The Divine

Mr. Leeds: Does man kind deserve to be saved?

Cleavland Heap: What?

Mr. Leeds: Man?

Cleavland Heep:pauses... Yes

The ultimate question occurs in this simple dialogue that occurs in Lady in the Water between the main character and a side character. Cleavland's family was murdered and his life was never the same. When Cleavland meets Story, the lady in the water, his purpose becomes clear, but not until the end of the story.

He is on a mission to save this mythical creature and in his journey this simple conversation takes place.This question that has been on the mind of people for centuries and in a time like this is even more prevalent.Does man kind really deserve to be saved?"Well does man kind deserved to be saved? This seems to be the ultimate question that historians, philosophers, and theologians have been trying to answer for as long as historians, philosophers and theologians have been around. Any one can see that the world is not perfect.

I would normally write that the world is imperfect but that would assume that the world was perfect when it was first created.

So to define this idea of perfection one must first start at the beginning. The creation of the world and humanity must be discussed before one can discuss the state in which the world and humanity finds itself. If you have been apart of the public school system in America you would have been at an advantage because you have been introduced to two kinds of solutions to the start of the world.

There is a maraud of options when coming to the beginning of the world. While I could disengage you by taking you through all of these options I will choose not to and focus primarily on what I find indubitably important. And in my case there are only two major ideas behind the creation of the world. Now there are many options behind those two ideas in which I encourage all to delve into but today I will present two and only two. For if I presented more than two you would think that the point of this work would be simply to inform you on the way the earth was made.

However, it is not, because I could not truly inform you on how the world was made since I was not there. Although if I was there I still probably wouldn’t tell you how it was made because you wouldn’t believe me and then you would label me insane and you would throw me away somewhere. So either way I will not inform you on how the world was made I will introduce two options.

The first simply being Evolution and the second simply being Creation. Now please do not take me as a simple minded creature just because I am suggesting two options to the making of our world. I suggest only two because if I suggested more you would get bored and again I would lose myself in those reading this only for arguments sake.

We have these two options of the making of the world. One that is simply erotic and random and one that has structure and development. One that is made from molecular combustion and one that was creatively planned out and put together by a Divine.

Evolution, being the substance of constant change. Every gene has been morphed to create a more complex gene. However this idea is not about time, its about the shared ancestor that we are uniquely connected with. This ancestor gave the commonality of life to us through the uncommon. This option gives us a scientifically driven idea based on short leaps of belief and faith. This theory has holes, hence the fact that it is not a fact. While Evolution is a viable option to the creation of the earth and to human kind it is not the only one. However, when humans start displaying superhuman powers I may lean towards this option more than the other.

The second option of course is Creation. This option introduces three characters and a scene. The first character being the divine- A God/gods of some sort. The second character being the creating of creation itself. And the third generally being the human aspect of the created idea. This human aspect is often created in a unique way apart from the rest of creation giving reason to believe that humans are worth more.

This creation is then lived upon and usually the God/gods and the humans make a deal, or a bargain concerning their relationship and creation itself. In the Egyptian realm the humans were there to serve the gods and to take care of them. This is a running theme throughout the creation story. The idea that humans were created to serve and care for the God/gods themselves.

Another reason why humans were created was to occupy the earth. The God/gods did not want to work the earth and take care of it so the humans were created to take care of the earth while the God/gods stayed away and played in idleness.

The last reason is that the God/gods created humanity to love and care for the earth and to be loved and cared for by the God/gods themselves. This is often found in the Judeo-Christian world view and is found to be quite a popular selection in our culture. However, many people would so much rather go with the first option of how the world was made 45%1 of Americans claim to be born again, which means 45% of Americans claim to believe in this idea of Creation. Also 21%2 of Americans are Catholic which holds this view of creation as well. Which means that 66% of Americans are Creationists by generalizing default. This doesn’t include the Jewish stats and the Muslim stats in America which I’m sure if we took a tally we would find a large percentage of Creationists by generalization. I therefore, apologize for any generalizations that have been made but lets be bluntly honest, our world is made up of generalizations, so I don’t feel that bad.

