Over the last month, we have looked at what, where, who is God – if God exists at all. Moreover, is there a God, of all faiths?
The focus of the sessions was to offer an opportunity for the local community to explore from their faith perspective: whether that be Pagan, Christian, Muslim or Atheist. We all have a voice which needs to be heard. This is their voice, summarised.
What is Life?
So what is the purpose of life, with respect to each and every faith? It might be easy to find what each faith has or is still looking to conclude on this issue. However, it transpired that we could have a common understanding here:
our own faith sustains us, but the ‘glue’ which binds us is our humanity and our desire to be connected, and support each other.
A summary of our discussions can be found here.
Who is this God?
We then moved onto how we understand God. It was interesting to try to tease out which faith would wish to worship an image of God, whether that image was singular or had many images. Some faiths believed in only one God, whereas others believed in multiple Gods. Was there an opportunity for consensus? A God, of all faiths?
There were so many names or descriptions of God: “faithful, the ground of our being, love, Father, all powerful, a comfort and a challenge, …everything“.
We discussed the metaphor of an elephant, where each of us could be looking at a different part of the elephant. Here we might gain a different understanding dependent upon where we are standing – or if the elephant keeps standing still!
It might be that God had not changed, and that we were in a living relationship with God. Our lives gave us new perspectives through our experiences; however, that only enabled a fresh understanding of God, ourunderstanding of God.
A summary of our discussions can be found here.
Does God talk to us today?
We then moved onto how does God communicate with us – if God does at all.
One aspect which seemed to resonate is with Angels. Do we have a guardian angel?
Some faiths clearly had their evidence that God speaks to individuals in a variety of ways. Whilst others felt that it wasn’t that important that God spoke to us, but that we spoke with God.
Furthermore, it wasn’t that God needed our worship – for God would remain there anyway with or without our praise. Nevertheless, it was evident that, for some, the important aspect was we were in communication with God, and for others, God spoke to us.
So is it one-way communication?
It was also clear that God speaks ‘mysteriously’ – as shown by Rowan Atkinson below…
It can be mysterious to others how this communication occurs. That communication should always be tested, reflected upon. Furthermore, we may be wise how that communication is discerned by others. Not that it is wrong, but that this is faith. The summary of the discussions that week are here.
Where is God today?
Finally we discussed where is God to us today? Was God still in Heaven, the absentee Landlord of planet earth?. Was he with us: either in the building or in person? If the latter, was God actually our conscience?
What transpired was astonishing. The summary of the discussion is here.
“God is everywhere” came back the unequivocal response!
God is to be found in our understanding of Heaven, from whichever perspective we have. They are to be found in our buildings, not only those that we state as ‘church, or synagogue, or mosque, or gurdwara, or temple’.
God is also in all of us.
We may see God as we look upon a mirror, if we choose to look.
We are born and die in ways common to us all. What may be different is how we transport ourselves between those common points. Our choice of vehicle is ours, whatever faith we have: but God is always present.
This is quite radical, oddly clashing with stereotypical media portrayal of religions today. Could there be a God of all faiths? Not an aim for this series of discussions, but a common understanding.
There was often an animosity, sometimes hatred, of the other on occasions – that the ‘other’ were wrong, and ‘they’ were correct. However, this was not present in any of our discussions.
What are your feelings about this? What might you like to say, contribute to this discussion?
Please write your comments below, let’s dialogue, engage. Thank you
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