This site deals with religion, and since religion commonly deals with God, one might think that material posted here will make frequent use of the word “God.” And yet that will not be the case, so an explanation is in order.
In many religions, “God” is indeed the commonly used term to refer to the ultimate being, spiritual entity, or “Something More” (beyond the dimension of time, space, and matter) that is the source, support, and destiny of the totality of all reality, or the Cosmos. In such religions, God is usually understood in some sense as a personal being, who communicates with humanity, is the source of moral law, responds to prayer and worship, guides and intervenes in human affairs, etc. Belief in this type of personal God is often referred to by scholars of religion as theism. In the blog posts on this site, however, we will tend to shy away from using the term “God” to refer to whatever that “Something More” is. As I argue in Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century, many intelligent, good-hearted, spiritually-minded people today, considering themselves to be, or wishing that they could be, believers or “people of faith,” are sometimes reluctant to embrace traditional theism and its designation of “God” as the object of faith. Of course, it’s easy to see why, over the long course of the evolution of humanity’s attempt to better understand the nature of the spiritual dimension, the object of faith would be associated with “personal” qualities such as moral goodness, love, freedom, wisdom, etc. These are uniquely human traits, and they are good and desirable. If there is a spiritual reality that is greater than humans (and everything else), it certainly should be understood to at least contain the best traits of human persons. So in that context it makes sense that, as human religious awareness evolved, the spiritual dimension came to be seen as, in some sense, “personal” and hence referred to as God, the supreme person. But there also are some problems with referring to that Something More as a person. For starters, the theistic God of traditional religions tends to sometimes demonstrate some very unappealing personal or human traits: anger, jealousy, vengefulness, bias, and more. Many would-be believers today look at the God of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) and ask how could God behave in such a morally unworthy manner. Mature humans behave better than God sometimes behaves in the sacred texts of these traditional religions. If you doubt this, see Dan Barker’s God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, an admittedly very biased work which brings to the forefront the many Biblical passages that followers of Christianity and Judaism understandably wish to overlook. In addition, some find the notion of a “personal” God, or a God who is conceived of in human-like terms, to be incredibly limited. To think of that Something More which governs the entire Cosmos in terms based on one particular species (the human) that has only briefly existed on one tiny planet (Earth) at one particular place in the Universe for only a brief moment in cosmic time would seem to be terribly limiting to say the least. God cannot be confined to human terms, they would argue. Perhaps it made sense to think of “God” in such limiting, anthropomorphic terms 2000 years ago, but that is no longer the case. We have outgrown the traditional way of thinking about and conceptualizing “God” that was developed at an earlier stage in the evolution of human spiritual awareness. “God” is so much more than that, and our language should properly reflect that more expansive sense of “God” that exists in the 21st century consciousness. Unfortunately, we are in a transition period from one mode of spirituality to another, and while the old language of traditional theism has lost its usefulness for many people, meaningful new alternatives have not yet emerged. For now, as people of faith at the early stages of the transition to what we will call a post-Axial and post-theistic spirituality (more on this in subsequent posts), we will have to be content with referring to that mysterious, incomprehensible, Something More through the limited language options that are at our disposal. Consequently, on this site we will tend to use terms such as Spirit, the Sacred, Ultimate Reality, Something More, spiritual dimension, and similar words and phrases. This is not to deny the personal quality of Spirit, and indeed, at times where it seems to fit, we will use the traditional word “God” in our remarks. But we want to emphasize that the traditional concept of a personal God who has human-like qualities which include anger, jealousy, vengefulness, etc., is simply not a credible and adequate way to think about Spirit for many 21st century humans. Humanity has outgrown certain aspects of anthropomorphic thinking about Spirit, and our language should be modified accordingly. Developing this new religious language will be an enormous challenge, and in subsequent posts we will explore various aspects of this challenge in the context of what a post-Axial 21st century spirituality might look like. Comments are closed.
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