There is almost universal agreement that God exists.
(92% of the 35,000 people surveyed believed in God and an additional 2% said they do not know or refused to say according to "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; February 2008; page 162; from Pew Forum website at:
You would think this consensus would bind us closely to one another and reinforce our sense of well-being and inner peace but it does not. Instead, this consensus is overshadowed by the many conflicting descriptions of God, which then often undermine our well-being and separate us from each other.
How do you have a relationship with God that increases your sense of well-being and unites you with others while freeing you from their pressures and opinions so that you can commune with God the way that fulfills you? How do you reconcile your description of God with conflicting descriptions? Where, exactly, is it wise to invest your faith? Can God actually be described?
These and other issues about having a healthy relationship with God are addressed in what follows.
THE PROBLEM
Are you waiting to see how “God” will be described here so you can then decide whether or not you agree or disagree with what’s about to be presented?
The term “God” is so loaded with meanings and emotions that we get in the habit where the mere mention of God creates division in us and signals that we must choose if we’re “for” or “against” some view of God.
God unfolds life.
Life unfolding is the work of God.
Each of us directly experiences life unfolding – the work of God – within us and around us.
So life unfolding – the work of God - is obvious; we do not rely on anyone else to see this for us. The way it looks, feels, smells, its sounds, our thoughts about it, etc. are always “right in front of our nose”. And further, God’s works are not abstract, nor are they mysteries hidden away and removed from us. No. We all agree God exists because each of us has concluded that we are, literally, the work of God, as is everything in our lives.
However, while we know God exists because His work is obvious to us, God’s nature - how and why God goes about doing His work of unfolding life – is hidden from us. God’s nature is unknown and remains a mystery.
Our Need to Commune With God
Because we are God’s work, deep in our core we yearn to commune with God: to bless Him, to offer our thanks and prayers to Him, to seek His help and guidance, and to understand Him. Yet because the nature of God - how and why God does His work of unfolding life – remains a mystery, the question is, how do we go about communing with God? What instructions are we to use?
Your Dilemma
So as you sit at God’s doorstep, you find yourselves in a real jam: you know God exists, you have a deep need to commune with Him, yet His nature is a mystery, hidden from you.
And that’s not all: you also know that differences in how people have chosen to describe and commune with God over the ages have led to unending division, strife and violence.
In fact, throughout history descriptions of God’s nature and how He works have been so divisive that a cornerstone of the success of the U.S. has been the freedom to describe and worship God as you choose. And today descriptions of God are still so divisive that we know not to talk about God in polite company.
Today the “progressive” view about the divisiveness over God is tolerance. Tolerance means to allow others to practice something that we do not necessarily like or agree with without interference. Certainly tolerating someone’s view of God is better than bashing them over the head, and thus tolerance is a huge step forward for mankind. However, there is a relationship with others that is healthier than tolerance, which is seeing that their conflicting description of God actually is equal to your own, and seeing this then forms the basis for a healthier relationship with God.
PURPOSE AND PRINCIPLES
The purpose of ourindescribablegod.com is to help you see that conflicting descriptions of God are equal to your own. And it is assumed the following principles will serve to help you in reaching this goal:
· The almost universal experience and agreement that God exists is a consensus so remarkable and so powerful that it is capable of dissolving separateness, uniting you with others and thus increasing your sense of well-being and inner peace;
· God’s work is obvious, non-abstract and is directly experienced by everyone;
· Human nature forever compels us to describe how and why God works (God’s nature), yet how God works and why has not yet been correctly described;
· Faith that you have chosen the one correct description of God separates you from others and thus undermines your well-being and inner peace, which is unhealthy;
· Faith that God hears you communing with Him regardless of the description you use brings you closer to others and thus increases your well-being and inner peace, which is healthy.
Arguments For and Connections Between These Principles
That we believe God exists, and that our neighbors believe God exists, is a real comfort that supports our personal sense of well-being and inner peace.
But then, why is there endless division and strife over God?
Disagreements and divisiveness over God arise when we forget that our relationship with God is a relationship in which we are truly humbled. We encounter our humility clearly when a child is born, a loved one dies or our own existence is threatened – we stand defenseless in front of God, knowing clearly that our fleeting presence here does absolutely nothing to change how God works. God does His work, and in complete awe and wonder we must simply stand back and (hopefully in humility) watch as He unfolds life.
And to believe that how you choose to describe God actually changes how God works is disrespectful arrogance that lacks any humility.
