The God Thing

In spite of outward appearances, including this journal, I actually really dislike speaking about God.

I don't mind reading plenty on Him; sometimes, if a person knows what they're talking about, I even like to listen to others discuss Him. The vast majority of the time, though, whenever people bring Him up, I become uncomfortable and edgy.

This happened last night in the meeting of the fellowship to which I belong. He was the topic, and I instantly began to bristle.

I especially bristled at two specific types of comments:

(1) God is not some sort of psychological construct or conception;

(2) You must believe in a God of some kind.

The reason I bristle at (1) is simple: I don't know if my God is or is not some sort of psychological construct or conception. He very well may be. For all I know, I'm completely deluding myself, or tapping into some Jungian archetype, or I've deified mother/father categories and idealized latent memories of uterine bliss from my prenatal experience. Perhaps I've adopted the concept in order to 'fit in', or as a safeguard against some raw experience of the meaninglessness of existence.

I don't particularly give a shit.

I can't prove God exist, just as others cannot prove He doesn't, because God, by definition, is indefinite, or supradefinite, if you like. His one definite attribute is His inability to be defined. And one cannot logically or empirically say anything, positive or negative, about something that cannot be defined.

I believe in God, meaning that presupposing a lack of evidence of the Big Fella, I choose to go ahead and think He's around. He's a working hypothesis, of sorts; I suppose His existence and act accordingly and see what happens. And since supposing His existence and acting accordingly has improved the quality of my life considerably, I see no reason to give up that supposition.

I know, though, that it's just a supposition.

As far as (2) goes, I take a great deal of issue with the idea that anybody must believe anything. Allah, subhana wa t'ala, said, "la ikraha fiyy ad-din": "there shall be no compulsion in religion." I stick to that.

My First Guide taught me that in our Way, we don't compel anyone to believe anything; we instead remove the stuff that stands between themselves and their natural belief. We don't tell anybody that they have to believe in God or anything of the sort; instead, we gently remind them of the moments in their lives where they felt swept up in things bigger than themselves, where they had courage or compassion or love or wisdom beyond their day-to-day means. That's all.

Because God, as our book describes it, is just an 'unsuspected inner resource'; like a pool of strength upon which one can draw. That's all. What you want to call that? God or Higher Power or whatever? I don't really care. We don't really care. The idea, the only idea, is to help you gain access to that resource within yourself.

Whether that inner resource is a psychological construct or a genuine Supreme Being, I can't say.

But again: I don't care. My life is better. Who, or what, makes that happen, I don't care.