How I Relate to Nature's God and Dad

Essay of Raymond Fontaine, PhD - January 2003

    Yesterday, my cousin Thien asked whether or not I pray to God for help. I answered, "No, because I have no good reason to believe that God intervenes in the course of events." Thien then said, "If that's so, prayers are useless and God is irrelevant in our lives." Applied to God, the word "irrelevant" sounded grossly irreverent. Within  minutes, it sparked a comparison between God and my dad, as regards their role in my life and my reverence for them.

   About 15 billion years ago, God originated a nodule that exploded, spewing gases and dust into space. In time, the particles gathered and formed zillions of stars and some planets such as our earth. Then three billion years ago, single living cells originated on earth and eventually evolved into a billion species, one of which is the human race. Today's humans, including me, date our origin not only from the first humans, nor from the first living organisms on earth, but as far back as the Big Bang set off by God. Without him, there would be no "me". 

   Similarly, but on an infinitesimally smaller scale, my dad fertilized my mother's egg and produced a single human cell in February 1917. Within hours, this microscopic embryo started a duplication process that in time produced ten trillion cells. Within the first nine months, my arms and legs formed, so did my ears and eyes, and my brain and heart. For their existence and development, all depended on my original cell fertilized by dad. Without him, there would be no "me".

   From the first moment of my life, dad assisted me in various ways until he died 50 years later. He began by holding my bottle of milk and changing my diaper. Later he made me a sled, a swing and a desk. He cut my hair and repaired my shoes. He showed me how to hammer nails, saw wood, and much, much more. Later when I headed a seminary for boys, he helped me build them a gym. While he assisted me all those years, I saw him, I heard his voice and I felt his hand.

   During all that time, the priests in church and the seminary told me about God's assistance in spiritual and supernatural matters. According to the Church, God created my soul and infused it into my body. God also assigned a personal guardian angel to take care of me. At my priestly ordination, the Church says, I received the miraculous power to transform bread into the living body of Jesus. Moreover, in the confessional I could absolve sins. God also helped me with sanctifying grace and indulgences and a lot more. I could not observe and verify any of this supernatural assistance from God. I believed it all solely on the authority of the Church claiming infallibility.

   Then in 1967, my dad died and so did my faith in the Roman Catholic Church. During five years in Uganda, Africa, while doing missionary work,  I had reviewed the heinous crimes and humongous errors of the medieval Popes. At the end, I no longer believed in the infallibility of the Pope. I abandoned his Church and all its supernatural doctrines, including the divinity of Jesus. But I held on to my belief in God, not as reputedly revealed in the Bible, but as required by the designs, structures and laws of nature. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson calls him "Nature's God".

    Since there is no reliable evidence that humans possess immortal souls distinct from their bodies, I do not believe that my dad is alive in heaven. But he lives on in my memory and heart. To remember him daily, I keep his photo just above my computer. On the same shelf, an album of pictures refreshes my memory of things dad made for me, such as a wagon and a sled; an altar and a desk. In other photos I see him planting daisies and ferns in our rock garden.

    When I glance at my dad's pictures, I don't look up to heaven and thank him audibly. I don't sing hymns praising him. I don't burn incense and light candles before his pictures. I just feel good and peaceful looking at him and the things he made. My love for him will always be intimate, personal and private.  

    Unlike my dad, God lives on, hopefully aware of my enduring admiration and gratitude. To conserve these sentiments, I don't need paintings of God as in the Sistine Chapel. I don't need Holy Books like the Bible recounting divine deeds. I don't need priests in the pulpit praising God's works. I don't need candles and incense, organs and choirs, and large gatherings to inspire my worship of God. I have abundant inspiration from nature wherever I am. For me, everything in nature carries an invisible label that reads "Designed by God". 

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