. I argue that both of these lines of argument are fallacious. God is not in His heaven, He doesn’t sit on high, and He does not judge, the way that judges judge, at least. The last three sentences are, to many, heresy. As the sun goes down over the western sky this evening on what has been a beautiful spring day, I look to the sky to see whether a thunderbolt is directed at me as a sign of God’s wrath. There is none. God has not smitten me this evening. Because God loves me as much as I love me: God is me. I believe in God because I believe in me.

Why does God not prevent genocides, like the Circassian, Armenian and Gazan genocides? Why didn’t He prevent them? Well, it’s because God is in us. We are the instruments of God. God cannot intervene in any form of human action but through our hands. God did not fail to prevent these genocides. We did. He prevailed upon our consciences to do something, to act, to protect the weak, to save life where life could be saved, and we failed to act. God did not allow these genocides: we did.

There is an attraction to the scenes of Mount Olympus in movies like Jason and the Argonauts. It’s a film that I marvelled at as a young boy. Especially the idea of gods on high playing with mortals on Earth like pieces on a chess board. Jason did not achieve his quest through the aid of the gods, however. He achieved it through his own strength, judgment and ability to learn from his mistakes. Every tale of intervention by a god-like entity falls back to a reflection of our own abilities, be they physical or the product of our conscience. When you Zoom or Teams with a colleague, you make up for the fact they are not physically present. The software allows you to interact with them as if they were right there. The same goes for your conscience: it is the pathway of communication to God, and He is not out there in space somewhere, but in here, in the inner space with you. God is us and we are God.

If we can take that simple equation to be correct, then a lot of what we think we know about God becomes very logical. When Moses asks God’s name, he gets the reply I am. If God is within us then the answer is extremely apt. I am God, God is me. God is omniscient. Whilst I am not omniscient, I, taken together with all of mankind, am indeed omniscient. If my conscience leads me to love all of mankind, then all of mankind’s knowledge is benevolent towards me, predicated upon their loving in like fashion. And because wherever mankind is on this Earth, then we can say that, if we are God and God is us, then God is also omnipresent and that means even when we are alone. In those places where there is nobody, then God is not there because God does not need to be there, since He is wherever we are for us, and we are wherever He is for Him. In Catholic churches, they burn a monstrance, which is symbolic of God’s presence. But the monstrance must demonstrate God’s presence to someone. It only fulfils its function when somebody sees it. And when they see the monstrance, they know that God is present, because they are present. They are God and God is them. Prayer to God is prayer to ourselves. We ask God to give us strength and wisdom, but in truth we use prayer as a means to reinforce our determination within ourselves to show strength and wisdom. Just as we recite a shopping list so that we remember what we need to buy, so prayer is a means for building and restoring resolve within the inner self. By asking God to care for us, we care for ourselves.

If you say your prayers before you bed down for the night, then don’t be asking an inchoate third-party entity to do your bidding. Whisper unto your hearts the dreams you want to realise when the night is over and the morrow comes. Ask not what your God can do for you, but what you can do for your God, and thereby for all, and thereby for yourselves.

Conceiving of God as being within us, within our consciences, changes the whole paradigm for the cynic. Instead of needing to be convinced that God is some spiritual thing that floats around in a place called heaven, demanding proof and hard evidence, he confronts the thesis that God isn’t out there, but is in here. God speaks to cynic and believer alike through the conscience, and anyone who denies they have ever been troubled by their conscience is absolved from any requirement to lend any credence whatsoever to what I have written here. Anyone who has, on the other hand, must wrangle not with the existence of God as an exterior being, but with God as the sum total of our consciences when taken globally, of which the cynic is as much a contributor as the believer. And that, contrary to what I wrote above, has a great many practical applications. None is more sobering than the idea that, when judgment comes, be it in life or in death, the Lord that will judge us is none other than we ourselves. Only we can know the full panoply of our life’s conscience. Only we can know its dark corners and its true sorrows and repentances. God knows all our sins and betrayals, because we know all our sins and betrayals. Whether we admit to any of them or are punished for any of them or are executed at dawn for their commission, we are the ultimate judges of our rectitude. The God whose grapes of wrath loose the fateful lightning of a terrible swift sword is none other than us.

I sometimes imagine a judicial system in which the accused hears the arguments and evidence arraigned against him and then stands up to avow whether, in his honest opinion, he himself is guilty or not guilty. And then he is let free, regardless of the verdict. The freedom of the guilty comes then out of remorse, like the sinner is free to leave the confessional after confessing his sins. The freedom of the innocent comes from the falsity of the accusations against them. But what of the freedom of the guilty who show no remorse? Well, that is in many ways the world we live in. The guilty who roam free by dint of their inability to recognise their sin must be taught by our example what freedom from sin means, and what remorse betokens. Criminal justice does not, as is patently apparent, operate on such principles, because we don’t trust the guilty to confess their crimes, and that applies as much when the accused has been arrested as when the accused is still at large. And yet all it costs them under such a utopia as I describe is a recognition of the existence within them of that little thing called God, and the ability to say, “I’m sorry.”

I don’t know if such a system would make bad men into good. But I’m not sure that imprisonment and execution do either; and what the latter do is impart a deleterious effect on those who carry out the punishment. Exacting justice as a mechanical response, without compassion, dehumanises both the punisher and the punished. Compassion flows from God; and thereby flows from us.

Turn your whisper to a scream.