A New View of the Moon
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Instead, it shows a couple of guys named Wylie Overstreet
and Alex Gorosh taking their sophisticated telescope to the streets of Los
Angeles, asking people at random if they want to take a look at the moon.
The reaction most heard from people seeing an up-close image
of the moon? “Oh, my God!”
Says the commentator, presumably one of the filmmakers: “It
makes you realize that we’re all on a small, little planet and we all have the
same reaction to the universe we live in. I think there’s something special
about that, something unifying. It’s a great reminder that we should look up
more often.”
An Anachronism
The phrase, “Oh, My God,” which has become “OMG!” on Facebook
and other social media (Too hard to write out?), is so commonly used it’s
become automatic, eliciting no actual thought. It’s a phrase that expresses
surprise, delight, awe, or all three. Obviously, it has nothing to do with a
person’s perspective on God. It’s an anachronism from the age of faith.
It reminds me of a story I once read about such phrases in
Russia’s Soviet era. A strict anti-religious atheism was the official policy.
Religious practice was outlawed and religious belief banned and often punished.
After decades of official atheism few people practiced their faith and public
or private references to God were non-existent.
Still, the common Russian phrases that had been used for
centuries persisted. “Religious” phrases similar to “Oh, My God!” were still part
of the Russian vocabulary. For me, it’s an example of how people cling to
religious practices that have lost their meaning, how religion becomes a cultural
appendage, having little to do with actual faith.
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There is something special about people
recognizing that we’re fellow travelers on this planet, and it is
unifying. And, yes, we should look up more often, but isn’t that a bit trite?
We should also look sideways to admire the beauty of nature and our fellow
human beings. Most of us are so focused on “our own stuff” we give little
attention to what isn’t in our immediate personal zones – our relationships,
our jobs, our finances.
Many honest people who pray, I suspect, ask themselves,
“Just where is this God I’m talking to?” A good question. Medieval paintings of
Jesus, Mary or the saints always have them “looking up,” and it’s hard for us
to shake the idea that God is “up there.” When referring to God, people often
gesture upward or refer to “the man upstairs.”
There may be some confusion because of the word “heaven,”
which is equivocal. It refers to “the place” where the Bible and many religious
traditions have said people could “go” after death. But it also refers to the
space somewhere vaguely above us, often expressed as “the heavens.”
Is Heaven a Place?
This confusion may also be reflected in the apparent clash
between what we know from the Bible and what we know philosophically. The Bible
– both the Hebrew bible and the Christian bible - has lots of references to
heaven as a “place.” The Lord’s Prayer, for instance, addresses the Father “who
art in heaven.”
But the Bible also describes God as spirit, and the souls of
the dead as disembodied spirits, and by definition, spirits are outside time
and space. Personally, I think of God as being everywhere, in me and around me
and in and around the billions of other people on earth, and stretching from
here to beyond the ends of the universe. As for heaven, I have to be content
with not knowing much.
Growing up, I was taught to obey the Second Commandment -
never to “take the Lord’s name in vain” - so “Oh, my God” doesn’t roll off my
tongue. But I think it’s fine for people to use the term when commenting on
something as awesome as a view of the moon up-close.
It would be better, of course, if people searching for God
especially, think about the awesomeness of God when they mouth the words.
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