After browsing some gnostic bloggers, I went and picked up a copy of VALIS, one of Phil K. Dick’s last novels. It’s a trip.
He writes: “They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep him.”
Assuming they do let you keep God, the problems come when you misplace him. It’s not that you lost God. It’s just that you don’t remember where you put him.
So where is God? Answer: Look in the last place you put him.
That has to be the worst advice you can give someone trying to replace a misplaced God. Doesn’t matter that it’s true.
If it’s true. Someone might have moved God from the last place you put him. How are you supposed to fix that? Wasn’t your fault in the first place.
Maybe the point is that you shouldn’t leave God lying around where anyone can get to him. Keep him locked up. Behind closed doors. In that place where your left hand does the things your right hand doesn’t know anything about. Keep it secret, keep it safe.
But that isn’t very fun. Why gloat about finding God in private when you can brag about finding God in public?
Though that could be how you misplaced God in the first place. God’s tricky that way. You have to keep an eye on him. You never know where he’ll run off too. Or who he’ll run off with. God keeps bad company. Or good company. Depends on who’s telling the story.
If I am to interpret your post correctly, you’re talking about the inherent paradox that is God.
Robert Fulghum talks about the paradox in one of his books. He became obsessed with contradictory advice when he was a teacher that he wore two buttons: one said, “Trust Me, I’m a teacher”. The other said, “Question Authority”.
Even aphorisms are contradictory:
“Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
“Many hands make light work.”
Even the Gospels are contradictory. When one of the disciples declares Jesus to be the Christ and Son of God, one book has Jesus declaring, “You are Peter, the rock. Upon you I will build my church.”
Another Gospel has Jesus responding, with alarm and suspicion, “Do not tell anyone you know this.”
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