Wrestling with God

Perhaps if we continue to use the word “God” we should alter it. Maybe: Godddd. Or: gODD. Or: Go(o)d. Some already use: G-d. The infinity symbol ∞. Goddddd∞.   I no longer believe in God. "God" is too small. The word has lost its meaning. I'll have to keep using it, because I'll confuse some people if I stop altogether. But I propose to use other terms or expressions. Such as,  the Holy Mystery the Source of life the Power of Love the Infinite Mind the Infinite Spirit the Universal Consciousness the Sacred Spirit the Holy One the Eternal One Holy Wisdom Holy Wholeness etc Or, I may write "God" as... Godddd gODD [something odd/strange] God∞ [with infinity symbol] Go(o)d The word God has become too domesticated and routine. It conjures up the Old Man in the Sky image. Or the Supreme Being. But Godddd is way bigger than that; much stranger. Any attempt to explain o describe Goddd is a lie. Any argument about Godddd is blasphemy. We have reduced gODD to an idea...

February 22, 2018 I’m feeling more and more like abandoning the metaphysical elements of Christianity. The ethical aspects are solid. Of course they are grounded in the Jewish tradition: the prophetic, wisdom, and Torah. What Jesus added is the radical love—love of enemy. Jesus and Paul taught that everything is centered in the “law of love.”  The Incarnation is metaphorical. You can’t get past the fact that Jesus himself is never reported as explicitly claiming to be God in the flesh. Even in John, he only claims a “oneness” with God, not an identity as God. He is the revealing of God’s nature and purpose. As Paul says, he is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus spoke of God using the metaphor of “father.” That is, we can relate to the Holy Mystery as if it were a loving father, yet a transcendent father, whose Name is holy/hallowed/transcendent. The father image is about being able to trust the Holy Mystery. And having a feeling that the HM (Holy Mystery) cares about us....

February 18, 2018 Jesus spoke of a kingdom – a mysterious presence; of grace/acceptance; and authentic relationships; he challenged oppressive structures. His life is ongoing… A community of hope formed because of him. This I believe: There is a Voice—a Call—that is part of our human essence… a call to graceful living… to reconciliation and justice… to humane treatment of the living…to Spirit-led life… to joy.

Prayer is speaking/thinking into the holy abyss where Spirit hovers. The universe’s Consciousness/Mind listens & responds.  Prayer is tapping into the interconnected web, the pulse of reality—casting thoughts or feelings into the mix. Vibrations return in the form of ideas, sensations, intuition. God is an infinite, body-less Self which can transmit messages and receive messages.  Any notion of goodness or justice is received from this infinite Self.  The Christian faith as a metaphorical system or a symbol system or a psychology.

February 16, 2018 I think the early church was onto something. Something new happened with that guy Jesus. Something broke into a human history from outside are bubbled up from the center. I no longer believe in God. The word “God” no longer has a meaning. I will use other terms such as “the holy mystery” or the “source of life” or the “power of love” or the “power of goodness.” What I mean by God is so much bigger and more mysterious than the word “God” connotes.  I cannot use it anymore; it does not function as it ought. 

January 22, 2018 Our talk about God is/has been mythical. i.e., a God ‘up there,’ etc.  The anthropomorphic language is actually mythical language. What we need to do is talk/write about God no longer in mythic language, but in mystical language. Mystical is more paradoxical and stresses the incomprehensible and ineffable. Along with mystical, we should aim for a humanistic God. If we can substitute another word besides “God,” that would be helpful. I don’t believe in ‘God’ anymore. I believe in that which is bigger than God. The reality which is beyond ‘God,’ – that which holds all things; holds the universe; that which is before and outside of the universe; and pervades the universe as well. The God beyond God. (Tillich) Being-Itself. O God, rid me of God. (Eckhart) _____   I believe in Meaning…Hope…Justice. But these values must have a transcendent foundation to be real. I see no other Story that gives a foundation to these values than the Christian Story. It’s a story that...

November 28, 2016 Why do people continue to go to church? We gather to experience community. The feeling of belonging is a human need. The church is one kind of community that meet a basic human need. Church is a place to make friends, to support others and feel their support. Supportive relationships is a gift to be received. We go to church to enact a drama of meaning. The Biblical stories place us within a narrative of significance. Through ritual, symbolism, and ideas, we place ourselves within a drama of life as scripted by spiritual experiences of our ancestors in the faith. We rehearse their stories and remember where we have come from. We appreciate the struggles they have gone through which have helped shape who we are. We listen to texts from our spiritual genealogy. We hear the poetry of our Scriptures. (Most of the Bible should be heard as poetry, metaphor, and analogy.) We affirm the propaganda of life found in our sacred texts.  We hear interpretations of our spiritua...

October 27, 2016 WHY I AM A CHRISTIAN I am part of a long tradition of women and men who have been shaped by the stories of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I have accepted the central vision of the man Jesus of Nazareth, which is that life is to be lived in love.  The first theologian of the Christian faith was a Jew named Paul. He agreed with Jesus that love is the fulfilling of the law. All the commandments, the instructions, the guidance of the Hebrew Scriptures can be summed up as the moral imperative to love one another. The people of the Christian faith have developed institutions and organizations to put love into practice: such as hospitals, schools, hospices, disaster relief, orphanages, etc. My people have combined the truth and wisdom of the Jewish faith and the Greek philosophers to shape cultures based on science, moral virtue, artistic creativity, and educational opportunities. The Church as an institution has a mixed history. It has allowed itself to ...

