Theism Isn't the Only Way to Explore the Sacred

 The God of my understanding and experience is a presence and a power, not a person, not a potentate.  

Love at its most perfect; that’s God.

The field of unlimited possibilities; that’s God. 

What’s really real; that’s God.

 

Light and air, water and star dust, and echoes of the big bang all coming together as you and as me; that’s God.

 

The Substance and Fabric and Vitality of life; that’s God.

 

The indescribable More; that’s God.

All-in-all; that’s God.

 

Or rather, those are the ways that I experience, understand, and try to discuss the 

unnamable Something that must be pondered but can’t be dissected, 

 

That can be experienced intimately but never known completely, 

 

That requires awe but not submission, 

 

That inspires love and never cruelty, 

 

That is part of everything but cannot be limited by anything. 

 

And I call that, for lack of a better word, God...

 

We’ve been to the moon. The internet connects us instantly to people across geography and time zones. We transplant organs. We have nano robots that do medical procedures from inside bodies. We cloned a sheep. We fly in the air. Every day.

 

We can live underwater for big stretches of time. 

We synthesized insulin. We can help a lot of people live past 100.

 

There are over 700,000 humans alive right now who are more than 100 years old. There are more centenarians on the planet than there are people living in Denver.

 

We know that homo sapiens (that’s us) have been around for 200,000 years with hominin ancestors going back 5 million years or more (maybe 10).  

 

We live on a small planet in a modest solar system that is one of 400 billion solar systems in a galaxy that is one of 2 trillion galaxies in a vast and expanding universe that is at least 13.8 billion years old and might actually be eternal (always is but never began).

 

The old guy on a cloud passing judgement, pulling puppet strings, deciding when people die, granting favors to the deserving few – 

 

is a mental image we inherited from a world that thought earth was flat and at the center of the universe. 

 

For God to be relevant and real to us, we MUST liberate Her from the middle ages and recognize the divine as part of the fabric of the universe that we actually inhabit. 

 

So, if God isn’t a superhero, but is the air we breathe and the light we see by and the electricity in the room and the love we feel more deeply than we can describe…

 

then we can pray to that God because that God is always with us, exactly where we are; 

we are part of its vastness; it individuates as us. The universe explores and knows itself as us.

 

So, yes we pray. We turn within, because God is there; or we turn outward, because God is there, or we turn to the Great Teachers (like Jesus), because God is there, or we turn to the traditions, because God is there, 

 

or we turn to one another, because God is there. That’s how and why we pray, because there’s not a spot where God is not. 

 

We aren’t calling out across a great canyon, we’re tapping Love itself on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, can I have a hug?” 

The answer is always yes.

(excerpts from Nov. 17, 2024 homily at Sunshine Cathedral)

 - dw

What if "God" were something other than what we were taught to imagine?

As a clergy person, I get two particular questions a lot (and they are variations of the same concern):
1. Why must we pray for good things; doesn't God know what we need and can't God just provide for those needs without being asked?
2. Why are some prayers answered and others aren't?

Both questions suggest an ancient, theistic understanding of divinity. The questions imply that there are gods on a far away mountain or in a sky realm hidden by clouds and they favor some mortals over others, or they are largely indifferent but can be cajoled into offering assistance. And if that is our understanding of divinity, then of course we become frustrated, even angry. Why should the gods grant me a convenient parking place but not protect my car from a runaway shopping cart? Why should the deities bring good fortune into my life only later to let it slip away?Why should the fates add a blessing to one person's medical treatment and not another's? The god in the sky or on the mountain top is notoriously unreliable and often quite unfair.

But here is the good news...there are other ways of understanding "God." God is the word we have inherited for Ultimate Reality, Eternity, the Infinite, the Field of All Possibilities, the Life-force within us. Some prefer to call this "Something" a Higher Power, others see life as being filled with so many seemingly random occurrences that belief in God is problematic. Still others see God as the spirit of life, an omnipresent Reality, an indwelling and all-embracing energy, a web of existence connecting all life. We are not limited to the super-human personalities of Asgard or Olympus any longer. Even Jesus said, "God is spirit..." which we could understand as energy, the breath of life, a ubiquitous gestalt. With that understanding of God, we can say as Jesus did, "the divine and I are one!"

If we say "God" but think of a Zeus or Odin type of character with human personality, then like all other human personalities, that God will eventually disappoint us. But, if God (to borrow from the poet Epimenides and the "Acts of the Apostles") is that in which "we live and move and have our being," then God isn't separate from us, granting some wishes and ignoring others; rather, God is a power within and all around us that we can tap into to help us make the most of the opportunities and possibilities in life.

Apparent delays and denials may not be the action (or annoying inaction) of Apollo, Isis, or Lakshmi; they may simply suggest that we have not yet learned how to do better, or we have not yet healed mental blocks that are in the way of some achievement, or that our desired good is in the works and just hasn't shown up for us yet.

Some of the great spiritual teachers have reminded us that what God does for us, God must do through us. That makes God a partner, something with which we can cooperate (like gravity or electricity), something we can explore and express more of as our journey unfolds. Perhaps the "why hasn't God fixed it yet" questions suggest a need for a new understanding of God, and empowered by a new understanding, we may yet find more peace, hope, and even achievement going forward.

On-going Confessions of a Non-Theist

I've got to find a better word. "Non-Theist" is assumed by atheists to be the same as their rejection of anything divine while traditional religious types just can't seem to imagine the divine as anything other than an invisible person, granting (or denying) requests, deciding (for some strange reason) when people will die, and sending the occasional natural disaster.

I believe in the Sacred. Mystery. Wonder. Awe. The interconnectedness of all living things. I believe in Intelligence, Wisdom, Love, and the amazing Process of life. I believe in prayer (though I may call it thought, feeling, wishes, visualization, or hope). I refer to my prayers being "received" rather than heard. I sometimes even call the Whole in which I believe, of which I am a part, and in which we all "live and move and have our being," God. I believe in God, I just don't believe in the God I used to believe in or that others seem to accept. My God is more than any image or name or understanding. God symbolizes infinite possibilities, extravagant love, deep wisdom, the unity of all that is. God is a clumsy word for that which can't be named. It's often the best I can come up with, but it's still just a word that represents what can't be known and what can't be limited by human understanding or language.

Emptiness - that's the Buddhist attempt to name what is "really Real."
Inward Light - that's what the Quakers came up with.
Mind - that's what some of the ancient Greek philosophers called It.
Ultimate Reality - I believe that's one of the terms Hindus use.
The Universe, the gods, Spirit...different names, all pointing toward the eternal Truth. Allness. Isness. "God."

Panentheism tells us that God is in us and we are in God. Theism believes in a God outside ourselves. Deism believes in a Theistic God who retired. Pantheism believes that God is in every living thing. But Panentheism believes that God is everything but the Whole is MORE than the sum of Its parts! How can you adequately name that which is All and More? My brand of non-theism is actually panentheism, but that requires explanation, too.

I'll keep working on it, but I dread the day I succeed at finding a term. Because once you can name and explain a thing, you have diminished it. And a diminished, understandable deity is just one more false idol that needs to be destroyed so that the search for the Infinite can resume.