It seems to me that throughout the history of mankind, one premise has stood as the prime motivator of all action: a just cause empowered by the most powerful deity. In short, My God loves me more!
Ancient tribes of men, wrapped up in fear-beliefs, offered sacrifices to appease the wrath of the Gods of the wind, volcano, and Earth. And in the name of their God, they ventured out to capture additional territory in order to live in peace.
Throughout the ensuing centuries, this quest for peace has become more complex, steeped in ritual language, song, and art, but with the same overriding premise: My God loves me more! Depending where you popped out in the world would determine which God you might refer to.
In India, all traffic stops when their sacred cow decides to sit in the middle of the street. You are not permitted to “shoo” this God, although, in the West, we are happy to eat It.
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and others covered all bases with many Gods, each designated to a particular territory over the mortals. For them, it was pluralistic: My Gods love me more! Even when they did not.
That’s the thing about deity—mere mortals cannot compare, cannot explain, justify, and indeed, cannot rule over—unless you conquer their people, in which case, all things are possible.
The Crusaders wanted to purge the heathens. The heathens wished to destroy the infidels. With such support, it became fashionable to try to straighten the other side out; after all, you had to prove that your God loved you more!
Atheists have no God. They love themselves more as the ruler of their lives, although many an atheist in a life-threatening situation resort to the plea, “Oh God, don’t let me die.”
Just as brothers may squabble over the value of their father’s love, humans obsess about their worth and the worthiness of their creator’s blessings. Like all things temporal, these blessings are temporal and tend to require ongoing renewal by those in power at the time.
In contemporary times, we see the Christian churches, so diverse and splintered into different flavors—one denomination for each believer—that they cannot find a common unity within their own precepts, regardless of what they claim. Yet they remain in the judgment of others who look for a common God.
I suspect that long after the humans of the planet have extinguished themselves through toxic pollution or technological bickering or war, the next species to inherit the planet might well stand high upon the rubble of the once great and quickly lost human world and, with a gasp of insight proclaim in whatever form it can: “My God loves me more!”
From: Homo Idiotus by William Gensburger (2016)
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