When I went to several dictionaries I found the culturally accepted definitions of god. "The One Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe." "The supreme or ultimate reality, a powerful ruler, the Being perfect in power, wisdom and goodness whom men worship as creator and ruler of the universe."
However, the term "god" is not a proper noun. The proper name for the god of the Hebrew people is Yahweh. God is a generic noun like table, chair, cat, dog, man, woman. God, like dog, can only be described by either studying all kinds of gods, or by describing one's experience of God. Several of you have met our dog, Penty. To describe her as capital D dog would be presumptuous and inadequate. Yet she is the only dog I know well enough to have an experiential concept of, so, if I were to describe dog to you I would describe Penty or our other dog, Pooh.
Today I will be describing my concepts of the God of my experience within the context of the Judeo-Christian culture.
These concepts of God are from personal experience and my observation of reality and tested by study of the Bible.
Most recently my thinking was challenged by a course on Archeology and the Bible, which I took while we were in California earlier this year. It reinforced my understanding that the Hebrew concept of God is closely related to the gods of their neighbors, Especially Canaanite-Phoenician. All had concepts of a god that acts in human history. Early evidence shows that to be god was to lead the people into battle and to provide fertile crops and animals.
Another recent influence which helped me organize my thoughts about God came from a recent book by Marcus Borg, "The God We Never Knew".
Our concept of God influences the way we live our lives. Whether it is of a distant god who created and set in motion an orderly universe which continues to create itself, or, a personal god who is involved in every minute detail of human existence or a concept some place in between these two extremes.
I grew up with the popular concept of God as defined in dictionaries, which is probably similar to the way many of you were taught to conceive of God, that is, of a distant monarch, the great king. Lord of all. A great god out there. The "man upstairs". Although, as a child, I imaged God more as a father than as a king, it was still God as a powerful male authority figure and still "out there", distant. For people who say they do not believe in a god, this is probably the god in which they do not believe.
I will talk about his popular concept of God and then I will talk about the concept of God I hold today as an adult.
When we talk about God we have to use metaphors. We have to make comparisons because a direct non metaphorical description of God is impossible. With many of the metaphors, we image not only god but ourselves in relation to God. If we image God as a shepherd, we are the sheep, or God as parent, we are the children, or as a lover, we are the beloved etc.
The concepts we choose when we think and talk about God have consequences that affect all parts of our lives.
The model of God as a political leader, that is, as king, lord, warrior, judge, lawgiver is only one of many images of God in the Bible, but it is the one that dominates the language used in the churches and, therefore, the concepts of most people in the western world. God is the king and we are the subjects, the peasants, and as such, not much, not very capable and not particularly responsible. As subjects, we owe the king loyalty and obedience. Legal metaphors and legal logic in talking about God are pervasive in our culture. This concept of God as king leads to a performance model for our life, of meeting requirements and measuring up.
With this concept of God it was easy for me to confuse God with the superego. Life under the superego is a life of continually trying to measure up to all the oughts and shoulds. At one point I consistently thought of myself as a slave or servant of God.
I grew up singing the song "Jesus loves me." Over and over I happily sang, "We are weak but he is strong." When I was young I thought of Jesus as the god for children and God was god for adults. Either way, God was a strong, all powerful male to whom I owed allegiance, honor, and obedience.
With god as king, sin is any violation of God's laws or any disobedience of God's wishes and just as crime deserves punishment, sin deserves punishment. Disobedience not only would, but should be punished some day. With this concept of God, sin and guilt become central to people's lives and to be God is to be like the Santa who keeps records and knows when we've been naughty or nice.
The concept of God as monarch legitimizes domination and subjection, which lends approval to domination of nature by humans, domination of humans by political and economic elites, domination of women by men, gays by straight, non-Europeans by people of European descent, etc. This concept of God as ruler has real consequences.
This image of God as lawgiver and judge also relates God exclusively to human beings. this anthropocentric view sees nature only in terms of its value for humans. Nature has instrumental value not intrinsic value.
Because I lived my entire childhood with this popular concept of God, it will always be a part of me. But that is not the God of my adult experience.
