Congregation Shema Yisrael

Thus, too, the Bible, which incorporates the Hebrew Books of Moses (known to Christians as the Old Testament). Eventually, though, certain Christians began claiming that Jesus was God as well as the son of God rather than a human emissary chosen by the one and only God. Idolatry threatened to rear its head (or heads!) yet again.

So around 610 C.E., God revisited the prophet pool and selected Muhammad, another descendant of Abraham, to tidy the mess that both the Jews and the Christians had made of His revelations. That’s why Islam returns to the original Jewish teachings for its inspiration and integrity… -from The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith by Irshad Manji

The above quote from Manji’s book (which I’m currently reading) will doubtless upset most Christians and Jews reading it, but I include it here for a reason. When I was reading these words and the sections that follow, I started to think about how we all conceptualize God. No human being exists without biases, including spiritual and theological biases (even atheists have such biases, just in the direction of discounting such issues), so it stands to reason, that no human being has a completely unfiltered view of God. A Jew reading the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings), a Christian reading the Bible, and a Muslim reading the Koran, all perceive God as filtered through those documents, even though they rely on the same source material. But if we peel away the layers of the onion, so to speak, who is God?

I’ll tell you right now, that even among people of faith, we won’t come to a consensus, beyond the most basic understanding of God as Creator of the Universe and everyone in it. How God manifests, what He wants of us, and who his “chosen” people are, will all be disputed by those of us who believe in the God of Abraham (or Ibrahim, if you’re a Muslim). You can see a clear example of this in the dispute over the Temple Mount, as the holy place for both Jews and Muslims. Jews consider the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the their most holy site, where twice, God had His house built and where it may well be built again. Though Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran, Islam believes that the Temple Mount is the location where the Prophet Muhammad was taken by God into Paradise. Christians tend not to think much of the Temple Mount at all, and consider each individual believer to now be a “temple”, as if God had done a bit of spiritual and metaphorical switching around of concepts.

Who is God really? How do you tell who He is? What do you use for a compass to point to Him? If you say the Tanakh, the Christian Bible, or the Koran, then you’ve introduced a bias into the answer. But you might say, depending on your faith, that each of these documents is the inspired Word of God, and because of that, each document is the only one for knowing who God is. Each document defines God’s involvement in humanity, and each document defines the role of human beings relative to our Creator. Fine. If you’re a devout Jew, then you have the Tanakh. Of course, depending on whether you’re Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox, exactly how you interpret the Tanakh (“Old Testament”, if you’re a Christian), will differ, sometimes wildly. Also, there are a number of other documents, collectively considered the Oral Law, that modifies the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, given by Moses and many others, not even all Jews see God is precisely the same way.

If you’re a Christian, exactly how you see the Old and New Testaments will vary, at least somewhat. Mainstream Christianity sees significant portions of the Old Testament (the Law) as obsolete, and having been replaced largely by the New Testament or New Covenant. Grace trumps the Law, as if they’re mutually exclusive concepts, and except where the Old Testament prophets speak in ways that substantiate Jesus as the Christ (Messiah), the “old” portion of the Bible (the first two-thirds), is just a history lesson. Of course, you also get the idea that Gentile Christians have replaced the Jews as the covenant people of God, and lots of other seeming Biblical contradictions, but that’s what happens when you have a document that can be interpreted in more than one way.

If you’re a Muslim, you may well have been taught that the Koran isn’t interpreted, it is always to be taken at face value. This may account for the fact that in nations where Sharia Law has been established and enforced (such as the country of Yemen), 10 year old girls can be legally forced into marriage and sexual relations with adult males. Even if these girls are able to “divorce” their “husbands”, the child’s life continues to be a nightmare. Yet the Koran exists, not just at the edge of such extreme events (that are published in the mainstream media), but at all points of a Muslim’s life, including how a Muslim sees his or her relationship with Allah.

So if you’re a Jew, you will likely say the Torah gives you a “lock” on who God is and who His people are. If you’re a Christian, you’ll say the Gospels and Epistles reveal the Christ and his people. If you’re a Muslim, you’ll say Muhammad and the Koran give you the inside track to Allah. So who’s right? Is anyone right?

