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Getting Real About God

Getting Real About God

Last updated on: November 1, 2011 at 3:01 pm by James Ford

Getting Real About God 2011-11-01T15:01:47-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I continue to stew over a Unitarian Universalist clergy event I attended where I felt modeled to frame my ministry as a call from a deity.

(Yes, this can be an issue within the Unitarian Universalist Association, which while rooted in Protestant Christianity, has no creed and has for a very long time admitted clergy who are not theists. I am only one of a number of Buddhist clergy within the Association, and we share a generally nontheist stance with a waning but once dominant humanist contingent…)

I admit my stewing has to some degree with how I felt I handled it badly.

Rather than rising above the fray, I fell into sniping at what I find to be a pretty shallow theism that many of us hold. The god I hear described in these circles often seems a bit more like Santa Claus than anything else. Nothing to offend except the idea it exists. And I’ve had a devil of a time not mocking it when it is presented as something deep and true… That was my trap… Is…

For me among the problems is that part of the current argument where it is implied when not actually asserted that without deity we’re wallowing in our own self-centeredness. For me this is an updating of the canard against universalists who were prevented from serving on juries because it was obvious if they didn’t fear hell they had to be open to any possible evil action. I hear this assertion without deity one is selfish and disconnected and I feel insulted…

For me the power of the seventh principle of the current Unitarian Universalist principles and purposes, “respect for the interdependent web of existence, of which we are all a part,” does a pretty good job of expressing our connectedness without any necessarily appeal to what frankly to me is almost always a projection of human personality into the sky.

And, it allows those who feel a personal connection to frame their sense of connection in a personal way.

Room for all of us, I would have thought.

So, my dilemma…

I want to be nice. I’m a born co-dependent. (It has served me well in my chosen calling as a parish minister, thank you)

And, I think we’re walking into some deep waters here.

And there are really important matters that religion is best equipped to help us with. If we’re not tied to the lowest common denominator definitions of the traditions…

So, here’s what I think.

I’m not the biggest fan of the Abrahamic traditions. One need not read deeply into history to get a sense of why this might be so. And, I think that Christians and Jews and Muslims have in each of their traditions expressions of divinity that explode the big guy thing, opening us to something I find true. And, I’m also aware how over the years in these traditions those who speak of this god behind god, something not just a projection are often silenced, suppressed, or killed. But, also, they persist. And to my way of seeing things, give life to these traditions…

This is what I believe.

I think there is a current in all religions that makes them “real.” Without it they’re not. With it, they are.

That current is a discovery of who we really are.

And it is expressed in a number of ways.

And this is what I confess.

Always, it points to a place we can stand, where we discover how intimate our lives are.

Intimate within our bodies.

Intimate with other human beings.

Intimate with all of life on this shimmering globe.

Intimate with the rest of the stuff on this globe.

Intimate beyond the reach of stars.

Intimate.

Graced with this discovery, people have spoken out of their culture and almost always within the language of their religious traditions.

And have pointed.

This is my prayer.

May our search of meaning and direction in life not be misdirected toward the silly and foolish, toward the deadends of the human condition.

May we seek this real place.

A lot is hanging in the balance…

A lot…

As an addendum UU blogger Tom Wilson gives what I find a considered reflection on the Whose Are We training. Worth a read…

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