Who is God?

Part 9: What do I really value about God?

Of course, it’s possible that God can affect things in the world directly, and probably most of us have – perhaps only a handful of – examples that give us pause for thought in the way events in our lives turned out remarkable beneficially. However, they are not certain, and they seem terribly weak compared to the obvious good things that a good God could do if he was inclined to act regularly in the world, such as end wars and cure sick people. There are pretty expert theodicies to explain how God can still exist alongside evil and suffering, but it leaves us uncomfortable with the gap between what God might do and the few examples we cherish (perhaps secretly) of when we feel we have discerned the hand of God “tipping the balance” in the direction of goodness. It seems, perhaps, fairer to accept that God does not act directly in the world – and this would certainly save many believers from agonising doubts over why God doesn’t act. I think we can also show that a God, who is an independent, personal agent, but who only operates through human agency, is a God worth adoring.

So, what is it that I value about my faith in God? I imagine that if someone I love dearly was desperately ill and the doctors had exhausted all their skills, then I would pray for a miracle. If I was on a sinking ship and all the lifeboats were gone, and the sharks circling, then I’d be very pleased if God could somehow give me a way out of the situation when there appears to be none. Yet, in fact, I have lived for over 60 years without requiring this. There were difficult times when it would have been nice if God had dusted off his fairy wand and given me a hand but the fact that I’m still here suggests that I didn’t need that. I acknowledge that I am very fortunate. I’m a British citizen, living through a period of considerable peace and prosperity. I had a good upbringing and possess a number of skills. So, I have not needed God to interfere in the working of the natural world to tip the balance in my favour. What I need is help in navigating my way through the natural world in a way of which I approve – which basically means doing good, avoiding causing harm to others and rejoicing in the life I have.

So, what I truly value about my faith is the rich interior life that I experience in relationship with God. I love the way he inspires me, comforts me, directs and reproves me, forgives me. I love the way I can share with him all my inmost thoughts, my sense that he is always with me, completely understands me and is always rooting for me. I love the truth that he shows me. I love the way that he lifts me up to ultimate experiences, and reveals the depth and wonder of life. It is not simply that in company with him I exult in the beauty of nature or am overwhelmed with reverence for life. Rather, beauty fills me, but then points beyond itself to someone (I call him God), a someone who is somehow the source and goal and fulfilment of this beauty (as of every other good thing). My deep reverence for life appears to be merely “a cover” for something even more deeply reverent which is behind, or within or which upholds and makes possible the life I revere. It is as though anything, no matter how supremely precious and profound it is, is simply an introduction to what is even more, and ultimately precious and profound. And this sense of precious profundity is experienced as a personal relationship. I am not inspired by principles or values or ideas; I meet someone of whom all these precious values are somehow a reflection of who he is – but even then not fully doing justice to who he is. He is always more. He is not a reflection of these wonderful values, principles and ideas; these wonderful ideas are a reflection of who he is. He is the source of the actual truth and existence of these precious things. All these precious qualities are “embodied” in God or, as God has no physical body, they are “personalised” in the person I encounter and give the name “God” to. Yet God is not – as in my understanding of ancient Greek religion – simply the personification of precious values; these precious values are a reflection of him. A secularist might say, “Why don’t you just say, “I believe in love”? After all, you believe God is love, so there seems no difference to me whether you say, “I believe in God” or, “I believe in love”. Yet when I say, “I believe in God” I do not just mean, “I believe in love”, though I might struggle to put into words exactly why I think that I am saying more when I say, “I believe in God”. Perhaps it is down to the personal aspect of God, in that, by believing in God, I am believing in an active agent of love, who is pouring love into creation (possibly only through human channels), rather than simply believing in love as a passive quality. I might have to admit that, if “God is love” then perhaps there is no difference between the quality of love that God has and the quality of love that we might conceive of as atheists if we were forming the concept of “perfect love”. Yet that concept of perfect love would, as it were, just be lying there waiting for us to do something with it, but, with the God of love, there is a person who is actively loving.

Who is God?

Part 8: Even if we cannot prove that God is an independent agent “out there”, in practice, he operates as though he is.

Can such belief be justified? Belief in what I would describe as a “personal God”?

I have written at greater length elsewhere, outlining my ideas on God as an experience of the transcendent who expresses to us an independent voice. A brief summary would be as follows.

