The Big G and me

Consider what people mean when they say that they have a personal connection with God. Do they use the same tired terms, such as having a “personal relationship with Jesus”? Or do they formulate their relationship with God in deeply personalized terms, referring to God as “Big G”? Do they consider God’s omnipotence in terms of the ability to create and move objects of immense mass? Or do they consider God’s omnipotence in terms of, to quote PhilosophyBro.com, God “always flips the cup in one flip”? As sacrilegious as the bro-ified view of God may be, it challenges us to think of the totality of what we mean when we say “a personal relationship with God” and “God is omnipotent.” If we accept that God can do what he wants, we cannot deny that God must also be a champ at drinking games. And if we are not comfortable accepting that “Big G” must be the world’s greatest beer pong player if he chooses to play, we cannot say that we have a personal relationship with an omnipotent being.

Consider which person might be worse: the one doing a “Walk of Shame” back to his or her dorm room after a random hook-up, or the one proudly commenting on never having done a “Walk of Shame”? Whether it’s called dirty lust or a great night out, he or she is ashamed, thus giving a name to the walk back. But the latter suffers unabashed pride. The walk of shame is similar to the story of “Jesus and the Adulteress” (John 7:53–8:11), in which the Pharisees decide to test Jesus by asking if they should stone a cheating wife. Jesus responded that, “He who is without sin may cast the first stone.” When no one dared to claim to be sinless, just the woman and Jesus were left, so Jesus told her to go, and sin no more.” Like the “Walk of Shame,” owning up to failing to follow one’s own code is a pretty strong acceptance of one’s beliefs.

Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” is a strong example of the distinction between poking fun at the believers and mocking the faith. The film is about the eponymous Brian, who was born at the same time and near Jesus’ birthplace. The film follows his life as he runs into trouble with both believers desperate for a messiah and the Romans. The film mocks the tendency for religious freedom fighters to split themselves into similar-sounding but acrimoniously divided factions, who commit suicide in squads as their preferred method of action. The film mocks our tendency to read speeches and beliefs in terms of economic incentives, especially given the film’s example of hearing the ridiculous “blessed are the cheesemakers” instead of the reasonable “blessed are the peacemakers.”

We have to admit that whatever we believe, someone will and can mock it. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, atheists? From certain perspectives, all those groups can look ridiculous because of how they represent their beliefs. We cannot deny that. We have to admit that the beliefs we hold, religious or otherwise, will not be shared by most other people. We can try our best to walk through the world, but if we judge each other, we fall into a dangerous place. We have to accept that we are probably wrong, that we probably look and sound ridiculous and that others have probably already made their minds up about us.

We want our beliefs to be respectable, but they are not always. God would be the world’s greatest beer pong player, if he chose to play. That’s not the serious God we want to portray to our grandparents, but that God is an extension of the omnipotent God. We deny the humorous perspective of our beliefs, much like Peter denied Jesus. More importantly, we tend to deny to ourselves that for the most part, we are pretty crummy believers; we are only willing to accept the parts of our faith we are think others will accept, and not ourselves.

Christopher Troein is an economics major from Windsor, England. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.