I use the metaphor of Spirit which stresses relationship, intimacy, and belonging. With this concept, God is a nonmaterial reality that is everywhere, pervading the universe as well as being more than the universe. With this concept I think God as being like a womb. the whole universe is inside that womb which is more than the universe.
In the bible the term Spirit is used to refer to God's presence in all of creation, in the history of Israel and in the life of people. The Hebrew word for Spirit, Rauch, means both breath and wind. It is invisible, but very real. We cannot see the wind, yet its effects are felt. Breath is like wind inside the body and is associated with life. Speaking of God as both breath and wind is speaking about God's transcendence and God's nearness. God acts outside of people and God acts within people, within each person.
Some of the many other metaphors used in the Bible for God which help me in naming my experience of the Spirit are Mother, Father, Lover, Companion, Wisdom (Sophia).
God as mother is like a mother caring for her children and comforting them. One of God's central qualities is compassion. The English word compassion is one translation of the Hebrew word 'Hesed', which is related to the Hebrew word meaning womb.
God as intimate and loving father is different from the authoritarian monarchical concept of father. This is my image of my father sitting on my bedside comforting me when I was sick, my father playing ball with us, taking us camping, etc. A concept of an intimate father is one who is close at hand and who may be trusted.
With the concept of God as lover, the lover and the beloved enjoy being with each other, value and respect each other, yearn for each other. I sometimes think about God as Spirit as one who hugs me--and likes to be hugged by me. I sometimes think about God as Spirit as wrapping all of us in the Meeting together with a warm blanket. In the book of Hosea, God is imaged as a jealous lover who seeks out and brings back over and over again the unfaithful wife, Israel.
God as Companion is the concept of the Spirit who travels with me wherever I am and is one with whom I have a close friendship. For the Hebrews, it was like a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. It was the presence of God (Shekeinah) who tented among them as they moved form place to place.
God as a shepherd has not only the journey companion aspect but is the one who provides food and protection and searches for the sheep when they go astray.
Wisdom, or Sophia in the Bible is the concept of God as the one who is the architect and means of creation and is also present in the created order. This metaphor suggests closeness and presence, It is Sophia who speaks through the prophets, and it is Sophia who invites me to live by her wisdom, to follow the way of Creation.
The Biblical metaphors we appropriate and use most often and most automatically affects our root image of God and affects the way we live our lives. What we do and what we believe are always linked and always matter.
I experience God as Spirit which is an experience of the nearness, closeness, connection, and compassion of God. I experience God, with aspects of all genders, rather than exclusively as the male of the monarchical model. My experience of God as feminine affects my self-image and shapes my attitudes toward society and nature. My experience of God as Spirit, as non anthropomorphic, is an experience of being in relationship with the sacred. The sacred is not simply an inanimate mystery but it is a presence. With an experience of Presence and connectedness, I see God's creation, not as something that happened in the distant past, but as ongoing in every moment of time. I see all creation as sacred.
I also see our human condition in different ways than that of the monarchical model. When I experience God as Spirit, my central problem is not sin and guilt, but separation, -- being separated from God in myself, God in every other person, God in all creation. Whether I acknowledge or consciously experience that presence, God is present to me. My problem is my blindness to or disregard of the presence of God. When I am separated from God in other people, or all creation, I inflict suffering on and am indifferent to the suffering of that part of God's creation.
These are some of the reasons I have chosen the metaphor of Spirit. This choice is based on my experience of God's Presence, God's Spirit when I interact with other people, probably most especially with my husband Larry, and daughters Megan, Nyasha, Sara, but also with friends, and individual acquaintances, prisoners, refuges, homeless people, and when I interact with our dogs, Penty and Pooh, and with other parts of nature, our worms, our river and our mountains which I claim as mine as should all people and all creatures, and my experience of sensing the Presence and listening to the Spirit, Sophia, in silence throughout the week and in our midst during community worship on Sundays in this room. And I choose the metaphor Spirit because it fits my understanding of the reality that God, as Spirit, prompts my mind to words and actions that create wholeness, and the reality that God is in and is constantly creating all that is. This is the God whose job description is unending. This is the way I think about God every day and this choice of metaphors for my thoughts and words affects all parts of my life.