There is an experience of the transcendent. Is this “just” in our heads or is it an experience of something “out there”? It’s probably impossible to decide this, given what we’ve said about all our experiences (including tables, chairs etc) being within our minds. However, the experience of the transcendent certainly seems to fit into the same sort of category of entity as love, truth, beauty etc. It is an experience that is there to be discovered. Crucially, this experience of the transcendent is experienced by us “with a personal face”. That is, we do not experience, for example, being inspired by a profound principle, we experience a relationship with someone. That is, the transcendent certainly appears to us to have an independent, active quality, rather than merely being the passive recipient, or reflector-back, of whatever thoughts and feelings we put onto it. This could all be a peculiarity of how our minds work, so that, although it appears to us that we are in a relationship with someone external to ourselves, we are, in fact, simply having an inner conversation with ourselves. My key point is, firstly that we have no way of telling which it is, and, if, in practice our experience of God (even if it could somehow be shown to be falsely perceived as a personal relationship with someone else) operates in ways that are indistinguishable from how a relationship with someone other than ourselves works, then – in practice – we are having a relationship with a God who is “out there”.

I feel that this is a pretty sound argument to establish a justifiable belief in a God who is more than “just a psychological effect in our minds”. We still have huge theological issues to answer for traditional believers. A key one is that scepticism we noted about whether God is able to act in the world – to change anything that would otherwise have happened anyway in the material universe. If God “can’t do anything”, then this is a huge loss for most believers. Many would question what’s the point of God if he can’t do anything to help you. He might as well be “just in our minds” – that is, an invention of our own minds. However, we did note how many secularists who reject faith in God are rejecting an unworthy view of God – for example God as a fairy Godmother who waves her magic wand to take all our troubles away. And we noted when considering the “ground of our being” way, that those who have succeeded in continuing to believe despite severe doubts have done so through creating a much more sophisticated understanding of God. So, perhaps, on deeper thought, it is not disastrous to belief in God to accept that, “No, God does not change the world” – except, of course, and this is a very big thing indeed, in the way he changes the world through changing us. Perhaps human agency is how God achieves his will – and this is clearly a very profound idea indeed, and well-worth constructing a faith around.

Who is God?

Part 7: Is God just in the mind or is there something more?

So far, we have begun to explore alternative conceptions of God, and I believe we have done enough to justify belief in such a God. It does add something to even a principled atheistic philosophy of life of commitment to profound values. However, these conceptions were under the broad path of non-personal understandings of God – as a force, a sense, a framework, but not as an independent personal agent in the classical sense. For me, as someone who has always treasured my sense of a personal relationship with God, I’m not sure that this is enough. So, let’s explore the other broad path of understandings of God and see if a belief in a personal agent God is still justified – most notably given what we said earlier about there being no clear evidence of God acting in the world.

As a religious person, I’ve always resented the secular criticism that belief in God is “just a psychological effect in the mind”. It’s certainly a valid and powerful criticism. We began by facing the challenge to religious belief in God that “there’s no-one out there”, and the first broad path encompassing ideas of God such as “the ground of our being” were an attempt to counter that – and pretty successfully too, I think. The question is whether we can do the same for the view of God as a personal agent. I must say that I am much easier with the complaint that God is just “all in the mind” than I used to be for I now realise: where else are we going to experience anything except in our minds? Everything that we experience in the material world – which secularists have no difficulty with accepting – is experienced within our minds. How can our experience of God be anywhere else except in our minds? In this respect, the only substantial difference between God and everything else is that everything else that appears in our minds does so through the intermediary of our senses – in contact with some external, tangible material object, whereas our experience of God is directly into our minds, putting us in contact with a tangible spiritual object. There is the objection that we are talking about objects. We could argue about whether it’s possible to have an object that is spiritual – though believers may counter that it is simply because God is a spiritual entity that he is able to “appear to us” directly in our minds rather than through our senses. There is a stronger objection that the point about material objects is that the senses are not simply an intermediary between our minds and external reality, but, rather, the experiences in our minds derived from our senses are real because they relate back to an actually existent, external object. However, for God, there is no verifiable proof that the experience in our minds of God relates back to anything that actually exists apart from our minds. We can note that I can experience in my mind now the image of a unicorn or a two-headed gorilla, but that in no way implies that such things exist. However, I can also experience in my mind now a feeling of deep love for my family, or patriotism, a sense of fair play, the importance of telling the truth. These are not physical entities, but they are definitely entities. So, a danger of trying to defend existence in God through the “ground of our being” or “reverence for life” route is that these are, indeed, definitely entities, but in the category of “ideas”, and so they are only real in the mind, and we have not established belief in a God who is “out there”. And I think the important aspect of this desire is that God should be more than my mind; he must not be simply my creation, of which I have charge.

