I thought there was God when I was small. Used to do prayers sometimes. My mom, and her mom are Christian, so I got baptized when I was little.
When USSR collapsed (I was born in Kazakhstan, and it was part of it), everything broke, those were some tough times. No salary for work, a lot of crime, killings around, etc. This time I started to notice that it’s not who are good who is going up in the society. Not the ones who pray and help others. It’s the ones who do things to control resources. People could do terrible things to others that time, and get away with it. And other people came to rescue, giving hand, fighting the violent ones, etc.
Over time, the situation has changed to better, and people established order around. But many people who did bad things were still there, now controlling the large businesses etc. Current system (government) had no tools to change that.
I started noticing other weird examples. Children of great parents, born with cancer. Great people dying from diseases (a great doctor, head of a hospital, who saved thousands of lives, died because he was bitten by a tick, small insect which transmits encephalitis, because it wasn’t detected in time, and he got cure too late), while bad ones living great lives. Who is this God who can create such a world? What did the children do to deserve cancer?
Or, another example, do you know how koalas die? They usually die because their teeth wear out, and they can’t eat. They die either out of hunger, or because they are so starved that pythons and other animals eat them free. Don’t you think it is a very cruel way to design an animal? Or kill 80%-90% of life on Earth several times by either an asteroid or other dramatic event?
What I realized is that it’s us, people, who comes and heals cancer, gives a helping hand to the ones who needs it, builds systems which protect us - or destroys them for the sake of our own pleasure, kills others, takes over their resources. We literally have to kill, either plants or animals, to survive. It’s us, people, who controls resources, and can do good things or bad things with them. The power of the God and the Devil are in us. They are us. We choose what to do. If we won’t help others - nobody will. It's us who makes things fair, has moral compass, or even puts definition to what fairness is. And our goal is to create the ultimate God - or Devil, grow it, as civilisation develops. And every day and every action we decide whom we grow today. Do we help, use resources meaningfully, teach, lift up the other people? Or do we destroy, take, brainlessly consume time and resources? We can grow consciousness in us - and this is the God.
You can see this God in other animals too, we are all conscious, just some are more, and some are less. The civilization - a proper one, which can help and cure, expand in a meaningful way etc is the ultimate goal of this world. Our power is in that we can create the God - or the Devil. It’s you and me who decides, by our actions or inactions. Do we support people who steals? Do we live and pay taxes in countries like Russia, which fights instead of talking? Do we try to figure out things and do better every day? We decide what is fair or unfair, and we create this world every day, small step at a time. The life is my God. Spreading life and happiness is what we are here for. Shaping the world in a way that is good - to the best of our understanding - is our task.
And I do my best to grow the true God inside me. By growing consciousness in myself - and others if I have a chance, doing my best to be humble to every new knowledge and person I encounter.