Another slightly edited old post, from my old blog, originally posted August 10, 2009, followed up with a bit of new stuff. Since we haven't discussed religion/spirituality much recently, for those of you who are new, I should explain that I was raised Evangelical/Southern Baptist, and my dad was raised German Baptist, which may not mean anything to you but trust me, it explains a lot. I still attend church, but at a progressive denomination, and my theology is a bit-- well, sketchy compared to how I was raised.
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Before I go off on my next idea, here's a bit of housekeeping, a defining of terms. I want to be able to use the word "God," but of course, when I use that word it may mean something entirely different to me than it means to you. It certainly means something different to me now than it did when I blithely told a young Jewish man I met at an icebreaker in college how happy I was that God was my best friend. (Yes, I really did do that and it gives me shudders down to my toes to think about it now.)
In my twenties, after I left my conservative childhood faith behind, I didn’t use the word “God” at all for a long time—I avoided it even in my head when I was just thinking. What the heck does it mean? I’ve said this before, but is “God” some kind of sentient, all-knowing, all-seeing Being in the Sky? Is it a cluster of ideas shared by a community that takes on a life of its own in the collective mind of the group? Is it something individual to each one of us? Is God, as the new age folks used to tell me, within me? And what the heck would that mean? Is God a Higher Self, a Divine Source, a Deity Within?
I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. Further, I don't think it's possible to know. But I sort of tentatively decided about a year ago (edited Aug 2018: that would be about ten years ago now) that I had been thinking about this long enough that I could go back to using the word God to describe a certain force in my life for which I have no other name. I don’t really understand what that force is, (ouch, I just remembered Star Wars and The Force and that’s not what I mean, but how else am I going to say it?) but it is convenient to have a name for it whatever it is, and God works as well as anything else and also conveniently fits into a number of other ideas.
It also enables me to have conversations with other believers without endlessly saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Although in that instance, it may unfortunately give them the idea that I agree with them about the nature of God when in fact I probably don’t. How could I, since I don’t really know what God is?
The point that I’m so convolutedly trying to make here is that when I use the word “God,” what I really mean is “What-I-think-of-as-God.” It is a concept in my head that may not have any objective existence at all. But it would be entirely tiresome to type that out every time I want to refer to “What-I-think-of-as-God.” So, that’s all I'm saying. Just don’t take the word “God” too literally-- here, or anywhere else, come to think of it. And I'm still capitalizing it. I considered not doing that, but it just didn't seem right.
And furthermore..... I still pray. Even though I'm not sure that What-I-think-of-as-God hears me, or is able to intervene in my life in any concrete way. And the weird thing is, I usually get some kind of answer. Not a lightning bolt from the sky, or voice booming over my car stereo or even a message on a billboard like Steve Martin in L.A. Story. But if I'm asking a question, or seeking a solution to a problem, or honestly trying to figure something out, usually within a day or two, I have an answer. Or at least a next step. I read something, or hear a random remark, or there's a line in movie, and it occurs to me-- there it is.
There are (at least) two ways you could interpret this: you could say I'm taking something I would have figured out anyway and calling it an answer to prayer, and to that I can only say: you're right. That could be exactly what's happening. Or from the opposite perspective, you could say, well, doesn't that prove that God exists and you should believe in Him/Her/It, and once again, all I can say is, yes, I can see how you would think that, but so far for me, that's not what has happened.
So I still pray. And I still function as if God exists. And all of this blathering on and on was just so that I could tell you that I prayed this week for help with breaking through a particular self-defeating belief that feels set in stone in my head. And the answer I got back was: be willing to give it up.
And that's something to think about.
p.s. this endless cogitating on all side of an issue and being to see a bunch of different ways of looking at a problem while remaining uncommitted to any of them is, I've learned, a normal feature for an Enneagram Five. Just in case you were wondering.
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