Who is God?

Part 6: Is God simply our sense of reverence for life? And is that enough?

I am both attracted by, and torn by, the view of God as, in effect, and perhaps in reality, nothing more than “reverence for life”. I am perhaps being unfair by saying that God is “nothing more” than reverence for life, as reverence for life is a very wonderful thing indeed, and if we all had it perhaps many of the world’s problems would be dealt with. Nevertheless, I am troubled by the idea of God as reverence for life, for, if he is just that, why talk about God at all? Why not just admit that the highest spiritual goal for humanity is to have reverence for life? We could decide that all our talk through the ages about God has simply been a story to help us to develop our reverence for life. We could, of course, continue our religious life once we accept that God is “simply a story”, and we might in a strange counter-intuitive way, for humans are strange counter-intuitive beings, decide that it is better to keep talking about God, for somehow our reverence for life comes alive when we put it in a story about God. Such an approach would help all believers who struggle to believe in the personal, theistic God, for we could now all clearly understand that it is “just” a story. It would also enable all secularists to also become religious, because they also embrace the God-story as an effective way to hold that reverence for life, which is now recognised as the ultimate goal – and recognised as what we have meant all along when we used the word, “God”. This is certainly a practical solution to the problems of believing in God, and may well be much more effective than trying to teach people to just have reverence for life, as a principle to live by. We all understand that if we extracted the key ideals from a film and published them in a list, we are likely to be unmoved by them, but those ideals put into a story in the film may move us greatly, perhaps sufficiently to change our lives.

Nevertheless, for the searcher after truth, it does seem to me that we have lost God. It is now reverence for life that we desire, and the concept of God is simply a useful vehicle to help us to live with that reverence. And perhaps that is ultimately what religion is: a way of living, especially in community. The ultimate goal in religion is to find a way of life that brings peace, meaning and purpose, which limits the harm we do, and enhances our care for others. “God” is our invention to spur us on in this goal and to help us to understand what the goal is.

I am often struck by the religion of the ancient Greeks, which seems to me to be the personification of qualities and values. So, if it is courage that you need, or mercy, or whatever quality, you do not simply summon up from within yourself the desired quality, instead you call on the gods, and implore that the god or goddess of whatever quality it is you desire will come to you and impart it to you. The beauty of this view of religion is that it can be held literally, in very simplistic form, as believing that, of course it was not me in myself who became brave, it was the god of bravery dwelling in me. However, the religion can also be understood in a very sophisticated form: “Don’t be silly; of course we don’t literally believe that the only reason I blew my top was that the god of rage over-powered me, but it expresses in poetic, mythic form the very deep truth about how I seemed to lose control of my actions, and it helps me to understand and come to terms with that.

Who is God?

Part 5: Does God add anything to creation?

There are also links with ideas of pantheism and panentheism. With classic theism, God is that being who exists outside of, or apart from, creation. With such a God, you could switch the universe off and on again, and God would not be fundamentally affected in himself. With pantheism, God is understood as some sort of divine spirit that pervades creation. It is NOT saying that God is simply the same as creation, for God’s existence is adding something to creation that it would lack if there was just a material universe. However, God is completely contained within the universe, and it might be possible to argue that in some ways God IS simply the same as creation. I think a lot of Hindu thought veers in this direction. It produces a profound reverence for life, and enables a spirituality that holds life as supremely precious (as opposed, say, to a materialist, mechanistic view of the universe as simply made of stuff that is available for us to exploit). Pantheism could be thought of as simply declaring that creation IS divine. Whether we are still saying that God is adding something to creation, I’m not sure, but if we weren’t, it wouldn’t matter anymore for we are now conceiving of creation itself as deserving of the holy reverence that theists reserve for God. I think that panentheism is a view that attempts to combine theism with pantheism with the view that there is definitely a something extra existing in creation, which is God (whereas our thoughts on pantheism led us into doubt on this point), but God is still to be found entirely within creation.

For countless millions of people, this clearly counts as a completely satisfying conception of God, empowering a deeply religious life. For a theist like myself, it raises questions about whether we are still really believing in God, and whether this is truly different from secularism (though I have admitted to the attraction of the idea of a secular religion). However, we began with the severe difficulties that the theist view of God as an independent person raises, and we have certainly found a way here to continue believing in God, though now conceived as a spiritual force that either exists within creation (panentheism) or as a spiritual force that is synonymous with creation (pantheism – perhaps?).

