In all the patriotic and religious fervor we've been witnessing in this country since September 11, one slogan has been popping up quite a bit. The same slogan that's been on our currency for a handful of decades: "In God We Trust."
Now, more than ever, this slogan makes virtually no sense to me. I mean, yeah… it's always bothered me, because there's a rather huge segment of the population that doesn't believe in any gods, let alone trust in one. But beyond that, I just have to wonder just what it is that people trust God to do.
When asked, the faithful will reply in any number of ways, but the replies generally all say the same thing. "We trust God to do what is best for us."
Now, I don't quite follow that, because none of these folks can tell me just what it is that is "best" for us. They can't explain to me why it is "best" that so many people should have died in such a horrible fashion. They can't explain why it is best that we are now killing innocents in the name of "justice," or even admit that it's just out of revenge. Even leaving aside the recent atrocity, these folks can't tell me why God inflicts children with cancer or other debilitating diseases. They can't explain why God allows people to be tortured, raped, and mutilated. They can't tell me anything, really, aside from empty promises that it's all part of God's plan.
And the reason they can only offer such vapid "explanations" is because they don't understand it, either. It's all part of some mysterious purpose that God allegedly has in his unfathomable mind. If something seems atrocious to us, we are to "trust" that it's all in our best interests, because God let it happen.
Frankly, if no one… not even the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Billy Graham, or anyone else… can explain how atrocities can be God's will, his idea of what's "best" for us, then it's clear that we have no freaking idea why we should trust God.
The Deists, including many of our nation's founders, believed that God was unknowable. They did not believe in a personal deity who answered prayers. Effectively, God was the Creator who put things in motion and then just stood back to watch what happened. They knew better than to "trust" in God, since God apparently didn't give a rat's ass. God was a cosmic scientist, and we are nothing but his experiment. Or maybe God was the ultimate Pinball Wizard, shooting the ball into play, watching as it ricocheted off bumpers and targets, and every once in awhile, he'd flip it back into play. But not always.
While I don't buy the idea of a god at all, this attitude toward deity seems to make much more sense to me than the attitude espoused by these "In God We Trust" folks.
But the fact that God's actions are inscrutable seems not to matter to them. To them, God is always just, and for that matter, always on our side. It escapes their notice, too, that people like Osama bin Laden believe exactly the same thing. Maybe this god is a double-agent, playing both ends against the middle.
This, too, seems to make a lot more sense than thinking God has some particular fondness for America, above and beyond the scores of other nations on the planet.
No, there's no reason to trust in God. Except perhaps to always do something we don't understand.
