Monday, August 11, 2025
I’ve grown weary of the myth that God does the good and humans do the bad. We, in the West, unconsciously hold a fallacy – humans are inherently bad, and we have messed up God’s inherently good creation. We had our chance, and we screwed the pooch. And God, forehead in his palm, is clicking his tongue wondering, “Of all things, what have I done?”
“The great Tao flows everywhere. All things are born from it, yet it doesn’t create them. It pours itself into its work, yet it makes no claim.” (Tao Te Ching, vs. 34) In Chronicles, we read, “For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.” Jesus confessed, “For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself.”
Somehow, in our collective psyche, we’ve got it this way: “All [good] things come of thee and all [bad] things come of me.” Imagine all things, every last bit, even thee and me.
Hitler of all things! Sexual deviation, of all things. Imagine using an innocent 6-year-old for sexual pleasure or a corpse, of all things! Imagine torture – splitting humans apart by stretching, burning them slowly, or dipping them in hot oil! Of all things, imagine cancer, a witch hunt, pestilence, addiction, and sex trafficking. Homosexuality, of ALL things! Men kissing men? The anus as an inlet? Unimaginable things! Imagine that.
Of all things, imagine having ultimate responsibility for the destruction, creation, and preservation of the universe. Of all things, a so-called random occurrence, like a human, or a mistake. Of all things, imagine screwing up the universe; a clumsy god in the sky wagging her finger and clicking her tongue, sorry for her surprising choices.
Of all things, imagine “thee” and “me” as two – one to praise and one to blame, or that good and bad are unequal. How, when all things come of thee?