Ah, the question of God. He, She, It, the Universe, the Great Spirit, Heart of Hearts, the Flow, Being, Tao, Heavenly Father, Divine Mother, Love, Compassion, Power, Omniscience, Wrath, Judgment, Kindness, Mercy — the list goes on. I’ve pondered, considered, rationalized, been terrified by, and felt smaller than small with this question — and to this day the enigma lives on…

GOD AS OBJECT

Over the decades, inside this ever expanding, often perplexing mystery, a personal insight has surfaced (not unique, but certainly of value). Like so many sojourners of faith, my earliest biblical recollection of God was as “object” (i. e. God the Father or the Lord God sitting on a throne in heaven). Historically, this particular concept of God or “object-G” was central to most ancient cultures (i.e. Assyrian and Hebrew models) as a commonly held idea of Creator, and with little modification, for many, lives on today. One might argue “the Father thing” is just metaphorical stuff — but the prevailing problem of understanding “object-G” in the context of metaphor is thorny at best. The everlasting presence of any object, (like “object-G”) lays in the power of the image it creates. Images are acutely captivating, and deeply imprinting upon our psyches. Consider God the Father touching the finger of Adam as portrayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This century’s old, anthropomorphic image is likely seared into most of our psyches. Once God the Father, always God the father. Culturally speaking, we become easy prey to this type of image branding. Add particularity to the Father image, and we end up with a sort of patriarchal super-being, with tendencies towards malevolence (Deuteronomy 32:35”) and violence (Joshua. 10:40, 11:15). This storyline is not only psychologically destructive, but utterly fails to move or inspire the heart. Sadly, even today, with people of faith resisting advancements in psychology, anthropology, history, archeology, linguistics, and quantum physics — a clear and unfortunate pattern is set — God, the infinite, is reduced to a definable object, and that object takes form as an image — in the likeness of ourselves. In essence, our minds create a god who thinks like us, behaves like us, discriminates like us, but unlike us, has super-hero powers — a superman if you will. The implications are endless...

♦️"Thus says the LORD: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool …" (Isaiah 66:1).

GOD IN OUR OWN IMAGE

**Photo by Simone Pellegrini - Unsplash**

I stumbled across a C.T. podcast about the “Rise and Fall of Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill”. Normally not a topic I’d have much interest in (years ago I lost my appetite for the fundamentalism), but nevertheless I did get sucked in, not by the malfeasance of religious demagoguery, but a much deeper psychosis called grandiose narcissism. In fairness to Mr. Driscoll, there were times he demonstrated genuine compassion — specifically towards women who were victims of boneheaded men (who he ruthlessly chastised) whose views of women were deplorable. But generally speaking, Driscoll’s god was too often a personal projection: unsettling, argumentative, self-righteous, angry, unforgiving, impatient, macho, painfully insensitive and destructive. We might say, in Mark’s own image! Mr Driscoll’s conundrum of a god manufactured as his personal “object-G” (in his own likeness), sadly, is easily generalized. Human deficiencies can readily become extensions of how we potentially see, behave and communicate God. This human propensity to act as, and defend their imagined god, leads us to another, more lamentable human trait: IDOLATRY.

IDOLATRY

Idolatry” is defined as an “extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone — in this case, an obsession with oneself. This model of god, in our own image is central to the brokenness of humanity — particularly, but not exclusively to the religious world. The affliction of idolatry assists in solidifying our gratuitous thinking (i.e. scapegoating/gaslighting), misguided actions (i.e. disregard for the natural world), and most importantly an unadulterated lust for power (i.e. endless warfare). Idolatry is multifaceted. It helps objectify our ideas about god, cements scriptural interpretations, promotes belonging to the right or one true religious organization — allows identification with a so-called superior culture, political party affiliation, a specific economic system or blindly embracing an acute form of nationalism. Idolatry thrives on both a personal and collective level. It is always binary and thoroughly non-negotiable!

