Faith, Fear, and the Idea of God We Created

Photo by egil sjøholt

What I’m about to say may sound a bit controversial — so reader’s discretion is advised.

Recently I came across a sarcastic statement that shook something loose in me. It said:
There are more than 3,000 gods in the world, and every single one is a figment of imagination… except, of course, the one we believe in. We’re the smart ones. Everyone else is misguided.

It’s a sharp line, maybe even offensive, but it exposes something deeply human.

For thousands of years, the idea of God has been used to guide, govern, soothe, and, more often than not, to control the way we live. And it makes me wonder how all of this happened — what still makes human beings surrender so completely? 

Fear of death, undoubtedly. Once we accepted that our end is inevitable, curiosity naturally followed: 

What happens after? What lies beyond this certainty we cannot escape? Yet no one had an answer that satisfied the human heart.

It was easy to feel the gravitational force that kept the universe in motion. Perhaps that force was the first God — a cosmic architect far more occupied with the orchestration of galaxies containing trillions of stars than with my grocery list or whether I find a convenient parking spot at the supermarket. 

A God who manages stars is admirable, but of little use. A God who manages our survival is irresistible, relatable, believable.

In the beginning, the divine mirrored the wider animal kingdom; then slowly we narrowed our imagination until God resembled us more than anything else— human-like, but prettier, braver, stronger.

And now that we have created God, shaped God, and nurtured this idea for thousands of years, it raises another question: How does someone who doesn’t believe in this human-like version make use of the idea of God at all?

If you have no shoulder to cry on, you can cry to God.
If the world feels unfair, you can hand your hurt to God.
If choices overwhelm you, you can ask God for signs.
If guilt becomes heavy, you can seek forgiveness from God.
If life feels directionless, you can outsource purpose to God.

Maybe that’s what God has always been — not a being, not a judge, not a cosmic king, but an idea we got carried away with. A container where we can safely place everything we don’t know how to carry.

PS: Physicists say our Sun is dragging us through the galaxy at 828,000 km per hour while an even more mysterious attractor pulls not just us, but our entire Milky Way and every nearby galaxy at 2.1 million km per hour. If that doesn’t humble us about what we don’t understand, nothing will.

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Territories

 

Today, while driving to work, I saw a small bird chasing another along the road verge.
It was a brief, almost comic scene — wings fluttering, sharp calls echoing, one bird fiercely defending a patch of grass no larger than a few square meters.

It’s a familiar sight. We’ve all seen such encounters in gardens, on terraces, balconies, and those little spaces we like to call ours — or at least believe to be under our care. Birds staking claim to air and branches, drawing invisible borders only they recognize.

If one pauses to watch closely, these tiny territorial battles raise a curious question.
While I technically own the garden — having paid for the land, tended the plants, and built the fence that marks its edge — the birds are merely visitors.
And yet, within that same space, they draw their own lines, chase away rivals, and claim rights to crumbs and insects — by virtue of arriving first, or simply by strength and persistence.

It makes me wonder — isn’t it all an illusion for the birds?

And somewhere out there, across that tattered line, if there truly is a Creator watching this grand spectacle we call the universe, I can’t help but wonder what passes through that mind.
When they see us mark territories with deeds, boundaries, and borders; fight, grab, and even destroy in the name of land, faith, or power — claiming what we believe is ours more fiercely than any other species.

Because much like the birds, our ownership exists only within the stories we tell ourselves — stories that shift with time, circumstance, and power.

Perhaps, in the end, we too are merely unaware guests in a garden that was never really ours to begin with.

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