WOW WOW WOW

      No, I haven't lost my mind, but wow wow! Yesterday afternoon I sat thru the movie X-Men Apocalypse and my brain was shouting wow all the while I was thinking that I wish I could take my honors class on a trip and then discuss, write, research and compare. No, it was not the movie itself; it was the questions that the movie raised, knowingly or not. It was seeing the old cover of Time magazine coming to life again - Is G-d Dead" and all the other media which discussed this topic. It was college bull sessions all over again, only this time from a different vantage point.
     Essentially, there is a figure which is awakened after a thousand years who claims to be god, who is tired of man's destruction and emphasis on the wrong things such as weapons and who decides that it is time to erase the board and start all over again with a remnant that will survive. Of course there are echoes here of the Flood, an epic found in all ancient religions but there is so much more.
     If this man or figure, rather, is god with a capital G then to whom was mankind praying all those years? If no one heard then what does that tell us about the power of mankind? What does that tell us of the evil in the world and when G-d is asked where He was during the Holocaust as he shows Auschwitz to Eric or Magneto as he became, G-d says he was asleep, put there by mankind.
     Huh? If G-d can be put to sleep then who has the ultimate power here? If G-d can be limited in power then again, who is the god and who is the underling?  The old story of the dusty old palace up high on an unreachable peak, filled with dusty old men and women, bemoaning their fate - the gods of Olympus who are no longer gods because man does not believe in them any longer, comes to mind. Are there other gods like this? Or is this heresy? Do we dare think like this?
     Then again, if our G-d is not all powerful, if he indeed gathers his strengths and powers from us, from the unusual among us, the mutants, so to speak, then why worship one who is ultimately just a composite of many of mankind? In fact, what were the people doing when this god figure was destroying the world - using people to do so - but praying to their G-d to rescue them, to keep them in His light, in His cone of protection. But which G-d would hear that? Are there more than one, perhaps a good one and a bad one? If such thoughts can be engendered then what does that mean to mankind?
     Or are we actually the gods. It is like the story of the explorers finding an ancient spaceship and researching its possible inhabitants and when they came and who they were and finding out that it was aliens - and we were those original aliens to Earth who then wiped out the original inhabitants. What is the truth that is often hard to figure out and so do we try to make a background for ourselves that we can live with? Ironic, is it not?
     So here we are at these same college age questions, questions that were asked by the whole world decades ago. But this time there are added issues. Are these people who use G-d as their justification for murder, rape, pillage, enslavement of others - are these truly representative of a true G-d or are these manifestations of twisted humanity? So not so college age limited is it?
     And yet, even as I see this film and run it thru my mind, even as questions are raised that perhaps have no answers, I still have a deep faith that there is indeed a Power beyond us, that does not depend on us and who for some reason decided to create us and then allowed us to develop as it happened and thus the evil in the world is not because G-d slept or because He abandoned us, but because just as a human parent does, as we try to set our offspring on the right path, raising them with morals, with inner strength, with the insight to recognize good and fight evil - but then we have to let them go and hope and pray for the best. So too it is with man and G-d and sometimes if we are lucky enough, G-d comes to us at an opportune moment, a moment of dire need. That is the Power that I see, that I believe in. But I also know that there is a deeper involvement too as the people of Israel, from ancient times till now, could never have survived without this Power, this G-d, who watched over them and continues to do so. Thus, despite the eternal hatred, the eternal violence, the infinite attempts to slaughter them, to banish them from here and there and indeed from everywhere, there is survival and prosperity and a future. I also believe that this G-d can be called by many names and if only we would all realize that what a better place we would have, what a better planet.
     So who is G-d? Is it the giant, amoral figure of the movie that judged mankind and humanity wanting and thus deserving of destruction? Is it the god who also decided that mankind was worthy of another start? Is it the being that derives its powers from us, a being to whom mankind itself gives the power to exist or is it a Power unto itself? G-d is multi faceted but how many of these facets can operate at the same time and at the end - on whom, on whose shoulders does the responsibility for evil in this world fall? Is it not us and should we not be moral with or without a belief in a Being, simply because that is the right road to follow? Should we not cherish our fellow man and try to live in harmony or will we forever be the struggling children trying to find our way, to make our life choices the right ones, the moral ones? If G-d and Man are so mixed is there not a piece of the Lord within us and is that not what the bible has been telling us lo these many a millennia. "Created in G-d's image" - no, not the fingers and toes, but the morals and the spiritual aspects. So, no, this god in the movie is a false god, perhaps more like the being that represents the hubris of mankind, that sinful pride and insistent demands. And perhaps it is the manifestation of the despair of the true G-d at the antics, the dangerous antics, of mankind.
     WOW   WOW  WOW. Anyone have any definite answers? Care to try? Care to think? Care to accept responsibility for our own lives and our own deeds? Not so easy, is it?