The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">In the beginning was Matter, and Matter begat the Devil, and the Devil begat God … and then [after a cosmic interval] God died, and next the Devil died, and Matter remained. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It was they [the supernatural powers], as he [man] now believed, and not he himself, who made the stormy wind to blow, the lightning to flash, and the thunder to roll; who had laid the foundations of the solid earth, and set bounds to the restless sea that it might not pass; who caused all the glorious lights of heaven to shine; who gave the fowls of the air their meat and the wild beasts of the desert their prey; who bade the fruitful land to bring forth in abundance, the high hills to be clothed with forests, the bubbling springs to rise under the rocks in valleys, and green pastures to grow by still waters; who breathed into man’s nostrils and made him live, or turned him to destruction by famine and pestilence and war.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">How manifold it is, what thou has made, although mysterious in the face of humanity.</em></p><p><em>O sole god, without another beside him!</em></p><p><em>You create the earth according to your wish, being alone –</em></p><p><em>People, all large and small animals,</em></p><p><em>All things which are on earth, which go on legs, which rise up and fly by means of their wings,</em></p><p><em>The foreign countries of Kharu [Syria] and Kush [Nubia], and the land of Egypt.</em></p><p><em>You set every man in his place, you make your requirements, each one having his food and the reckoning of his lifetime.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… tell me all this, you Muses who have your homes on Olympos</em></p><p><em>from the beginning, and tell who was first to come forth from among them.</em></p><p><em>First of all there came Chaos and after him came</em></p><p><em>Gaia of the broad breast, to be the unshakable foundation</em></p><p><em>of all the immortals who keep the crests of snowy Olympos,</em></p><p><em>and Tartarus the foggy in the pit of the wide-wayed earth,</em></p><p><em>and Eros, who is love, handsomest among all the immortals,</em></p><p><em>who breaks the limbs’ strength, who in all gods, in all human beings</em></p><p><em>overpowers the intelligence in the breast, for all their shrewd planning.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Mortals fancy that gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves.&nbsp; Yet if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint and fashion images as men do, they would make the pictures and images of their gods in their own likeness; horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen ….</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">This only is denied even to God, the power to make what has been done undone.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">What’s done cannot be undone.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">What else is Nature but God and the divine reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts? … he is the first of all causes on which the others depend.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">There was therefore never any time when you [God] had not made anything, because you made time itself.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… not one of the slanderous disputes to be found in the works of philosophers who disagreed among themselves, in any of the vast number of books I have read, had ever been able to wrench away from me the belief that you [God] exist, whatever may be your nature (and of this I was ignorant) and that the course of human affairs concerns you. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The stature of this [Hebrew] God, the way he was completely different from other divinities in the religions of the world, was now apparent, and the faith of Israel at last took its true form and stature.&nbsp; This God could afford to let others have his land because he was not tied down to any country.&nbsp; He could allow his people to be defeated so as to awaken it thereby from its false religious dream.&nbsp; He was not dependent on this people, yet nonetheless he did not abandon them in their hour of defeat.&nbsp; He was not dependent on the Temple or on the cult celebrated there, as was then commonly supposed … No, he did not need this cult, which to some extent concealed his real being.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image.&nbsp; But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God … and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">You must begin with God, your Creator.&nbsp; You exist only because God wills that you exist.&nbsp; You were made by God and for God—and until you understand that, life will never make sense.&nbsp; It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny.&nbsp; Every other path leads to a dead end.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness.&nbsp; The portrait is substantially that of a man—if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one, perhaps, would desire to associate with, now that Nero and Caligula are dead.&nbsp; In the Old Testament His acts expose His vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly.&nbsp; He is always punishing—punishing trifling misdeeds with thousand fold severity; punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers … It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man who was very strong.&nbsp; They told me that he could lift mountains.&nbsp; They told me he could part the sea.&nbsp; They told me it was important to keep this man happy:&nbsp; when we obeyed what the man had commanded, he liked us.&nbsp; He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didn’t like us.&nbsp; But when we didn’t obey what he had commanded the man didn’t like us at all.&nbsp; He hated us.&nbsp; Some days he hated us so much that he killed us; other days he let other people kill us.&nbsp; We call these days “holidays.”&nbsp; On Purim, we remember how the Persians tried to kill us.&nbsp; On Passover, we remember how the Egyptians tried to kill us.&nbsp; On Hanukkah, we remember how the Greeks tried to kill us.&nbsp; “Blessed is He,” we prayed.&nbsp; As bad as these punishments could be, they were nothing compared with the vengeance the man himself meted out: plagues, famines, floods.&nbsp; Hitler may have killed the Jews, but this man drowned the world.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">There was a young man of Cadiz</em></p><p><em>Who inferred that life is what it is,</em></p><p><em>For he early had learnt,</em></p><p><em>If it were what it weren’t,</em></p><p><em>It could not be that which it is.</em></p>