The White Wolf Asks Who Is God?
Well, we have addressed the fact that I opened up and listened, waiting for God to make the proper introductions. (See here) We also addressed the answer.
Now once again we move on to where I went during this initial answer and beyond it. I was asking who God was. While on the subconscious level things were moving, they moved on the conscious level as well.
If I am asking who God is, the initial reaction is to go to any of the staple answers that I have been given in my studies thus far. The simple answer might be to fill in the blank with Jesus' name and be done with it. However, this was not the time for the simple answers. Beyond which, I knew that my thoughts that something had been missing rang true in the answer I had gotten. There was no simple, "I am Jesus, you already know me" kind of answer. So if that path held the answers, I was at least supposed to look a little deeper to understand those answers.
What else had my years taught me besides that simple name? There were other things about God that I could reflect on. God is love. God is truth. Looking at those two statements I realized that they weren't true.
God can not be truth. Simple logic destroys this theory. I have a scar on my right foot and it has been there for nearly a quarter of a century. That is the truth. Simple logic states if A=B then B=A. Might lead me to worship that scar, or at least the concept of it.
What God says may be true. Surely what God says is true, is true. God can't be truth. Similarly God is not love. I suppose this one is more plausible, but this isn't true. God is loving, but is not love. What I feel for my wife is pleasing to the Goddess, but it is not Her.
But then, how important were the attributes of God right at this point. I struggled with the question of whether I needed to look at the varying attributes as I could best assemble them, and work my way in to know God, or if I needed to find God and thus learn the personality from there.
Something told me that I had more of a grasp than I gave myself credit for, so I kept working on this concept.
The next concept to work on, since I was taking these lessons that I had learned and was investigating them, was what it was that I thought was missing. What it was that I had gone looking for as I walked away from the church in search for answers.
The answer to this question surfaced in one of the most unexpected places. It happened on an evening when we were doing our then traditional Friday night bonfire at my house. It was early yet and it was just me, my wife and a friend of hers. The friend said that she had decided that she was going to "try Wicca."
My reaction was profound. I laughed at her. I couldn't help it. She said it like one might say they would try on a coat, or sample a new dish. "I want to see how it feels, and decide whether or not I am going to keep it."
Finding myself mired in a serious spiritual journey, this flippant attitude kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Still, as she started to explain some of what she had heard about Wicca (admittedly not much at the time, even by her own tale, and some of it wrong) I went out on the porch and reflected back on another whom I had known who practiced this religion, and how he might have reacted to the comments inside. I had a fairly good idea. While I helped the chaplains while in the Air Force, I mediated in a feud between him and a bunch of people who had made a similar decision to "try" this religion, for them as an excuse to bash christians for the most part.
He had spent a couple of nights with me, explaining his beliefs and how they differed from what was being represented by these others. I filed it away along with the feud when it was all done and went on. Yet, now, something struck me. I knew what was missing. What I had been looking for. She was.
When I was younger, and more faithful than knowledgable, simple circumstances permeated my religious experiences. I would walk outside in the windstorms and feel the wind running across my body and I would pray. I would pray to God, yet even now I realize that the wind was always Her.
As I studied, being raised Catholic, I would frequently pray to Mary, as we were taught. More frequently than to God. Kind of a "you speak to him" mentality that went away as my studies continued. Continued to a point where She had been put aside. My faith had taken me to a place where there was no "her."
And the slight breeze said, "Now you are onto something."
Now once again we move on to where I went during this initial answer and beyond it. I was asking who God was. While on the subconscious level things were moving, they moved on the conscious level as well.
If I am asking who God is, the initial reaction is to go to any of the staple answers that I have been given in my studies thus far. The simple answer might be to fill in the blank with Jesus' name and be done with it. However, this was not the time for the simple answers. Beyond which, I knew that my thoughts that something had been missing rang true in the answer I had gotten. There was no simple, "I am Jesus, you already know me" kind of answer. So if that path held the answers, I was at least supposed to look a little deeper to understand those answers.
What else had my years taught me besides that simple name? There were other things about God that I could reflect on. God is love. God is truth. Looking at those two statements I realized that they weren't true.
God can not be truth. Simple logic destroys this theory. I have a scar on my right foot and it has been there for nearly a quarter of a century. That is the truth. Simple logic states if A=B then B=A. Might lead me to worship that scar, or at least the concept of it.
What God says may be true. Surely what God says is true, is true. God can't be truth. Similarly God is not love. I suppose this one is more plausible, but this isn't true. God is loving, but is not love. What I feel for my wife is pleasing to the Goddess, but it is not Her.
But then, how important were the attributes of God right at this point. I struggled with the question of whether I needed to look at the varying attributes as I could best assemble them, and work my way in to know God, or if I needed to find God and thus learn the personality from there.
Something told me that I had more of a grasp than I gave myself credit for, so I kept working on this concept.
The next concept to work on, since I was taking these lessons that I had learned and was investigating them, was what it was that I thought was missing. What it was that I had gone looking for as I walked away from the church in search for answers.
The answer to this question surfaced in one of the most unexpected places. It happened on an evening when we were doing our then traditional Friday night bonfire at my house. It was early yet and it was just me, my wife and a friend of hers. The friend said that she had decided that she was going to "try Wicca."
My reaction was profound. I laughed at her. I couldn't help it. She said it like one might say they would try on a coat, or sample a new dish. "I want to see how it feels, and decide whether or not I am going to keep it."
Finding myself mired in a serious spiritual journey, this flippant attitude kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Still, as she started to explain some of what she had heard about Wicca (admittedly not much at the time, even by her own tale, and some of it wrong) I went out on the porch and reflected back on another whom I had known who practiced this religion, and how he might have reacted to the comments inside. I had a fairly good idea. While I helped the chaplains while in the Air Force, I mediated in a feud between him and a bunch of people who had made a similar decision to "try" this religion, for them as an excuse to bash christians for the most part.
He had spent a couple of nights with me, explaining his beliefs and how they differed from what was being represented by these others. I filed it away along with the feud when it was all done and went on. Yet, now, something struck me. I knew what was missing. What I had been looking for. She was.
When I was younger, and more faithful than knowledgable, simple circumstances permeated my religious experiences. I would walk outside in the windstorms and feel the wind running across my body and I would pray. I would pray to God, yet even now I realize that the wind was always Her.
As I studied, being raised Catholic, I would frequently pray to Mary, as we were taught. More frequently than to God. Kind of a "you speak to him" mentality that went away as my studies continued. Continued to a point where She had been put aside. My faith had taken me to a place where there was no "her."
And the slight breeze said, "Now you are onto something."
posted by Wanderer at 7:16 PM
2 Comments:
God cannot be truth. God cannot be love. The reason in both logical and linguistic. I cannot be quantum mechanics. You cannot be anthropology. You can't put a noun at the end of that kind of sentence. No matter how thoroughly you study your religion, even if you live, eat, sleep, breathe, and puke religion, even if you are literally praying every second, you can't be theology.
Similarly even if everything your god says is true, that doesn't make him truth. The concept of an entity being truth doesn't even make sense.
Agreed, which is what makes the spewing of such comments dangerous. Whenever you run across a point where you point to a religious text or to a portion of a sermon and can state unequivocally that what was said cannot possibly be true, such as "God is truth", the foundation of your belief can be severely shaken. Simple logical step. How much more of this is wrong?
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