September 16, 2016 As an only child I had an imaginary friend that I played with. We got along fine. Didn’t some philosopher say, “If there wasn’t a real friend, you’d have to invent one”? I don’t remember how old I was when I stopped playing with my “friend.” I had also been taught from a young age to talk with an invisible friend named “God.” Those conversations were called “prayer.” Our whole family talked with our invisible friend. At church we sang songs about him. We praised him. We confessed our wrongdoing to him. We were taught to do what he wanted us to do.  I’m still in love with this invisible Friend. I still talk to him, though I now believe that he is not really a male. Sometimes I call him my Mother; or the Spirit; or the Loving Energy of the universe; or the Heart pulsing at the center of everything. There are days when I think he is an “imaginary” friend; not real. Made up. But I’ve been his friend so long that he is part of my life. I know there are people who woul...

September 10, 2016 The whole Christian drama makes sense to me. The Biblical Narrative follows the arc of a well-known plot: Paradise…Paradise Lost…Paradise Regained. Another way to state the narrative arc is: Union…Disunion…Reunion. Or this: Wholeness…Brokenness…Healing. So many plays and novels follow the pattern of: (a) Everything is normal—(b) Uh oh, something has gone wrong—(c) But the crisis is overcome.  I can assert that the Christian story is based on factual events. I can support the historical factuality of the life of Jesus and his resurrection. That is, from the written reports in the Christian Propaganda Book, it all falls into place. An argument can be made that the reports are realistic and not the result of a conspiracy of deception. But when I step outside the theatre of the Christian drama, I look around and see ordinary, daily existence with no reference to any religious or spiritual reality, and I am able to sympathize with people who live without that referenc...

From the beginning humans have  perceived or imagined unseen powers and forces which spooked and awed them; and the humans tried to influence those unseen powers to be friendly. Dying and rising gods and goddesses were already imagined way before the birth of Christianity. Sagas of an ancient couple named Abraham and Sarah, and their descendants, also tell of a small clan of Semitic people held as slaves in Egypt. These people have a memory of being liberated from the tyranny of a Pharaoh by the power of their God, YHWH. They had stories of tribal leaders, then kings and prophets, followed by forced exile from their homeland in Palestine to Babylon. They eventually return to their homeland and rebuild.  The Christian religion has its roots in the Jewish story. A Jewish man named Jesus was born in Palestine in around the year 4 BCE (which is numbered as year ‘0’ by a historical slippage).  While some people in our time speculate that this Jewish man Jesus never actually ex...

RESURRECTION – VARIOUS VIEWS 1. TOMAS HALIK – “eschatological character” As theologians emphasize, the word of the Greek text of the New Testament that we translate as “resurrection” is taken from the experience of people waking from sleep and of “resuscitation,” the return to this life after apparent death. It can therefore only serve as an analogy or metaphor for the mystery of Christ’s victory over death, which Christian belief interprets as something radically different and more profound. (It would be a total misapprehension if our drawing attention to the limitations of this concept were taken as a diminution of the Easter mystery—the opposite is true.) [T]he view that the Resurrection is “nothing but a historical event among other historical events,” or a “miracle” among other miracles, leads to the abyss of fundamentalist banality. The Resurrection is an event of an eschatological character—that is indicated by the expression “the third day,” which is not simply a chronological ...

AFTERLIFE? 1. I was raised by family and church to believe in an afterlife. It has become part of my psyche and my conceptual framework. 2. During my formal education this belief was affirmed. In my studies and critical thinking I confirmed my acceptance of this belief. 3. Therefore, this is my bias. It is such a part of me that it is the default position in my believe system. 4. I have a desire to maintain a belief in an afterlife. 5. The sense of hope that has come with my ingrained acceptance of an afterlife sustains me. 6. The concept of Transcendence I was given as a child and during my higher education is one of a Reality (God) that/who is eternal. No beginning or ending. Infinite. Therefore, the concept of eternity has been part of my spiritual framework. 7. Having accepted the reality of an Eternal God who has created the universe and given a special place to human beings as creatures with consciousness; and believing in the truth of Justice, it makes sense that God would not l...

FLICKERS OF THOUGHT God is the pronoun for the genderless Reality who holds everything. God pervades the universe, but is also outside the universe. My temperament makes it necessary for me to view the world through a metaphysical framework. God is meaning. Meaning is God. Without meaning my life has no purpose. Three options: Meaning is given from beyond. There is no meaning. We create our own meaning. Because we exist within the System (universe/life), we cannot judge the system. It is reasonable to trust the drama of the universe to the One who designed it and will have ultimate control over the consummation of it. For a human being to judge God is the height of hubris. Human tragedies are part of the “permission” given to the universe. Without the permission in place the world would be mechanical and humans would have no dignity. Human tragedy is the price we pay for the existence of human dignity and freedom. From our perspective we cannot accept the price without anger or disbeli...