The Form of God

I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God.
It's religion I'm doubting.
- Bono

How can God be so many different things to different people? How can God be a young Jewish man to some, an ancient male figure to others, and a female or an eagle or have eight arms or be formless for others? And how about having three forms simultaneously (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost)?  How can God be the incarnation of peace and love for some, while embody justice and divine retribution for others? How can God be, for some people, someone/something that intervenes in each human's life on a daily basis, while for others God is more distant and does not micromanage our lives. How about free will and/or predestination?

Of course there are many theories. The most common belief is that exactly one of these views toward God is real, while all the others are false, and often viewed as intentionally heretical falsehoods. And of course many other people believe all ideas of any "god" to be strictly human inventions.

Personally, I believe that God is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Benevolent (although that seldom means that we get what we want). Being omnipotent, God can and does appear to each of us bearing exactly the characteristics (form and message) that best serve us individually. Those who need love see love. Those who need justice see justice. Those who need a "personal" God get that. Those who need a distant beacon to mark the goal get that.

For me, this idea that God can be everything and anything to each of us drives my commitment to honor all people and to respect each of their beliefs about God.

God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace
that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.
- Bono

We must be ready to learn from one another,
not claiming that we alone possess all truth
and that somehow we have a corner on God.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

God has no religion.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Religion is a blessing when, and only when,
it provides a focus for a compassionate community
to minister to its members and to the world at large.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Religion as a human phenomenon is as riddled through
with potential for both good and evil as any other phenomenon.
- Richard John Neuhaus

We can never be the better for our religion
if our neighbor is the worse for it.
- Anonymous

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity
are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society.
The community makes God into the image it wants,
vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.
- Mary Douglas

A common denominator of all religions
is that they have the power
to bring out both the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson

Further reading: Perspectives on the Nature of God

Many Religions, One Divine
     

To Be a Faithful Follower of Jesus

From Romans 12:9-21...
Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in love.
Honor one another above yourselves.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
Live at peace with everyone.
Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath.
[It is God's job to punish, not man's]
If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And the second [commandment] is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
- Matthew 22:39:40
[Jesus 1st commandment is, of course, to love God]

Loving others is FUNDAMENTAL to the "radical" (and basically socialist) teachings of Jesus.  If a person rejects one of the two commandments that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on," how can they consider themself a true follower of Jesus?

Is Hope Futile?

Question: I have tried goal setting and hoped for many things, but not one of them has ever happened.  In fact if I really take off after something, that is an absolute 100% guarantee it won't happen. Is hope futile?

My Answer:

There are a number of steps on the path to success - and you need all of them.

1. Believe that God wants good things for you.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

2. Believe in yourself - develop self-esteem.
(see How to Build Self Esteem)

Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities.
Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers
you cannot be successful or happy.
- Norman Vincent Peale

3. Take action toward your goals - every day.

You can't cross the sea merely by
standing and staring at the water.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

4. Accept "failure" when it comes. "Failure" may mean either that you have learned something that will enable you to "succeed" next time, or that God has chosen something better for you than what you asked for - even if it doesn't seem so at the time.

Success consists of going from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill

A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

(also see A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect
and Maybe So, Maybe Not. - Ancient Taoist Proverb)

5. Never stop trying. Look for new paths toward your highest level goal (your life mission) - and do not get stuck in repeating old methods that didn't work.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
- Napoleon Hill

If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up.
Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
- Michael Jordan


-----

May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Why Me, God?

When troubles descend, people have long asked, "Why Me?" or "Why Me, God?"

The answers to this question range from the theological, to the compassionate, to the philosophical, to the comic -- and sometimes humor is actually a great help in surviving bad times.

Consider the highly varied points of view in these quotes on the question, "Why Me?"

If I were to say, "God, why me?" about the bad things,
then I should have said, "God, why me?"
about the good things that happened in my life.
- Arthur Ashe

God will never give you anything you can't handle,
so don't stress.
- Kelly Clarkson

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish he didn't trust me so much.
- Mother Teresa

Life is a succession of lessons
which must be lived to be understood.
- Helen Keller

Why has God given me such magnificent talent?
It is a curse as well as a great blessing.
- Albrecht Durer

"Why me?" That is the soldier's first question,
asked each morning as the patrols go out
and each evening as the night settles around the foxholes.
- William Broyles Jr.

