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Readings:  

from A History of God, by Karen Armstrong

 

            The human idea of God has a history, since it has always meant something slightly different to each group of people who have used it at various points of time. The idea of God formed in one generation by one set of human beings could be meaningless in another. Indeed, the statement “I believe in God” has no objective meaning, as such, but like any other statement only means something in context, when proclaimed by a particular community. Consequently there is no one unchanging idea contained in the word “God”; instead, the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. Had the notion of God not had this flexibility, it would not have survived to become one of the great human ideas. When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is antihistorical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today. Yet if we look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective view of “God”: each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. The same is true of atheism. The statement “I do not believe in God” has meant something slightly different at each period of history. The people who have been dubbed “atheists” over the years have always denied a particular conception of the divine. Is the “God” who is rejected by atheists today, the God of the patriarchs, the God of the prophets, the God of the philosophers, the God of the mystics or the God of the eighteenth-century deists? All these deities have been venerated as the God of the Bible and the Koran by Jews, Christians and Muslims at various points of their history. . . . [T]hey are very different from one another. Atheism has often been a transitional state: thus Jews, Christians and Muslims were all called “atheists” by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of a “God” which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time? . . .

Sermon:

            “What about God?” Several years ago, when I was interim minister in another congregation, a fourteen year old girl asked that question. When her friends talked about their religious communities, God always showed up in the conversation. But, she said, that’s not what happens in our church. So, she asked, “What about God?”

            It’s oft said out of the mouths of babes . . . and although at fourteen she wasn’t really a baby, it is a good question. What about god? We UUs so often talk in other images and metaphors, and don’t use much “god” talk. Last week I traced the history of religious humanism in our movement, and so today, I decided to tackle Chelsea’s question.

            So what about God? What do I believe about God, what do you believe about God, what about God? (Let me talk for a moment about terminology. I use the word God, because although it is used often to refer to a male being, the English word God does not have a set gender, whereas the word Goddess is exclusively female. So for me God is a better neutral choice than goddess. Feel free to translate for yourself, if needs be.)

            What about god? God, it seems, arises unbidden, unasked, unknowingly out of almost every culture. Well, at least God arises out of almost every culture—whether or not god is bidden, asked, knowingly there, this, actually, is the whole crux of the matter. Does God arise, appear? Is God created? Does God insert God’s self into culture, into our human lives? Or is God there, an absolute that we can either choose to know or not know, choose to embrace or not embrace, choose to acknowledge or deny? Good questions, as is whether or not our experience of God has anything to do with whether or not there is a God, or what God’s essence (should there be one) actually is—that again is a whole other question. For one thing that is certain is that this is a question that none can answer, absolutely, for all time, with all accuracy. We can only tell what it is we believe, feel, doubt, conceive, hear, respond to, create, deny, embrace about God, and God’s existence, shape, form, being, non-being. There is no absolute truth, no absolute way of knowing, of proving this way or that. As noted scholar of world religions Huston Smith has stated, the lack of proof of existence does not prove a lack of existence. And similarly, what constitutes “proof” for some does not constitute proof for others. So there you go. In a morass, without an answer that can be given, except to go deeply into the personal, and speak from our own, independent, individual hearts and minds and spirits and souls about this biggest question of all: What about God.

 

            Now, in the beginning, at least back as far as we have any indication of how people thought and believed and tried to make sense of their universe, or their realm of existence, there have been gods. Karen Armstrong refers to this as “the human experience of transcendence,” and says it is a fact of life. Good enough for me. Beings or forces larger than the merely human.

This is how I imagine it. In the beginning there was the word, but the word was not quite as it is in the Christian and Hebrew Bibles. Cast yourself back, if you can, to the beginning of human consciousness of time and space and place and being. Imagine yourself, in that wonderfully wooly animal pelt, standing on this rocky outcropping under the incredible grandeur of the skies, without any light pollution at all, for you haven’t even found fire yet, and you’re staring up at the heavens displayed above you, with the shooting stars, and the magnificence of the northern lights, and you say the first words that frame in your mind.

            Got ’em? Now my first words would be “Holy Shit!” As reverent a choice as I can think of, but you might try others, depending on whether or not there are children present. But whatever they are, they are words that express the incredible heart-stopping wonder and beauty and awe and mystery and terror of seeing the world all around you, the skies lit up, the ground bringing forth good things and bad things, and things that you haven’t even figured out yet.

            And out of these first words, then, would come an effort to try to make sense of it all. Where did it come from? How did it get here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Will that round yellowish orange thing come up tomorrow, bringing with it its mysterious heat? And what is a tomorrow, anyway? And why isn’t this white orb, which changes in size and shape, why isn’t it as warm as that other one that comes at other times? All good questions.

            But the biggest ones: where did this come from and who is in charge here? What great and mysterious power is responsible for all of this, because I sure as heck hope it isn’t me! And thus, I believe, was borne God. Or at least our experience of God. Or at least our naming of this experience of the transcendent with a label, a name—god. For if there is/was a god in the beginning, then it was already, borne or not. But our experience—that began with the sense of the mysterious terrifying universe into which we were thrust. Our experience begins with feeling that we are a very, very, very small, dare I say infinitesimal, part of this universe.

