When considering any question having to do with what we call “God,” it
seems beneficial to return again and again to the truth of reality
experienced. For perhaps the foremost problem or obstacle in thinking
about “God” is the mind’s tendency to objectify, and in this case, to
treat “God” as “a separate being.” Such tendencies of thought when
relating to “God” are intensified in the Christian tradition because of
the existence and weight of doctrine and dogma, much of which
communicates symbolically, and gives the impression of objectifying
“God.”
First, however, let me clarify why I am
writing “God” in quotation marks in the preceding paragraph. What or who
God is in “Himself” human beings scarcely know. Our language about
“God” is always at best tentative, and it must be symbolic. Giving
“God” names, and speaking of “Him” as we do, can and often is
misleading. And yet, saying nothing does not seem fitting, either. So
for the present I will write a few words about that which we call
“God,” understanding that these thoughts are crude, the formulations
approximate, and that any language about “God” can be, and often is,
misleading.
“Religions” have often given the
impression that “God has been revealed.” Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
and even ancient “religions” in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece have
given the clear impression that human beings know much about “God,” or
“the gods,” or “the divine beings,” and so on. I think that it is
healthier and wiser to begin with the obvious truth, and to return to
it repeatedly: All of our speech about “God” or “the gods” is
imperfect because our knowledge of God may not even deserve the name
knowledge, but is at best a groping towards knowledge, a desire to
understand what is ever beyond our full or satisfying understanding.
“Claiming to be wise, they became fools” is a far healthier or more true
statement than “the truth of God was known to them” (Romans 1). Wiser
is the Apostle Paul’s formulation in his letter to Christians in
Galatia: “Now that you have come to know God--or rather, to be known
by God.” We can know, apparently, that we are known; but who or what
is knowing and forming us remains ever beyond our mind’s grasp.
***
Return
to the opening formulation: When considering any question having to do
with what we call “God,” it seems beneficial to return again and again
to the truth of reality experienced.
Whatever we
think or say about God is one of several things, or a blending of
these: (1) It may be a more or less mindless repetition of what we have
heard or read about “God,” most likely from one or another religious
tradition, scripture, liturgy, prayer, or doctrinal formulation. (2)
Or, one’s own mind can develop some thoughts based on what one has
heard or read about “God,” such as the “Triune God” of Christian dogma.
(3) Or one’s imagination, moved perhaps by one passion or another, can
imagine all sorts of things about “God,” and formulate them as “truth”
or “revelation.” (4) Or one can proceed more cautiously and
circumspectly, presenting a more or less faithful exegesis of one’s
experiences of the divine. (5) Or one can recall and present in words
another’s experience of the divine. (6) Or, one’s formulations may be a
combination of these or other kinds of discourse on “God.”
I
am seeking to avoid numbers 1-3 above, and to proceed mainly from
numbers 4-5, to the best of my ability. In other words, I seek to base
my thoughts and words about “God” on the truth of reality experienced,
especially by a prophet, apostle, philosopher, or mystic; or from some
momentary lights in my own consciousness. Although in Christian
liturgy we necessarily use scripted language from the Judaeo-Christian
tradition (in the scripture readings, in preaching, in songs, in the
Eucharistic prayer, and so on), in one’s quieter meditations, or when
speaking with those seeking understanding, we need to be more cautious,
more analytically cautious.
Let us consider
one of the greatest “revelations” in history for an example: The
experience by the man called “Moses” (Mosche) in or out of “the burning
bush” on Mount Sinai. What this one particular, concrete human being
experienced on that occasion, and then formulated in words, remains
probably the most significant and fundamental experience-formulation of
the divine presence recorded in documents of human history. It is
recorded in the Book of Exodus (chapters 3-4) that God spoke to the man
Moses, having drawn his attention through the appearance of what looked
like a fire that burned, but did not consume a bush. In any case,
apparently what we call “God” broke into the consciousness of one
particular human being, on one occasion. In the midst of Moses’ awed
and questioning mind, the divine Presence identified Itself not as a
named, finite “god” dwelling on a mountain, not as a being of any sort,
but simply as “I AM.” Or from the written document (dated much later,
of course, than the original experience), that is what Moses “heard”
or experienced of the Divine: “I AM WHO I AM.”
