God is the guarantor of human fulfilment. Part 2

God is the guarantor of human fulfilment

Part 2: God shares our moments of perfection

Now if God is contained entirely within the realm of human ideas, then clearly this is not going to happen, and so we need to consider how God can still be the guarantor of human fulfilment.

Firstly, I must confess that this is much easier for me to consider than it is for many, because my life has already been so fulfilling. So, if I am knocked down by the proverbial bus tomorrow, I will be dead peeved (actually, I will just be dead) because, if I had avoided the bus, I might have had another 20 years of marvellous experiences. Nevertheless, at the age of 63, my life is already full of marvellous experiences, and I am able to be philosophical about it ending. God is not simply the measuring stick of my life – if that was all he did, he would just serve to expose how inadequate my life and my qualities have been. Instead, God becomes the expression of ultimate fulfilment of life, into which I have plugged my own life through my commitment of faith. Through God’s gracious holding of my failures and weaknesses, I am able to appreciate the goodness and achievements of my life as held within God’s perfect goodness and achievements. And when I do experience the goodness of life, I do discover that it has an absolute quality. It is not relative or partial or incomplete or not perfectly fulfilled. The good moments of my life have a quality of perfect fulfilment. In those moments, I want for nothing more, for I am already completely filled. When I die (if God is just an idea) all that I have experienced is lost and my consciousness is ended. Yet, even if God does not bestow on me a new life in heaven, I am able to face that loss with equanimity because my life, with its experiences has been “taken up” and incorporated into the concept of God. That understanding of perfect goodness, truth, love, and all the rest, has fed into my own life, and I have reflected it back into the community’s understanding of God as perfect fulfilment – that is, to whatever degree my life has encompassed goodness has become part of the whole, part of humanity’s appreciation of what perfect goodness is – and all held within our conception of God. Our understanding of God’s perfection is extrapolated out of our experience of our own perfection, and so our shared community concept of God is built out of my experience – along with everyone else’s experience of goodness, truth and love. Therefore, in my experience of God, while I am living, I experience absolute, perfect fulfilment, through my relationship with God, and when I am dead, all that is good about my life lives on through the faithful community’s understanding of the character and life of God – to which I have contributed.