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I was thinking about you EdJ, and a verse came to me: something about a King being distracted by news from the east /west. Then I pondered your support of Donald Trump, and all he stands for, and wondered what a country under your rule would look like.
I think the universe exists because creation is God’s own self-evolution from unconsciousness and mere potentiality into self-consciousness and self-actualization. Each part of the universe, however tiny it may be, serves to enrich God. I like to think of teh universe as the body of God. I don’t know any other metaphor that does justice to God’s great sensitivity to all things and also God’s omnipresence.
Ed,
What is my motive in this thread?
My motive is firstly to help those who are feeling lost.
Secondly, my motive is to find answers myself.
Would you could you understand that?
Hoghead, I guess we try to think of God as we humans. But can a sheep understand the complexities of humans? Or a bee? Could we ever fully understand God?
One thing I know about God is God is love; and in his love alone we are safe and satisfied.
I also know that God may ‘let us go’ for a time; perhaps when we don’t listen?
And, I know that if we miss God, then we knew God.
Ed,
What is my motive in this thread?
(1) My motive is firstly to help those who are feeling lost.
(2) Secondly, my motive is to find answers myself.
(3) Would you could you understand that?
Hi Miia,
1) I’m not feeling lost.
2) In that I can help you.
3) Yep, got it, check, righto.
____________
God bless
Ed JHoghead, I guess we try to think of God as we humans. But can a sheep understand the complexities of humans? Or a bee? Could we ever fully understand God?
Hi Miia,
We were created in God’s image, he certainly wants us to try to understand him.
“If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt
thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:4-5)____________
God bless
Ed JWell, of course, quite right. God is radically transcendent and therefore beyond being ever fully understood by us. And, as you indicated, for that matter, we don’t fully understand ourselves very well, either. However, I do feel we should be more careful about how we think of God as transcendent. Too often, Christians have assumed that God as radically transcendent means God is “wholly other.” In traditional theology, there is the via negative (negative way or negative theology). Accordingly, we cannot ascribe any sort of creaturely, finite attributes to God. We can say only what God is not, not what God is, as major fathers such as St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized. As pseudo-Dionysius once said, God does not even have “being,” as “being” is a creaturely characteristic. One problem here is that this puts a loaded gun in the hand of just about every atheist. It enables them to claim that the whole concept of God is ultimately meaningless and absurd. The other problem is that it presents God as an alien intruder, threatening, the negation of our humanity, depersonalizing and dehumanizing. Furthermore, it’s not enough to say we believe in some sort of undefined X; we need to say what kind of God we believe in, we need to give God some sort of character. Now, I believe all knowing is analogous knowing; we generalize from the familiar to the unfamiliar. If there is one thing we are most familiar with, it is our human existence. So, unless there is some genuine analogy, some real likeness between ourselves and the rest of reality, most especially God, then we haven’t got an inkling what’s going on. The fact that God has a unique relationship to goodness does not mean God is not good. The fact that God has a unique relationship to matter does not mean God is wholly immaterial. Anthropomorphizing is not the problem, it is the solution. God is not the negation of all metaphysical principles, but their finest exemplification. For example, we all have some degree of empathy with others. But it is very, very limited. We are also all omnipresent, but in a very limited sense. God, however, is omnipresent in the fullest and richest sense of the term. God enjoys a direct, immediate empathic response to any and all creaturely feeling throughout the whole universe. We are total strangers to sensitivity on that grand of a scale.
Well, Milia, I don’t think God ever abandons us or jus sits back and doesn’t try to help. I think of God as Cosmic Artist. God’s goal is to prom0te beauty. Now beauty means complexity, and complexity means freedom, things can be some other way. Hence, God has to work in and through our free decisions. We have to decide for ourselves, God can’t force us or coerce us. God “lures” us. Because we have real freedom, it’s up to us to decide how much we will actualize God’s aim for ourselves. Hnece, the possibility of evil is always there, as we can choose to actualize but very little of God’s aim. God doesn’t, abandon us or encourage or allow evil. But God cannot eliminate the possibility of evil. To do so, God would have had to crate a wholly simple universe, one in which you couldn’t even use a rubber knife or build a simple camp fire. But that would not have been beautiful. What I mean is that fire, for example, is very beautiful, but the fire that warms you can also really hurt you if you choose, for whatever reason, to misuse it. If we are gong to have great music from grand pianos, we need piano wire. But piano wire can be misused and turned into an effective killing weapon.
Very true HH.
I also don’t believe God “abandons us” but, becomes silent? Perhaps when we are following our own will and desires rather than his for us.
I can remember in the early days of knowing God (when God made himself known to me), I would feel close to and in touch with God one day then distant the next, and I was constantly grieving and praying as to why I suddenly felt distant to God (even though it had only been like 24 hours). I was trying to work out why. That was years ago.
We were created in God’s image, he certainly wants us to try to understand him
Yes, you are right.
But, to a point.
Hello, Miia,
your experience is quite typical. Our anxieties and defensiveness are a major factor here. Our conscious awareness in only the tip if the ice berg, as the old cliché goes. Hence, we miss much of reality, which we more directly encounter via unconscious affective experience. We can feel more deeply than we can think or sense. Our ratino-scientific culture has little place for emotion, so that we find the deeper world of feeling to be quite threatening and want to keep it tuned out of consciousness. And that means somedays we are more open to greater depth and breadth of experience than on others and then God in and out of the picture.
Hi HH,
I experienced God as being very in touch with human suffering on individual and global scale. When I felt close to God I felt God’s compassion and desired to act either through prayer or deeds, but when I felt distant to God I did not feel God’s compassion nor the desire to act. I believe love and compassion is the fruit of God’s Spirit. Which means that if we feel desensitised, perhaps something has gone wrong somewhere along the way.
Have you or anyone else here felt God’s love and compassion in that way?
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