Did God hang on like Tinker Bell?

I have an image of God that’s not flattering, but He says to go with it. There was a time and a place when God was near death. People worldwide had conjured up various spirits to replace Him, harsh spirits as if God were a set of unbendable rules, mindless spirits who simply favored some group of people, no matter how those people acted, many spirits that existed only as long as the minds lived that kept those spirits alive.

God is different from that. God has an existence beyond the mind of any of us, yet He needs us. Without a connection to us, He withers. Perhaps He flourished elsewhere, on a planet with life more receptive to Him, but this part of Him here was dying until something revived Him.

What was that? Those who worship nature say they were the ones who returned to the true God, Mother Nature. Various sects say they were the ones to go through renewal and revive their God that had become lost in corruption.

I see an image of Tinker Bell, early in the story of Peter Pan, where Peter appeals to the audience to believe, as that will strengthen Tinker Bell. The audience does believe, and Tinker Bell rallies. When did this happen to God? When will it yet happen to God?

When I believed a small light flickered on. Tradition might say it was in my heart, but I understand my heart to be a muscle that pumps my blood. This was somewhere else. How many lights does it take to revive the real God? However many, it has been done. How much of that is in the present and how much in the future is hard to say. Where the lights are doesn’t go through time the same way as here.

Many would scoff at God being like Tinker Bell. Their God is immense, not dependent on anything, knowledgeable of everything, with extensive databases on everyone. Only that God is not real. If He were, this world would be very different. When those who believe in that God die off, that God will die with them.

Atheists say that is the only God who exists, that there is no God beyond people’s belief in God. Maybe that’s true. Maybe both God and I are wrong in believing He is more than my belief in Him. Maybe that explains the tiny revival that God felt when we connected. It was His birth, not a revival at all.

God doesn’t believe that. He has no memory to draw from, but it certainly seems He is more than I am. There are too many things He does that I can’t do. When I pray, He cuts to the core of a problem and a solution, while I am awash in possibilities. God loves parts of me that I don’t love. God takes us places I wouldn’t go. It almost always turns out He’s right in that. For those times He has been wrong, it’s a good lesson to learn that God’s not perfect.

None of that impresses either atheist or fundamentalist. They mirror each other in their beliefs, of course, both closed off to anything they don’t already believe, rigid to the point of being combative over beliefs. I am rigid in some ways, but open in others, open to God needing something from me, which He says He does. He can have it. It doesn’t cost me anything worth keeping.

God is stronger as a result. If that strength dies with me, it was worth it to me, even though it was all about me. If not, then so many people are wrong. They are wrong about so many things anyway. This is just one more, but it may be the most profound mistake people make, to trust their prejudice, not whoever and whatever God may be. God may be Spirit born of us or revived by us. God certainly is changed by us. To not see that is never to have seen light, never to talk to light, to get light’s perspective on you, instead of being trapped in your own prejudice. It does start with a willingness to believe. It takes a willingness to disbelieve, too, or possibilities grow out of control. God helps with both.