The Thought of God
They say that all Gods live as long as their believers do.
After all, Gods are the imagination of the people. That’s how powerful the imagination is.
Now, this is in no way an implication that Gods aren’t true. They are true as the passage of time and anyone who doesn’t believe that is hopeless; devoid of hope and far too unimaginative. True, that the only proof of God right now is imagined, but that does not at all mean that God doesn’t exist.
It may not exist like definitive things such as trees and ponds. We can’t see them, touch them, hear them. They exist just as love exists. We know it exists because we love and feel it ourselves. Just because we never saw love as we saw cars and restaurants we still know it is there in the world, everywhere, within us, and ours.
Such is how Gods exist. They exist for those who believe when something good happens, when a daughter is born, when their mothers live longer, when their sons become rich. God exists to them as proof of good things in the world. They exist as synonyms of Hope and Support. It is a sort of Placebo effect. In the end, what matters is that it works.
They don’t exist but at the same time, they do. They exist because people want them to exist. It's whatever they want it to be. Everyone perceives the world differently. They perceive different versions of the same God. They perceive different Gods for the same needs. They perceive new Gods and they perceive no Gods. They’re so flexible. As flexible as the mind and the human want.
That is why so many people hate Gods. So many people hate the believers. For they don’t believe in it themselves, they are forced to believe and no one can be forced to be hopeful, it’s too factitious to last long or be of any value. The belief comes from within, the God comes from within, and their support and love come from within. Just as love can’t be manufactured, devotion to a god that isn’t yours can’t be either. You can’t believe in something you didn’t create for yourself or something you didn’t test out.
Yet, those who deny Gods lack the imagination that goes beyond. After all, it’s imagination that got us so far. Anything could be a God. The appreciation of oceans and suns and nature is seeing the God in them, the concepts of power, money, resilience are represented through revered Gods which people look up to. Gods are created to set paths for people to follow to feel liberated. God’s a companion, an authority, an appreciation. God is whatever you like. You create your creator.
So, a God lives until its last believer is there to remember it. Otherwise, it turns back to its state of nothingness. Ideas come and they go. Gods come and go, they are Weak Gods. It’s not their fault. They were made that way.
These Weak Gods can be revived. They can be altered. They can be hated. And then destroyed again.
They sleep with their believers who have slept forever. Those who hope to return to them. Unlike them, they can be awoken, after all, all they need is someone else to stumble upon the forgotten memories of them, to revere them to the way they were before they ceased to exist. Just like an idea lies dormant —still put out in the world, nevertheless— waiting for someone else to believe in its greatness.
Or who knows, all of this could be completely wrong.
James feels a flutter, as if someone called him.