Yes, There Really Is A God Virginia!

Yes Virginia, there really is a god! Don't listen to those small-minded people who say otherwise, because they are wrong. We live in a skeptical age, and many refuse to believe in that which they can not touch, or see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible to their little minds. And all our minds are little Virginia, as measured by an intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes Virginia, there is a god. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give your life it's highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would the world be without god! Why, it would be as dreary as a world without Virginias! It would be a world without child-like faith, without romance or poetry, to make this existence tolerable. And if there were no enjoyment (except in that of sight and sense), then the eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in god? You might as well not believe in Santa Claus! And even if your father was able to hire a million men to watch every chimney on Christmas Eve, to catch Santa as he came down, and they failed, just what would that prove anyway? Of course nobody sees Santa, but that's no reason to think there is no Santa! Perhaps the most real things in the world are those that can not be seen. And it isn't hard to imagine that there are many wonderful things we can't conceive of, that are no less real than the many we can see.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle to see what makes the noise, but perhaps there is a veil covering the unseen things of this world that no one can tear apart. Only faith, poetry, romance and love are strong enough to push back the veil enough to see what may lay beyond. And what can be seen then, in all it's glory, is it not just as certain, just as real as anything else? Ah Virginia, in all the world, there is nothing else as real or abiding as this unchanging glory, not fit for eyes that are in fact completely blind anyway.

No god?? Insanity! A million years from now he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

BUT NOW Virginia, if I were to tell you that there really was no "god", or Santa Claus for that matter, how would it make you feel? For everything I said above, while true, may only be true only for the child. As St. Paul once said, long ago, "When I was a child, I thought as a child..." But he went on to say that now that he was a man, he had to put aside the silly things of childhood. But is Santa really so silly after all? On Christmas morn, the presents really are all 'round the tree! As the gifts are opened, is there not real joy on the faces of every child? And should that joy diminish, when one has finally been told the simple truth, that "Santa" is really Mommy and Daddy after all? Is it no less wondrous that their love for you, their selfless generosity, has given to you such a splendid morning? Could it perhaps be even more beautiful than imagining the fat old man in the red suit?

And so it may be for what men have called "gods", or God, over these many thousands of years. Could this great "man", with the long white beard, who we have always been told exists...could he too be something like Santa Claus? Surely, there must be something to believe in far more noble, and ennobling, than the monster of the Old Testament? Indeed, if I needed to find someone more moral than the "god" I was brought up to believe in, then I could quite easily substitute my very human mother for him! And why not? After all, was she not "Santa Claus" as well? No, she was not all powerful, nor was she all-knowing, but what power she had, was expended for those she loved. What knowledge she had, she tried to use for the good of all she loved. And somehow, it was good enough, as small as it might have been, in comparison to that infinite "God" of common faith and religion.

Maybe the god of Christianity is "too big". Maybe we need to look back a bit, to simpler times, and see the wisdom of the primitive peoples, who brought god down to something more real in their lives, even if it was but an animal. Maybe we need the wisdom of the children, who can honestly tell the whole world that their Papa is the strongest, and their Mama is the best. Truly, if GOD is ever to be the greatest, the most worthy of human worship, he has to be better than us. And while the god of the Old Testament is certainly not even as good as the most immoral of all men (and therefore not worthy of worship), still, there "must" be something, perhaps even "Someone" who can give meaning to the greatest things we know. Love. Selflessness and devotion. Beauty. Oh Greatest Someone...Wherefore art Thou??