IS THIS THE BEST GOD COULD DO?

SARAH TIRRI

Description

Is This the Best God Could Do? (nonfiction, approximately 115.000 words) was born of a crisis of faith of the most cruel kind, the loss of my mother who lingered on the brink death for five weeks, and that is where the book begins. I was living the American dream, a happy wife and mother, and by most measures, charmed, and then she died, suffering terribly in the process in spite of my ardent prayers.
Like many in this position, I felt that God had let me down, but once my grief passed, I realized that the God of traditional Christianity keeps us in thrall by fear and guilt, by insisting we are small when we are really quite "big" beings. When the World Trade Center collapsed, I also realized that the end of the world might well be upon us because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the zealot believers in the Abrahamic religions, fear carried to an illogical extreme. This epiphany made me angry. Is This the Best God Could Do? is also the result of that anger.
However, although the topic is obviously deadly serious, I debunk the warped monotheism of the "Big Three" with humor and wit as well as reasonable, albeit edgy, argument. What follows the section in which I recount the loss of my mother (and the realization that the Abrahamic version of God has been messing with us for a couple thousand years) is part dialogue with that big guy (picture Groucho Marx as interlocutor: "Hi, God of Christianity, Sarah here. I can appreciate your dilemma, I really can. But the next time one of your angels gets out of hand, please try to take care of the problem instead of making it one of ours..."), part personal history, and part reasoned deconstruction.
But the conclusion I reach about religion does not amount to an advocacy of atheism. Although the monotheistic God is discounted as a manmade thing, one used to control us, I also argue against the godless scientism of Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), and Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). In fact, I argue against this limited perception of human being as a random function of extraneous forces in favor of a more profound participation of humans in reality leading to a profound spiritual transformation on the part of individuals and eventually all of humanity.
I also argue for a kind of pandemic version of the dramatic "wake up" effect (Eckart Tolle's concept from A New Earth) I experienced when my mother died. The human race, indeed the very planet, is going through extraordinary changes – all cause for great alarm among the monotheists as the beginning of the end. I insist in Is This the Best God Could Do? that, on the contrary, our situation is karmically inevitable and the dire straits in which we find ourselves an invitation to spiritual growth and thereby a renewal of civilization. I also call for those born to relative wealth, the American populace in general but also most of the Western world, to accept responsibility for charting the way forward because it is easier to evolve beyond the traditional notions of religion when one's belly is full and one is warm and dry.
But Is This the Best God Could Do? is not just a polemic about the medieval grip of fundamentalism that holds humans back from the self awareness necessary to find a way forward through the difficulties of history to an enlightened way of life – the book also charts the path. I offer guidance to the reader for achieving the kind of awareness that allows them to hear "God's voice" and to participate in the world as an active agent instead of being just a passive believer, to understand the "magnitude of our spiritual reality."
Although my book is utterly unique in its mixture of elements (the strident debunking of monotheism, the hopeful recognition of the "bigness" of humans as spiritual beings to stand in opposition to the "smallness" of fear and guilt, a hope-filled recipe for saving us from ourselves, and memoir – and all in a tone worthy of British humorist Russell Brand in My Booky Wook), the various aspects of the manuscript can be compared to other well known books.
Like James Redfield in The Celestine Prophecy, I invoke Jungian synchronicity as the mechanism by which we can hear "God speaking." It is through the development of our intuition that we recognize these moments in the first place, and as Rick Warren advocates in his A Purpose Driven Life, I argue that this recognition is not reserved for the few but is available to anyone who becomes self aware – in place of Warren's scriptural references are ideas from Eastern religious practices. Ultimately, I am advocating an evolution of the spirit, from medieval servitude born of fear to what Gary Zukav refers to in The Seat of the Soul as a necessary move beyond reliance upon our senses (the atheism of scientism) to the cultivation of our intuition in order to bring about a better future for ourselves and civilization as a whole.

Sujets

• Comparative Religion
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 03 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456601263
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

IS THIS THE BEST GOD COULD DO?
 
 
by
SARAH TIRRI
 
 
Copyright 2011 SARAH TIRRI,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0126-3
 
To contact the author, please write to:
 
PO Box 120822
Clermont, Florida 34712
USA
 
Website address: www.sarahtirri.com
E-mail: [e-mail]
 
 
Cover design: Sarah Tirri
Artist: Daniel Jankowski
 
Permission is given to quote freely from this book.
 
