Dear God,

Well, here it is, early in another church year and, silly me, I have decided to lead off by talking about you…whoever or whatever you are. Now, if you are who some claim you to be, you, in your all-knowing wisdom, will understand that this presents something of a problem for me, since, after all, I have been, at best, wishy-washy on whether you are out there or not.

Indeed, I have gone all the way from capital “T” True, capital “B” Believer, albeit when I was too young to know any better, to complete atheist…back in my 20s when I thought I knew more than you anyway. Pretty big pendulum swing, don’t you think? Nowadays, as I imagine you also know, the pendulum swings a much shorter distance. On one end it reaches an intuitive sensing of your presence, which may just be an emotional longing for you to be there and for there to be purpose and order in the universe… and then it swings across to the other not very extreme end of pure, simple, “I dunno,” agnosticism.

So here I am, a religious leader, supposedly one familiar with the study of you and usually expected to be able to discuss your godlike self with some degree of conviction, and I am set up to preach a sermon on the likes of you for, well, a bunch of headstrong Unitarians. To be utterly and completely honest, God, I haven’t got the first idea on a.) Whether or not you exist and b.) If you do exist, then what your nature might be. This is the crux of my preaching problem, Your Omnipotence, and one I wouldn’t mind your help with, if you have a few moments to spare.
I can be reached by phone, fax, letter, e-mail, or a parting of the clouds if you’re in a more dramatic mood.

Yours, not quite faithfully,
Brian

* You’ve got mail!

Dear Brian,

I’ve chosen e-mail to reply since, oh, I don’t know, it’s so contemporary. I’ve generally given up on the parting clouds and hurling thunderbolts thing, partly because it’s a lot of work, but mostly because it’s lost its effectiveness, thanks to Steven Spielberg and all those special effects geeks.

The point I’m getting to (if indeed I exist as a conscious entity and this isn’t the product of your own feverish brain, Brian) is that every culture and time has its own way of expressing thoughts about me. And they all wonder, in their more hesitant moments, if they’ve got it right. I have developed one strict policy. I never tell anyone who or what—or even if—I am. Perhaps your intellects are too puny to grasp my true magnificent nature. Or maybe I’m just some great fraud like the Wizard of Oz. Or maybe I’m not really here at all, and you have all just made me up to suit yourselves. I’m not telling.

I will say that I have had eons of entertainment from you people. I’ve been cast as everything from bloodthirsty baby-eater, to loving mother, to stern judge, to partisan army general, to a whole pantheon of males and females with all kinds of characteristics. Sometimes I feel like a dress-up doll like Ken or Barbie. You guys just put on the clothes that you think are right.

None of that bothers me much—in fact, it’s kind of fun to see what you come up with. You humans are, all in all, a pretty entertaining species, at least compared to say, a codfish. But boy, some of you could use a sense of humor. That John Calvin guy couldn’t get a joke no matter how many times I explained it to him—and your Michael Servetus wasn’t much better!

The catch is that sometimes those overly serious types start dressing me up and then proclaim the image of their mind as absolute fact, handed down to them directly by me. Well as I said, I never tell, so they didn’t get it from me, and my minions are unbribable, so it didn’t come from anyone in this realm. Those dress-ups are products of your human brains, but some of you figure that if you yell it loudly enough, people will believe you—and many do.

The really sad part is that these too-serious ones use their beliefs to divide instead of unite. They use religion to start wars in my name and kill people. That’s just sick, and it’s not very fair to me. But I suppose it’s understandable if you buy that Biblical stuff about the plagues and floods I was supposed to have caused, not to mention the firebombing of Sodom and Gomorrah. For the record, I had nothing to do with that. And while I’m setting things straight, don’t pin all those sexual and dietary laws on me either.

You guys make the moral rules, not me. It’s just that a few of the more self-righteous of you proclaim them in my name to give them more weight. You know, I think I could do well in a slander suit against them.

