Getting God to get it.

 God just doesn’t understand how to be God. Good thing he's got people to explain it to him. – Uncle Albert.

​ Getting God to get it.  

My friend Axel has been reading Musonius.* “I was thinking I could work on my Greek,” he emails me, “expand its horizons. But I couldn’t find the Greek.

     “This is from the very beginning of Cynthia King’s translation,” he goes on. “I got it on my Kindle. It’s from the lecture ‘showing that one does not need to use many arguments to prove one’s point’: ‘It is a reasonable assumption that the gods need no argument to prove anything, because nothing is unclear or uncertain to them.’
     “Hold on to this. I’m going to call you,” the email ends.

 

Then, we’re on the phone. I’ve got the email on my screen. Axel goes on as patient as his impatience allows: “Do you see that? It is a reasonable assumption?”

     I nod. He hears me.
     “Yet there are how many Christian theologians and preachers who would agree? And how many go against it – entirely? Instead, they spend their time and their energy – their days and their nights, their sermons and their books – explaining over and over again – explaining to God! – how things really work? ‘Pay attention!’
     Or, if they aren’t working the way they’re supposed to, why aren’t they? How many times do they say to God, ‘Let me start again . . . ,’ thinking, ‘He’s just not getting it’? But he will. ‘Once more. Pay attention!’
     “Musonius’ assumption must be reasonable if God is God, not like those so ‘completely absurd and dull’ they need a hundred explanations. God gets it the first time. He gets it the zeroth time.
     “So, what’s up?” He pauses, Axel, sighs. I wait.

     “What?” he says.

     “What what?” I say. “I don’t know.”

     “Am I right or am I right?”

     “About what?”

     “Does God need us to explain to him how to be God?”

     “I’m guessing, ‘No.’”

     “So, why do we keep explaining it to him?”

     “I don’t know. What’s the Greek for absurd?” I ask.

     “I don’t know that. I told you, I don’t have the Greek.”

     “What would it be?”

     “I don’t know that either. There’s a word atopos.** It’s in Acts a couple of places and  can mean both something like ‘backward’ and something like ‘curious’ or ‘strange.’ Maybe ‘absurd’? I’m not sure. Forget I brought it up.”

     “Atopos. Forgotten.”

     “Literally, it would mean out of place or un-in-place. No, forget it.”

 

“Besides, you’re missing the point,” Axel says after a moment of atopos silence.

     “No, I haven’t,” I say. “You’re going to stop preaching to God.”

     “Shit,” Axel says. “Probably not. It’s what we do, isn’t it? Preachers especially.”
     “Tell God how to be God.”

     “Yeah.”

                                                                         04.23.21

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 * Gaius Musonius Rufus in Musonius Rufus: Lectures & Sayings (Revised Edition). Translated with an Introduction by Cynthia King. Edited with a Preface by William B. Irving3 Published 2011 by William B. Irvine at www.CreateSpace.com. Copyright 2010, 2011 by Cynthia King.

** a1topov

Graphic: Gaius Musonius Rufus at U.S.C. in 2016. Pastel from publicity photo.