Logic Demands That We Choose, and Thus That We Disagree
Most people come into life hard-wired with a deep yearning to commune with God – to worship, give thanks, understand Him, seek His help and blessings, etc. And to commune (communicate) with God you may feel you need instructions, which you usually get from an established religious tradition.
God controls your life and death, which can make your need to communicate with Him successfully feel very important. Here logic dictates, “For your communications with Him to be successful, you must communicate correctly, for to communicate incorrectly will surely invite grief into your life.”
The problem is that the various descriptions of God’s nature and how He works that are provided by religious traditions often contradict one another. Here logic again dictates to you, “There can only be one correct description of God among the many existing descriptions and, further, descriptions other than the correct one must be incorrect.” Just as everyone agrees H2O is the only correct description of water, that same logic dictates that there can only be one correct description of God.
So logic here demands that you make a choice: to successfully communicate with God you must first sort through the multitude of conflicting descriptions of Him and choose the correct one.
Luckily you are not the first person to encounter this problem; most people throughout history have faced it. And thus many capable, sincere people have already spent their lives trying to describe God. What then have we learned so far about choosing the correct description of God?
After all these thousands of years of sincere, exhaustive research, we know there still is no agreed-upon description of God.
History confirms what common sense tell us, which is that our chances really are very, very slim that out of the multitude of existing descriptions we will get incredibly lucky and actually choose the correct description of God.
Such slim chances – such high risk – create doubt in us, and that doubt is unsettling and undermines our sense of well-being and inner peace:
“Am I using incorrect instructions? Am I successfully communicating with God? Does God even hear me?”
Doubt is not what you want here, what you want is CERTAINTY that you are successfully communicating with God, because success here is extremely important - it affects your very life and death.
And how you respond to your need for certainty here is the central issue you face in building a healthy relationship with God.
A great, great many people throughout history have encountered in themselves this same desire for certainty. And that is why the largest ongoing business on earth has been built around fulfilling your desire for this certainty, and why today countless packages of certainty are being offered.
The question you need to ask yourself is, what price am I willing to pay for the packages of certainty being offered? But just remember, the price throughout history as it still is today for these packages of certainty has been endless division, separateness and strife.
In summary then, we agree that God exists and that our very life, the diversity of nature and the orderliness of the universe are His works.
Doubt here arises not over whether God exists – you have already concluded God exists based on your direct, first hand experience. No, doubt here arises over whether or not your chosen description of God is correct and thus provides you with the correct instructions you believe are needed to successfully communicate with Him.
Have Faith
To dispel this doubt, the traditional advice has been for you to “have faith (in God)”. But what actually does that mean?
You already know from your first-hand experience that God exists and life unfolding is His work. You did not rely on faith to know this – you simply watched life unfold and your common sense told you it was God at work.
Any doubt here is not over whether or not God exists. The doubt here is over whether or not, out of the multitude of descriptions; “Was I incredibly lucky and just happened to have chosen the one correct description of God that enables me to successfully commune with Him?”
So what happens when you try to dispel this doubt by “having faith (in God)”? When you “have faith (in God)” here, it involves you in two parallel exercises. In the first, you have faith “that God exists,” which easily provides certainty since you are already pretty certain that God exists. In the second exercise, you have faith that you actually did choose the correct description of God. And since doubt here arose because your chances of having chosen the one correct description of God really are quite slim, the hoped for outcome of doing these exercises in parallel is to shift some of your certainty that God exists over to provide some certainty that your chosen description of Him is the correct one.
The problem with trying to shift some certainty from the first exercise over to the second is that it really doesn’t provide you with any lasting sense of well-being and inner peace because something inside you knows your circumstances here really have not changed, and that the truth remains that your chances are still quite slim that you actually have chosen the one correct description of God.
So “having faith in God” to dispel your doubt that you have chosen the one correct description of Him never works very well because your sense of well-being and inner peace are not easily fooled by shifting certainty over from the first exercise to the second.
There is however one final, desperate way out of this jam, which is to ignore both the evidence and your inner voices of well-being and common sense, and to simply insist that you actually have chosen the one correct description of God. But the obvious problem with this is that now you are demanding that God fit your description, which is disrespectful arrogance that might just make Him mad.
By proclaiming that you actually have chosen the one correct description of God, you are simply proclaiming yourself to be right and thus everyone else must be wrong. And in so doing you separate yourself from others since no one other than those who agree with your description will accept that you were somehow so lucky as to have chosen the one correct description of God.