 
Sarah Tirri
 

 
 
 
Contents
 
PART ONE
Chapter One
God
Chapter Two
In the Beginning
Chapter Three
Linda’s Leaving
PART TWO
Chapter Four
The End Times
Chapter Five
The Pied Piper
Chapter Six
Human Smallness
Chapter Seven
Heaven, Redemption and Jesus Christ
Chapter Eight
Eeny, Meeny, miny, moe. It’s a Random Life, Ho-Ho-Ho!
Chapter Nine
The Word
Chapter Ten
…and man created God
Chapter Eleven
Revamp it!
Chapter Twelve
Morality, Sin and the Catholic Church
Chapter Thirteen
Altering our State of Consciousness
Chapter Fourteen
Fanaticism of Islam
Chapter Fifteen
God Has Favorites, naah-na-na-na-naah!
Chapter Sixteen
Behold: A Godless World
Chapter Seventeen
Creation
Chapter Eighteen
Separate and Suffering
Chapter Nineteen
Evolution
Chapter Twenty
More Than Five Senses
Chapter Twenty-one
Western Evolution
Chapter Twenty-two
Alternative Thinking: A Head-On Collision with the Bogey Man
Chapter Twenty-three
The New Age Movement
Chapter Twenty-four
We Have So Done It All Before
Chapter Twenty-five
The Choosing
Chapter Twenty-six
Dual Existence Actually Means Death is Birth
Chapter Twenty-seven
A World of Good and Evil, or A World of Unresolved Karma
Chapter Twenty-eight
God is Everything
Chapter Twenty-nine
Reality Creation
Chapter Thirty
The Light Ages
Chapter Thirty-one
God
 
Acknowledgements
To Michael Crane: On the good ship Venus, my God you should have seen us! Thank you for your welcome critique. My manuscript has come a long way since your robust comments in red ink first graced its pages!
 
To Stephen Henson: I never did work out whether you are a fundamentalist Christian or simply a superb editor. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to you for your merciless goading and prodding, which helped me validate my many random thoughts and forced me to dismiss or reconsider ideas and views that were clearly wanting. Thank you.
 
To Michael McIrvin: I would like to extend my gratitude to you for your outstanding editorial services. The fact that you too “got it” encouraged me to further embrace my rebellion by summoning the last bit of rationalization necessary to excuse me from not keeping my mouth shut ever again. Thank you for not once suggesting that I tame my words or walk on eggshells around the delicate issue of religious corruption.
 
 
Dedication
To my children. Charlie: The day I gave birth to you was the day I knew with absolute certainty that God existed. Joey: Freethinker, philosopher and dreamer—you are cherished. And my daughter, Samantha, superwoman-in-the-making: What can I say to my little mini-me—I love you darling.
 
To my husband. Prince Charming, my mate and the man of my dreams: My adoration and appreciation for you is only eclipsed by the pleasure that comes from knowing you are mine. Thank you for accepting me without judgment and for allowing me the freedom to be me without opinion or complaint. (This is just a nice way of saying that I know I am a difficult bitch to live with and thank you for putting up with me!) I love you, sweetie.
 
 
 
 
PART ONE
STAY SEATED
 
 
Chapter One
God
 
 
 

I am not who you think I am.
—God
 
 
“Hello, God here.
Well, well, well, I’ve just been channel-surfing on the new television set that St. Peter bought for me last week. There we were, enjoying a nice little soiree, and suddenly, all I see is war, destruction, greed, corruption and poverty. Not to mention a rising level of dissatisfaction that I haven’t seen before. All this quite put me off the biscuits that Mary so kindly baked for me. And then, to top it all, St. Peter—in rather somber tones—informed me that some of you are beginning to think: Is this the best God could do? Is this the best I could do? Me? God? Is this the best I could do? No. No it’s not. It is most definitely not. Jesus warned me this might happen. I should have listened. He told me what would happen if His message got distorted. I told him not to worry, of course, but I’m not sure what to think anymore.”
 
I need to be alone for a while. Martha, turn off the TV—there’s a good girl.
 
