THE CONCEPT OF GOD
WAS
BORN OUT OF FEAR AND IGNORANCE!
It's an interesting question, this question of; "Where did God come
from?" Like the birth of anything, we
have to go to the very beginning
of that birth to find it's origin. The concept of god could have very
well started
with primitive man. If I could illustrate by a story:
Very early in man's history, here on earth, he may have been walking
along searching for his next meal when
all of sudden the ground under
his feet started to move. As he look about in great fear, wondering
what was causing
this great upheaval he saw in the distance the
volcano shooting great clouds of smoke and fire. Seconds later when
that
volcano exploded in great balls of ash and fire this prehistoric
man, not knowing how or why this was happening, became
overwhelmed
with FEAR!! One can even imagine him crouching down behind a large
boulder to hide from all of this
violence!
As he looked over at the volcano he must have wondered what great
power had shook the world like that. It
would seem to him that he
should stay in this crouched position because the terrible noise and
fire was starting to
reside. Now in his primitive mind I am sure that
he didn't call this, what ever it was that shook the world, a "God"
but
it is not too difficult to understand that he would have thought
that it was surely someone or something that was very
very powerful
that shook the earth and made that volcano roar and the earth shake!!
Something exactly like this
may have given birth to the first spirit,
or god, in this man's mind. After things quieted down he may have gone
back
to his cave and told the other members in his group of this great
spirit that shook the world.
He may have told them that if you hide or bow down and not show your
face to the great spirit, he will not
hurt you. In any case something
like this story could have easily happened in those early days and
then it was
just a matter of continuing this ritual of bowing to these
gods that controlled the great ways of nature. The god of the
rain!
The god of the sun! The god of the volcano! The gods of the Ancient
Egyptians! The gods of the
Romans! The gods of the Greeks! The god
of the Hebrew nation! These "gods", the gods that primitive man
feared
so much may have, very well, grown out of that first encounter of
prehistoric man with the shaking of the earth
under his feet!
Of course today we are much more knowledgeable about the ways of the
world and nature. We know what makes
the volcano roar! We know what
makes the sun go dark! We know what makes the earth shake! There is
one thing,
however, that we as modern man have in common with our
distant brothers, primitive man, from so very long ago. There is
in our
lives this one thing that allows modern man to reach out and hold the
hand of prehistoric man from so long
ago! And that is;
We still have this "FEAR AND IGNORANCE" that occupied the mind of
prehistoric man. No....Our
fear is not of the volcano, not of the sun,
not of the great earthquakes that shake our land,
No......OUR FEAR AND
IGNORANCE comes from not knowing what happens beyond the grave that we
must all face.....someday.
No matter how advanced our technology, no
matter how intelligent our scientists, we will never know what lies beyond
the grave!
This is OUR primitive "VOLCANO"; This is the one thing that gives us the
fear of the unknown. Like
primitive man, this is where we place OUR god!
God has always occupied that place in man's mind where FEAR and
IGNORANCE have not been conquered!
Today OUR "Primitive Volcano", OUR "Fear and Ignorance", lie.......
"Just Beyond The Grave!"
