God

Could we move beyond the various names for God? To presume to know the name of God is to presume the power and authority to summon Him and to control Him. We realize today that this is not possible. It is in fact blasphemous in most mainline religions to even suggest that we might be able to control God. Yet we continue to imply that we can by presuming to name the God who has no name, because He needs no name. He is the only God there is. Could we, perhaps, even move beyond minimizing God by insisting He created the world only a few years ago compared to an awesome and almost incomprehensible number of years ago simply because we want to assert our dominion over all other forms of life? I don’t care what any book has to say about it, that is absurd.
God doesn’t need to write a book through various ghostwriters about His accomplishments. He can speak for Himself, and He has -- in His creation. We simply need to look at it more closely than we are in the habit of doing, and then determine the approximate time of creation by using the reason God gave us. Besides, we’ve already established our dominion, often by simply wiping out other forms of life.
Let’s talk about God honestly and openly, and let’s start at the beginning. Not the beginning of God or of Earth or of life or of us, but the beginning of our experience of God. And then let’s continue on, discussing our growth in understanding and even our continuing growth in understanding. Contrary to the opinion of many believers, we still have a long way to go. God in our lives is an unfolding revelation rather than a sudden and complete understanding. It began at the very beginning of Mankind, and from the point of view of the evolutionist (which I am) even long before, and it will continue until our individual demise, Mankind’s demise, and for those of faith (of which I am one) long after the demise of Mankind.
Who is God? God is just beyond your reach, always elusive, always there. You feel His presence in your darkest despair, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, but not obtrusive, just there. Reaching out you can almost touch His hand, but never quite. Conversations are never really completed, yet never unfinished. You talk. He listens. His side of the conversation is silent, but the quiet is a shout just beyond comprehension, easily understood, unless you listen too closely. Then it fades away. Let the shout enfold you and it becomes part of you. If you seek God, you will not find Him. He stands beside you and you cannot see Him, because you are looking into the far distance. Turning, you walk right through Him as you stare at the sky. He is not up there. God is a mystery. He will always be a mystery, but He will never be a puzzle. No matter how much you know, you will not know Him. No matter how little you know, He is easily understood. To say you know God is arrogant. It presumes a knowledge you do not have. To say you do not know God is ignorant. You know Him very well. You are ignoring Him.
Is God offended when you ignore Him? I cannot imagine in my wildest imaginings why He would be. Does He care if you ignore Him? Again, in my wildest imaginings I cannot conceive of any reason why He should. I suspect He may even admire you for ignoring Him. That, of course, would be my Christian background speaking. God respects us. He encourages us to set out on our own just as any good father would. You see, the early Christian theologians did a really remarkable thing with Pagan theology. They adapted it to Christian cosmology. God became family. He created us, thus becoming the father of us all. This reflects the very ancient view of those who domesticated animals and tilled the earth -- Mother Earth. The idea is that we were all born from the earth and we all return to it in death. She was family, but bound us to her much too closely for the warrior class to accept. They preferred the God of thunder and lightening, the God in the sky, and so Mother Earth was abandoned. Christians see themselves as children of God. At the same time they see Him as all powerful, not confined to this planet. The Mother Earth theology still hangs on, though, in the gods controlling the other planets in our solar system: Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus.
But not only did God create us, He came to live among us. This again diverts Pagan theology to Christian concepts. God came to live among us as one of us. He joined our family, born as a child, raised by human parents, and finally dying an ignoble death, cursed to be bound by the futility of His soul trying to escape from the crossed paths of a tree. But God cannot be bound, and so broke the bounds of this age-old superstition and all superstition that would bind us. God cannot be bound and neither can His children. Only we can allow ourselves to be bound by such nonsense now and in the future. There is nothing that can contain us unless we allow it to do so. We are God’s children.
There is more. Not only did God the father come to live among us, He came to live among us as one of us. He came as His own son. He was just like us. He expected no privileges the rest of us do not have. This point has become so wrapped up in the attempt to explain it in a previous age that it is almost incomprehensible to us today. As a result, many are pulled into a kind of Pagan mythology that completely misses the point of scripture in this day and age. Our understanding of God is still governed by a centuries old cosmology. It was certainly understood in this earlier age, but times change and language changes and our knowledge of the world around us changes. We are faced with a choice: reject the mythology that has developed around the resurrection or reject what we know to be true. It is not a choice we should have to make, but we must because many of our religious leaders have not moved beyond their Pagan perceptions. They refuse to reaffirm the deeper significance of God coming among us, living as one of us, and dying as one of us.
And it doesn’t stop there. God stayed behind and is still among us as part of us. This is an insight so deep it is frightening. Pagans had a father god, a mother god and a child god. The natural conclusion of a Pagan theology would be that Mary, the mother of Jesus, would be the mother God, with Jesus the child God.
This completely misses the significance of God among us. God must be complete. He cannot be separated into parts or His point in joining us is lost in the complexity of family relationships. The God story becomes just another fairy tale without any real significance.
The point is that God is a part of us. It’s the part that binds us together emotionally. We are blood. A common ancestor, Adam, connects us as humans. A common brother, Jesus of Nazareth, connects us to God. The question then becomes “How much like a human father is God?” and “How much like a human mother is God?” Mothers and fathers play significantly different roles in the raising of their children. This is basically an instinctive response to parenthood, but much of it is also a cultural development of the parental instinct --the fathering instinct and the mothering instinct. Instinct is important to us because it is what has kept us alive and has contributed to our evolution. God has not evolved. He is what He was, is, and ever will be. He does not have a parental instinct. He is what He decides to be. This doesn’t mean He changes, but it does mean He could change if He wanted to. It is, however, inconceivable that He would change just because He can. He is God. He chose to be as He is. Whatever He chose cannot be improved upon. I say again, “He is God!” Whatever He chose is perfect. It has to be. It can not be made better.
Then what was the point in His coming among us as part of our family? The answer is clear. Of all the things we’ve done, good and bad, family was significant enough to be affirmed by God Himself. This is the relationship we should cultivate among ourselves. It is the one thing that makes us significant in this universe. If there are other intelligent beings somewhere in outer space, and there surely are, they are more than likely very different from us in their evolutionary development.
The instincts that contributed to their survival and to their evolution are almost surely very different from our own. I would guess that God would affirm them in a different way. Family could be of some value to these aliens even though it be a completely foreign concept to them now, yet one that could contribute to their future as the concept God has affirmed among them could be to us --a concept that we may find completely alien, but perhaps useful to our becoming better, stronger, more complete.
My point is this. God has become part of our family, but we make a horrible mistake if we attempt to obligate or limit Him to our instinctive responses and to our cultural biases. We can’t say, “You are our father, so you must...,” or “You promised….” It will have to be enough to know that He is family, that He cares, and that He wants the best for us. The rest is presumptuous and too often arrogant.
But again, I must admit this is my perspective as a Christian. Not all Christians believe in the trinity relationship of God to mankind, and certainly no other religion accepts it. I do not mean to present it as an established fact, but it is certainly a fascinating concept, and has great potential. Other religions have a more realistic view of God’s relationship to Mankind, but their expectations of Mankind often seem unrealistic and nonproductive. That, of course, could be (and probably is) a reflection of my ignorance.