God is Beyond My Comprehension
For the last week I have been talking about some of my life assumptions, those ideas I hold to be true. Along the way I’ve thought of several more. Perhaps I’ll write about those another time. The last of the assumptions I want to write about this time, however, is a sister to the first assumption–”I could be wrong.” Like the first, “God is beyond my comprehension” assumes I don’t know everything, and I want to be open to new understandings as they come.
I grew up in a fairly conservative evangelical home where faith was an implicit and explicit part of our existence. I found great comfort in that theologically conservative worldview because it helped me make sense of my world. However, when I moved into my adult years, my study and experience gradually introduced me to a variety of worldviews that often contradicted my own. I discovered that not everyone thought of God as I did.
Some understood God as a distant spectator of the world’s activities, uncaring and uninvolved. Others, envisioned God as so intimately involved in our lives that God provided parking places for us at the busy shopping mall–that is, if we said the correct incantation. Still others saw God so clearly in nature that God became synonymous with the earth or sun or moon. Some believed God loves so deeply that hell is an impossibility. Others, believed God damned us all to hell from the moment we were born.
I discovered that some focused on God’s feminine qualities and believed she was tender and motherly, feeding her children from breasts of compassion that never run dry. Others saw God as the man’s man–a warrior ready to do battle against the forces of evil in the world, a god who destroyed evildoers with the thrust of his spear. These are just a few of the multiple perceptions. There are many more, each with thousands of varied subtleties.
A Muslim man once said to me, “We serve the same God, you and I. I call him Allah. You call him Yahweh.” Do we really serve the same God? Do I believe in the same God as my Muslim brothers and sisters? My answer has to be ”no,” but not for the reason you may think. My answer is “no” because when it comes right down to it, the God I believe in and serve is not exactly like anyone else’s God. I don’t serve the same God as my Christian brothers and sisters either. Each of us have a different understanding of who God is.
Muslims and Christians discussing their faith outside a religious shrine. Notice the young boy to the left taking in the conversation, forming his own understandings from the varied perspectives he hears.
These varied pictures we carry of God are unique, formed out of our individual experiences and training. Can I say my understanding is more “true” than yours like many claim? Absolutely not. What I think we all have in common, however, is an imperfect understanding of God. God is far larger than my limited understanding. God is far larger than your limited understanding.
I am aware that some (if not many) of my God-perceptions may be wrong. That is, some of the understandings I hold to be true about God, may in fact be completely contrary to God’s nature. In addition, some of my perceptions may be wrong only because they grasp only a fraction of the largeness of God.
One of the things that bothers me most about religion, I think, is the arrogance toward “truth,” the idea that “we” understand God best, that “we” know God’s will perfectly, that “our” way is the right way to believe. I’m not arguing for a syncretistic faith here that attempts to blend eveyone’s beliefs into one. That becomes it’s own worldview with its own limitations. Instead, I am arguing for all of us to continue the quest to hear God, know God, and understand God. I’m arguing for a humility among all of us that assumes God is far greater than our current perspective can possibly grasp and we must be constantly open to a grander vision, even if that grander vision calls us to change or abandon our previous”knowledge.”
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