 
Chapter Two
In the Beginning
 
 
 

Ask and thou shalt receive.
—Jesus Christ
 
 
Something very strange happened to me. I was thirty-three at the time. The man from Cinderella, the one who was known to me as Prince Charming, turned out to be my husband. All my life I had dreamed of getting married to Prince Charming (and have him stay that way). In four whirlwind years, he and I had three beautiful children together, and every time I look at my family, I know that I have been to the ball.
 
One day, I turned to look at the home that Prince Charming and I had recently built. I had spent the previous year submerged in the world of interior design. After coming up for air, giddy with anticipation, I plopped my idea of a dream house on my architect’s desk. From this, she quickly produced a set of blueprints that took my breath away. My architectural dream turned out to be real. My house was the icing on the big, fat cake that was my life.
 
Three months after we moved in, I poured a well-earned glass of cabernet and began to sketch an extension. Now, that might not sound particularly strange, except for one small detail; my house was my dream house. My house has a separate guest cabaña and a luxury pool and sits on 20 acres. The grounds are lush and tropical, and there are two hot tubs, a library, and a butler’s pantry. Imported granite sits splendidly on all the hand-built cabinetry, and the exercise room allows me the option of being healthy or storing junk. The five bathrooms are not all used, but I like that. My 5,000-square-foot home is the nicest place I have ever lived. Some of you might be thinking, Big deal, 5,000 square feet. And some of you might be thinking, Wow, 5,000 square feet! I fall into the wow category. I’m English, and English houses are notoriously small. My present bathroom is bigger than the entire downstairs of the two-hundred year old flint cottage that I spent much of my childhood cramped-up in.
 
As I pondered an extension to my dream house, I sketched an elongated roofline and shaded in some windows. I added a couple more columns and several skylights. I upgraded the lighting and contemplated the angle of the new porte-cochere. Then my hand trailed off the paper. I looked at my hand for a while—watching it twitch in eagerness to convert my greed into more square footage. Then I looked into the distance. How could I be designing an extension to turn my dream house into my dream house when it was already my dream house? I looked at my wineglass and saw a bug thrashing around in the burgundy death trap. Not wanting to swallow a drunken fly, I stuck my finger in the glass, pretending that I was magnanimously saving its life. I then looked up at my house, which seemed to present a much greater illusion. I knew that wanting more was something I wanted more of, but equally, I knew that if I got more it wouldn’t stay more because I already had more —and it didn’t. More wouldn’t bring me more happiness because more is something I already had ..., and now I wanted more .
 
A period of hazy disconcertment followed, and I paid a visit to my doctor. She told me that Prozac would help. I tried this for a month or two, but the happy Prozac feeling I’d heard about never came my way. A different approach was obviously necessary.
 
As I walked past my staircase, I heard my boys playing Mario Smash Brothers with their father, and, appalled and amused, I shook my head at their inherited competitiveness. My son was telling my husband that he was going to kick his butt, and my husband said, “In your dreams, dude.” I laughed as I headed for my bedroom. My routine was the same, but this time I took a deep breath and decided on a course of action that—although I didn’t know it at the time—would change my perception of reality, change it entirely.
 
I stood next to my bed for a long moment, and then I lowered myself to my knees. I do that—I pray. I thank God for giving me my three beautiful babies, and then I ask Him to keep them safe. I thank God for giving me such a good life, and then I say a couple of childish prayers. I then ask Him for various favors, which He had always seemed to grant.
 
This lovely March evening was a little different, however. I closed my eyes.
 
“Hello God, Sarah here. Thank you for my children and my husband. Thank you for Worf, and thank you for Daffney. Thank you, but God, I need your help. There’s something that I’m not getting. I’ve found out that having it all isn’t enough. I have the fairytale. I have all that I was ever told and believed would bring me happiness, and it does—it truly it does. But I want more, and that can’t be right. There’s something very wrong with this picture. Wanting more than I already have can’t be good for me, and I don’t want to live my life like that. I really don’t. If my only option is always seeking more than I have, then I’m not sure I’ll stay sane. God, please help me understand what it is that I obviously don’t. I’ll wait to hear from you. Thanks a lot.”
 
*
 
A few days later, I was in a bad mood, pre-menstrual and bitchy. I had turned my cold back on Prince Charming the night before. I had yelled at my kids. I felt disgruntled, and negat