Who is God?

Part 4: God as a powerful force, but not necessarily a person

However, it is not the only conclusion to draw. And this takes us back to the start of our thinking when we considered that many people have developed a very different conception of who God is. I think there are still two broad channels to go down. Some people have a view of God that, in my view, is not really a view of a personal God – though they may disagree, and the other route is to continue to believe in a personal God – but in very different form. I expect that there are multiple combinations of ideas, with the two routes over-lapping to greater or lesser degree, and perhaps becoming indistinguishable.

Hence, many believers understand God as a presence. They detect in the workings of their hearts and minds an experience of a presence. This is often understood as an experience of the transcendent, or the infinite and eternal, or of perfection. So, rather than experienced as a presence, you might simply call it an emotion or a feeling. Interestingly, (as a contact with the God who is simply “out there” ready to be found) this presence or feeling is simply there to be found. It just exists in the natural world – or, at least, it exists in the capabilities of the human mind, and I am calling that part of the natural world. Some people might want to claim that it is somehow “artificial” because it is a human construct, but I don’t think that argument holds, especially when we consider how universal and ubiquitous this experience is in human cultures – it appears to just be part of who we are as humans.

A very popular modern idea, linked to this, is the idea of God as “the ground of our being”. This is a very profound, multi-faceted idea, ( it could be compatible with God as a person, as some sort of spiritual force, or as “something else” that’s difficult to put into words) but I think, very briefly, it understands God as the something that enables existence to happen, and which imparts into existence qualities of goodness and love etc which it is possible for human beings to “tune into”. People with this view of God can live lives of profound faith, believing in the qualities of God, and trying to live them out in their own lives, and, in fact continuing to talk about God (for God must be talked about somehow) in ways that accord completely with traditional conceptions of God, while never being able to conceive of God with any precision, for God is simply an intangible sense that there is “something” behind, or within, or upholding existence, and our lives within it, and this something is good.

It’s tempting to think that if we push this approach too far, we simply end up with God as an ideal – he is a set of principles and values which anyone could hold, and which a number of secular philosophies of life have emulated through the ages. I think the view of God as ground of our being or as some sort of “sense of the divine” is saying more than this, but we can see that it could quite easily morph into this, in which case, there is certainly great scope for, and need for, the creation of a “secular religion” which becomes a philosophy of life for humanity to embrace, which would take up all the good ideals of religion without ever fully leaving a secular mindset.

Who is God?

Part 3: If you conclude Father Christmas is not real, can you go on believing that God is a real person?

“But there’s no-one there” sums up the agonising disillusionment that many people come to as they give up faith – while many, of course, congratulate themselves that they never fell for this con trick / lie / fantasy / wishful thinking, for it was obvious to them from the start that there is no-one there.

Although atheists often compare faith in God to believing in Father Christmas in rather a trite way, there is, nevertheless, a large degree of truth in their criticism, and I think it exemplifies the problem that many believers face very well. Children often conceive of Father Christmas, as a mysterious figure, whom they have never seen (and aren’t allowed to see) but who is definitely real – because mummy and daddy have told them it’s true, and there is lots of evidence of general belief in him – and, most importantly, no doubt, there is the evidence that the child prizes most of all in the miraculous appearance of presents on Christmas morning. Yet, the term “miraculous” may not be quite right, for Father Christmas is understood to be a person existing in the natural world. Perhaps he has magical powers which enable him to get round the whole world, and to get down chimneys – and perhaps he has magical elves to help him – but he is thought to live somewhere, perhaps at the North Pole, and he drives a sleigh with reindeer, leaves footprints in the snow, and likes a glass of Guinness (in our house!).

