In the spring I took an online FLASH Introduction course. For my final project I put together something for the Church of Cottony Softness with Pastor Guido. It can be found on bottom of the Some Good Fun page.
When I showed it to one friend, he said that unless I was Catholic I really shouldn’t make fun of or be critical towards that church.
Never fully understood that attitude. Humour or criticism rarely reach the intended audience with real power or potency. And I didn’t think it was specifically Catholic anyway.
What really caught me by surprise, however, was his follow-up description of God.
This God we speak of is a life-giving Spirit. Think of it as a continuation of evolution. The One that started it all is starting something new. It’s like a sci-fi symbiotic thing. The starting point is Christ and for some reason God required the sacrifice of this one to allow this symbiotic relationship of His Spirit in us.
This same friend tried to convince me it is dangerous to be a non-believer because of the coming Antichrist, and used 2nd Thessalonians to support his worries about me.
At this point I deflected so as to end the conversation. It could have easily spiraled down into a debate but I didn’t want to insult either one of us and let it come to that. I have a cordial dislike for debate. It can be incredibly difficult to serve the greater good while ignoring or even shouting down another person’s point. I’d rather be a friend and see if we can share a joke.
His description of God demonstrated two things for me quite clearly:
1. The meaning or definition of God is so flexible that any idea can be attached to it at the whim and discretion of the speaker. (I wrote about this earlier with help from Dan Dennett — here and here for example.) People use the word for their own meaning in very personal ways. Desired or negotiated or constructed ways. Even non-believers do this, although they seem willing to go in another direction than believers.
2. Regardless of whatever flexible description of God is used, often enough that description is very quickly tied back to the God of the Bible. If I lived in another culture, maybe a different authority-text would be used.
The act of dubbing it an authority-text is a problem for me. It is an old, odd library collection rubber-stamped by committees. It is a wonder of inspiration and intrigue with immense literary value and cultural investment. It has been translated and interpreted again and again. “Even Newer” Testaments have been written with varying success rates. When it comes to God, the Bible has been what many people cling to or rely upon.
However, the Bible alone does not invoke trust and faith today.
Some face such a problem as a call to battle. Defend, debate, prove through victory the might and authority of the way of God through the text.
Some face such a problem as a call to change. Discuss, collect, offer through deliberation the lessons and directions for our relationships today.
I want to focus my next posts on this second approach, in a sense. The Observer published an article in October entitled, “What do we mean by God?” — six short passages that re-envision the what and the how of God.
I applaud their efforts, but question what consequences may come from it. In separate posts I will summarize each writer’s ideas from the article and then ask:
1. Is this a useful description for God today? Is this a meaningful negotiation or construction of someone’s ideas on God?
2. What does this mean for the Bible? Would the Bible be an authority-text under such an understanding of God? Would the Bible have to be edited?
A month ago I put up a poll asking what should be my next blog theme. Choice #2 won out and so I’m running with it. Will you please join me in this? I am asking you for a lot of help. Otherwise, I might draw my own conclusions…
The writers:
Rev. Nancy Steeves – “God is a Mystical Presence and Evolving Energy”
Ross Lockhart – “God is Trinity – Revealer, Revealed and Revealing”
Bruce Sanguin – “God’s Creativity is Expressed Through the evolving Cosmos”
George Hermanson – “God Sets down the Melody; We Offer it Back to God”
Susan Beaver – “An Old and Immense Turtle Lives at the Bottom of the Lake”
Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng - “God Embodies Wholism and Shares Power”
- – -
Note: I’m tempted to include pop-incarnations of God in this series, and so might add:
Elizabeth Gilbert – “My God is a magnificent God”
Wm. Paul Young - “God is an old black woman named Papa, but still called He”
Hey Andrew. I looked at the two Dan Dennet posts you linked to. I liked the one quote you pulled out: “God is literally what we would call a metaphor.” Joseph Campbell says something very similar in “The Power of Myth”. What I find so funny about that idea – which is of course totally correct – is that all language is metaphor. Words are always only signposts that point towards concepts, and concepts are always only mental constructs of (possibly) real things. And concepts always simplify reality, and words always simplify concepts. Like the old philosophical idea of identity: How many planks of a ship have to be replaced before it isn’t the same ship anymore, but a new, second one? How many grains of sand can you take from a hill until it ceases to be a hill and is just a scattering of sand? When not even simple words and concepts like boat or hill are more than vague, imprecice metaphors for complex realities, how can we expect that words like God, love, the soul, life, meaning, good or evil could be anything more?But why should that mean that we can completely redefine them? If you can’t sit in it and doesn’t carry you over the water, it’s no boat. If it’s not higher than