Why does anything ever happen?
Some things happen and some don't.
- Kid Rock

Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?"
Then a voice answers "Nothing personal,
your name just happened to come up. -
- Charlie Brown, in Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts

God is in all men, but all men are not in God;
that is why we suffer.
- Ramakrishna

It is no use to grumble and complain;
It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain
- Why, rain's my choice.
- James Whitcomb Riley

I think wholeness is God's design for us;
and that often amounts to embracing contradictions.
- Bono

A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb

There are people in the world so hungry,
that God cannot appear to them
except in the form of bread.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.
- Yiddish Proverb

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)

Is today a day to gather strength from the storm -
a day to to learn life lessons for the next battle?
Or is today a day to sit by the fire
and watch the storm rage outside?
Either way, the storm is just life.
Give thanks for all of Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You don't have the power to make life "fair,"
but you do have the power to make life joyful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Miracles Need Both God and You

Every miracle needs two participants - God and you.

There are two things you need to do to begin a miracle. First, you need to have a genuine unselfish intention for the outcome. Second, you must do everything within your own earthly power to facilitate the miracle. Everything else is God's job.

To illustrate this, let me re-tell a very old story.

For years a man prayed each day, "Please God, let me win the lottery." After receiving no response whatever, he finally asked, "God, why have you forsaken me? All I asked was just to win the lottery."

The skies opened and a powerful voice answered, "Jacob, Jacob, meet me halfway. At least buy a lottery ticket."

I re-tell this story because it is cute, and not because winning the lottery is an appropriate miracle to ask for. But the takeaway is, "Meet me halfway." Don't expect God to do what you are able to do for yourself. God's part of the job is to do everything you don't have the ability to do for yourself.

Let's look at an example. Three people have cancer.

1. The first person says, "I'll have the surgery and the chemo. Who needs God."
2. The second says, "If I pray hard enough, I don't need modern medical treatments."
3. The third says, "My part of the miracle is the surgery and the chemo. I am meeting God halfway, and the rest of the miracle is God's job."

I would be that third person, believing that God expects us to use the earthly tools He has given us as our commitment to meet Him halfway.

If modern medicine offered no options, I would travel to Lourdes or to John of God to fulfill my part of meeting God halfway.

A miracle doesn't have to be about a life-or-death crisis. All of life is composed of smaller miracles. For each of those miracles meet God halfway - even if that just means standing in the rain and getting wet to get a better look at one of God's miracle rainbows.

My Personal Experience of God

What is your personal experience of God? Does God talk to you? Does God send you wordless intuitions when you most need them? Have you had the experience of receiving physical of emotional healing? Or the experience of acting as a channel to facilitate the healing of others?

On the other hand, perhaps your experience of God is that the whole concept is a fraud, and there is nothing beyond ourselves in the universe.

Are you willing to share your personal experience with others? If you are, Please write, as a comment below, whatever aspects of your personal experience of God you feel called to share. PLEASE do not make negative comments on the personal experience anyone else has shared.

My special thanks go out to those who are courageous enough to share their experience.

Perspectives on the Nature of God

Have a Conversation With God, Today

Unanswered Prayers

Feel Your Connection With the Infinite - a Meditation

Grant That I May Radiate

Understanding, Love, and Compassion for All

The following quotes are by the Most Rev. Dr. Desmond Tutu in his new book God Is Not A Christian: And Other Provocations. Archbishop Tutu has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the Gandhi Peace Prize

We must hold to our particular and peculiar beliefs tenaciously, not pretending that all religions are the same, for they are patently not the same. We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

We are supposed to proclaim the God of love, but we have been guilty as Christians of sowing hatred and suspicion; we commend the one whom we call the Prince of Peace, and yet as Christians we have fought more wars than we care to remember. We have claimed to be a fellowship of compassion and caring and sharing, but as Christians we often sanctify sociopolitical systems that belie this, where the rich grow ever richer and the poor grow ever poorer, where we seem to sanctify a furious competitiveness, ruthless as can only be appropriate to the jungle.

The answer? Understanding, Love, and Compassion for All.

How God Works

How God Works
- an old anonymous story retold

A very religious man was stranded in his house as the flood waters began to rise. Soon all the roads were impassible, and the water lapped at his front door.

A neighbor rowed past in a boat. He called out to the man, "Come with me to higher ground." The man replied, "No thank you, I have faith that God will save me."

The water continued to rise - forcing the man up to the second floor of his house. He heard from a loudspeaker, "This is the sheriff, we have come in our boat to rescue you." The man opened the window, and yelled back, "No thank you, I have faith that God will save me."

The water kept rising, and the man climbed onto the roof of his house. A Coast Guard helicopter hovered overhead, and the crew began to drop a rope ladder. The man yelled, "No thank you, I have faith that God will save me."

Before long, the man was washed off into the torrent and died.

When the man faced his judgement, he asked God, "Why did you desert me? I had absolute faith in you, and you let me down."

God answered, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what were you expecting?"