who or what is God?
Jim October 23rd, 2008
i mentioned in a comment on a previous post that when i am conversing with others about “God” that i often wonder if we are referring to the same reality. which prompted the question: who or what is God in terms of your understanding?
this morning i received an email that read:
“God and man are like the two ends of one line. When a believer in God conceives of God as a separate entity and of man as a being separate from Him, he makes himself an exile, an exile from the kingdom of God. He holds fast to the form of God created by himself, and he does not reach the Spirit of God. However good and virtuous he has been in life, however religious in his actions, he has not fulfilled the purpose of his life. …
Those who think that God is not outside but only within are as wrong as those who believe that God is not within but only outside. In fact God is both inside and outside, but it is very necessary to begin by believing in that God outside. From our childhood we have learned everything outside. We learn what the eye is by looking at the eyes of others; everything we see in ourselves we have always learned from outside.
So even in order to learn to see God we must begin by seeing God outside: as the Creator, the Judge, the Knower of all things, the forgiver; and when we have understood Him better, the next step is that the God that we have always seen outside we now also find within, and that completes our worship. If we have only found Him outside then we are His worshippers, but we remain separate from him and there is no communion, which is the purpose of life.”
i’m not sure i really buy everything that is said here but i was intrigued with the idea that our understanding of God naturally evolves. so, how do you understand “God”? who or what is “God” in terms of your understanding? and how do you understand yourself to relate to or plug into this understanding of God? try to be as practical as possible. i’m not looking for a theological or philosophical thesis.
i am welcoming any person’s response. please don’t use this thread to judge others on their view or argue your view of God over other people’s views. for the purposes of this thread, let’s just accept there will be different answers, even conflicting ones.
(photo by zoo gal)
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I don’t know about “two ends of a line,” but his assertion that God is both without and within rings true my experience.
I grew up in church trying to conceive of a God who is totally Other. That was all done in good faith (no pun intended), but now I can see that all my efforts tended to reduce God to the size of my concept.
At times I believe I had encounters with God. Once while walking through the woods, in the fog, I sat down by a tree and simply accepted God’s presence. Another time, years later, I was asked to pray, and I was overcome by joy (that I suppressed quickly). In each case I knew I was encountering God, God “without.” The key was I didn’t make it happen or attempt to contain God in a concept. It came on God’s terms.
At this point in my journey, I have less and less desire to contain what I know of God in a concept — God is simply the loving Reality that I live and move and breath in. I could say God is without and within, or just know that God is — or as someone said, “In Him I (we) live and move and have my (our) being.” (Did I quote that right?)
BUT it’s still crucial to me that God is love, and that it’s personal.
Jim, maybe you remember in “Wide Open Spaces” when you hesitated and brought out the question whether this God you were describing could still be personal (maybe that was in the quark section). That was exactly my question right then, but your quick assurance didn’t quite settle my feeling of concern. I’ve brought up this root concern in conversation with a Buddhist friend who relates “with the universe” (which I understand, but it falls short of what I know of God as Love). Is this requirement that God be “personal” a sign of my need for a concept? Or off my faith in what I’ve read in the Bible (that Jesus, the Word spoken by God, communicated love to me in the most personal way possible)? Or of my worship: that I want to acknowledge, celebrate, and wonder out loud about this greatest mystery and revelation of God?
This may be a bit metaphysical. Here goes anyway:
I see God as the creative energy behind the universe (”creative energy” is my favorite interpretation of the name Elohim). I believe that just as the physical/structural creativity on display is incredible beyond imagination, God’s emotional source and power are equally beyond and amazing.
Yet in both ways, in body and in spirit, the big has come near and given us a chance to be part of this cool project called creation. And he’s still with us, both outside and inside, and even built into the very fabric of the dimensions seen and unseen.
To paraphrase a physicist, the I see the universe as God’s quantum computer. And I think he’s loving every minute of it.
