Recently, I had a conversation with a friend in which I said, "God doesn't care the slightest about vice or virtue."
"Huh, he doesn't?" he asked. Bemused, I shook my head. How could it be otherwise?
The word "God" is such an interesting one. People see it differently, and many, if not most, see it as a device to unknot understanding from religious authority; a faraway lens to squint at. Very few, however, can observe and use the word in a way that doesn't create any new understanding for themselves, or in others (ideally). It shouldn't. Should giving 'red' to the name of the color make anything new turn up? With real things, this doesn't happen. Get to the bottom of the matter, and it seems strange that the word "God" should have any power to manipulate people.
All the same, the word God is a convenient one for a certain poetic brand of philosophy. If you want to see the world as a united form, in such a way that the one who decided that electrons should stick to protons is also the one who made hunger unbearable, and that this dude is somebody called "God", then it should follow by a modest flash of observation that he is also uninterested in vice and virtue. No hard thinking needed at all - you only need look at the world to see everyone is allowed unimpeded access to either option, with no particular push by the "forces that be" for either one. You simply choose, then you have.
One might say choosing "virtue" is right, and choosing "vice" is wrong, and that God has authorized these sorts of moral rules as correct understanding, vis-a-vis the words of his "chosen interpreters".
Well, feel free to believe I am otherwise, but in my mind I'm no heretic - I have nothing original up my sleeve, and am well-supported by some of the names from the same books people would claim I blaspheme against.
But instead of a literary analysis, let's go even beyond decision-making: why is it that we make the choices we do? Is there not something entirely beyond our choosing that makes the fact of sugar's sweetness the intuitive reason why it's there in your coffee? And why you can open the door of your home to a world in love with the stuff as well?
Electrons just move towards protons, and human beings just move towards sugar. The attraction of one thing to another is what animates the world, and experienced in the body we see that this is none other than the different loves taking their turn with you. If it's said that God is love, (and why not), then he's there in the loves of vice and virtue equally.
Please take it easy in your upvotes and downvotes, as I say goodbye for now with a highjacked quote from my buddy Kabir -
"Few understand my meaning
The one who does sits unmoved
Richiki does not seek to establish or destroy"