Does that answer your questions, Bri?

Your friend (maybe),
God

Dear God,

Thanks for your prompt, if only marginally helpful, reply. If I have it right, you’re not even owning that the reply came from you, and while you told me a bit about what you’re not and what you haven’t done, you haven’t told me anything about who you are or what you do…and the sermon is Sunday! I’d like a little more clarification, if you please.

Confusedly,
Brian

Dear Brian,

I was looking at your hymnbook today…by the way, it’s a refreshing change from some of the relentlessly turgid hymnals I’ve seen. There’s a reading you might want to look at… number 611 from the Bhagavad Gita:

I am the Self that dwells in the heart of every mortal creature: I am the beginning of the life span and the end of all…. I am the mind; I am consciousness in the living. I am the knowledge of things spiritual…. I am the knowledge of the knower…. There is no limit to my divine manifestations.

Now I suppose you’re going to claim—maybe even whine a little—that there isn’t much specific in that passage, and there isn’t…but that’s the point. Think about it!

Yours,
God

Dear God,

Thanks for the tip on the reading. I’ll use it. Maybe it will strike the right chord for someone out there, but to me it seems, well, kind of large and amorphous and non-specific. Do you ever get specific about anything?

Brian

Dear Brian,

Nope! Keep thinking. Use your natural—perhaps even God-given—thinking ability!

God

Dear God,

Now you’re starting to sound like my mother, and that’s just creeping me out! Okay, what I’m getting is that our human concepts of God are too limiting for whatever you might or might not be.

So I guess that leaves us religious liberals with just a couple of options: 1.) We can deny your existence. We can deny you by saying that no self-respecting deity would allow as much evil in the world as we see around us. But I guess that argument is predicated on the existence of the Biblical God who takes sides and intervenes in our lives. Even though you seem to be talking to me, you’re pretty clear that you stay out of our affairs. The other reason to deny you would be because you are too vast for us to grasp. Thinking about you strains our brains too much, so let’s forget the whole thing. But “it’s too hard” isn’t really a very satisfying reason to deny you. Option 2 would be to allow for the possibility of your existence, but to give up our obsession with defining, particularizing and limiting you. Now, that option would take a lot of work. For one thing, it puts the responsibility for our lives back squarely on our shoulders, and that’s pretty hard when we’re alone and need help.

It would follow that if our need creates you, that we need you more than you need us. To approach you in humility is not so much to acknowledge your godhead as it is an exercise in admitting the limits of our own powers. By giving you a name and “dressing you up,” as you say, we’re really admitting that we’re not gods ourselves, that sometimes we need help, that sometimes we need to believe that there is something greater and more eternal than our merely human selves. How am I doing?

Curiously,
Brian

Dear Brian,

You’re on the right track. Maybe that’s why I come in so many cultural variants, because I am the product of your need. Of course, once you get that far, to the realization that your belief is far more important than my existence, then who or what or if I am become questions that rapidly fade in importance.

I know you are aware of that relatively contemporary school of thought called “Process Theology.” They have gotten imaginative enough to suggest that you humans are co-creators with God. They suggest that whether or not I exist, my work of creation could not go on without your active participation. That’s the most enlightened idea I’ve heard you humans devise in some time. Of course, I won’t tell you if it’s right or not…that’s just my way. But it is an elegant thought, that beings and their divinities are interdependent.

Well, Brian, you have posted a sermon title of “What will we do with God?” The answer is as always. You’ll invent me, dress me up, deny me, praise me, hate me, work with me, work against me, think creatively about me, and think about me not at all. You’ll curse me and desperately call my name in foxholes. And through it all, I will remain mysterious. And that’s a good thing, for as much as you protest against them, you humans love a good mystery the same way a dog loves a bone. It gives you a spiritual thing to chew on.

As ever,
God

By Brian J. Kiely, Minister, Unitarian Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada President, International Council Of Unitarians And Universalists