What he (Redlefty) said!
to this point i can not comprehend who or what God is – physically anyway. i do believe that His essence is power and love and that both of those reign inside me and outside me. in my opinion, who and what God is will only be revealed upon our appointed meeting. until that point i will ask… seek… and knock.
I’m in the same court as redlefty and don. The more I read about quantum physics, the more I see God. The study of atoms and the sub-atomic particles that make up atoms, points to a “creative force” over and over. The more we learn about the micro universe, the more we realize that there is some unknown force that holds this illusion of electrical impulses together. Most everything that takes place on that level can be understood, it seems, except for… gravity. At present, it just seems to be some mystical force that holds everything together. It makes no sense, it just is. It is the glue that binds, but it cannot be defined mechanically. It is a mystery beyond our understanding. But, it surely exists, and we can calculate it’s effect with great accuracy. It is consistent and predictable, but it cannot be explained.
Something created this illusion we live in, and something holds it all together. It seems likely that it was built for a reason, and that reason will probably become clear to us at some point. I think there is a good chance that “life”, the spirit of living things, is the only thing real, and everything else is just an illusion created to allow that “life” to experience something it wouldn’t normally encounter in it’s natural realm, and to learn from those experiences.
I have a feeling that we are all extensions of the Life that created us and placed us here. And some day we will all be called back to the Source of our spirit, and come together as one, combining our experiences, and adding to the Life from which we originated… God.
Every physics class (and chemistry class, for that matter) that I took, it felt like God was smiling out of the textbook at me. Not that the equations were describing Him, but that He seemed to be saying, “Here is ten amazing steps up Mount Everest that mankind has done. If you take ten steps more, I’ll still be amazed at my creation…but the full explanation will still be far, far higher!”
He does this no matter where we are – if someone is incredibly well-versed in the Bible and all the complexity there, like my friend Phil, He is still deeper, smiling back in His love of us, of course.
Our greatest pleasures and our greatest pains here on Earth are based in our relationships with others – and I have to think those relationships mirror something very important about the relationship God desires with us. He is Other – or He would not need to paint all the pictures of His broken heart, His pursuit of us (Hosea), or the glory of reconciliation (the prodigal son).
Yet, since He knows us better than anyone else, as our very Creator, and desires that we know Him more and more, then the Other concept is not enough.
Are our very favorite moments with the closest people in our lives based on when we are most like them? I don’t think so…maybe I can leave the completion of that thought to others.
I cannot imagine, anymore, a God that is an entity somewhere out there. That God does not exist for me now.
Now, having remove most of the junk(I will let others define junk–I think it is different for everyone), I can only experience God through a manifestation in things that I see–including myself. This means more to me than any throne metaphor that I used to believe. This places me in God instead of toward God. I am OK with this–I need nothing else.
I plug into God by plugging into the ordinary things in life and seeing the inner beauty in reality–the “real”. Accepting and Allowing the “real” and false. When I see a water fall, a city street, people talking, I know God has manifeted himself through Love, Peace and Joy. Nothing that exists is seen by me as a waste–everything is now significant to me. In my old religious structure, most things were insignificant and very few things mattered at all. Even when I see or hear “bad” things at times, I can see through that facade (ego).
WOW–it’s great (even when it’s bad)!
We, by our nature and by our language, (Aristotelian in logic), must warp the meaning of a paradox into “if this, then that”.
But a paradox is logically contradictory, mutually exclusive, concomitant opposites, yet true in one.
A good example is the Christian concept of Jesus Christ being at the same time being truly God, and truly man. If this is true, then He was a living existential paradox.
I choose to accept that to Einstein, God might appear an atom, to Moses, a burning bush, to Baalam, a donkey, and so on.
So we can wonder about the validity of another’s concepts of God, but question them?
We want to be ‘theologically sound” but somehow, in dissecting the frog, it dies.
I suspect that whatever it takes for us to recognize the reality of and appreciate the attractiveness of Himself, God is quite capable of being anything He desires, (especially, sometimes, if that upsets my theology).
