Louisville Process Theology Network

The Meaning of God Today

“For me, God is not a defined personality. God is the underlying creative force of the universe. God is the universe. There is no division in my mind between creator and creation, they are one and the same.…….This is a very primal definition of God that can be traced back to our most ancient ancestors. It may even predate the existence of Homo sapiens as a species.”

Reza Aslan

 

 

“When I am asked if I believe in God, I always say yes, but I also say, just don’t ask me what God is. But I know that there is a God.

I once broke my neck. My surviving a potentially fatal injury was a coincidence, as much a matter of luck as anything else. But a miracle happened afterward; my vision of the world entirely changed.

There is no explanation that I could think of, except what it says in the Talmud: A lot of times when we fall, it is easier for us to see heaven from the ground looking up. That is the beginning of the ultimate contradiction. At times we feel the presence of God most in his apparent absence.”

Stephen Tobolowsky

 

 

”I’ve never been able to feel that God does exist. I’ve never been gifted with that belief…….I’ve heard about the leap it takes, and I’ve just never been able to make that leap. I’ve been unable to commit to belief. So I’m a seeker……..

I’m searching for a higher power, something beyond the immanent world, but I’ve never been able to find it……..

 

 The longing for transcendence, for some experience out of time, is very deep within me. The belief in God is an ongoing discussion and quarrel. It’s a quest. I don’t think that it comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

 

I can’t give up on the idea of God. One of the reasons that I write poetry, and have written poetry, is to try to find moments out of time, to rescue meaning from the flux of experience. But I have had only

fleeting experiences, mere instances, that seem to freeze time or hold time or escape from time. Then inevitably I am back in the flow.”

 

Edward Hirsch

 

 

“I’ve been in conversation with God from my earliest consciousness. As a social introvert, I have always spent an inordinate amount of time by myself, and much of that time has been in conversation with an unseen divine creative power…….

When I sat down to play an instrument and create music and melodies, I would enter a “zone.” That zone allowed me to tap into the divine. I could hear the collective yearnings and joys of humanity vibrating in the air as I played and composed music…….

Through my work, I experience the divine.”

 

Basya Schechter

 

“In the past it might have been easier to talk about God in an absolute and dogmatic tone, but today it is very difficult to talk about God that way……..

One of the main Jewish questions has always been: Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? There is a midrashic tradition that when Moses ascended Mount Sinai and wanted to see the face of God, it was because he wanted to ask God this question………In the face of such enormous evil, we struggle to see how we can still assert our faith in God……

 

I think that the only way we can live in a world that is connected to God is by openly acknowledging brokenness. We are broken, and our ideas of God are so fragmentary that we struggle to keep them alive……

 

God is not trying to imprint himself on us in an absolute way; he does not say that this is who he will be forever. Instead, his language is an invitation to develop, to grow and change and deepen our understanding of God. I find that enlivening. It acknowledges that nothing is whole and that our understanding of God is never complete.

I like to imagine God as a teacher, particularly as a music teacher……Such a relationship is an intimate one; it is expressed in the music of a life.”

Avivah Zornberg

 

 

 

“The laws of physics are the closest thing in the world today that I would align with a theological perspective. I view the world as extraordinarily coherent and harmonious because of the way the fundamental laws of physics are able, with just a few symbols etched on a piece of paper, to describe a wealth of phenomena…….

From my perspective, that order and organization come from fundamental physical laws; for others, that’s the role that God plays…..

I think the theological perspective is extremely valuable because it captures through religious stories the qualities that have been most important to us…….

I think of myself as a spiritual person, but not in a traditional religious sense. I look at the world with awe and wonder. I am struck by the spectacular way that the universe is put together…….”

Brian Greene

 

 

 

 

MOMENT MAGAZINE, March 2018