Something in human nature likes feeling better than others. So insisting you are one of the Chosen – that you are right and others are wrong – is a very appealing, seductive and dangerous path. We know this is dangerous because throughout history this path has led to division, strife, and violence.
If you would rather not base your relationship with God and your well-being and inner peace on luck, slim chances, arrogance, separating yourself from almost everyone and perpetuating endless division in the world, then the question is, What are your options?
GOD IS INDESCRIBABLE
Again, for thousands of years, many sincere, capable people have spent their lives trying to describe God; yet there still is no agreed upon description of Him. So, based on such exhaustive research, concluding today that God has not yet been correctly described is certainly more reasonable than is concluding that one correct description probably exists.
So, while life unfolding within and around us is obviously God’s work, how and why God does His work is today unknown and remains a mystery.
Yet to see and accept that God cannot be described is to arrive at and live in a very unfamiliar place.
To get there you must first override your need to possess the correct description of God, which may be living quite comfortably in your core. And for many, confronting that beast will feel way too threatening and thus impossible to do.
Others however will recognize this place where God cannot be described as where you truly reside.
You will recognize that God truly is indescribable, and being indescribable means that no description of God can possibly be any more correct than another and thus that your description is equal to all others.
You will recognize that all descriptions of God today simply reflect mankind’s best attempts to fulfill our hard-wired need to commune with God, which attempts also reflect the various cultures, geography, personalities, influences, etc. of our origins.
You will recognize that the test for what description you should use is not what description is correct but rather which description truly fulfills you and increases your sense of well-being and inner peace. Which one do you truly love? Which one resonates with you?
You will recognize that communing with God should be a wonderful, fulfilling part of life filled with rituals, promises, songs, smells, symbols, images, lifestyles and people that you really like.
A relationship with God in which He cannot be described is a relationship based on establishing balances within yourself that are very personal to you, and to you alone. You will still choose your description of God and use it to commune with Him. But you will learn to hold your chosen description quietly and tenderly, not so dearly that it divides you from others. And in so doing you will build a relationship with God based in humility, which is the true status of your relationship with Him.
Freedom
There is great freedom in accepting that God has not yet been correctly described:
It frees you from the risks, worries and pitfalls that come with feeling you have to choose the correct description of God.
It frees you from having to be right and thus better than others.
Sure, some will view you and your “indescribable” description of God as flawed, but that simply reflects their lack of freedom, not yours. You can still embrace them and by doing so you will remain free even though your embrace may not be returned.
And freed of those shackles that accompany the need to possess the correct description fo God, you are thus freed to build a relationship with God that supports your well-being and inner peace, your connection with others and thus your health.
Doubt Re-enters
But hold on. If no instructions for communing with God are any more correct than others, then how can you be certain that God hears you?
Doubt and certainty, forever entangled, return.
Well, God is, after all, God. So it’s quite likely that regardless of how you chose to commune with Him, He hears you.
And that God hears you regardless of how you choose to commune with Him is where you should invest your faith. Have faith that all descriptions of God enable you to communicate with Him equally.
So, in the end, your relationship with God still boils down to faith; it’s just that you do have a choice where to invest it:
BALANCE
People get lost in chasing after their description of God. They get so close to it and so wrapped up in it that they are no longer able to see that their chosen description is separating them from others, undermining their sense of inner peace and well-being and is not fulfilling them.
The point of “God and Freedom” is to learn to stand back from your chosen description of God and simply watch yourself – watch what you’re doing.
Watch your relationship with God and try to see how it is affecting your life in terms of the following balances:
humility -- arrogance
freedom -- bondage
closeness -- separation
fearlessness -- fearfulness
contentment -- always in need of more
well-being -- things aren't turning out well
inner peace -- seeking but never finding
Practice standing back from yourself and watching where you are on each of these spectrums. And then ask yourself if you want to continue living your life at the point you find yourself and if not, then get to work and make some adjustments.
We all really do stand together in our certainty that God exists and unfolds life within and around us. Our job is to remain humble in the face of God’s indescribable nature and to balance our need to commune with our need for certainty.
Build a relationship with God that nourishes your well-being and inner peace. And then hold and practice your description of Him quietly and tenderly, not so dearly that it separates you from others.
When doubt and the need for certainty arise, have faith that God hears you, not that you are right (and others are wrong).
And rejoice and celebrate with your friends and neighbors in that which truly unites us all: in the obviousness and joy of God at work in our lives.