For myself, I believe that He cannot live apart from me (else He created me to be a robot), nor I from Him, a curious situation that seems to have had it’s genesis “before the foundation of the world”! In Him I live and move and have my being. Our relationship finds complete and perfect expression on at least two levels. He finds me to be an exquisitely unique component of a larger collective; a building, a body, a bride, in which my individuality retains it’s own integrity.
Unlike a window, possessing only 2 major facets (either one side or the other), this is more like a paradoxical diamond with many facets. All shining. All true. All Him.
Where do I plug in practically, to my concept of God?
Three ways at least I guess. Internally, externally and collectively.
Internally I seem to grow in recognizing His fingerprints, His nudges, and His voice. Taking Jesus to be the character of God helps me a lot with knowing what He is not! Recognizing that nothing occurs to me without His permission, encourages me to look for His hand in my circumstances. Without being either fatalistic or masochistic, I get to look forward to some of my messes, knowing that I will appreciate (sometimes even better through them) the reality of the Kingdom within me. I am evolving, and enjoying the ride.
Externally, I seem to be regaining my sense of wonder at how exquisite this sandbox playground protected by ‘time’ is, into which He has placed me for my evolution. In the face of a beggar or a painting, a song a sky or a leaf, His creation and creativity gifted to us humans, gives me a childish pleasure i thought I had lost.
‘Collectively’, is the most confusing, and where I seem to be most crippled. In laying down my life and opinions and becoming a bridge to the Universal Spirit, for people to cross, to find what I enjoy… Mmmmmmm. I think I’d enjoy Church right well if it weren’t for the people. But this is the area where He seems to fertilize me the most, so I guess it’s where I am growing the most.
Does our understanding of God evolve? My answer is a resounding ‘Yes’. I’m 73 and until about three years ago it was almost entirely ‘head knowledge’ and almost no ‘heart awareness’. I had been a committed ‘Christian’ from the age of 24 but I had never had a faith that I could comfortably share with others (even my own children) because there were too many unanswered questions.
It was in 1996 that I was forced to reconsider just about everything I had ever believed (and that’s a very long story). By 1998 I had reached a point where I had been freed from the slavery of legalism and by 2003 I was becoming aware of committed Christians being drawn away from the churches that they may have attended for many years. Since then I have learned a lot of why people believe what they believe (often based on divisive denominational theology).
It wasn’t until 2006 that I really became aware of the significance of allowing Jesus to live His life in and through me (Gal 2.20) and then in the summer of 2007 I read “The Shack” and everything just fitted into place (another long story).
And that hasn’t been the end of the story.
It hasn’t happened yet but I like to imagine a conversation where someone says, “I don’t believe in God” and where my response might be, “Tell me something about this God you don’t believe in. Maybe I don’t believe in that God either”.
My blog refers to a fresh start – and is an introduction to my web site that describes some of my journey – especially since 1995.
Many people talk of being on this journey outside of traditional Christianity for perhaps two, three or five years. A close friend who died a few years ago once said, “Peter, you have the knack of asking the awkward questions to which there are no easy answers”. I first asked the question, “What is the purpose of life?” in 1966. The immediate response of the Vicar was, “Peter, you can’t ask that, it is the 64,000dollar question (a lot of money in those days). Let’s go on to the next question”.
Unless we have an answer to that question do we really have a faith to share?
Is our understanding of God evolving?
My first understanding of God came through my dad. It was kind of like I walked along life holding Dad’s hand as he held the hand of Jesus. Then, somewhere along the way, my hand was transferred from the hand of my dad to the hand of Jesus, and now He and I walk along together. So, yes, there was a kind of evolving in my knowledge/understanding of God. I think of God in terms of a Father, similar to the loving, affirming dad I had. I think of Him as a Person, with the characteristics that Jesus showed us when He was here in bodily form. I experience Him in times of joy as a deepening presence and in times of loss and sorrow as a comforting one. In the in-between times He’s there, too, but I don’t always notice Him as much.
