I sympathize with what you’re saying because I would agree with you if God were simply a being possessing a number of unique qualities with one of those being his particular, arbitrary set of rules. But I reject that definition of God partly for the very reasons you gave.
The God I believe in is not a demiurge like so many of the other religious heroes of antiquity, but is rather the God of classical theism. He is metaphysically simple, not merely beyond space and time but subsistent existence itself. He is eternity. He is infinite knowledge. And he is “The Good.” Under this conception of God, true meaning is not caught in circularity because it flows from the infinite wellspring of beauty, truth, and goodness that is God. These are not qualities within God that he must rely on to impart meaning. He simply is; I Am that I Am. Therefore, participation in God is to participate in true ‘being.’ And true being is the only place where true meaning can be founded because being, meaning, goodness, etc are all one and the same thing in God. Otherwise, like you said, you’re just following rules that are set contingently within our existence by a powerful bearded man in the sky who decided, “This is what’s good and meaningful.”
I fully understand that this understanding of God is abstract and difficult to comprehend (and I would say necessarily so), but it is the traditional view that the majority of us moderns have lost since the Enlightenment. And like I said in my article, “what we mean by God” is a huge conversation in its own right. One that I don’t think should be done in the comments section here on Medium lol. So if you want to respond to this I’ll let you have the last word and bow out here.
However, if you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart. Although I should warn, much like my article, it is tough reading. But once you get past the fancy prose and admittedly arrogant tone it makes for a very important dive into what we in the classical Christian tradition actually mean by the word ‘God.’ And this opens up a whole new world that is rarely if ever discussed in modern existential conversations.
Anyway, thanks for the dialogue! God bless ;)
