What about God?

To be completely honest, the word "God" does not have a lot to do with my way of being religious - at least not when I consider the word God in a traditional sense. So, when I was asked recently "what is your theology of God?" I fumbled around without a particularly clear answer. The question deserves an answer, even if only because God is the word that plays the central role in most traditional religion.

I find it easy to say what role God does NOT play in my theology. For starters, I am quite convinced that there is no God that controls our lives, unleashes natural disasters, or decides who will "miraculously" survive a terrible plane crash.

I also can not conceive of a God that needs my praise or supplication to encourage God do good in the world. If there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God, would this entity really have a delicate ego in need of human strokes?

I feel certain too that God is not an old white guy with a long beard and a golden heavenly throne. In fact, I can't accept any notion of a gendered God and I don't believe that using the kind of language we use to describe human beings is either helpful or appropriate. God is not the sort of thing we can fully describe or understand; after all, if God is beyond our full comprehension - as most traditions assert - it would probably be best if we could stop trying to do just that.

With all of those traditional images around, I'm inclined to say that the word "God" has more often been an impediment to my spiritual growth than a guide in that journey. After all, it is the prevalence of those views of the divine that kept me away from religion for so many years before I found that there are ways to be religious that don't depend on conceptions of the divine that I find so difficult and unpalatable.

But there have also been times when I have come across understandings of God that do indeed speak to me.

One of these is the conception of God as an intangible force or spirit that leads us toward the good. This God is a flow rather than a consciousness - a direction rather than an answer - a "way" rather than a rule-giver.

Another image of God is as a source - an infinite reservoir of hope and love and compassion upon which we can draw when our own stores have been depleted by misfortune, sorrow, and by the seemingly endless needs of a world in pain.

A third way of seeing God that appeals to me is God as action rather than as entity. This view sees God as the inspiration and revelation that come when we open ourselves to one another and expand ourselves and each other through a deep, authentic interchange. This "God event" brings understanding, compassion, and connection to our lives. God is - in this way of thinking - an action in which we can participate. It is a happening that brings love and justice more surely than any bearded, enthroned, divine ruler.

Can I really put together these loose ends to become a coherent answer to "what is your theology of God?" probably not, and in fact, a clear coherent view of what is essentially unknowable may be contrary to the ineffable nature of the divine essence.

But, a question asked awaits a response, if not an "answer." thus, I would say this:

I conceive of God as beyond understanding. God represents that which we can not prove, or grab hold of and which is yet central to living with wholeness and connection. The conception of God can serve us well if we are careful to avoid the trap of personification. With anthropomorphic images, understandings, and analyses set aside, the incomprehensible, intangible God becomes that which brings us back to the ways in which we choose to live faithfully: to reach outward and be filled when we are depleted, to find a way toward goodness when we are lost, and to participate in the expansive, life-embracing action that helps to create a heaven on earth.

Stop 'effing' God

Ineffable: Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable.

God, or the ultimate reality, is understood to be profoundly unknowable in most of the world's religious traditions. This divine entity is powerful and present in ways that put it vastly beyond our experience and our understanding. Recall in the Hebrew Scriptures how Moses had to turn away when God passed by, for none can look upon the face of God and live. Recall that the very name of God is unspeakable in the Jewish faith.

The three Abrahamic faiths - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - forbid the worship of idols. Such images can only be false and lead one away from the true essence of the divine. Hindus may worship avatars, but the ultimate divine entity - Brahman - remains an unknowable "trancendent absolute being that pervades and supports all reality."  Taoism proclaims the unknowability of the ultimate reality. In the words of Lao Tzu:

Tao, the subtle reality of the Universe cannot be described. That which can be described in words is merely a conception of the mind

In all of these great traditions, there is a powerful strand that recognizes the divine as something incomprehensible, unnameable, and indescribable.  Being human though, our immediate impulse is to describe the indescribable and provide a name for the unnameable. We want a God we can related to, look at, and even to touch. We want to 'eff' the ineffable!

Hence we depict God, we create idols, we designate specific beings as the incarnation of this entity so that we may more easily grasp and contain it. In doing so, we risk distorting and misrepresenting the divine. We may well come to worship only our idols and our rules - the form, rather than the ineffable reality.

In the New Testament book of Galations, Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self–control." Following Paul's lead, I want to suggest that our notion of the divine and how to follow the sacred path should also be identified by its fruits.

I know that I am in tune with the sacred when I become more loving and more compassionate. I also know that the path to these fruits is not the same for everyone. We are different and will find different ways toward a sacred wholeness, but our guide is there always in the results.

This pragmatic view of spirituality is beautifully encapsulated in a poem by Hafiz, the 14th Century Persian Sufi mystic (via Daniel Ladinsky), in which Hafiz describes his response to a man who asked if his visions of God were authentic:

I would say that they were if they make you become more human,
More kind to every creature and plant that you know.