Such an experience of the divine remains normative in “history.” It is
not for us to invent “gods,” or merely to have recourse to “the God of
our tradition,” or so on, but to ponder and to be conscious of the
truth as experienced. And it is surely not for us to replace the truth
of God for our own imaginations, for our own private and passing
“self” or ego. The often silly and shallow Swiss-French philosophe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, preferred his own fanciful musings to the truth of reality experienced. In his novel, Emile,
Rousseau asks the self-referential question, “Did God speak to Moses
to speak to Jean-Jacques?” In other words, “What do I, Rousseau, need
of any so-called “revelation” of God to Moses--or to anyone else? I
have God speaking directly in my heart.” Indeed, Rousseau says that he
does have God speaking directly in his heart as “the voice of
conscience,” which “makes man like God.” Again quoting the Apostle
Paul: “Proclaiming themselves wise, they became fools.” Or to put the
matter more simply: Rousseau, drop your blind arrogance and
self-centered existence, and open up to the truth of the God who did
speak to Moses, and who speaks to anyone through that singular
experience who will think about it, meditate on it, heed it.
From what can be known in the course of human history, God indeed
spoke to Moses to speak to us. Or more cautiously: the divine
communicated himself to Moses, who in turn communicated the truth of
God to us. But how did God “speak” to Moses? What happened? Assuming
that Moses was a human being as we are, let us briefly consider the
truth of reality, and how it is that a human being can “hear” God speak,
or be moved by God.
What we call “human being”
is essentially that part of the whole of reality that is between the
Divine and other beings / material reality. Man is between God and the
“sub-human.” (Ways in which animals may or may not experience God is
not here the question, but set aside for further thought later.) Man is
a part of reality in which the Divine can and does move, break in,
communicate, act. Again, leaving aside the ways in which the Divine
acts on other parts of reality, what we can know and experience is God
moving us in consciousness. When we question God, when we ask, “Who are
you, LORD?” it is God himself moving us to question. What we
experience is a restlessness, a wondering, a desire to know that which
simply is, a desire to be rooted and grounded in what truly is and what
endures, so that we do not simply pass away as all material being
does. Desiring life now and forever, desiring what is really good (and
not just an appearance of good), desiring the source of all that
exists, desiring to glimpse that which is simply beautiful and present
in all things beautiful, our minds are drawn towards God. The divine is
that Presence in us moving us towards the Divine. Human is the being
drawn to God; or to be human is to share responsively and consciously
in God. All things are in God, but human is the mode of being in God
mindfully, with awareness, with a desire for a more perfect union.
What is it that can truthfully be called “God,” based on such
experiences as those of the great man, Moses? Who or what is the God
of Moses? Who is it that speaks or is heard by Moses to say, “I AM.”
What is happening in Moses? What has stirred him up? Why does God
move Moses? In the context of Exodus, Moses is moved in order to stir
him up to lead “my people Israel” from bondage into freedom under God.
Did God move Moses ultimately to lead all human beings, or even all of
creation somehow, from bondage to death, to sin, to self, into freedom
and fullness of life in He WHO IS? Is Moses the Representative of the
God to humankind, for one and for all? If Moses, then why other
prophets? Perhaps we do not heed, and need reminders? Why Christ? To
see what God-in-man fully looks like? Why does the divine stir and
move in each of us? Can we not just hear words with our ears, obey, and
live? What is gained by encountering the Divine hiddenly in the truth
of one’s soul or consciousness?
Why does God seek man, human being? Why does man seek God? Why do I ask these questions?
***
Let us consider once again, briefly, the question, “Does God have feelings?”
What God is in and of Himself, we do not know. What we know of God is
the Divine as experienced by particular human beings in history. Men
such as Moses and the Apostle Paul “heard” God speak to them, in them,
but does that mean that God has a voice? To have a voice, would not
God have to have a body? To be a body, would not God be bounded in
space-time, limited, and bound to perish? Does it not make more sense
to say, “The divine Presence can be experienced in a human being as
words, or as love, or as peace”?
When the
divine is experienced as present in a human being, one may “hear,” or
“see,” or “feel.” Words can be heard in a receptive human being: “I
AM.” “I AM Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” “If you love me, keep my
commandments.” Words are heard, for the Divine communicates to the
human soul in a way that a man can understand. So God “speaks” Hebrew
to Moses, Greek to Paul, Aramaic to the Apostles, English to Wesley,
and so on. Or the mind of a man, moved by the divine Presence, can
“see” images, or pictures in the mind, in response to flowing Presence.
Or one feels “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding,” when
one is not “in his flesh,” in himself, but conscious of divine
Presence here and now.
