Initially, I was confused at Lauren’s Earthseed God; I just couldn’t understand what made her God a god. It seems as though Earthseed religion is a proactive, existential philosophy and/or way of life and the God part is there only to contrast her upbringing with a Baptist father. Granted, creating Earthseed helps/helped her cope with the current world’s state and hyperempathy and so I’m not trying to say anything negative about Earthseed. Earthseed doesn’t need a God, yet it God appears many times throughout the Books of the Living. More or less, in Earthseed humans can change God so that they can change themselves. If we consider Earthseed to have existential colors because of the ‘take hold of your future’ sort-of theme, then you can, hopefully, see why I was confused with including God in Earthseed text. Why have a medium of God in order to change ourselves, why not just change ourselves without that medium? With God traditionally known as an unchanging force who changes us, why does Lauren go the lengths of transforming this thought and not merely abandoning it?
I feel it would be contrived to suggest that this book is a critique of God of the Judeo-Christian faith(s), but we can look at something concrete from the book and hopefully give some defintion through contrast of God being in Earthseed. On pages 14-16, Lauren reels into a train of thought about how she feels and what questions she has about God (the Judeo-Christian God) and can be summed up in this thought: for all we know we could just be playthings for God, who might just end up being a illusion of security and control. The biggest lash against ‘her father’s God’ would probably the question, “Is it a sin against God to be poor?” concerning the natural disasters (objectively neutral turned instrument of God) destroying the misfortunate when the Bible usually illustrates that the poor are reward/favored. Before potentially breaking out into a discourse of God and why suffering exists, I will just provide what Lauren thinks of this – by using the book of Job she construes humans are disposable like toys.
Let’s go back to even this idea of “shaping” or “changing” God in Earthseed. Obviously, she doesn’t literally mean reaching into the heavens and molding God like God is some cosmic play-doh (I mean, she could, but reading Earthseed texts, I think it more implies the following). It means that her understanding of ‘her father’s God’ is that God is irrelevant and also stagnant so instead of rejecting it – accept that one can change the idea of God that exists in our heads. That is a bigger reversal to the traditional God than just merely rejecting God; we transform God to a different version and essentially become our own gods. Rereading the Earthseed excerpts, the traditional God and the new God appear – which further makes me believe that Earthseed is an inner reaction against her dissatisfaction with ‘her father’s God’.