Here is where words fail us. What is meant by “God”?
The Christian God Jehova? Which one? The stern father of Catholicism? The stern but caring headmaster of Anglicanism? Maybe the very angry and ready to smite “heavenly father” of the Evangelicals?
Maybe the unknowable mystery which is the יהוה of the Jews and the الله of the Muslims. Maybe the Great spirit of Native Americans.
Maybe God is just another word for “nature” or “universe”. Maybe you can’t make an idol out of the universe or the Earth. Maybe you don’t believe in any God at all. Maybe they all start looking alike in the darkness as night falls.
All Gods are attempts by human beings to push back the terror of existence.
It seems that the real curse of Adam and Eve was they opened their eyes and looked up to God and then down into the abyss. The abyss is not hell. The abyss is the prospect of an eternity of blackness. The abyss is an image of ourselves, old and all alone. This is the abyss that Nietzsche spoke when he wrote:
“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”
“Take refuge in silence. You can be here or there or anywhere. Fixed in silence, established in the inner ‘I’, you can be as you are. The world will never perturb you if you are well founded upon the tranquility within. Gather your thoughts within. Find out the thought centre and discover your Self-equipoise. In storm and turmoil be calm and silent. Watch the events around as a witness. The world is a drama. Be a witness, inturned and introspective.”
“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
