James Norton | Boston | Deist

"...who are you, O man, to talk back to God?"
— Romans 9:20

Before assessing God — and passing judgement on all that He has worked upon our world, which He is arguably responsible for creating in the first place — it's a good idea to cast around a bit, in the hope of finding out who God is.

Figuring out God's personality — and impact on the world — is a tough nut to crack. His work is diverse, subtle and powerful, and has been cited as a major influence by figures in history ranging from Michelangelo to Moby.

Many major religions, with millions of adherants, would have us believe that God is a creation of Walt Disney Studios, Inc. — that He is all-powerful, and all-loving, flawless, all-seeing and completely good. And while we'd all probably like to believe this, we can't. In the pages of history, and in the gutters of the world, we can find evidence to the contrary.

An all-powerful God is not all good.

"When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?"
— Amos 3:6

But if you believe the whisperings published between the covers of graphic novels and old heretical texts, God is a different sort of being — a cosmic superhero, locked in a heroic battle with the collective forces of evil. The drama is real, not scripted — God sometimes loses, and it isn't clear how things will turn out.

An all-good God is not all powerful.

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."
— Genesis, 1:3

In contrast, there is a third view of God, a view that is the most satisfying to those poor skeptics who are cursed with a need to believe in a higher power. The pages of the Old Testament offer us a compelling portrait of the being that is God — a singularly strong and visionary cosmic architect given to spells of anger, jealousy and madness, slinging existential bon mots and thunderbolts alike from a throne of pearl in the sky.

God's actions throughout the pages of the Good Book are sometimes divine, and sometimes insane. He dispenses great wisdom — and sends bears to slaughter children (I Kings 2:23-24). He gives the Law to His people... and then humorously reveals that some of the laws were "not good" and were laws the people "could not live by" (Ezekiel 20:25-26).

In short, the Old Testament reads like the story of the world.

But God has done some really, really great work, and we can't forget that. The sky at sunrise — His work. Nipples — His work. That piece of really, really terrific pecan pie? Since God came up with pecans, and caused them to be distributed across the Earth, we can logically give him credit for that, too.

There is no shame in crediting God for bringing about the world in which we are lucky enough to live. There should also be no shame in acknowledging that God can be cruel, capricious and utterly incomprehensible.

God is great, and has put us in a place that is endlessly complex, often confusing, and constantly wonderful. God is great, and He arbitrarily spreads pain and joy across the face of the planet, while we wriggle around in a semi-blind state of near-total ignorance, swimming toward we know not what.

We have all been cast as players in a pageant of enormous proportions, and while we should not cease to be amazed, we should also not be ashamed to feel a great variety of things about the director of this epic farce — things including love, hatred, passionate devotion, spiteful disbelief and utter confusion.

God gets five stars out of a possible five.

E-mail James Norton at jrnorton@flakmag.com.

— graphic by Jeffrey Avila