So where is God?”
anecdotal
The people quietly averted their gaze and you could see their finger pointing upwards – as it was obvious.
“Really?”
Their finger retracted, their view remained averted.
Why can we struggle with the question “Where is God?”. We can theologise, use grand theological explanations which are beautiful, poetic, but may not really get that meaning across to others.
Heaven?
Yes, originally, God was perceived in reside in Heaven, above the dome. God was attended to by those Angels we discussed last week. God was separated from the world that God had created, where once God had walked (Genesis 2, not Genesis 1). Within Judaism, God could be with those who had died and were in Sheol, as well as in Heaven. For some faiths Prophets came upon the Earth and shared wisdom from God. For some, the ‘son of God’ was born and died on the Earth, revealing more wisdom.
However, God was either still in Heaven or amidst us all. A Muslim perspective is here.
For some people, God is not an entity but a presence, may be in our conscience. That might beg the question, what happens to us when we die? A Christian response could be this.
Building?
Recently we have seen comments that we, or at least some of us, should be in a building to pray to our God. It would appear as if the building is a portal, a means of communication, with God. Are we limited physically where and when we can speak with the Almighty?
But is God the absent landlord? God, the one who made the world, may appear to some as no longer with us now, leaving us to get on it.
or With us?
There are also stories of meeting with God, either on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24: 13-35) or departing Jerusalem en route back to Arabia (Acts 8), or in Medina (Quran).
Russell Brand describes a Vedic perspective where his understanding of God may be found through prayer. (6min)
So where is God now? How can we show that/explain that to others today?
If our lives are to model what we believe, how do we model that God is alive to us today?
Discussion
Given that dilemma of Heaven, building or within us: where do you start?
Heaven
From an Islamic perspective, God resides on a throne in the 7th Heaven, oddly reminiscent of Teresa de Avila’s understanding of the 7th Mansion. Heaven was not a key aspect of discussion amongst others present. Has that emphasis changed over time?
Building
We discussed whether the concept of the building was to help us conjure up that strong religious identity, where we could feel the presence of God. It may contain icons which offer that opportunity as ‘portals’ to God. However, it certainly wasn’t to take the place of God. Nevertheless, this building was considered to be “absolutely necessary“, to focus the minds of people, a community asset.
We noted that since 70 CE, the Jews, now bereft of their Temple in Jerusalem, could only congregate together in synagogues, the place where God dwelt. This was still merely a symbol, not where God resides. It was only since the Constantine’s allowing the Christian church to be one of the accepted religions within the Roman Empire, in the early 4th Century, that permitted groups to gather in ostentatious buildings and for their ministers to have richly coloured flowing robes. Nevertheless, this building was still the “mothership where we return..to give as much as receive“.
It was a place where, as St Augustine said, God was “more intimate to me than I am to myself.”[ii]. There is a resonance here within the `Islamic faith, for:
There, we are closer to him than his jugular vein.
Quran 50:16
Within Us
Finally we moved onto whether God was within us in some way, perhaps even our conscience. Some would feel that God is that higher voice on our head, our reality; but most certainly not our ego. It was questioned whether this was an issue with how God communicates with us. As others have expressed that there is a life force within the universe, which could be expressed as God.
Multiple Religions – One God?
It was purported that there were groups of people were contemplated many gods, prior to Judaism, it was the Jews that developed a faith centred upon one God. This was then built upon through Christianity. It should be stressed here that this wasn’t a ‘takeover’ or diminishing of one faith over another but a different perspective, built and developed in contextual circumstances.
Some within Christianity have felt that Scripture invokes such a split from Judaism within in the New Testament.
God finds fault with them when he says: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord.
Hebrews 8:8-9 based upon Jeremiah 31:31-32 with a possibly questionable translation difference
Nearly 6 centuries later, Islam could be said to have been built upon the foundations of Christianity. Again, not to denigrate Judaism nor Christianity, but relevant and contextual to this group of people as they identified themselves.
What was evident here was that there was animosity, sometimes hatred, of the other on occasions – that the ‘other’ were wrong, and ‘they’ were correct.
Conclusion
Where is God to us today?
“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.
God is also within nature.
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.
It’s odd in that all of our conversations, from different faith perspectives, we have found commonality despite the differences, we have seen bonds grow despite our beliefs, and we have found our mutual understanding grow – growing closer to being “one community”.
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