GOD AS VERB

If for a moment I may play the role of grammarian. What if we abandon (take a big breath) entirely our traditional notion of “object-G” (noun) and it’s subsequent idols. We then paint with a more expansive brush — refashioning our perception of God from noun (object) to verb (movement, action, direction). No longer objectifying the god of old (object-G), we can shift into a quality better understood as “engaging in or moving with God.” (verb). As a side note, stepping outside Eurocentric culture, we find numerous examples of societies, such as the Ojibwas’ of North America, where verb usage is dominant in language and expression. This idea might be difficult for a Westerner to grasp, but consider a language where the verb is primary to the noun, and how a perceived reality might be redefined! At this point a good analogy for our discussion might look like this: a welcoming summer breeze makes its subtle yet enlivening presence known. Caressing with the tenderness of a mother’s hand you are gently drawn into its formless presence. In that moment, the wind whispers, “come nigh.” Serenity draws you near, thoughts pass and images cease — you and the wind are one. In a similar way it is how we come to engage or move in and with God (verb) — open, connected, always in motion.

♦️“[God] “an overflow which never stands still and always flows effortlessly and without ceasing.” ~Mechtild of Magdeburg

♦️“The wind blows where it wills, you can hear it’s sound but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes.  So too is everyone born of the Spirit (God)” (John 3:8).

With object-G’s patriarchalism exposed and roots disrupted — the experiencer is now drawn into a heightened state of mental and emotional clarity. No longer chained to a lurking, hovering object-G — the heart can sing to its new found freedom. Whats more, the experiencer, embracing a new latitude of insight, begins a needed and necessary process: the shedding of unwarranted psychological and cultural baggage.

♦️“I pray God to rid me of God."  ~Meister Eckhart

This theme of “the experiencer,” was evident early on by esoterically minded students of Tao. They viewed the underlying universal principle of existence or source as Tao — devoid of images. In fact, Lao-tzu, author of the “Tao Te Ching”, stated that “the Tao that can be defined (imaged) is not the Tao!” Strange notion this Tao is. A second example is found in the ancient Jewish tradition. God’s name was written with four consonants: YHWH. Nowhere in the Torah is the reader ever given permission to utter those consonants (this tradition lives on today)— and think of the difficultly trying (no vowels). In addition to refraining from speaking God’s name, there was an unequivocal absence of godly images. To speak the name of or to attempt to describe God objectively was anathema! “No man can see/describe (or explain) God and live,” declared Moses (Exodus 33:20). Wisely, conceptualizing YHWH or Tao were taboo and as futile as attempting to describe the color red to a blind man.

♦️“God is ‘pure act’.”  ~Thomas Aquinas

☎︎ A cautionary note: Images lodged in our heads do die hard — especially when reinforced by thousands of years of cultural conditioning. It takes time, effort and practice to rise above this deeply embedded sludge! But eventually we do break through... taking flight above the images and idols that once weakened us, to a life of exceeding value.

There are sages from all traditions who have understood God attributably as mystery (def: being inner woven into the very thing we are attempting to understand). These seekers embraced any opportunity to wade into, embrace, and become one with this ineffable mystique. This unspeakable phenomenon is much the same as witnessing the birth of a newborn or that first magical kiss? Words do fall short, but the experience is off the charts! In a similar way this is the experiential wisdom these seekers embodied — an at-one-ness with source. In a similar light I’m reminded of the story of a desert dweller who traveled many months beyond her arid homeland, to witness for the first time the magnificence of a free-flowing river. “How can anything be so beautiful, she thought.” In awe she rushed to grab a water skin, captured a minute portion the river, then raced home. The day of her return she excitedly unveiled her extraordinary discovery. “Come, look, it’s a river, she declared! The reaction was pure disinterest. Afterwards, she realized the skin filled with a portion of the river was not the river. In the same light, God demystified: reduced to an object, rule, doctrine, sacred text, painting, a wood or stone carving, biblical image or noun, can never adequately represent or be God.

♦️ “God is not a noun, that demands to be defined. God is a verb that invites us to live, to love, and to be.”  ~Bishop John Shelby Spong

♦️ “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.  “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).

GOD IS LOVE

In the Gospel of John we read, “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). According to the ancient Greeks, the highest form of love was Agape (the love that is, and flows from God, whose very nature is love itself; God does not merely love; God is love itself. Everything God does flows from love; God is that flow; this love is unconditional and selfless (from PastorLife).

Is the presence of Love (God) continual, unceasing? “Love never fails…” (Corinthians 13:8). Is selflessness a state without a state, or a self, beyond self? Love is limitless, without boundaries (Romans 8:29). If we as humans act in Love (God) it seems certain we (the self) will rise above/beyond self, uniting with the very act in which we partake in. It is this unification through Love where the mind yields to the spender of Love that we meet God. We lose ourselves in this outpouring of Love (“He that loses his life shall find it…”(Mathew 10:39). This “losing of self,” in Love, is like being spellbound by a night sky or a mesmerizing campfire — “Thanks be to God for the unspeakable gift (Love)!” (2 Corinthians 9:15). Whenever or wherever we practice Love, God abides. Why? Because it’s the nature of Love (God). And what is Love? The Apostle Paul declares, Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud… it is never self-seeking… always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13). Why is Love (God) so important to the human journey? Because God (Love) brings meaning to the moment — all of our moments; it connects us to all living things — its the juice! This is the nature of Love. If God (Love) is beyond self, or any objectification, what is left? Love (the verb) — for God is Love.

♦️“…nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:39).

♦️"When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love."   ~ Søren Kierkegaard

In a talk given by theologian Peter Rollins on the topic of Love, Rollins makes the point that Christian mystics and their insights on love reflected a transcendence that never objectified, but brought the participant into a place of inexpressibility and quietude. Rollins explains, “Love does not exist, it calls things into existence; love is not meaningful, Love renders the world meaningful.” These insights connect and demonstrate the profundity of God as Love — not an object to be conceptualized, but an action that is revelatory, participatory and experiential (i.e. the act of loving others and being loved). As Richard Back in his book ‘Illusions’ states, “The river (God/Love) delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage (Love/God), this adventure." There is something beyond words or concepts that is felt from the deepest regions of the heart — this is Love (God). As Jesus the Christ declared, “the kingdom of God (Love) is within.” My concept of God may be lacking, but my entering into Love (for God is Love) isn’t. In Love we find and embrace the Divine. Love (God), by its own nature brings meaning to every moment of everyday. As Rollins points out, “God isn’t the thing that you see, God is the light that allows you to see (Love).” Light is movement and that movement is God. God is found in the current, and IS the current; God is found in the breeze and IS that breeze. A touch, a smile, a tear, even our deepest pain, are all experiences revealing something that can never be objectified: Love.

♦️“God, is a name we put on Love.” Other names we put on love include justice, mercy, joy and goodness. God, then, is not a force who acts on the world through coercion, violence or the suspension of physics and free will. Instead, God is something that we participate in.”  ~John Caputo

THE PARADOX

Finally, I must comment on the seeming paradox of living in a calamitous world and the idea of God as Love. How does one reconcile the two? Here is my best shot. If God is no longer defined as object-G — that is, the traditionally all-seeing omnipotent sovereign, skin sometimes in sometimes out of the game, thumbs up or down, not sure where he stands patriarch — then the traditional yoke is lifted. We can now think of God in healthier, more healing ways. Again, if God is Love, the “ground of being” as Paul Tillich describes it, then the god who once ruled forcefully over his subjects, fades into obscurity. God (Love) becomes a better God — you might say, '“God beyond God!” Now we understand God as omnipresent, in and through the loving acts we humans participate in. And where Love is needed it is God (the flow of Love) beckoning us to come forth and be that Love. For this Love abides in us. “God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him” (1 John 4:16). It is Love calling unto Love. For Love (God) is the well-spring of selfless expression, of healing, forgiveness, care, compassion, all of which are manifest in the mystery of being human and the mystery of Love. Jesus the Christ never asked people to idolize him, but to “follow him.” In what way? By “loving one one another” (John 15:12). In Love, everything he did was motivated by and flowed from Love. Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) too revealed the infinitude of Love by sharing with his disciples their mission, “Radiate boundless love towards the entire world — above, below, and across — unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.” That same story is found throughout history by countless saints, sojourners, and sages… Where Love is present so too is God. The god of old, lording over humanity, deciding who lives and who perishes is no more. Love, as movement (God) manifests wherever and whenever we extend a hand towards one another. This is the “manifestation of the sons and daughters of Love (God)” - Romans 8:29. Love is fluid, selfless, and purposeful. Love always finds a way, is the way; Love always conquers hate, Love sees the best in all things… For Love is God and God is Love.

♦️“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and Love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall…”~Mahatma Gandhi

♦️ “But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is Love" — [for God is Love] (1 Corinthians 13:13).

SOURCE: Peter Rollins.org

“God” (a different perspective) by Keith Basar

Wisdom2Be 📬

“God” (a different perspective) by Keith Basar

“Reflecting on Reflecting” by Thomas Moore

Tao Te Ching (Chapter 6) — a Commentary by Galen Pearl

Wisdom2Be 📬