"Who is this God person anyway?"

‘God’ – as in ‘Do you believe in God?’-  is a hard worked little word, and can be taken to mean many different things.

I mostly use it in this blog to refer to an unseen sacred numinous principle, an ultimate reality; not a being, and certainly not possessed of any qualities that we could imagine. But I’m aware that I do also use the word to refer to the aspect of this numinous principle to which I pray. (For more on this see the post 'Full Circle - Thou, It, I, Thou')

Karen Armstrong, (whose book ‘The Case for God’ should be given free by the Government to everybody attaining the age of 35, and anybody younger who asks for it,) maintains that in earliest times many humans were well aware that no ‘being’ could be responsible for all they experienced, but worshipped and respected ‘Being’:  “a fundamental energy that supports and animates everything that exists…. You could not see, touch or hear it but could only watch it at work in the people, objects and natural forces around you.” Whatever this was, it was impersonal and transcendent.

Perhaps this is why the natural forces thus animated were themselves anthropomorphised as gods and goddesses in many societies, for example: Agni, the god of fire, Apollo the sun god. I used the term ‘gods’ in this way in my post ‘Honouring the Gods‘, and modern psychotherapy makes much use of these as a way of identifying the unconscious driving and pulling forces within human nature. Buddhism, which is unconcerned as to whether there is or isn’t an unseen sacred numinous principle – Buddhism is an agnostic religion- nevertheless makes reference to the ‘realm of the gods’. These gods are powerful superhumans, enjoying a life of luxury, rather like most the Greek gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. Like them, they can interfere in the life of ordinary people but, also like the Greek gods and many other pantheons of gods, they are neither omniscient nor omnipotent.

When I was taught Christianity, I was taught that those who worshipped pantheons of gods, or one in particular of a pantheon of gods (Zeus, for example) had got it wrong, and that only monotheism was right. However, one couldn’t help noticing, as one made further investigations into this, just how like Zeus or any other ‘sky god’ or ‘high god’ the Christian God seemed to be. 

Unlike ours, many societies did not (and do not) have a problem worshipping a pantheon of gods, while being absolutely clear that these gods do not represent ultimate reality. To quote Karen Armstrong again “There was no ontological gulf separating these gods from the rest of the cosmos; everything had emerged from the same sacred stuff.” 

I should say here that I do think that Christianity in this country, the UK, tends towards fundamentalism (inclined towards a literal reading of the bible). I remember the outcry when an Archbishop expressed the view that it really didn't matter whether Jesus was born to a virgin or not. However, I consider myself a Christian, because I use Christian symbolism and myths in my meditations and prayers, and I'm completely happy to pay my dues to any number of  'archangels' representing various principles such as 'truth', 'compassion', 'courage' and 'serenity' without ever getting these confused with the sacred unseen numinous principle; the ultimate reality. I think that fundamentalists have completely failed to grasp the actual point of religion.

Millenia ago it seems the "Upanishadic sages [in India] were among the first to articulate another of the universal principles of religion....The truths of religion are accessible only when you are prepared to get rid of the selfishness, greed and self-preoccupation that, perhaps inevitably, are engrained in our thoughts and behaviour but are also the source of so much pain." (Armstrong.)

I would be very interested to know to what others reading this are referring when they use the word ‘God’.