"Godless"

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Besides sports and some “reality adventure” shows, about the only TV I watch is on Netflix because I’ve become intolerant of commercials. I haven’t, however, brought myself to watch a popular Netflix series called “Godless.”

According to a TV-news web page, it’s a seven-and-a-half hour western about a man “who hides out from a violent outlaw in a town populated almost entirely by women after a deadly mining accident wipes out most of the men.” The official trailer depicts a stereotypical small town in the 1800s where “law and order” is not high on the agenda.

“It’s Godless country,” says one of the actors in the trailer.

Prevalent, Predictable and Tiresome

It also appears to follow the trend of extreme violence, and that’s why I haven’t watched it. Some violence on TV and in movies is inevitable because life is sometimes violent.  It’s just that’s it’s become prevalent, predictable and tiresome.

I’m intrigued, however, by the series’ title, “Godless,” because you hear many people use this term today to describe contemporary society.

I did a web search of the term, and found a reference to “Christian” broadcaster Rick Wiles, who apparently uses it often. There are several references and videos of him saying the world is becoming Godless and it’s the Democrats’ fault. They are “stalking” members of the US Congress and cabinet, in fact, and are bent on killing Republicans.

“They’ve gone berserk, totally crazy,” he’s quoted as saying about Democrats. “Killing is the next thing that they’ll do.” 

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People who think God is always on their side, it seems, use the term “Godless” to describe people with whom they disagree. Seems a bit bizarre. And is it possible that the idea that America is becoming “Godless” may result from the fact that there are comparatively fewer people who profess Christianity these days and more who are Muslim and Hindu?

That’s upsetting to some people, even though believers in those non-Christian faiths also profess a belief in God.

It occurs to me, in fact, that it’s impossible to be “Godless.” For Christians and Jews, at least, God is everywhere, embracing every human being regardless of the faith they profess or whether they profess any faith at all.

Many are accustomed to think that the opposite of a “Godless” person is one who is religious in the traditional sense, someone who attends church regularly, adheres to a specific set of dogmas and identifies with a denomination.

And while I believe virtually everyone could greatly benefit by becoming religious in this traditional sense, I don’t believe you can limit God. All of us are on a life journey in which God has provided the freedom to take different roads, and only God knows our “location.”

Life as Gift

But a person searching for God, seems to me, should strive to adopt at least what theologian Tomas Halik calls “the primal foundation of a religious attitude to life.” He describes that as “a deeply experienced awareness that life is a gift.”

“If there is something truly godless,” he writes, “then it is … that banal perception of life as an ‘accident,’ as a purely biological fact without any spiritual content and meaning.”

Some people choose not to name God as the object of gratitude, leaving it vague. Others express gratitude to “life” or “the universe.”

“If someone has this experience,” writes Halik, “and is reluctant to talk about God in relation to it – and they prefer to speak about gratitude to life itself or to nature – then it usually simply means that their personal concept of God is (too) narrow to encompass that experience, and they are actually using concepts such as life and nature as ‘pseudonyms of God.’

“But why not use the right word?” he asks. “Why deify something that isn’t God?”

Perhaps because, unable to detect God’s all-encompassing presence, it’s hard to believe in God in a world perceived as “Godless.” So maybe it’s courage that’s needed here, something like the courage of the women portrayed in the series “Godless” who take on the bad guys – but without the pile-up of bullet-riddled bodies.