Unknowable?

For years I have pictured and related to God as "up there," everywhere at one time, right next to me, no where to be seen or heard from in one moment, blaringly loud and obvious in the next. Lately though, I really don't know what to make of him. Or her. Or it. Sometimes God exists, sometimes, as Peter Rollins has described, God insists. The more you hear about God from another person's experience and insight, the less it can feel as though any of us really know what the heck we're talking about. And yet at other times, someone could say something that is so spot on to your own experience that you walk away feeling about as certain as you could be that the encounter was "of God."

"The unknowableness of God is a defining principle for the mystically inclined religions of the East. Buddhism and Taoism for example, leave little room for any personified deity. Even Hindus, who worship specific personalized deities understand that these specific, identifiable gods are representations (for their convenience) of the one supreme Godhead." Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg

We personalize God for our own convenience so say Hindus, and convenient it is. How do you relate to something invisible? It is much easier to image the divine as people, something my Christian faith hinges on in the person of Jesus Christ. And yet, I cannot seem to shake the mysticism out of me, the nudge to drop all personifications of the mysterious, invisible, life force all around and within us. In fact, more and more often I find myself craving the freedom from needing to understand--giving myself permission to open up a space to just be in the universe, to observe and interact in a way that let's everybody be right and wrong at the same time.

"The conclusions of the mystics seem clear: God is by nature unknowable. God is not an objective fact, or an actual being; God is in fact, being itself, the absolute, undifferentiated oneness that is the ground of all existence...all personifications of God are symbolic attempts to grasp the ungraspable. When we realize that any conception of God is a piece of this large puzzle, rooted in mystical understanding of what's fundamentally real, then all religions become siblings, all faiths become true and all incarnations of God can be understood as real." Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg

I understand why so many people denounce their faith or their ties to organized religion. There are often very justifiable reasons to walk away and never go back. But going rogue in one's faith or spiritual journey often sounds better on paper than in practice. It's not as though we are not able to encounter the divine individually, but if the mystics are at least half right in the idea that God is "oneness" and "being itself" than isolating your faith like that severely limits your ceiling. For me, there is something about being grounded in community that keeps me doing what I do. I try to give space for people to believe whatever it is they need to believe for peace of mind, motivation, healing, etc, but the moment we think we don't need other human beings to grow spiritually is the moment we "deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8

I think we need one another now more than ever. We just could use a brush up on our open-mindedness, conversation and listening skills.

Photo by Cristina Cerda on Unsplash