            The rest, then, is commentary. The question becomes what we do with this sense of smallness, of incredible finiteness in the midst of the ocean of time, space, place, being. And what powers do we give to this overall sense—this transcendent awareness?

            Do we give it locus outside of ourselves—“somewhere, out there, beneath the clear blue sky,” or “somewhere, over the rainbow,” or even “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go?” Do we give it shape and form, being, or allow it to be amorphous, without being, shape, dimension? And what attributes do we give to that something outside of ourselves? Goodness? Badness? Power? Absolute power? Infinite power? Cuckolded power? Shared power? Ennui? Boredom? Compassion? Concern? Doubt? Certainty?

            For many people, an outside source is their answer. They posit there is something, outside of themselves, that must have the power, the control, the ability to make things work. Knowing that we humans don’t have a clue, many feel the need for—or discover the truth of—another power, being, force, something out there that does know what’s going on. That may be in charge. That may have consciousness, or something greater than consciousness that we don’t know about yet. These people experience the universe as one where there is a sort of order, a schema at least, holding things together, and that the power that binds that together is something outside. Sometimes a good, loving order. Or a bad punishing one. Something life giving, or life denying, or simply as is, with no 30 day, 30 mile warranty.

            For many, this is religion’s job: giving shape to order. From the earliest days of what we call “mythology,” pantheons of gods were described. The Greek and Roman, building upon each other, with names I always confused. The Norse. The various Native American and Native Canadian typologies, and those that we are now learning from other parts of the world, such as Africa, Europe and Asia. Yet no matter how much these systems confuse me, and perhaps you, they helped others feel not so alone in the universe. They helped them understand where the power of the universe comes from. They became part of their lived lives.

            More recently, the big three religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have taken the notion of all the gods outside, and made it into one god outside. Monotheism is a relatively recent innovation—about six thousand years old—and it provides a whole different way of ordering the universe. Rather than seeing multiple separate emanations, the transcendent becomes located in one place—one being—one form. God became supreme in a way that the gods could not. So supreme that for the Jews the name can’t even be spoken, and for the Muslims, it can’t even be attempted to picture.

            And with that elevation, came many different forms. All the Gods that Karen Armstrong speaks of: the god of the patriarchs, the prophets, the philosophers, the mystics. And the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good concept children are weaned upon—the three-in-one concept that cannot be reconciled. If God is all powerful, then God could make everything right and wonderful. But there is sorrow and hardness and injustice in the world. So does that mean that God is not all loving and good? Or that God is not all knowing, unable to predict the future? Or does that mean that God is not all powerful, unable to make the world the way that we want? Frequently, people try to “solve” this dilemma by playing the original sin card—because humans have free will and they disobeyed the very easy request of God, then we are saddled with our own sin and must live outside of the divine grace and goodness, at least on this earth. Regardless of the solution, this conundrum, the struggle to try to reconcile the power with justice and love, has led many to unseat the God of their childhood, seeking a better answer. Yet still millions of others have found that their best response to the mystery of life is this transcendent other, out there, a god beyond the self, a god that may change, but outside of self.

 

            But that’s not the answer for everyone. Because another possibility is to give the transcendent locus inside of us. Is this where you find your response to the mystery of the universe? Somewhere deep inside, the still small voice, the presence of the unknowable right inside our very bodies or hearts or minds? And if we find it inside, do we not give it shape and form, non-being, or allow it to have shape, being, presence, dimension? And what attributes do we give to that something that is inside of us? The guardian angel on our shoulders? The devil inside making us do it? Do we assign to it goodness, badness, power, powerlessness? Do we think of it as part of us, or something resident inside of us—a something that we either want or don’t want to exorcise, depending on how lucky we feel in a particular day? And how do we know it is god’s voice, and not that of psychosis—or, actually, how do we know psychosis and psychotic ramblings are not the real thing? We presume craziness when the line between true revelation and madness seems neither rational nor logical. But isn’t a demand for a logical transcendence stacking the books? Who knows which inner voice is real, valid, true?

            For many, they understand the nature of god as an inner sense of connection, of being part of that interdependent web. Sometimes dependent upon the voice, other times knowing the voice as clearly as a bell, sounding its clarion call out into living full lives. It is a closeness, a participation in life. The Society of Friends have long felt this sense of an inner voice, a closeness and nearness of God that helps them find their way.

            Others, like Buddhists, don’t even try to name the transcendent, but rather try to experience it, be part of it, sink into the reality of life. Knowing what they feel, knowing that they can understand all of life, with skill, practice, determination, meditation—there is a way to know who one is, and to understand the totality of life, but without the exterior force, power, being, that for some becomes too problematic.

