WHO IS GOD?

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What is God? You might think it's an obvious question but God is a term that is quite ill-defined in most people's minds. They usually see God as a kind of moral Dirty Harry who enforces a certain set of behavioural standards with threats of Hell. Many will then say that you endanger your eternal fate by questioning this belief and many other superstitions that they hold dear.

In the Bible that's a Picture that you might easily get from the behaviour and pronouncements of Yahweh, the God of Israel, who is frequently sending His Judgements on people.

Genesis

Many Darwinists see God as an evolved concept, or meme, that has been successful in pushing the buttons of the human psyche [see Evolution]and often they say that God is disproven because of this. But this ignores the deeper understanding of the God concept in the thinking and discussion of people throughout time, and hence is grossly arrogant.

God can also be seen as an out-dated World-View, or set of folk hypotheses about the World, which has now been superseded by scientific understanding. For example, the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible extolls the wonders of clouds as an example of God's abilities [Job 36:22 - 37:18], a mystery beyond understanding. However the nature of clouds is reasonably well understood in our modern age and few see them as direct works of God. 'God' could just be a collective term for the World and its mysteries, a term that accumulated moral, political and ethnocentric baggage through time.

Others see the whole World as just a product of some Super Mind and so the World doesn't possess real existence. For them what matters is Liberation from this world because it is flawed, temporal and ever perishing. Is there something to this Idea? Or are God and the World are both Realities? That's a view held by billions of people who say that the Cosmic Mind is a Being who has created the World and who involves Himself in its affairs. Often they believe the World has been created specifically for us humans as a place of preparation for the Other World.

I think this over-inflates our importance especially since our Universe is immensely larger than this tiny speck we call the Earth. Back when stars were lamps hung from a solid sky it made sense, but now we need a subtler understanding of human worth.

GOD AND THE WORLD

Perhaps both points of view can tell us something about the World and God. A theology that combines both perspectives is PANENTHEISM which means ALL-IN-GOD [PAN-EN-THEOS], and so solves the problems of both. For Saint Paul this meant that we 'live and move and have our being' in God. By filling and including all things in God's own self, God and the World are intimately related. God's knowledge of all things is complete and interior, not partial and exterior - such knowledge is effectively equivalent to all things. Many, many Church thinkers have held this view over time and it is common in other religions also. God in this view is not some sort of Super-Angel, nor is God Cosmic-Santa Claus. Instead God is the Soul of the World, the life-breath that gives life to all of Nature's processes.

God is then encountered not merely through extraordinary miracles, but in all the day-to-day wonders of the World as well. For a Christian God as Trinity can be understood in a new way with a long history. Imagine God the Father as the Mystery of the World, the never-ending fount of novelty, while God the Son is the organising Mind of the World, the Logos, or rational order, and God the Spirit is the power of unfolding of Mind and Novelty, the wind that blows through all the World. This is a concept of God that dates back almost to Bible days, but is lost as we make God ever more like ourselves in our imaginations.

For me, God is about new possibilities and hope in all the dark parts of my life. And life is hard. Evil is a reality in this World and often people reject the closeness of God to the World because of it. But perhaps this misunderstands the nature of Creation. According to modern physics and mathematics there is no simpler way of knowing a Universe as big as ours except by actually bringing it into being. God took a cosmic risk by creating a World as complex and as rich in possibility as ours, but in a way there was no choice - God could have been all-in-all in himself or he could have shared his life with a World.

And because God's knowledge of our world is IDENTICAL with the World, God knows and feels all the pain, hurt and suffering of all his Creations, down to the last sparrow that falls to the ground on a cold winter's night. But why does God not do something to alleviate all the World's pain? Firstly, I don't know. I can only suggest some possibilities. He has done something for humans, by giving us moral truth, and the Power to live lives in that Truth [for a Christian, the Holy Spirit.] He became one of us and shared our humanity also, or so a billion plus Christians believe. But these only cover human suffering.

Non-human suffering is more difficult to understand and explain as the act of a loving God. However God is also Creator and a Universe complex enough for life is also complex enough for death and decay. To undo such processes would be to undo the World. God had to create a World, a complex set of interacting forces and processes, and to remove one would [perhaps] destroy it all. Mathematically there are some consequences that can't be pre-computed in advance, and hence perhaps God, as that logic of the world, is limited by Creation.

Perhaps God could simulate the World prior to creating it. But any simulation rich enough to cover all the World's consequences is surely equivalent to a World itself. Creation, it seems, is a real RISK for God, a real act of FAITH as seems consistent with the God of Jesus Christ.

NOVELTY IN EVOLUTION

While God's role in the evolution of the World is seemingly hidden, there is a role that He may play which indicates His concern for all living things. Since Descartes declared that animals are merely machines many have held that animals don't suffer because they don't have souls. According to the Bible there is no distinction like this - they are given life by the same God-breath we are. Animals feel and they strive, and I think in their lives God inspires them to develop and move in new directions. Evolution of animals has seen an increase in the complexity of their senses and brains, and a wide-ranging diversification of species into new behaviours and life-styles. Animals have moved beyond simple stimulus-response circuits and have developed real MINDS. This diversity has arisen through the exploration of the new, and I believe that through inspiring animals to explore the new God has moved evolution forward.

But He can only act on what is available. And he must balance all the needs of all that lives. Humans are complex enough that we can communicate in ever-richer ways with God through the miracle of language, and we can transcend the limits of mere biology. We have wider-scope for growth and hence a greater responsibility to our fellow creatures. Also the Bible others us a vision of a new World which goes beyond the struggle-for-life that created this World, and that is my personal hope for us all.

 

 

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