God’s Presence In My Life
My first experiences with god
Photo by Guillaume de Germain
My first and earliest idea of god was something bigger than all of us and always watching, like the movie “Big Brother (1984).” This film gave me the idea of God as “Big Brother” who is always watching you. Certainly not as sinister as how they watch people in the movie, but still a force that is always keeping an eye on all of us. God never seemed like a person but rather just a being somewhere up in the sky.
My idea of god also came from family gatherings where some of our family would pray before we eat. These were the first and only experiences I ever really had of seeing people “talk to god.” My older family was religious, but they never really pushed it on us in any way, it was always just there.
But when I started to get older my idea of god and Jesus started to converge into the same thing. Whenever I went to a funeral or a wedding and saw the images of god and Jesus, it was always on old white guy with a long white beard and white hair wearing a robe. So, the idea of god being another race/gender really intrigued me because all the imagery I’ve seen would be false. I really started to think about how people would feel if one day we find that god is a lot different than what we think it is. Another thing that also piqued my curiosity is if god was human like or some type of creature. How could he judge human behavior if he isn’t one?
But like Miller I also thought that whatever god is, he or his family was better than mine. Like he was this perfect man or something. But one thing that differed was that I don’t think god was wealthier than me. I thought he was just a better person that had more knowledge of life and how do get through it.
If he was a better person than all of us, I always questioned why he let bad things happen in our world. My best guess was that it was lessons for people or consequences for people who did bad to other people. At the end of the day, I don’t think god could play a role in my day to day life nor did I think he could do things that would affect me. But like I said at the beginning, god is always watching over us like a big brother. You make the decisions in your life and whatever happens when you die is still something I cannot confidently decide on.
