There are a few descriptions of God out there that I can believe in. In her book Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler, the seminal science fiction and afrofuturist writer, outlines one such vision of God: God as change.
All that you touch
you change
all that you change
changes you.
The only lasting truth
is change.
God is change.
– Parable of the Sower
What the word “God” means varies between and even within religions. Though the most powerful meaning of that word connotes “ultimate reality;” not just a singular deity that rules the world, but the true state of existence. The notion of “change” is a good candidate to fill God’s shoes.
Change has been happening since the start of our universe and will continue until its end. Every human life is affected by change, from inception to demise. Change continues after death: our particles rejoining the ongoing parade of life: from the worm-churned earth, to the zipping birds, to the cats that move like rivers, to the rivers that swallow cats, to the civilizations that drink-up rivers, and to the droughts that bring down kingdoms. Change is the sign under which we live. As far as we can tell, it’s universal and all-pervasive. It’s what brought us into existence and what will wipe us from the universe, whether slowly or all at once, like a rag passing over a speck.
What more could you want from a God?
Magical Relations
What more could you want from a God? Well, most people would want some relatability.
Butler’s conception of God in this novel isn’t a personal God. Change has no agency or sentience; it’s a process. Elsewhere in Parable of the Sower, the protagonist says: “My God doesn’t love me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty to my God. My God just is.” This version of God is tantamount to a law of nature. But if that’s true, why not just call it a law of nature? Why not just switch out “God” for “change” and never look back? There might be good reason why not.
The usefulness of the term “God” is likely the very reason we invented deities to begin with: it personifies an abstract and unknown reality. Lightning was made relatable as the work of Zeus, Odin, or thunderbirds. The ocean’s bounty and fury had to do with Poseidon, Mazu, Varuna, and other sea-deities. At some point in our evolution, human beings developed a comprehensive theory of mind (an ability to understand other human as having minds, beliefs, and intentions different from our own). We then attributed similar mind and agency to non-human creatures and phenomenon like animals, floods, volcanos, droughts, the seasons, time, death, and even fate. We used to barter with these deities: ask them for favors, sacrifice livestock (or one another). We lived in an uncertain and difficult world and sought control of our surroundings any way we could: either through tool-making or relationships with magical entities. But now, when tool-making has come so far, why do so many people still appeal to these magical relations? Why do we still want to emotionally relate to the universe at all?
The Robes of God
If you were alone on an island floating on a dark sea, what would you rather have with you? A dog? Or a robot dog? (I would take the former.) But in extreme isolation, that need to relate to other minds is so important we can project sentience where it is not. As Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Castaway discovers, it’s better to ascribe a personality to a volleyball than go mad from loneliness.
We are minds that yearn for other minds.
Based on our current scientific understanding, a materialistic “dead” universe seems to be the most likely description of reality. But a “living” universe may better fit our emotional needs.
Butler’s God in Parable of the Sower strikes a balance between these poles:
We do not worship God
we perceive and attend God.
We learn from God.
With forethought and work,
we shape God.
In the end , we yield to God.
We adapt and endure,
For we are Earthseed
and God is change.
– Parable of the Sower
There is no need to worship the phenomenon of change. Change is not conscious nor has agency. But calling it “God” implies and allows an emotional and religious connection to form between a person and a non-human, abstract concept (in this case, change). This sense of personal connection to the rules and forces that govern the universe alters the qualitative experience of a religion from a purely intellectual one to one that involves emotion and sociality. This may be the general difference between philosophy and religion: in philosophy, our relationship with the universe is primarily mediated by rationality while in religion it is primarily mediated by sociality.
The personal part of a “personal God” is an emotional and psychological glue. It’s far easier to activate human beings when they believe a sentient entity is involved. Consider how hard animal rights groups work to personify the animals they’re trying to protect: if we can visualize a mama cow’s wailing as her baby is taken away from her, then we might think twice about where we get our milk. Personification alters how we interact with the rest of the world—both living and inanimate.
