The only thing I’m sure about God is that nobody has a correct idea of what God is really like. How could we possibly imagine, much less understand, what an infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being could be like?
We struggle to understand why God allows children to starve, why God
allowed Hitler and Stalin to do what they did, why he allows earthquakes and
plagues. We struggle with his foreknowledge, which seems to preclude our free
will. We often act as if God doesn’t love us or he isn’t watching us. And we
have a hard time accepting that he could possibly forgive us despite our selfishness
and hypocrisy.
So we have some preconceived notions about what God ought to be like,
but sometimes these don’t match how God acts in the Bible, in history and in
our lives. There are two possibilities here: either God doesn’t exist, or else
he is not at all like what we imagined. As Chrys Jordan said:
I don't actively disbelieve in the "Christian God," so much as I seriously doubt such an entity exists. In my mind, such an entity is far too petty and too small to be the Creator of Everything. When I hear that God made everything in six days, I cannot but think: look at the world. Look at the universe. You think God is so small. When I hear that God is obsessed with trivial matters such as homosexuality, I cannot but think: look at how great the universe is. Do you think the source of all things is obsessed over trivia? The only thing I will say is that God must be great, and the image many Christians have of him must fall short.[1]
We find out some things about God from the Bible,
but this is difficult, since much of the Bible is allegorical. For example, God
told Abraham to kill his son Isaac and then intervened; does this episode show
a hard, demanding God or a forgiving, loving God? Is the lesson to obey God no
matter what, or to put an end to the Bronze Age practice of human sacrifice?
We inherit some ideas about God from our culture and religious
tradition, but this is shifting sand, since our image of God has changed
considerably in the past couple centuries. Consider, for example, the wrathful,
righteous, judging God of the Puritans. Our modern idea of God is little like
that of John Knox!
We get some of our ideas about God from personal experience. When I cry
out to God in anguish and grief, he comforts me in very special ways. When I
look at a tree swaying in the breeze, feel the warm sun on my face, listen to a
gurgling brook, smell the rich earth on a farm and taste a freshly picked wild
raspberry, I am in what the ancient Celts called a thin place and
I feel particularly intimate with God.
But my encounters with God are not at all like yours. Some of our very
real perceptions contradict each other. Even within my own life, surely some of
my profound life-shaping events were pure coincidence or brain chemistry, and
not divine intervention.
We have no shortage of ideas about what God might be; I would suggest that we have too much material to work with and we need to do some judicious editing. As Jeff Wilhite said,
I spend a lot of time continually challenging everything I believe. This makes my faith, my love for God and my understanding of Him so much stronger. Some of my most deeply held theological beliefs have been molded and shaped by the need to respond to very valid criticisms.
Some people’s faith is too rigid to bend. If you grow up believing that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and then you are confronted with the possibility that it might not be so inerrant after all, you have a decision to make. Do you throw out inerrancy or do you throw out God?
Many people will tell you that after enough of this theological whittling you will be left with no faith at all so you are better off scrapping it all to begin with, but I vehemently disagree with that sentiment.
In this process of theological whittling, you are only shaving away falsehoods. God is truth, and, as such, He has nothing to fear by your sincere and honest searching for truth. A fundamentalist faith (or even the picture of God many atheists hold) is just a solid, featureless block of wood. But after enough of this sincere searching for truth and whittling away at falsehoods, the face of a good and beautiful God begins to emerge. [2]
We discover God, piece by piece. We will not likely
be fortunate enough to have him reveal himself as he did to the prophets of
old, but that does not mean that he cannot be found.
Where do we start? When asked many years back what portions of the Bible should be retained as a foundation for one’s evolving faith, I had no good reply at the time; since then I have realized that this is precisely what the creeds were invented for. Take, for example, the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. [3]
Nearly all of this is paraphrased from Biblical
texts, and that which isn't comes from widely-accepted exegesis of Biblical
texts. So this creed is on solid scriptural ground; it is concise enough that
it is practical for every day; and it has stood the test of many centuries of
examination. While it spends many words to refute heretical ideas, it consists
of positive assertions we can use to formulate our own concept of God.