Patron Saint, Are We All Lost Like You?
An existential monologue
God: You clearly don’t know how to be. You need me.
Me: I don’t even know what you are?
God: I am a spiritual being.
Me: That literally doesn’t mean anything. That phrase is a placeholder without content. “Being” is the present progressive form of the verb “to be.” Like I am being weird right now. There is no meaningful content to the phrase “a being.” It’s another way of saying “a way of existing across time” or “a way of living life.”
God: Wow, you really think you’ve got this all figured out, huh? You deconstructed the “being” part, what’s up with the “spiritual”?
Me: That’s related to time and intuition, which are the same in an important sense. When people talk about “spirit,” they are talking about a culturally cultivated, or disciplined, intuition. A sacred spirit is an intuition cultivated through the social and personal rituals associated with a religious culture. So, “spiritual being” is a way of saying “a way of living life according to a culturally disciplined intuition.” It really sucked to figure that out because it meant that the power of all symbolism is cultural and human.
God: You must feel so smart swapping religious words with social-psychological terms that mean the same things. Well, say that’s all true. Say that, when people use the name “God,” they are referring to a way of living life according to a culturally disciplined intuition. Are you telling me you don’t want to live a way like that? You want your desires, expectations, and actions to be disorganized? You want to flail chaotically through existence? You want to be uncultured? You want to live impulsively with no center of moral gravity, no direction whatsoever? Is that it?
Me: No, but—
God: Aha! So you do need me!
Me: If I have no idea what you are, how can I possibly agree with that, God? Need what?
God: According to your own definition of “God” or “spiritual being,” I have no material existence. If I am a way of living life, then I’m obviously an immaterial approach to life, not a material object. So why are you so frustrated about not knowing what I am? I thought you already knew?
Me: I’m frustrated because… I think because there are so many versions of you. I know what you are in the general, abstract, placeholder sense, but not in a specific livable, inhabitable, believable, actionable sense. To really know what you specifically are would be to be like you, to live a specific religious culture’s way of living life with that specific religious culture’s kind of disciplined intuition.
God: And you can’t make me specific?
Me: No, because there are so many cultures and subcultures. Like so many people claim to know “God,” but they mean totally different things by that name. Even people who supposedly believe in the same singular “God” give contradictory accounts of that “God.” There’s no way to know which one is the right one.
God: Welcome to modernity, to multiculturalism. Why don’t you just pick the version of “God” you personally like the most to discipline yourself, your life, your being?
Me: I’ve thought about that, but I don’t think it would work. If I’m self-aware that “God” is a name for a culturally-specific way of living life, can I really pick like that? Can I believe in a “God” that I know to be culturally contingent and contextual?
God: Can you afford not to? Can you bestow your own salvation — oops, I mean “discipline your own intuition,” heh — such that you live more purposefully, meaningfully, truthfully?
Me: Ha, nice one, God. I am trying to do that, but I keep running into problems. My ways keep proving wrong. At least I keep learning from mistakes... But I am pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology to become a psychotherapist. How can I help other people live a better way if I don’t know the best way to live myself?
God: If you knew that, you’d be like me, right?
Me: If you are the best way of living life according to a culturally disciplined intuition, and, if truly knowing the best way to live means actually living that culturally specific way, then yes, I would be like you if I knew the best way to live.
God: And you definitely aren’t me right now, right?
Me: Right. Like is my life as I am living it symbolic of the best way to live life according to a specific culture? No. Even if I constituted a culture of my own, I wouldn’t live out the ideals of “Marshall” culture. I am being a way that leads to frequent falling short. I am a patron saint of lost causes. I cause things that I don’t finish because I lose myself somewhere along the way. The “Marshall” way of living is an approach to life that creates many partially written stories.
God: Every human is a patron saint of lost causes. No one actually knows, lives, their ideal way, regardless of their culture. Anyone who thinks that they are being ideal, or living perfectly, is an untrustworthy narcissist. You know that. Everyone fails.
Me: True…
God: So, why not pick a culturally specific “God” and go with it? Why not try it out? It could be helpful.
Me: Because I’m scared I’ll lose myself to it. I won’t be an individual. And I’m driven mad by most religious people’s profound lack of self-awareness. I hate that they think you chose them when really they chose a “God,” a cultural way of living life.
God: I thought you said the “Marshall” way of living is not working as well as you’d like? Am I not choosing you through this strange inner monologue you are typing out right now? Who are you talking to right now?
Me: Myself.
– Anberlin, (*fin)