As we float on our spherical island in the middle of a vast black ocean, our emotional attitude toward the universe partly depends on whether we believe our universe is living or not. Butler’s conception of God in Parable of the Sower splits the difference between an animate and inanimate ultimate reality: To believe in God as change is to believe in the very real and universal phenomenon of change—evolution, tectonic shift, growth, death, planetary destruction, planetary formation. To ascribe the name “God” to change is to become emotionally involved with this changing and otherwise non-human universe. Butler acknowledges the universe is not alive like we’re alive. But how we name and think about reality can change the way we relate to it.
By calling change “God” we start to think about it as a personified entity. Change plays an active, daily role in human life but also supersedes it. Change can be learned from but cannot teach. Change can destroy or create and do both without concern. Change is neither alive nor can it die—it goes on forever, affecting the entirety of our universe. By dressing change in the robes of God, we have a special type of deity: one that exists beyond human social intuition but to which we can still relate. And if we can better relate to the world, we may reduce our sense of alienation in it.
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I find it hard to imagine calling change god. I think there is a wonder that we get at a beautiful sunset or a sense of grace when we hit bottom and need something to sustain us. Why can’t we simply accept that this is us and not a deity out there, whether we call it god or change or late to dinner. I believe we sell ourselves short on who we are.
Hello Judith. I completely agree: beauty, grace, all we experience – these things are us. Change is not a “deity.” Change is not conscious, it is not intentional, nor does it have agency, etc. It is a process. My point in this piece (and Butler’s point, i believe) is that rather than worship or believe in deities, we’re better off beholding the immutable patterns and processes of reality and holding those up as the highest reality – the thing(s) worthy of the word “God.”
“The only lasting truth is change” – that is a curious statement. I certainly hope that the truth contained in Newton’s laws of motion don’t change anytime soon. To come to the point, change is only half the story, the other half is endurance.
The sun is in a process of constant change, yet it has endured for over 5 billion years. The Mississippi is constantly changing, but Mark Twain rode steamboats on it 150 years ago.
The concept of “process” integrates the two truths, change and endurance, through the “lawfulness” of Nature. Natural change is “processional,” which is to say, orderly. Because of this, Nature is creational, it regularly produces highly organized, novel entities.
Why Nature is lawfully, why it is creational, is a mystery.
Now if we take all these ingredients together, change and endurance, novelty producing lawfulness and mystery, we come to a notion something like the traditional notion of God, something truly worthy of our reverence. I prefer to call this Tao or simply Nature, though I have no problem with the word God either, as long as we don’t try to stuff that word with a religion.
Hello Thomas. I understand “process” and “change” as synonymous. Endurance seems to me to be just sufficiently slow change.
To your other point: the laws of physics are not necessarily fixed. That’s a core axiom of physics, but it is not a proven fact. I believe that in the very early universe, the fundamental forces were very different than they are today. I believe there may be a question as to whether the so called constants of the universe are actually constant or if they are in minute flux.
Thank you for this, Daniel. I recently read Butler’s “The Parable of the Sower” and resonated with her articulations of God as Change.
For me, these 2 sentences you wrote capture the yin and yang of the matter. “Based on our current scientific understanding, a materialistic “dead” universe seems to be the most likely description of reality. But a “living” universe may better fit our emotional needs.”
These are the tension within which Spiritual Naturalists find our path. Neither magical nor mechanistic, rather into the mystery.
Palms together,
James
Thank you James. I agree. It requires living in tension / paradox / contradiction. But that work, to me, makes the emerging understanding feel all the more earned.
Earned and authentic.
This is great Daniel! I’d love to repost this at godischange.org, and link to the original essay here, with your permission.
Hello John. Absolutely. The original original was published on my own site:
https://www.reenchantmentpod.com/post/what-if-god-were-change
But feel free to link to whichever one you like.