 

            And then there is the bi- or multi-locational approach. Is it something out there, and something in here? Does it reside out there, but the only way we can know that is by feeling it in here? Or does it reside in here, but we give expression to it out there? Is there no separation at all? Are we all part of god, or god part of us, or is the transcendent really part of the imminent?

Pantheism recognizes the presence of God everywhere, but there is a cost. For this means that everything is god, and that we are not separate, which leaves us a bit light on the personal action scale—if everything is God, or God is everywhere, then where are we? Do we really exist at all, or are we just a figment of God’s imagination? This schema works well for egoists—knowing self as god can also be incredibly powerful and rewarding. If there is no difference between transcendence and us—God R Us, so to speak—then we should always get a great parking place, at the very least.

            Panentheism is different, and this is tricky stuff to nuance. In pantheism, god and the world are identical, no separation, no difference. But in panentheism, god is the whole. Everything is in god—some describe it as god being the ocean, and we being the fish swimming in god. With panentheism, God is not identical with world—rather God contains the world. And we are parts of that. We are to God like our atoms are to us—they help make us whole, but there is a whole that is greater than each atom, and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Panentheism is one of the ways to rationalize, to justify, to explain the sense of both imminence, the closeness of god, and the transcendence, the otherness of god. For some, this is what works.

            What if these don’t work? Then what do we do with god and transcendence? Do we ignore it, pretend that we aren’t moved, or aren’t aware, of our own finiteness? This is the answer for some, but choosing to live life unaware doesn’t seem right to me. It is good for us to have a sense being small in the incredible universe. Perhaps some people don’t ask why they are here, and what it’s all about, but I can’t believe that they don’t feel that sense of being small, that sense of being adrift in the great wide universe around. There must be some dark night of the spirit, the soul, the self, where you know that there is more than just you around. Everyone has a working definitions of how the world is put together, and where we humans are in the great scheme of things. We just might not admit to it, know it, see it. But we experience transcendence, of that I’m sure.

 

            So what about god? What about that transcendent feeling? What about the experience that you have, alone in the universe, part of the universe, held by the universe, betrayed by the universe? What about that feeling, that experience? For as I started out by saying, we can’t know whether there is a god, or is not a god, other than by how we choose to know and label and classify our experience of being human, of being alive, of being in this universe at all. God—or no God—is a response to who we are. Perhaps we do discover a truth, but we will never know this side of the grave, and maybe not even the other side of the grave, whether we know anything true or not.

            So what about God? What is it that you experience? What is it that you name, that you choose not to name?

            For me, I like the word God, and I embrace the word God, even when I’m not always quite sure what I mean in the moment by that word. When people ask, do you believe in God, I say yes. I’m not sure if I’m answering the question they ask though, for more often than not I’m asked that by people who assume that there is only one way to define god, their way. When people tell me they don’t believe in god, I ask them which god it is they don’t believe in. Chances are, I tell them, I don’t believe in that god, either.

            Rather I believe in God more as the biggest word of all. The word that encompasses and holds the most possible good, the most possible positives, the most possible justice, the most possible love, the most possible possibilities. Perhaps that is a naïve choice. I know that the word god has been used to justify things that I abhor, but I refuse to cede a wonderful word, with incredible power, to others. I don’t know another word as powerful, except, perhaps “holy shit.”

            So on my best days, my most open and holy days, I see god as the power for good, the presence of love, of compassion. I see it as that which calls me to be the best I can be, that calls me out of my narrow focused world and into a sense of the whole. I find myself called out, called forward, called to be the arms and hands and feet and heart of action for the betterment of all. I see myself as part of that web of transcendence, inextricably bound up in the miracle of life.

            And I know that others do not see it this way. That many have been injured in the name of god, that people have felt their spirits squelched by that name. For me, though, it is what is done wrongly claiming the name, not the name itself, that is the problem. What people do in the name of love is not always loving, and yet I still believe in the power of love. What people do in the name of justice is not always just, and yet I still believe in the power of justice. And likewise, what people do in the name of god is not always godly, and yet still I believe in the power of god. Not a puppeteer, not a controlling force, not a being, and not not a being, but rather, more the experience, the knowing, the believing, the trusting in the interdependence of it all, the possibilities of it all.

            I don’t always live into my best days, and I don’t always believe in god, and there are other days that I long to believe with more striving than I can ever express. So what about god? What does it all mean?

            For me it gets down to this. In this universe, in our being alive, we have to choose what we will trust, and where we will put our lives. We do it, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. We can see what we believe, what we trust, simply by looking at how it is we live, the choices we make in our daily lives. To me, it makes sense that those choices, those dreams, those understandings, arise out of and need to be embedded in our knowledge of ourselves as finite, miniscule, immaterial, and all important. To me, it is important to know that we stand in the midst of mystery and wonder, bathed by connection. It is that which I call god. Simplistic, perhaps, but it is that which sustains me, and holds me, and moves me in my living, my breathing, my acting, my loving. May you, in your living, find something—god or not—that holds you, entices you, calls you every more strongly into your precious being.

            May it always be so. Amen.