Speaking of God?

Comox Valley Unitarian Fellowship

October 1, 2006

Marvin Haave

Some of us may choke on such a word. Some of us have come from backgrounds that presumed such familiarity with the divine, that presumed to have it in their back pockets, that we're almost sickened with it. We're singing along happily: “I hear music in the air” and we come to “there must be a” and we come to the big G word and we choke up or maybe we hold our noses and sing it or maybe we mumble it, maybe we remain silent until we can sing again, “I hear music in the air.” Some of us may be like the dyslexic, agnostic who doesn't even know whether there is a dog!

On the other hand you may celebrate such a name as the great power that upholds the universe, as the “ground of being” in Paul Tillich's language, as the Great Spirit of first nations spirituality, or as deity. If you're one of the mystics among us, you may echo happily the words of the bard that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and bask in the sweetness that you experience, in nature, or whatever. Or you may think of Goddess in some guise as Astarte, Isis , or her myriad other names. Or you may speak of father or mother, although I can tell you that such anthropomorphisms are deeply offensive to any who have never experienced a caring parent.

The names for God have been cruelly misused, abused, sullied, chiefly by one or another form of religious fundamentalism – that which presumes to know exactly what it's talking about and arrogate the power that goes with such presumed knowledge. I'm thinking of things like the Spanish Inquisition or Puritan trials which burned presumed witches, homosexuals and other undesirables in the name of God, or the shunning practiced by some religious groups, or the extremes of Islamic fundamentalism in which men and boys willingly blow themselves up, and others with them, in the belief that God will reward them in a paradise inhabited by scores of delightful virgins at their disposal. We may wonder what is promised to female suicide bombers! The disease of fundamentalism of every sort is that of taking things too literally, of spoiling the beauty of myth and parable, symbol and poetic description.

Some, in reaction, avoid god language altogether. There is, I think, some wisdom in the Hebrew practice of refusing to write the name of the Divine, or the Ineffable, and instead to use the four consonants (JHWH, usually transcribed into Jahweh). However, even this didn't entirely succeed because Hellenistic Jewry of the 3 rd century before the common era borrowed the Greek language and used “Adonai” (my Lord), and Jahweh became Jehovah, which solved nothing at all and merely added one more confusing term. There is some wisdom also in Buddhist thinking which conceptualizes a great space or void and endeavours to follow a “noble path” rather than trying to understand or name what may be beyond human understanding.

It was Freud who formulated, but did not originate, the notion that giving names to any idea of deity is at best a projection of human need—namely the need to make some sense of this great, often silent universe. I myself agonized for years about whether the universe is “friendly”, another expression of a desire to make some sense of it all.

So we have in known human history – not to speak of the eons of human imagining and worship that are unrecorded and unknown – so we have in known human history myriad descriptions of theistic, deistic, monotheisms and polytheisms, and beings such as the Greek and Roman deities who were very much like ourselves in their loves and hates, desires, pettiness, and warmongering.

How can we benefit from this broad panoply of ideas, concepts, and names? When I studied theology several lifetimes ago I was taught to have disdain for poor old Ludvig Schleiermacher, a 19 th century liberal Christian theologian, who spoke of religion as basically a “feeling of dependence.” I have since gained considerably more respect for such attempts at meaning, for I think it is now clear as never before that we are finally dependent on our environment. And when we humans have had the arrogance, the hubris, to mess up our environment we have created a truly “unholy” mess which threatens not only many of the species of life with which we share this planet but perhaps, in the long run, the survivability of our own species as well. We are so dependent on this environment, and what lies beyond and beneath it.

Is it time, then, for a renewed sense of the sacred, where we can stand in reverence and awe before the wonders of this splendid and fitting universe upon which we depend? This may, in fact, be a direction that can take us out of our dilemmas, our confusion, perhaps our animosity with any or all of the names of God.

Human history may be described as a series of waves, flowing and ebbing, of attempts to apprehend, to make contact with that which is beyond, the Transcendent. Some would use terms like supernatural, although we skeptical Unitarians may not be inclined to favour such language because it implies that we know for sure that there is something “super” or above nature. Some humans, particularly those influenced deeply by thorough-going empiricism, or what we might call scientism, would deny that there is anything at all beyond our bodily senses. In other words, if we can't touch, see, hear, taste or smell it, test it in the laboratory, it doesn't exist. But this can lead to a deadly emptiness, loss of meaning, hopelessness, cynicism, and amorality. My very first philosophy professor began his first class to us first year students with these words: “The philosopher is like a blind man in a cellar coal bin at midnight looking for a black cat.” Now I ask you, where does one go from such a beginning?

It's important to remind ourselves that all human thinking is analogical, consisting of images and pictures, metaphors and likenesses. We observe a dog and say that it wags its tail because it is happy, or even that it smiles at us. Yet we have no way of experiencing directly being a dog; we simply project an analogy from our human experience. So it is in our thinking about God. All the analogies – God as father or mother, creator, redeemer, king or queen, lord or lady, shepherd, great clockmaker – are, after all analogies, attempting to describe what we cannot know directly by using images, metaphors, and stories based on our human experience.

What is needed, I believe, are spiritual practices that can allow us to experience – to experience – well, let me quote Albert Einstein. Yes, that Albert Einstein, who as a Jew escaped the holocaust that was coming in his native Germany, a holocaust in the name of God, with every Nazi soldier bearing the words “Gott Mit Uns”, God with us, on his uniform. Yes, that Albert Einstein, who contributed hugely to 20 th century science and probed more deeply, perhaps, than anyone else into the secrets of the universe. Here is what he wrote in Living Philosophies : “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.”

What form would such spiritual practices take? There have been many forms: meditation, prayer, sublime music or chanting, a walk in the mountains or forest, going into the wilderness for forty days, giving one's life in service, yoga, to name but a few. There are times to ease up on our healthy Unitarian skepticism a bit and allow ourselves to experience. That is why we gather here. We want our gathering here to be sanctified, blessed, made sacred by that experience of the great mysteries. That is what your Sunday Services committee wants to provide, and we need your feedback today and regularly as we go along about what you experience, what moves you, or doesn't move you. That is how we create a life of meaning and joy together.

There are many names: Great Spirit, ego-transcendence, the Light, the Self beyond the ordinary self, Universal Soul, the Great Self of Buddhism, Spirit of Life, Holy Spirit, or the Ground of Being or God above God of Paul Tillich. The names don't matter. What matters is the experience. So I invite you to join me now in singing yet another time, and feeling: “Spirit of life, come unto me, sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.”