the surounding ground, it’s no hill. These terms may not be precice, but they’ve got a core.One of the core’s of the term “god” seems me that it describes an entity. If you just mean the physical universe, well, we got a word for that: The Universe. If you mean love (whatever you may mean by love), bloody call it love. Not god.Here you write that you want “to set God free of our ownership”. I think you are making the same mistake there that you seem to try to criticize. Of course we cannot “own” god, any more than we could “own” passion, or conscience, or nuclear fusion. But we collectively do own the word, and we each can own a concept of god (or of his lack.)When you write “My God is that which makes me direct my actions and decisions according to a commitment to shared human values” I have to ask why you deify that. Because I would call that altruism. Or perhaps conscience. Or, well, shared values. But why do you call it god?If you mean by god a driving force that forms and shapes the world – as I believe would be the common understanding, and thus an understanding you would invite by using the word “god” in this context – then I have to ask, were you see god “at work”? What is the reality that your signpost is pointing at? Isn’t it humans that act and decide according to shared values?In Camus’ “The Plague”, Dr. Rieux and Tarrou talk about god. Tarrou asks Dr. Rieux why the doctor works so devtedly and passionately if he doesn’t believe in god. And Dr. Rieux answers that nobody believes in a god who does the curing of the sick for him. That he sees his job as fighting against creation. “[...] since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven [...]?”What is the point of calling the goodness in the human heart (no matter if you see it in shared values, or in trying to fight against death, or in simple compassion) “god”? why not call it the goodness in the human heart? If god is nothing outside of us – mightn’t we better simply admit that it isn’t god, but that it is nothing but us?If god is to be a useful metaphor, it must point at something outside of us.Well, I’ll be looking forward 5-7 essays on these various ideas about god.PS/Edit: I now watched the full Dennet lecture (the interview with Moyer has been taken down, sadly). He seems to say some of the stuff I said, too, esp. about concepts. So, in his terms, I would call your use of “my god” a UME, I suppose, lol. Of course, in other places he comes to very different conclusions – or draws on very different experiences – than I do…
“But why should that mean that we can completely redefine them? If you can’t sit in it and doesn’t carry you over the water, it’s no boat. If it’s not higher than the surrounding ground, it’s no hill. These terms may not be precise, but they’ve got a core.”
I question the very core. And I think the time has come for us to realize we do completely redefine things. I’m asking that we start doing it consciously. And have some fun with it. You asked me once what I believe. I believe strongly that we have to play with these ideas until they lose their power of authority.
I cannot sit in a gravy boat and it cannot take me over water. Same for an origami boat. And yet they have real claims to the word boat because we like to make the comparison. There’s a great article on how our brain works with metaphors that I was going to use in a post. I might not get to it for about a month now though.
The set God free thing was more an attempt to juxtapose ideas. Freeing an unlimited entity, to use your word, of course makes no sense. Going to the trouble of conceiving its nature or figuring out what ‘it’ wants is just silly, in my opinion, unless it is done from a position of no authority or influence.
“When you write “My God is that which makes me direct my actions and decisions according to a commitment to shared human values” I have to ask why you deify that. Because I would call that altruism. Or perhaps conscience. Or, well, shared values. But why do you call it god?”
This is a great question and I think I want to work on this a little more than just this comment. Maybe a separate post. Man, I really have to rewrite that about page! This is good though. To try and quickly tie this in to your signpost idea, there seems to be some kind of effect when a word like ‘god’ is used that drives people to action. If that sign is like an arrow, then there is a tip pointing at something and a back-end reference of where to start, sort of thing. Does that make sense?
I don’t care at all what the ‘something’ is that the sign points at. People point it at everything they rely upon or cling to and so a consensus would be near impossible. Whatever it is becomes deified with or without use of the word ‘god’. But I’m much more interested in the back-end and how people get empowered to act. It may be some driving force that forms and shapes the world as you suggest, or it could be something much simpler and non-entity-ish. If we play an ‘entity’-game with a word like ‘god’ then we are pushing an explanation into a hole that is better left empty, in my opinion.
And about Dennett — yes! My use of ‘god’ and the phrase itself “my God” is most definitely a deepity! Sometimes you have to make the mistake very blatant and bold so as to get at the heart of the problem. I don’t want to stop people pointing (I don’t think I ever could). I just want to make them aware that it seems like they are really just trying to give themselves directions or justifications.
FF, you are definitely forcing me to clean up my thoughts and my sentences, and so wanted to say thank you. I tend to be sloppy and wander a lot with ideas but with your prodding I might actually get to something here.