How do you envision God?

[mvd]

Poll question: How do you envision God?

I see him as a force of light. Kind of like the force behind the universe. How do you see him/her?

[mvd]

1. To the people who vote other, could you explain?

I'm curious to see what other Christian progressives say.

[theredpen]

2. Other

I don't see God "as" anything. God is the universe. What we usually call the "universe" (or what science would call the universe) is just the part we can experience directly.

[133724]

3. Other:

As a friend and a partner in the creation of the world....

[shimmergal]

4. Can't really relate to "God the Father"

at all anymore, because the image is contaminated by centuries of sexist, all-powerful ruler imagery.

When I pray seriously, I pray to Jesus. Sorry if that makes me sound like a fundamentalist; I'm about as far from one as you can get and remain Christian, but His humanity makes him approachable.

I also find meaning in the Holy Spirit part of the Trinity; I find it capable of reflecting the many images and virtues and even personas that are outside the bounds of conventional Christian discourse. Like The Lady as a source of succor and protection.

A marvelous book, She Who Is, really prodded me in the direction of sorting all this out mentally.

[elshiva]

5. I "Love She Who IS" but I still relate to God the Father.

He has gotten some bad press...

[theredpen]

8. I don't know if you know this...

But the Holy Spirit is explicitly female. "Hagia Sophia" is "Holy Wisdom" and it the Greek name for the Holy Spirit. The "a" ending is feminine.

(Ssssh! Don't tell the fundies!)

[supernova]

6. Hard to describe but I'll try

God is simply THE eternal existence. A being without beginning and end. I also take a bit of pantheism and panentheism, God is everything and in everything, so occasionally takes forms we recognize in order to communicate with us in ways we understand.

I don't think of God as "male" an old father figure. I think of God as something beyond what we call male and female. The Old Man imagery is simply our limited language, not a comment about the God's gender.

I sometimes get intimations of God in his/her natural state. Lovely doesn't begin to describe it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. I am trying to break away from the very ingrained Old guy on a throne who

is just waiting to launch a lightning bolt at my butt and move more to a panentheistic view. Kinda like the Force! :D

[mcg]

9. me too, more of a panentheistic view nt

[Kajsa]

10. I believe God is a force.

I don't always understand God as I believe him/her/it to be,
but that's OK.

Faith is the belief that something exists without the
concrete "proof and evidence" required in atheism.

God is omnipresent and works through others.

[Popol Vuh]

11. Other

Gawd is the entire multidimensional universe. The entire universe is various densities of vibrating strands of energy. All energy is consciousness. All consciousness is Gawd.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Other...

To envision God is impossible. If God could be understood, envisioned, described, or defined, God would not be God any more. Just something described, defined...

God may well be something very common in another dimension or higher plane of understanding, but we aren't privy to that plane, so we accept God, but don't define God.

My personal expectation, should I ever be able to understand God, is that it is a universal intelligence, but that's not something I believe, just suspect to be. We are able to worship God and know God's presence while realizing that God's actual "form" is unknowable, and therefore irrelevent to us.

I joined a Quaker meeting when I came across this sort of thinking in Quaker theology, and while that is a simplified version of the way most Quakers view God, it began to clarify my own, somewhat similar. thought.

Quaker theology (we don't have doctrines or dogma, but we do have common beliefs) talks of "the Light" which is "that of God within us." We don't fully understand this Light, but we accept that it is working within us to bring us into communion with God and with each other. No, the Light isn't quite pantheism, but it doesn't necessarily deny pantheism, either. It is the knowable aspect of God on earth.

[Meshuga]

13. Other - similar to #12

In my opinion, God cannot be understood or defined. I believe that when a person tries to give God characteristics that person limits God to that definition. But to deepen the relationship we need to let go of the limiting characteristics and seek interaction to achieve closeness. The same works with the relationships we have with our friends and family. We can give them limiting characteristics about who they are but we are only close to them if we let go of the characteristics we perceive and start interacting and having a true relationship with them.

Sometimes I do my share of limiting God by defining God as a process or sometimes as a personal God (when I need comfort). But my general approach, which I try to stay on focus, is of a God seeker more than a person who claims to know God. To me, and I am sure that to many here as well, it is more worthwhile to seek God in every aspect of life and communicating with the divine through deeds.

Happy New Year!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Unimaginable

and a little bit of "appears different to different people."

[skater314159]

15. I was torn between "other" and "appear differently".

The choice that I voted for was "God appears differently to the individual". I finally chose this, even thought I believe that God is. By that I mean that in the Torah, we see the name of God, as given to Moshe in the Wilderness is "I AM". God uses the verb "to be" as his name. God is being itself, and as such, all things which have being (all that which is is God). Because of this, in Hebrew and Aramaic the use of the verb "to be" is limited to God. Individuals do not use the verb to be, as only God is.

I think the is-ness of God is mediated in a way such that it is both perceptible and understandable to the individual. God will never speak to a person in a language they cannot understand. God could be either an old man, a young woman, Shiva, Hailie Selassie, Jesus, love, art, Jazz, the wind, the Cosmos, or whatever else an individual experiences as "the Numinous". The only problem is when a single individual becomes either so insecure or so filled with hubris that they feel their is-ness is the only is-ness there is... and this is a REAL problem when that individual gets followers. That is the birth of fundamentalism and most of the problems that you see today with religion.

I could go on for a lot longer about this - I have a MATh... :silly: so this is really my cup-o-tea! But I will spare you!

Peace!
:hippie: