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| Image credit: Photo by jam343 on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
I've decided to follow my husband's lead and purge all of my negatives about God:
I do not believe God is knowable by any one person. Someone else's vision of God may be very different (even opposite) from mine, yet this doesn't mean their God is not the true God, nor does it mean my God is not the true God.
My God is not a man in the sky. My God is definitely not a He, but my God is also not a She.
My God is not a separate being. My God is not a being at all. My God is not separate from us at all.
My God did not (could not) create the universe, but came into being with it.
My God has no rules, no commandments. My God has no will. My God doesn't require anything. My God doesn't grant anything. My God doesn't believe anything. My God doesn't think anything. My God doesn't control events. My God doesn't judge or punish or reward. My God has no consciousness.
My God rules no Heaven, because there is no Heaven. My God banishes none to Hell, because there is no Hell. My God frowns upon no sin, because there is no sin. (And because God, as no being with no consciousness, can't rule, banish or frown on anything.)
The question of whether or not I believe God exists makes no sense to me, because God is not something that can be measured or said to exist in a concrete sense.
All of that, much of which was deeply believed and valued in the church in which I grew up, now makes up the negative space around my God. Maybe now, I'll be able to fill in the positive.
This is a much different place than where you were a year ago...and that is an awesome thing
Great posting and thanks for the link back to your April 2007 posting. That ending made me smile.
For me, God is not an old white man who oversees the Oscars and Olympic games. God does not answer my prayers but gives me (or is) a place where I can find the right answer for myself.
I used to think God managed my days until 9/11 and then I figured that out of all those who died on that day there were surely people who woke up and trusted that they were going to be exactly where God wanted them to be that day. And yet I believe God is where they all went in that moment.
I'm still confused and a little disconnected from God. Yet I have this sort of weird prayer connection with my mom. And I believe God crossed my path with yours because I needed to learn something from you or just because. So God is. I think so.
Love you MPJ.
Danielle, yes, it's true that taking ownership of the word God and applying it in my life is a huge, huge difference for me.
I see this as a huge step toward forgiving my childhood church and making peace with Christianity. But I don't see it as a change in my core beliefs or a step toward embracing a different set of beliefs about the nature of the universe.
I have to work through the fact that I do still feel some defensiveness around that: that I feel the need to explain the distinction, that I want to make others see that my God is a true and legitimate God and not a step toward some new (more real and true) God, and that the God I am talking about now is not a new presence in my life, just my willingness to use that name for it. (As long as we're on what God is not, right?)
This has given me MUCH to ponder as I'm on my own path of re-discovering my God. And although I do not agree with everything you've written, I can totally & completely respect it.
Good work! Hope you don't mind if I "steal" this assignment!
You're going to hell.
lol. nice one tjw.
Thats some bold unconventional stuff there. I like it.
Hi Mary,
Its an interesting article which you've written and it's good to see one of my pictures being displayed here
If you haven't noticed this image is under "All rights reserved" copyrights. Would have been great if you had taken my concurrence before uploading it here..
There is a commercial fee in displaying this image, request you to get into a formal agreement or this will considered as a violation of intellectual property.
Appreciate you revert to me on mail asap
Thanks
-Selvin
selvin, my apologies. I have removed the image. I find the images I use on my site by searching for material licensed under Creative Commons in Flickr. When searching for an image to go with this post, I recall searching for an image that could be used with attribution and that was ok to modify, as I knew I wanted to create a negative image.
I just checked and see that your image is indeed marked as all rights reserved. I must have made a mistake in my search. It was not my intent to use or modify an image under copyright.
[...] again. Prayer wasn’t something that fit well with my conception of what my God is and what my God is not and healthy humility wasn’t something that had been a part of my experience. And yet, [...]