Whose God is it?, I: An Introduction

OK, OK, Karl ... you have my attention. God is on your side ... or ... you are on God's side.

Either way, you and God (God and you?) have a thing going.

You're referring to God as defined by Fundamentalist Christians (FC) who believe the Bible ("their" Bible as in the King James Version or one its parallel translations) is the literal Word of God.

I mean, we have to have some common ground here as to what we mean when we say "God" like in "God is on our side" because the people fighting us are saying the same thing and unless God is really a Joker, He can't be supporting both sides ... unless He simply supports conflict like in, "I say, 'May the best side win!' " That would be kind of fun wouldn't it? But I don't think you believe that so I can assume you are talking about the FC God. (Keep in mind the "FC" stands for "Fundamentalist Christian" so "FC God" is short for Fundamentalist Christian God. Yes, I know, Karl, you are a genius and probably caught that right off, but I wonder about some of the other FC's.)

I know something about this FC God you mention. I grew up in a REAL FC family. When I was a little kid I believed more in Heaven than in Moscow. Like, how could there be a place with those funny looking onion-knob buildings? Moscow had to be make-believe. I had been told Santa was make-believe. I just lumped Moscow in with him.

But God and Heaven? Not a scintilla of doubt in MY mind!

I even became born-again--that is, "saved"--before I was a teen-ager. What is more I became born-again as a Baptist, so once saved, always saved ... (though I went to a Pentecostal church for awhile--does that mean I'm really a backslider and have to be saved all over again?) ... unless I commit the Unpardonable Sin and I don't even know what that really is other than the FC Bible's--my Bible when I was saved--vaque definition of "blaspheme against the Holy Spirit". So come to think about it, who knows? Maybe I'm in, maybe I'm out. Lot's of conflicting issues here. My relatives pray for me a lot. Mostly because I have chronic kidney disease but sometimes about this going to Heaven or Hell stuff. We'll see.

Anyway, the core concept here, Karl, is that I know about this FC Bible and God stuff. Like for instance, I know about the Prophet Elijah getting his God (Was it the FC God? FC's think so.) to burn up his altar in the competition with Baal's priests (Baal was another, obviously lesser, god). Elijah then went about slaughtering the priests of Baal ... all 400 or so of them. I am sure you get the picture. Kind of a blurprint for action, eh, Karl?

I thought I'd use my blog to sort of go over this God thing ... kind of flesh it out, so to speak. ... seeing as how I have a certain familiarity with the whole issue. Maybe there are some people out there in the blog universe who are struggling with the same issue and would like to know how someone else (me) dealt with all this religious belief stuff. (I use "stuff" alot to kind of lump things together. I could make a list, but I might miss something ... and I think most people fill in the blanks fairly well with "stuff".)

If you have read this far, then you might be serious about following along with me. Which is great, of course. On the other hand I'm going to do this whether there is anyone following along or not ... sort of a personal catharsis of my soul.

The basic text for this effort is Karen Armstrong's A HISTORY OF GOD. When I return I will discuss her Introduction to her book.

(Note: By the way, "Karl" is Karl Rove, of course. Also, I got my copy of A HISTORY OF GOD for 25 cents as a used book--a Ballantine paperback--at Symposia Bookstore in Hoboken, NJ. -NCS