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The Nature of God
by Dr. Mark
Pitstick
Human beliefs about this phenomenon vary widely,
however, much collective evidence indicates that God
is not a big bearded man sitting on a throne in the
sky somewhere. Humanity’s spiritual growth has
suffered for too long by making God in our image
instead of realizing we were made in God’s image as
beings of Spirit. In theology school, God was
defined as the highest power of which we can
conceive. My greatest image of God is that of love,
peace, justice, energy, beauty, wisdom, power—the
Life Force behind all creation.
In An Open
Life, Joseph Campbell, that brilliant scholar,
author, and interpreter of sacred traditions,
states: “The divine lives within you . . . the
separateness that is apparent in the phenomenal
world is secondary. Beyond, and behind, and within,
and supporting that world is an unseen but
experienced unity and identity in us all.”
The following
description of God is the most pure and beautiful I
have ever heard. In Destiny of Souls,
Michael Newton, Ph.D., quotes a client who was one
of the most advanced souls he ever interviewed
during a spiritual regression under deep hypnosis.
She described Oneness, the Presence as: “. . . it is
. . . massive, but soft . . . powerful . . . yet
gentle. There is a breath . . . a whisper . . . of
sound . . . so pure . . . the sound creates all . .
. including light and energy . . . the sound holds
this structure . . . and makes it move . . .
shifting and undulating . . . creating everything.
It is a reverberating bell . . . then a high-pitched
pure humming . . . like an echo of . . . A mother .
. . full of love . . . singing to her child.” (2)
These
descriptions of God are, needless to say, quite
different from those that many of us were taught at
an early age. Do the words ‘wrathful, judging, and
fearsome’ sound familiar? Some denominations still
teach about a God of unfathomable love and then, in
the next instant, warn that this same God will send
us to or allow us to choose a fiery hell for
eternity. Can you say ‘schizophrenia’?
In a U.S. News
and World Report article (March 25, 1991) Clark
H. Pinnock, theology professor at McMaster Divinity
College, states: “How can Christians possibly
project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness”
as to inflict “. . . everlasting torture upon his
creatures, however sinful they may have been.” A
God who would do such a thing is “. . . more nearly
like Satan than like God.” I agree.
We need to
reconsider our notions about God, to refute
half-truths and mistruths that we were taught in the
guise of truth. Many people were brought up with
the notion of a vengeful God who watches our every
step, ready to smite us at the least transgression.
These teachings were the result of archaic
patriarchal and fear-based misunderstandings,
numerous changes, and political expediencies.
Rediscovering the
original import of sacred wisdom teachings conveys
greatly different meanings. Aramaic translations
help us rediscover more accurate spiritual
understandings from that pivotal time and place that
so greatly influenced Judaism, Islam and
Christianity.
Regarding the primary Aramaic meanings of the word
‘God,’ Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D., states: “The root
words for God are ‘Eloha’ or ‘Alaha’
from the Hebrew ‘Elohim.’ All these words
mean unity, sacred unity, or one Beingness. The
Jewish or Aramaic notion of the Divine is not a
being sitting somewhere, someplace as in a room
above us but a unity of which we are a part, of
which our being is a part. Both Jesus and the
Hebrew prophets before him shared this bigger
picture of the Divine. That’s quite different from
our Western conception. Our problem is that when
this conception was squeezed through the Greek
language and thinking into Western Christianity,
only a very small part of this meaning was carried
across the language bridge.”
Some people are
atheists or agnostics because they understandably
find the idea of no God an improvement over the
strange images we have been led to believe are true
about the Divine. If you were taught bizarre
notions about the nature of God, don’t let that
misinformation keep you from enjoying a personal
relationship with The Ground of All Being.
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