I have never experienced God in the overwhelming direct way that you described in your book, DIVINE NOBODIES, but I didn’t suffer the kind of horrendous childhood you did, either. My thinking on this is that He will use whatever means He deems appropriate and necessary to make Himself known to each of us. And that’s all right with me.
God is with present in us. God is waiting for us to move along the road towards his love…perhaps your line (although I wonder if it’s more multidimensional). He is there with an open hand inviting us to play. God is in the simple things…the obvious things that we tend to take for granted. God is the grass, the trees, the leaves, the air, the animals, the rivers, and the land. God is inside our hearts. God is in epiphanies. God walks with us not in front of us. God loves.
Old Pete, you are a classic! I shake your hand. You say…
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“Does our understanding of God evolve? My answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.”
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Old Pete I couldn’t agree more and we are only just starting! Why are we stuffing around here trying to define “God” in worldly terms when we haven’t even arrived there yet? It may be all right for all you younger ones to debate your heady stuff but us two old fellows are running out of time. If things don’t start moving soon we are going to miss out on all the fun, and I for one am not happy with that. I’m sure Old Pete feels like this too?
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Here we are with the world collapsing down around us and unless we plug into the spirit and get led out of this shambles we are going to be in one hell of a mess. I had a peek at your blog Old Pete and I see you have raised the issue about the command to “Follow Me”. Right on – that’s our next step everybody. What say you kick off a topic about that Jim rather than waste time playing dirges to each other in the market place and going nowhere? We are only guessing about the “God” thing at this stage.
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As I have said before, to those here who are coming out of religion, you are only just reaching the point where the ordinary secular person, the so called unbeliever, has been for a while. That is becoming conscious of connecting with their hearts and this is just the beginning. We have to start reading and responding to those inner instructions now.
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Come on you younger ones step out, go deeper, and Old Pete and Old Brian will hobble along behind you and give you plenty of support!
I am going to be right up front here that I find it hard today to talk of God outside of my Theological framework… but I’m learning.
I like and loathe the idea of God as the unknown knower. Like because it has a sense of mystery that I see in ideas of God and loathe because it puts God at a distance from me, often when I need God most.
I see God as creator and wisdom, both through the Sophia of God. I see God as able to be close, because that is the type of God we see in our best example of Human Life… Life in all its fulness… Jesus of Nazareth.
I see God in others and available to everyone, everywhere, all the time… Because of my background this is harder for me to accept, but again, I’m learning.
Blessings
Andrew
I’m so happy because I think God is right here, right now, in this very conversation we’re having about Him…nudging us to get out of our heads and into our Hearts, or as Old Pete puts it ‘Heart awareness’. Right on, Pete! He’s been in our Hearts all along waiting for us to rediscover Him here. How many times does he have to ‘nudge’ us??
Also Pete, you ask, ‘what is the purpose of life’? It’s to wake us up!! Life is not meant to make us happy, it’s meant to awaken us to what has been ‘real’ all along. Only then can we actually move on. Let’s move on! Metanoia!
Life is about coming to an understanding of God and life itself. There is immense depth to God and his blessings (Romans 11:33) that we struggle to ascertain. Consequently, there is great depth to us as well. “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Prov. 20:5).
Think about how children and adults, even though they might be able to swim, are often fearful of going into deep water. Why? There is security in the shallow.
The same thing is true when we look at God and our own lives. We tend to want to deal with things exclusively on a surface level. So we rest in what we can perceive through the senses, matters of the surface. And yet, we must delve deep to understand God and ourselves, for we are made in his image.
Truth, life, providence and a number of factors have changed how I view God, and I am much better off for it. I am not afraid to ask the big, tough questions, because I am no longer content with dwelling on the surface.
God exists.
God exists without you . God exists without you period. You don’t exist without God.
This material world is generated from the spirit world. The spirit world is more real and solid than this temporary physical world.
God reveals to us what God is. What we think, feel or imagine about God is irrelevant. By your trying to comprehend God on your level your putting God in a box and the box is empty. Stop and let God be God. Let God show what is God to you. At least than you’ll finally know the truth.