Questions about God

This is an overdue response to my friend's awesome religious post. Click here to see it in full. Or read on to see what I am going to respond to:

"So generally my ramblings center on the anthropomorphizing tendencies of religion. If Jesus was a man and Jesus is God then God is human right? Or another way to put it is that humans are the most approximate reflection of God. Why would God choose to be human? It seems we are a pretty a war-mongering and vicious species in general. My friend, who is amazing because she takes time out to answer all my questions, gave me a pretty good answer. She said that Jesus was sent to save us, but in order to do that he had to be one of us. Seems to make sense. But then are we, humans, the only things that need to be saved? Do other forms of life need to be saved? According to her, and I hope I understood correctly, is that human have the capacity for free choice, rational thought and morality that other life forms may lack. Therefore we are the only ones who needed to be saved and so God had to manifest his son in the form of a human. But why are humans the closest approximation of God? Why is the human fully alive God's greatest glory? I still don't get it.

Also, why does Jesus have to be a god? (Yes, I know this is probably blasphemous, but I really need to know). Why couldn't he have been a great man who did great things and in response to his totally selfless act God decided to save the rest of his kind, i.e. humans? Why must Jesus be a deity? I believe that Jesus is our savior and died for our sins, but does that make him God? Is this the perspective the Jewish religion takes, that rather than being God Jesus was a prophet? I know, so many questions. I just feel that religion is such a central part of our lives and so essential to development and peace that it's worth finding the answers. I love the beauty of the Christian religion and all it has to offer, but before I fully devote myself to something I'd like to understand it."

Two issues: 1) God's choice to be human and 2) the necessity of Jesus' divinity in Christian salvation history.

First, why did God choose to be human. You know what, I don't know. I used to think that it was intuitive that God would reveal himself in human form, but I'm thinking now that not everyone thinks this is so, both people now and people in the past. There are cultures were people worshipped/worship nature and the guardians of nature. In the Bible, there was a huge feast and celebration for an idolized Golden Cow. In Indian mythology, there is a god who has an elephant head.

What sets humans apart from these other objects of worship though is that we do the worshipping, we do the idolizing. Golden cows don't worship us, bamboo trees don't worship us, dogs don't worship us. Barring extra terrestrial life forms, I think we are the only species for whom religion is a large part of life and has been since the beginning of time.

For those who believe in religion (and, it can be argued, even for those who say they don't believe in religion), there seems to be a desire to rely on something out there, something apart from the Self. What I'm talking about in this case is not simply the desire for companionship or the desire for society. True, humans are social beings, but so are other animals - the pride of lions, the herd of sheep, and the school of fish. And yes again, you can again argue as to how social those animals are and whether these groupings can be termed society in the way that society is understood when applied to humans. But let's not go down that route. (If you really want to, leave a comment and I'll indulge you in this.)

My point is that there is a distinction between religion and mere society, special though the Other may be in interpersonal relations. Okay, that established, let's move on to the essence of religion. When people believe in God, what exactly do they believe? Different things, I guess. When people pray to a God, they pray for guidance and assistance for things that they cannot control in their day-to-day lives. They pray for direction when they think their life is a mess. Or they may simply be seeking to commune and understand a being that is so beyond their grasp. At this point, let's remove from the analysis those who pray just because they want to conform to societal or cultural expectations.

I guess the point is that when people commune with a god or seek a god, they respond to the call of something beyond them. And at this stage in the analysis, the question becomes why did God choose to reveal himself as a man?

Now that I think about it, God has not always revealed himself in human form. Yahweh has appeared as a burning bush, as a tower of cloud, as a tower of fire. In revelation history, God has revealed himself not only in human form but in other forms as well. If this is so, then it is at least conceivable that other forms, such as animal forms or other life forms, would also be appropriate if he wanted to reveal himself.

So now, the question turns to why did God fully reveal himself as a man in the form of Jesus Christ? And I guess this goes back to who needs to be called and who responds to the calling. And here, rationality has to factor into the analysis. Animals and plants, for all intents and purposes, seemed satisfied with what they have. They live the same lives day in and day out. If I am a lion, I hunt and eat deer, and travel with a pride through the wilderness of some jungle. And the same can be said for other animals. Granted, there may be differences where other animals are considered. For example, horses used to run wild when now some of them are saddled. But they did not choose a life - they were forced into such a life by humans.

It's a very different case with humans. Sure, in biological essentials (and maybe not even then) we remain as we always were. But comparisons among civilizations at different points show that humans have the capacity to do very different things with their lives, and to perhaps live in a very different way from the way their ancestors have lived. Humans need direction and guidance, because it is only they who have the capacity to carve their own paths.

I speak of needing direction and guidance not to say that humans cannot live (in the physical sense) without direction and guidance. Certainly, the absence of both direction and guidance is a form of direction and guidance. Life goes on and we move along with it, even if we don't know where we are going or perhaps even if we don't want to know. That said, it becomes clear that humans need God's guidance.

And then we ask, why would God choose to guide us by transubstantiating into a fellow human being? And I guess my answer to that would be, wouldn't a human being be the best guide for another human being? If God wanted to show us how to live our lives, then what better way than to provide us a living example of a divine life, as lived by a human being - with the same two hands and two eyes, with the same physical limitations and opportunities, living in the same world that is bound by time and space?

Oh, definitely, He could have continued going on as a burning bush or as a cloud in the sky. Or maybe even as a dog or a horse. But it would be difficult for a burning bush to be the perfect example of how a human should live. This is not to say that God would not be able to do it, but that it would probably be difficult for us human beings to understand, given our limitations and the limitations of physical beings generally.

This actually links to the second question, which is why Jesus had to be a God to save us. Let's start first by saying that there is definitely a value to be found in following or emulating the lives of the saints or the prophets or other holy people who live good lives but are not God. Even Jesus had the teachings of the prophets to consider. But the problem is that if we had only prophets to follow, then the question has to be asked - who exactly are these prophets following? Or more, can their communion with God ever be complete or perfect?

And that, I think is why Jesus Christ had to save us. He had perfect communion with God because He was God, both human and divine, two natures, one God. Jesus had to be a God in the sense that divinity could be fully alive in him and coexist perfectly with his human nature, to show all of us that glorifying God through being the best people we can be is possible. His life was the perfect example of that. And by his life, He went through all phases of living, even death, and yet He came out alive. He conquered. He has led the way, and we trust that He will help us do that in our lives.

I think that's why He had to be a God.

Whew, that was tiring. I hope it makes sense somewhat. This isn't intended to be a theological dissertation, but just me having a conversation with an imaginary audience on why I think salavation history turned out this way. Read and listen to me speak. I was going to write more, but I am exhausted now, and starving.

Have to go get food.