Testimony 3

Testimony 3:

Not to be disagreeable, but I also am not sure I believe in God as a being, a conscious being and certainly not an embodied being. Any thing that came from nothing and from which all things came cannot look or sound like me (or maybe it does, who am I to say?). Something that exists outside of time and space, how can I even conceive of such a being. To be, yes, I believe God is. As I said earlier, I enjoy the rhythm of an impossible being being the impossible start to all things; then again, if you want to say that God always existed, that too is fine with me. It’s fine because it’s as equally impossible for me to grasp and one must believe that God or whatever either always existed or came from nothing—both of which are just as absurd and just as reasonable as the other.

Now, here’s where the church and I may depart (although I’ll guess most theologians would concede my point). I think the conception of God as presented in most churches today is probably wildly incorrect; that God is a he, is a consciousness, is a self—these are beliefs that I’m not sure of. What I am sure of is that it is much easier to fall in line with the rhythms of God’s creation if we plug into him with this primitive language and crude understanding.

So what does that mean when one proclaims that one religion “gets” God more than the others? Is it pretend? Is it prejudice? I practice the Judeo-Christian religion with post-modern American influences; am I more enlightened than the savage witch doctor? Gosh, I hope so. But I also recognize that God transcends religion.

Yet while God may transcend religion, we don’t. Spacio-temporal bodies with knowledge gleaned through these limitations, what hope have we of grasping the greatness of God? Not much. But perhaps we can taste it. We are worshippers; we worship through thought and act, time and money, practices and pretenses. Religion is our human path to God. So, are all religions the same, are all gods God? Who am I to claim that one religion is the way to taste God, to touch what may be touched of an untouchable being?

A children’s book does a better job than I of tackling the exclusivity of faith; while everyone who got to go live with Aslan were worshippers of Alsan, one character was accepted into Aslan’s heaven not because he had found Aslan but because he sought with a seeker’s heart. Let’s say that is what I feel comfortable believing about religion. There is truth and it’s available to us, maybe not in whole but in part, and those parts, those pieces, those splinters of truth may not be the exclusive domain of any one religion; however, one religion may make finding those pieces easier.