Kester Brewin on God's greatest trick: convincing us He exists

Via Pete Rollins I discovered Kester Brewin recently.  Phew!  If you think Pete is a little edgy, Kester pretty muchs pours gasoline all over orthodox theology and lights a match.  I'm a big fan of brave theology.  I tend to think of this site as a safe place to explore some ideas, some radical, some less so, but all the while keeping the conversation alive.  Whether we are running toward God or away from God, God is at the centre.

Here's Kester pulling the theology grenade pin with a comparison of existence theology to the film the Usual Suspects:

Now, I’m going to throw something pretty radical out there as an inversion of this… not something I’ve fully sorted, but what the hell, here goes:

If the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick God ever played, was convincing the world that he did exist.

In order to pull this trick off, like any magician, like Verbal, god is going to need a supreme act of misdirection. Why? Because, like Verbal, God has been caught in an uncomfortable cross-examination, and wants out. So, like Verbal, he throws dust in the eyes. He creates an avatar, a scene of brutal violence… The cross, in this deeply heretical reading, is an act of divine misdirection, which allows god to disappear. Un-noticed, the temple curtain rips, and god escapes…

Why? What would be the purpose?

For Verbal / Kayser Soze / the devil, the trick of non-existence was to enable him to exist, and thus, under the cover of non-existence, do his worst work in order that he might better be able to exist later.

For God, it is the opposite. The trick of existence was to enable him to not-exist, to subvert any conception of actual existence, in order to do his best work, and thus be better able to exist later.

People need a god… God, people always need some kind of god. So by throwing up the apparition of existence, by throwing this physical being to humanity, a being who ended up being persecuted and killed for his divinity, god could disappear into non-existence to allow humanity to believe their theo-cide… in order that god might re-emerge without the burden of religious bindings at another date.

God needed to pull the trick of existence, in order to successfully not exist.

Kester full post is available here.