Last month, when I was still feeling healthy and motivated—before “the plague”—we talked about the Big Three of the Hindu pantheon: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. The Hindu triad represents three forms of the divine that are all part of one absolute God.
Christianity has its own “Big Three,” the Holy Trinity. Although Christians are always careful to emphasize that there is only one God, Catholics and most other Christians still recognize three different aspects of that one God—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.
God the Father is kind of like Brahma—he’s the Creator, the one who made the universe and everything in it out of some formless void. Despite the fact that popular depictions often show God the Father as a wise old man seated on some shiny throne in a heaven full of puffy clouds, there’s really no way of telling exactly what he looks like, or even if he’s male. The Book of Genesis says that God created man in his own image, but that’s pretty vague, if you ask me. Compared to, say, a duck-billed platypus, a female human is pretty damn close to the popular image of God as an old man. (In fact, most Christian denominations say that God has no gender—he/she is just God, and that’s all there is to it.) So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say he’s kind of an angry old guy who watches over things—that’s God the Father.
God the Son—i.e., Jesus Christ—is, in a way, a bit like Hinduism’s Vishnu, the Preserver. According to Christianity, things had gotten so bad on Earth that God the Father decided to send his son—who was simultaneously a real human being and also completely divine, one of the great inexplicable mysteries of Christian belief—to save us all from sin and eternal damnation.
In other words, Jesus came in order to "preserve" humanity and bring us salvation. Jesus Christ is (obviously) the focal point for Christians and the aspect of God that makes Christianity unique among other religions. For that reason, we'll move on for today and talk more about Jesus another time. Trust me, he'll get plenty of attention now that I'm starting to feel better.
The third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is probably the most difficult to comprehend—and in a group that includes a Father who is formed like humans but also formless and a Son who’s both all God and all human, that’s saying a lot.
I went to CCD for 9 years and I couldn’t really tell you exactly what the Holy Spirit is. (Of course, I went to CCD for 9 years and even taught it for one year, and up until a few minutes ago, when I Googled it, I couldn’t have told you that CCD stands for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine,” so I may not be the greatest source.)
The Holy Spirit is often depicted as a dove—for example, the dove that came down to Jesus when he was baptized. But essentially, the Holy Spirit has no permanent form. It’s . . . well . . . spirit.
Unlike the third part of the Hindu triad, Shiva, however, the Holy Spirit doesn’t serve the role of “Destroyer.” In fact, the Holy Spirit is viewed as the Giver of Live, and is frequently considered an eternal divine force that existed before the universe was created.
The Holy Spirit is, sort of, the one who gets things done. It goes around giving power to those who need it and putting necessary steps in motion. For instance, the Holy Spirit was the one who made it possible for Jesus’s mother, the Virgin Mary, to conceive him without a human man. The Holy Spirit is, in my mind, kind of like the puppet master—working behind the scenes, but ultimately responsible for putting on the show.
So, yeah. It’s a little confusing. There are three aspects of God, but they don’t necessarily have distinct roles. There’s overlap and enigma and things just aren’t crystal-clear like they are in Hinduism. But the mystery is part of Christianity. Most Christians believe we can’t ever fully understand the precise form or nature of God. And we shouldn’t understand. We have to accept God on faith—that’s the whole point.
Me? I like clarity. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had so much trouble being Christian, both in the past and over the past two weeks. But I’ll keep trying.
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