Do you believe in a higher power?
It's almost an institution, in our culture, in our nation, to describe God as a higher power, something greater than ourselves . What's that, "the force be with you"? What is this higher power—gravity, lightning, earthquakes? Now one thing about this nebulous, amorphous, nameless, characterless power, is that first of all it is impersonal, and second of all and most important, it is amoral. See, there's an upside and a downside to worshiping a higher power—a nameless, faceless, force like gravity, or cosmic dust, or lightning, or thunder. Here's the upside to a sinner . A force that is impersonal and amoral makes no ethical demands on anybody. Gravity does not make judgments about people's behavior unless they jump out of windows six-stories high. But even at that, there is no personal condemnation that comes from gravity, or an earthquake. Gravity has no voice; it says nothing, it sees nothing, and it knows nothing. We could describe this higher forc...