Now, when believers, perhaps subconsciously, conceive of God in similar terms, even though he is now thought of in supernatural terms, with truly miraculous powers, it leads to huge problems, once they start to think about things, just like children eventually have to surrender their belief in Father Christmas. For, when God is understood as a person, “out there”, doing things, as an independent agent with a will of his own, and when he has been described as perfectly good and loving, anyone willing to take on board all the evidence is bound to confront severe doubts as to whether God is really there. Put simply, God is not doing enough to help us; he is not doing enough good; he is not putting things right. (We can imagine how short a child’s belief in Father Christmas would be if the promised presents never arrived, or if on Boxing Day they disappeared as indebted parents took them back to the shops for a refund). Believers can accept that God is a person “out there”, but why is it so difficult to detect his presence, the way some believers say it is, and who, it has to be said, apparently have no problem in experiencing his presence. Ultimately, a person who is never seen, and of whom it can never be said definitively that he changed an event in the world for the better, becomes a person who is very difficult to believe in. This is hugely influenced by our conception of what it means to be a person. No matter how much we try to take on board the extraordinary conception of this person of God (infinite, eternal, ever-present, perfect in all goodness), when we use the word “person” it influences us to conceive of a person like the other human persons we know. God is clearly not like that, and so, for many people, a crisis of faith eventually hits and they ask: “In what way is God a person?”. Not finding a suitable answer to this question, an obvious conclusion to draw is that God is not real.

Who is God?

Part 2: What lies hidden behind the name: “God”?

At the heart of the matter, is that we have all continued to use the word “God”, even though we now understand that word is dramatically different ways. I remember during one of my own periods of doubt we had a senior minister as visiting preacher. When he spoke, he betrayed not a shadow of a doubt about God. At the time, that was briefly encouraging because I thought, “Well, if he, in his senior position, continues in faith then I should be able to as well”. However, it wasn’t substantially helpful because he was disguising the issues that I needed to face up to, I realise now that he was talking about God in a completely different way to how I conceive him. I also realise that I am quite a literal thinker. As a boy, I had been told about this God, who is an independent agent, and I believed them. I see now that the senior minister who misled me was thinking of God using ideas like, “God is the ground of our being”, or “a sense of divine presence”. Of course, he was not deliberately misleading me. I imagine that in his own journey to hold onto faith, he had realised, like me, that the view of God he had grown up with was untenable (Note: not all Christians think it is untenable!), but, desperately clinging on – perhaps through tremendous travail – he had found a way to redefine what he meant by God. This enabled him to continue to believe in God, and once this is done, he is able to speak about God apparently exactly as he did before. His listeners then relate to him with their own understanding of who God is, and they all assume that he is talking about God with the same understanding that they have.

There is clearly a level of deception at work here, or, at least, a terrible lack of clarity. I say again that there is no deliberate deception going on, but it would be extremely helpful to clarify what we do mean when we talk about God. Especially for that great mass of people who have given up believing in God, they would benefit from understanding that those who do still believe are not simply being dim and refusing to have the wool pulled away from their eyes. They might even find the new conceptions of God deeply appealing. And, of course, for all those Christians struggling with their faith, it would be extremely helpful for them to understand what conception of God is being used when he is being spoken about, and assistance to find a view of God that each person can live with would also be enormously helpful.

(A theological reflection in 12 – yes TWELVE – parts. Good luck! I hope your stamina is up to it)

Who is God?

Part 1: Seeking a new God after the old one has been lost

One of the things that strikes me about modern Christian faith is how sophisticated and how varied are the beliefs that people have about God. Although it’s rather simplistic, I think it is fair to give an analysis along the following lines. Seventy plus years ago, a large proportion of people in Britain were Christian. Their faith was often very profound, but also, I think, simple. (Simplicity is a profoundly good quality) There were also a lot of people who believed because they were told it was the right thing to do – there was a general consensus that God is real; those in authority supported the Christian view; the life of faith was understood to be beneficial and at the heart of community formation. However, it was often a simple and literal view of God that people had. Respected people, like clergy, said that there is a God, who is a person “out there”. He is an independent, personal agent, who exists independently of creation (that is, you could switch the universe off and God would still be there), but who acts within creation to achieve his will, and he is a person with whom you can form a relationship.

However, during my lifetime, the number of people active in the Church, and secure in their faith, has plummeted. Multiple factors have contributed to this, but in terms of believing, much of it is to do with disillusionment, doubt, and ultimately rejection of belief. People have formed the conclusion that they were told something that is not, in fact, true. There is not a God out there, and he is not going to help you – because there is no-one there. However, some have persevered. How have they done this? I think through the development of remarkably deep alternative understandings of who God is. As this is an intensely personal journey, often taking the believer through intense doubt, the solutions that people find can vary greatly – especially as each person is trying to answer the difficult questions that have arisen for them. Perhaps this leads one person to a particular understanding of who God is, while another person – who perhaps is not concerned about that person’s issues – finds a very different solution that answers their own questions.