If we are going to look at this existence between the God/gods and humans we must come to a self realization along with a societal realization. Somewhere, some how, some one messed up. I say this purely for the moral and ethical reasons that are presented by the reality of this ‘imperfect’ world. The reason that our culture can reject this idea is because we consider law and morality to be the same thing. Unfortunately we would be quite wrong in the world we live in now. We live in an amoral world, so all of our laws are primarliy arbituary sociol laws. They are laws that are simply made to keep order. The first couple of areas we must investigate are the ones that are so recognizable that they have faded into the background.

Bad and Good.

The simplicity of these two words can be summed up in a child. "You want to be a good little girl right?" This statement has echoed our lives and we have been entrapped with being "good." Good and bad has been taught to us at and early age. It’s a way to categorize things. When I taste warm apple pie combined with the creamy sensation of vanilla ice cream I declare it good. When I put a raisin in my mouth or a white castle slider, I declare it bad. While these are simple illustrations that is what children are taught. Hence the stereotype of the physical. Good and Bad is strictly a physical guideline to life and does not encounter the internal being at all. I grew up thinking bullies were bad so I separated myself from them declaring myself good. I grew up thinking homelessness was bad. So I separated myself from that and declared myself good. This mind set carried me through my child hood and haunted my young adult hood. These ideas of good and bad cannot truly exist in this way simply because they are absolutes. Another way to put it is to paint a picture on a big canvas. Paint one side white, and paint the other side black. When declaring this kind of absolute we have forgotten that when we declare it we realize that black and white then cannot affect each other.

Black is on one side of the painting while White is on the other side. This is not true in real life. I guess you could separate yourself from the "bad" people but really who declares you "good"? Do you believe that you have obtained morality in it’s truest form because you can recognize the bad and stay away from it. I must tell you at once you have found yourself in the good and bad realm of thinking and this kind of thinking is non-existent in real life.

You cannot separate yourself from something else because you are not absolute. You are not a concrete idea. You are a person that has the ability to do good and bad. To love and to hate. To see and to be blinded. To give life and to blatantly murder. Good and Bad are too concrete and to ideal to truly live out anyway. No one can truly be good unless they are absolute and no one can actually be absolute unless they are pure and not one can be pure unless they are divine.

Good and Bad are no longer contestants in the Beauty pageant of the moral.
So then we must conclude that to obtain the absolute life one must never adhere and shape their lives around the Good and Bad simply because they don’t truly exist.


Right and Wrong.

Once again another absolute. Except right and wrong are not as clear as good and bad simply because right and wrong become situational absolutes. They still are defined by great lines and rules except they are on a broader scope. If we have ever been in a situation of ratting out a friend we must come to the realization that Good and bad are clearly cut off from truly right and wrong. What is the right thing to do? This is the statement that we continue to ask ourselves.
This comes to every young person in that situation. That moment when the marijuana gets passed around, that moment when the vodka gets passed, that moment when they come into line with their consciousness. While Good and Bad was concerned with only the physical reality Right and Wrong bring the consciousness into the picture.

The consciousness and the being itself start dialoguing and a new world is created. The lines then become drawn between the physical being and the internal consciousness itself. However many times the physical being wins the debate and gives into the physical desire. This is looked at by many as the flesh and soul struggle. The reality that the flesh then wins out and takes part in the earthly pleasures of the world. Catholics always seem to have a hard time with this struggle.

While the painting in Bad and Good is black and white on two different sides the painting in the Right and Wrong would look like a splotch of white and dark all over the painting. The good and bad obviously play into the presupposition of the right and wrong. Hence the continuos paint of black and white except the absolutes aren’t concretely defined. The only thing that is absolute is the painting itself. As long as this painting is still in existence then the absolute is still in existence. This kind of thinking creates the being itself to adopt the idea that they are the divine. They have control over what they do and what happens.

Morality then doesn’t exist if the being itself, is the divine because this means that the being has never been not created.

Right and Wrong also get knocked out of the pageant of morality because if the being makes these boundaries themselves morality is not needed.