On the Love For God

What I'm about to write will make no sense to those who have a materialistic worldview: that only matter exists, no mind, no soul, no god. This mindset includes over 1/2 of scientists and probably a majority of self-styled 'intellectuals', professors, journalists, doctors, and more politicians (on both sides of the fence) that one might think. Many college educated would think belief in or even having an open mind to the 'supernatural', i.e. dimensions beyond the 4 of the natural world of space-time (as we know it) would mark them as 'hicks'. I understand this mentality: I once shared it. As a young man in college, I was an agnostic (and a socialist!) and recall when I read Greene's novel,'The Power and The Glory', about a priest in Mexico who thinks himself a failure as a holy man yet when the revolution comes and starts murdering priests, he alone does not flee his flock in their time of need. It costs him his life but he discovers, much to his own surprise, that he has developed a deep love of God. Now Greene is a favorite author but I shook my young agnostic head, puzzled, even unbelieving that anyone--even professed believers--could love something so...intangible as God! It just made no sense to me. Guess what? It still doesn't make sense to me! Almost 50 years later I still cannot understand how I came to love this ineffable Being/Force/Presence: all I know is I do. Part of it may be plain gratitude, for SOMETHING restored me in body, mind, and, yes, soul, when my life came apart at 24. Seeing it as a whole, I'm sure it was more than luck, chance-- far too many improbable events, some inexplicable in terms of physics(though perhaps not quantum mechanics, which portrays our Newtonian world as illusion). And unlike some religious people who seem to have worked God out-- I haven't. Perhaps it was just an impersonal force like karma operating on me.But I suspect that while karma is real, more immutable than any law of physics (which logically could disappear at any time), and is the essence of the Golden Rule that ALL the major faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) have espoused, I find it impossible to talk to, to worship an impersonal force. Still, that does not explain how I've come to love a Being I can't be certain, at least in this life, exists. I just do-- I don't know when it started, or even why really-- I just know I do. Like I know I love my wife, but there too, I don't really know why, or even its breadth and depth