Conversation Point

Living With The Existence of God

Thursday night television has become a weekly ritual for me after many years of reticence on the subject. Indeed, I had my doubts at the beginning of this season last fall too, seeing a whole range of episodic dramas that demanded immediate, long-term commitments. Difficult to accomplish if missing one program means losing track of the story lines or the potentially good series is canceled prematurely. There also seemed to be glut of crime shows involving forensic work. While I enjoy a good mystery, I'm not a blood and guts kind of gal, at least not five or six hours a week.

But Grey's Anatomy is now a personal favorite. It is a limited purveyor of people's insides, and said people usually start out their scene alive, even if they don't make it to the commercial that way. Less about the patients, Grey's follows the personal and professional lives of a group of doctors at fictional Seattle Grace Hospital. Truth be told, the program is about the emotional insides of its characters, which can be much more raw and graphic than the physical counterparts.

Last night's episode closed with the death of George O'Malley's father. George is a surgical intern. His father came to Seattle Grace, along with his wife and two other sons, for treatment for a perceived heart condition that turned out to be a double dip into a cancer that had spread too far. George's family looked to him for guidance and strength in making the decision to let his dad go. Afterward, Christina, a member of George's Seattle Grace family, with whom he had feuding, came to find him, to welcome him to the "dead dads club." It was a club, she explained, that you could only join when it happened to you. Her own father had died when she was nine, and she was sorry to include him at that moment. George told Christina that he couldn't imagine going on living in a world in which his dad doesn't exist. Christina bluntly, but compassionately, told George the truth, that that simple fact never changes.

Having lost my own dad over half my own lifetime ago, I know Christina is quite right. For the first time in years I thought to myself a few days ago that I should ask my dad a question about his parents for my ancestry research. He has not been a part of my daily life for almost twenty-five years, but I imagine that he is still here. That certainty of him being gone and me remaining seems to be divided by such a thin line that he should be able to cross back and forth, at least for basic information and an occasional hug. But he can't.

Pondering George and Christina's conversation, I began to consider the certainty of God's presence among us on earth. The majority of our United States population says they believe God exists, but that is where the surveyors complete their fact finding mission. There doesn't appear to be much collected data on why people believe God exists or how that impacts their lives. Is the fact of God's existence like accepting that Niagara Falls and the Rocky Mountains are there, even though you haven't seen them? What do these people who believe in God think God does all day? Where does God live? How much power does God possess? Does God control all the stop lights and the lines at Dunkin' Donuts? Is God judgmental, mean spirited, unfair? If God is all-knowing, does God care how often we clean our bathrooms or if we tip the paper carrier at Christmas? I'm sure you have your own list of questions to draw up for those who care enough to survey all the believers in God's existence in the future.

As with George, Christina, me and everybody else whose dad has died and must live with the fact, so too those of us who say we believe that God exists must live with that fact. We must define what that means for us and how that impacts our lives.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 4:58 PM