Is There Only One God Concept or Others?
By A Reader
Question
Sometimes I am confused by God-language in the church. I wonder if we are supposed to consider only one concept of God, or if not, what are some others?
This may be the most important question one can ask these days. Indeed, if we don’t solve what is often called The God Problem, the future of organized religion may be bleak. We all grew up with a very narrow definition of God as a Person (Theism) depicted by artists as an Old Man in the sky who is busy processing prayer requests and handing out favors or punishments. We often speak of Imago Dei in the church, Latin for “Made in the image of God.” But our lived experience seems very different. Instead of being created in the image of God, too often we have created God in our own image.
Unfortunately, we also use words like atheist and agnostic incorrectly, assuming they both mean someone who does not believe in God. An a-theist is a non-theist (which describes my view). An agnostic is a person who does not believe we can know whether God exists—at least in any meaningful way by humans—this also describes my view. I do not believe that God is a person who “exists” somewhere out there and runs the world. That does not mean, however, that I do not believe in the Holy Mystery, the Deu, mysterium tremendum, the source of all that is, or perhaps what quantum scientists call the Singularity that preceded the Big Bang.
About God, it is always best to be humble, because certainty and faith are not the same thing; they are opposite things. Some people are pantheists who identify God as the universe itself; others believe in panentheism, who believe God is present in all things, but is also more than the sum of all those things.
Perhaps the most ancient and useful way to conceive of God–even though all language falls short– is that God is Love in its highest and purest form. Theologian Jack Caputo uses the term axiology to describe what we value most, and that everything comes down to love. “If you want to know what you really believe, ask yourself what you really love. Really believing is not a matter of doctrines and propositions but of love. We do not put our love where our belief is, we put our believing where our love is. We do not love because we believe; we believe because we love.”
~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers