What We Believe About God & Why It Matters
When at midlife I started seriously considering what I believed, what the Bible said, and what I saw the church doing, I began gradually revising my understanding of God.
I came to see the basic aim of all religions as discovering how the divine (the sacred, the holy) operates, mainly in the hope of influencing it. Religions’ adherents try to obtain divine favor and avoid divine wrath by doing what they see as the will of the divine and by praying in various ways. They do this hoping to ensure survival, obtain life’s necessities, and increase comfort and happiness, for themselves and others.
Christians call the divine “God” and refer to how it operates as the will or nature of God. Most Christians see the Bible as the main source of information about God. Many see it as the only valid source. However, the Bible presents only the experiences and beliefs of one particular cultural and historical group, as reported through a complex centuries-long process of oral storytelling and then writing, selecting, compiling, copying, translating, and editing. In my view, therefore, the Bible cannot legitimately be considered a complete, literal, or uniquely accurate account of what God is like, what God has done, or what God has communicated to human beings.
I find many of the Bible’s portrayals of God unbelievable, but they’re understandable because of how long ago the Bible’s contents originated. What is not understandable to me is that so many churches and individual Christians still portray God only as the Bible does. We know that we don’t live in a flat three-level world, but many Christians portray God as being in the sky above us.
Contradictory portrayals of God
The church also portrays God in many ways that contradict what it claims to believe God is like. It says God is spirit, yet it constantly portrays God as a person-like being. It says God is timeless, but it often speaks to and about God in 17th-century English. It says God has no gender, but it portrays God almost exclusively as male. The church often portrays God specifically as a Santa-Claus-like man who capriciously, unpredictably, and unexplainably gives some people what they ask for but denies the requests of others. Many Christians portray God as an all-powerful being who allows or even causes disasters such as tornados, wrecks, and illnesses to kill some people while saving others from the same disasters. These portrayals deny much of what we now know, and they differ greatly from how we now think about most other subjects.
A being? An order? Impossible to know
I understand the divine not as a being but rather as something like the order, pattern, or system of principles underlying all aspects of the cosmos (that is, of total reality, whatever that may include). Knowing exactly what this infinite pattern or system is like or how it functions is surely impossible for finite human beings. However, I can’t believe that it deals individually or personally with people. It may be loving in the sense of operating beneficially for the overall system or for whoever and whatever acts in accord with its principles rather than against them. But I believe the divine is neutral in that it does not deliberately do good or bad for particular individuals or groups as a result of their personal needs, behavior, beliefs, or requests.[1]
Continually examining and revising
Some beliefs I express here may be wrong, of course. I offer my statements of them only in the hope of helping readers become clearer about theirs. And these are only my current beliefs. I believe that being a Christian requires continually examining one’s beliefs and revising them when new information and insight make revision seem necessary, and I expect to keep doing that.
Many Christians would say that having the views I’ve expressed here means I’m not a Christian. Many would say that being a Christian requires believing the beliefs and doctrines and following the religious practices that have been seen as essential by most Christians over the centuries, that are seen as essential by most churchgoers today, and that are officially prescribed by the institutional church. But I don’t think acceptance by the majority proves a belief correct or means a practice is a requirement for being Christian. I believe what is required of Christians instead is seeing the practice of compassion, justice, and nonviolence as one’s goal and actively working toward that goal. It’s making Jesus, not the majority, one’s guide.
Many Christians feel that people with minority views like mine shouldn’t be allowed a voice in the church. That seems shortsighted to me. It seems to me that if the church wants to show us we’re wrong, then the way to pursue that is not to stifle, oust, or shun us. It’s not to bombard us with Bible verses, because we don’t attribute unique authority to the Bible or interpret it literally. Instead, the way would be to openly address our beliefs and questions. Persuading us to change our beliefs would require openly discussing the pros and cons of our views and also of official church policies and majority views, and showing us convincing evidence that the church’s doctrines and practices made more sense and produced better fruit than our beliefs. But the danger in that approach is that some churchgoers might be converted to our views instead of converting us to theirs. Isn’t that why the church so often stifles new information and insight and discourages open discussion?[2]
Does anyone really know?
whenever I see anyone claiming to know how God feels or what God wants. I wonder, “Does anyone really know such things about God?”
Could God be like a person?
More important, given what now seems to be known about the universe, I don’t see how God could be like a person and thus do things like love or want or think. It especially baffles me when people who are well-informed about the nature of the Bible and presumably also about the universe and who see themselves as progressive speak of God as a person.
The answer isn’t obvious
Besides, how can we be sure exactly what God’s likes, dislikes, or requirements are? Is knowing such things about God really possible? The answer to those questions depends on what we believe God is like. It depends on what we understand the word “God” to mean. It also depends on how we think God’s will gets communicated. But I rarely hear Christians acknowledge this.
I wish churches, seminaries, and individual Christians would acknowledge it more often and more openly, because too many thinking people, what God is like is nowhere near obvious. Failure to see churches addressing the question of what “God” means, in reasonable, contemporary terms, is part of what makes many thinking people feel like church misfits and even avoid churches. Many especially avoid worship services, because so many of those present God only as a person-like being without giving any hint that that picture might not be literally true and that there can be other ways of seeing God.
The way in which most worship services refer to God can be misleading. They rarely include statements that explicitly say what God is or isn’t like. Instead, they merely use verbs that attribute person-like actions and feelings to God. They say “God created,” or “God loves,” or “God wants,” without pointing out that these statements are showing God as a person.
I keep finding that many progressive Christians, including seminary professors and retired pastors as well as laypeople who aren’t in church-related professions, don’t attend worship services. Some of these lay people actively participate in their churches’ classes or service ministries, but not worship services. Part of these Christians’ unwillingness to attend worship is that so much of what they hear there isn’t believable to them, and hearing God portrayed as a person is a big part of that for some.
Especially for the many people who because of experience or innate personality traits don’t readily see meaning that is expressed through metaphorical, figurative language, such statements mistakenly come across as literal and factual. By showing God doing things that only people do—loving, commanding, hating—such statements can easily give the impression that God is literally a person-like being, maybe even a Santa-Claus-like being up in the sky. And they give the impression that there’s no other legitimate way of seeing God.
Doesn’t the Bible give the answer?
Are there others? The Bible is full of statements that portray God as a person-like being. Also, the Bible shows many of its human characters saying that God has communicated clearly and directly with them, enabling them to know exactly how God feels and what God wants. Doesn’t this mean that God actually is like a person, and that God has revealed feelings, wishes, and commands to specially chosen people?
If God is like a person, if such communication from God happens, and if we can reliably know who has received it and who hasn’t, and why God chose only those special recipients and not others, then we may be justified in saying things like “God loves diversity and justice.” But the person-like picture of God that such a statement and so many scriptures reflect doesn’t seem to hold water today, given what has been learned about the universe since the Bible’s contents were written.
Besides, many different people claim to know how God feels or what God wants, and they don’t all agree. How can we feel sure, then, that some of them really know but others don’t? And how can we reliably identify which is which?
Progressive methods, regressive beliefs
I find it strange that many of the church’s official spokespersons and other leaders see themselves as progressive yet don’t advocate asking these questions and rethinking beliefs about God and Jesus. Many address mainly justice issues instead. Others advocate updating church methods but ignore the need to update beliefs. Too many of these otherwise forward-looking church leaders still refer to God and Jesus only in the ways used by the authors or subjects of scripture or by ancient church councils, many of which contradict recent discoveries and today’s best thinking and thus seem more regressive than progressive.
Why this discrepancy? Are these leaders afraid that using newer and possibly more appropriate ways of portraying God would cause them to lose their leadership positions? I hope that’s not the reason, but their continuing use of ancient language about God and Jesus while claiming to be progressive in ways less likely to scare traditionalist members makes me wonder. Openly addressing questions about what God is like and what the relationship of Jesus to God seemed to me to be an important part of what progressive Christians need to be doing, especially within the church.
Beliefs about God have big effects
What people believe God is like has a big influence on how they treat other people and the natural world. Christians who think God wants America to be the world’s policeman are likely to see wars as our God-commanded way of filling that role. Those who believe God hates certain sexual practices and wants them eliminated are likely to inflict injustice on the people who practice them. Those who think God spoke all of the Bible’s words and no other words will treat favorite scriptures as rules that God wants obeyed by everyone, even if that was never intended by those scriptures. And the Christians who feel sure that only their understanding of God is correct mistakenly call everyone with other views atheists.
Because the effects of different beliefs about what God is like are so powerful and sometimes harmful, I’d like to hear pastors and seminary professors address this subject openly. I wish they’d admit that there may be a person-like being “out there” somewhere but there may not be. I’d like to hear these leaders acknowledge that in light of what is now known about the universe, understanding “God” to mean instead something like the order or principles by which all of reality operates might make sense. I’d also like to hear leaders explicitly and openly acknowledge that Jesus may not have been divine in any way different from other human beings.
Instead of “God loves diversity and justice” I’d like to hear progressive pastors and religious scholars give reasons that seem more likely to persuade today’s thinking people to promote these qualities. Presenting pleas for them in terms of how God feels is unconvincing to many people because they can’t believe anyone knows how God feels and they can’t believe that God could be a being who has feelings and communicates them like humans do.
“God” to me refers not to a person-like being but rather to something like the underlying principles by which the cosmos operates. That’s the only meaning I find believable. Therefore when I think about how I experience God, I see mainly these ways.
Observing the natural world: the unimaginable vastness of the universe; the beauty of the earth’s physical features; and the amazing ways in which the bodies of the earth’s animals, plants, and people are constructed. So when I’ve seen the snow-covered Jungfrau or the Grand Tetons, or beautifully colored birds or intricately constructed flowers, or even when I’ve learned something new about how human cells function, I’m reminded that what I understand as “God” is somehow behind or within it all.
I also experience God when I hear beautiful music and participate in groups that perform top-quality choral music. Hearing—or better still, seeing—the “Te Deum” scene from Puccini’s opera Tosca never ceases to thrill me. Singing in Brahms’s Requiem with a local community chorus also has spoken of God to me. So has hearing Chopin piano concertos and the music of Debussy and Bach.
Experiencing previously unimaginable changes that have happened in my life during the last 20-30 years has been a God-experience for me. That process, which is still ongoing, made me start openly questioning and actively investigating what I’d always heard from the church and other traditional sources. I began finding eye-opening new answers that make sense to me as no previous answers had, which felt as if I were somehow experiencing God. I soon came to feel that I must speak up about these findings rather than stay quiet about my views as I usually had earlier in life. I feel sure that, like all human discoveries, my most recently discovered answers aren’t likely to be complete or final, and that some may turn out not to even be partially true, but they still seem like important increases in spiritual maturity.
Coming to understand a powerful dream several years ago also felt like seeing into God’s presence. It showed me the need to make major changes in my life. Through that dream, I came to see the need to make a break from childish conformity, to examine and clear out some beliefs that I had stowed away in my mind because they hadn’t made sense, and to move into new ways that at the time of the dream I couldn’t yet see.
I often feel that I’m experiencing God through communicating with people whom I recognize as kindred spirits, whether it’s in live conversation, reading what they’ve written, or hearing them speak. It’s the feeling of wanting to say “Yes! Yes!” to what they’re saying, or of having them react in that way to my speaking or writing. It’s the feeling that something like electricity has suddenly been connected between us. I’ve felt that connection with authors, as when I’ve read writings of Carl Jung or John Sanford, about how to understand dreams, or when I’ve spoken with a kindred-spirit seminary professor about them. I’ve also felt the connection when hearing or reading views of John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg.
I‘ve also felt that I experienced God’s presence when my path unexpectedly crossed someone else’s at a crucial time for one of us—what is often called serendipity or synchronicity.
They’ve rarely happened in church
Very few such experiences have happened to me within the activities or friendships that I’ve been part of in my church congregation, and those that did happen there are now far in the past. Singing in our choir’s presentation of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah in the 1960s was one such time. About the same time, a child in the 2nd-grade Sunday School class I was teaching suddenly came close to me one Sunday in ways she had never previously done, and the next day her mother died unexpectedly, putting me in position to help her as I had never previously been. Near that same time, my congregation sponsored a discussion of the controversial new book Situation Ethics, which was a God-experience for me despite upsetting other participants in the discussion.
I not only haven’t had such experiences in my church in recent years, but throughout my years I’ve very rarely seen God’s presence in worship services. In fact, most worship services, in my congregation and elsewhere, are an actual hindrance to experiencing God for me. They are full of claims that I find unbelievable. They present God as a person-like being (usually male) in the sky, whom we can individually influence. They present Bible quotes and ancient doctrines as if they were literally true, without giving even a hint that they might not be.
Besides, as I’ve changed in ways that I believe represent spiritual growth, my congregation hasn’t seemed to think that what I was doing was desirable. Instead, much more often, my changes have not only been ignored but have actually been criticized by my fellow members. They’ve been seen as evidence that I no longer belonged in the church.
Whether we see God-experiences as sudden and infrequent, as I do, or as a part of everyday life, they can help promote spiritual growth. Then in turn, growing spiritually can lead to increased recognition of God’s presence. If such growth were happening more in the church and were being more openly acknowledged and regarded as valuable, I suspect that more of us would become willing to let each other and outsiders know about our God-experiences. Also, getting help from the church in having and recognizing them could make us more willing to recommend the church to others. I suspect, too, that if churchgoers saw a closer connection between the church and God-experiences, they would become more willing and able to work effectively together at transforming the world in the ways that Jesus taught and that, especially now, seem so urgently needed.
What difference would it make?
Would such change lessen the decline of the UMC and other mainline churches? I’m not sure. It might attract more people to the church—people who don’t currently see it as likely to help them experience God. But it might instead cause a good many current members to leave, because many apparently feel they couldn’t bear to discover or even suspect that any of their present beliefs about God might be wrong. They’re afraid that if they gave up their current beliefs, they might not find anything equally satisfying to replace them.[3]
[1] November 2009
[2] November 2009
[3] May 2017