Obviously, I have my “bias”, too and I believe in the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. I believe in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah and the son of the Almighty, who came once and will come again, to “fix” the world, and to claim his Kingship. Do I know God, and do I believe only those who share my theology know God?

That’s a wonderful and horrible question to ask. Even within Christianity, there are disagreements about which denominations or factions “know” God and Jesus, and which ones don’t. Oh sure, the vast majority of denominations believe all the others are “saved”, and that their disagreements in theology aren’t on salvational issues. Not all Christian groups can make this statement. Orthodox Christianity for example, believes that only their group can claim direct descent from the First Century church, and that all the other denominations are flawed, and further away from the truth. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) believe they are the only church and further, that only they possess the true document that God has given, to define who God is, and who His people are, through the Book of Mormon (the original Bible being flawed, due to translation errors). Of course, mainstream Christianity defines a cult in part, as a religious group that claims they, and only they, are the “true church”, so an Evangelical is unlikely to acknowledge the claims of an Orthodox Christian or a Mormon.

What does God think about all this popping around, though? I can’t presume to speak for God, but I can make a suggestion. God doesn’t need anyone to believe in Him in any fashion in order to exist. Think about it. All of the faiths I have mentioned tend to believe that God existed before He ever created the Universe (if terms like “before” and “after” have any meaning within the context of God). That means, before any of us were created, God existed. When I was a child, and tried to imagine God before Creation. I pictured some old man sitting on a huge throne, floating through an empty space devoid even of stars. I couldn’t really picture the Universe not existing, just a Universe empty of all matter (assuming God isn’t matter).

If you acknowledge God at all, you must admit that God exists independently of His worshipers (and independently of His “non-worshipers”). God exists apart from the jillions of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (not to mention every other faith perspective) theologies that people hold to, or have held to across time. God doesn’t need us to kneel and hold our hands together in prayer in order to exist. God doesn’t need us to face towards Jerusalem when we pray in order to exist. God doesn’t need us to pray five times daily while facing towards Mecca in order to exist. God exists apart from anything we mere mortals say, think, or do. I’m not saying that what we say, think, or do doesn’t matter to God, just that God is God, regardless of what we do with our free will.

If you are an atheist or agnostic, you likely think I’m at least deluded in my thinking as I write all this. You don’t believe that God exists at all or, if you believe there is some sort of Supreme Being, that Being (He, She, or It), isn’t a personal God who takes note of people as individuals. Some people believe in a God that created all things, but then just ignored the Universe, and let it unfold as it was originally programmed to do (just press “Enter” and run the program), which explains how you can believe in God and evolution. Some people don’t believe in a Creative Intelligence at all, and suggest that all of existence “just happened” as a “natural” process, without design or designer. In that case, my writings don’t matter to you. However, if there is a God (and I believe there is), He doesn’t require your belief in Him in order to exist. He is God. He reveals himself to humanity as a whole, and to each of us as individuals, but we, having the free will He gave us, have the ability to attend to God or to ignore Him. Further, if we attend to Him, we have the ability to choose which system we use to “interpret” God.

Interpret God? I know I’m treading dangerously close to suggesting that no one “knows” God as He truly exists. That means that neither Jew, nor Christian, nor Muslim, have a “lock” on who God is and how He operates. That’s quite a kick in the teeth to everyone who believes in God only through the particular context of their primary holy document (Torah, Christian Bible, or Koran). Am I saying that it doesn’t matter which perspective you choose? No, of course not. I couldn’t hold to my own perspective, if I believed how we worship God is totally relative. In fact, morality and the nature of faith would become relative and thus, unstable to me if I believed that. I mentioned earlier what I believe (and reading my other articles in this blog will add detail to my theology), so I claim a bias and believe it is the correct one. That said, while it matters to God how I conceive of Him, and how I understand my role as a child of God, mattering to God isn’t the same as God “needing” me, in order to exist and to be God.

God is Sovereign. God is Independent. God Exists. God is God. I won’t quote from the Book of Job, but those of you who’ve read it, recall the horrible trials Job endured. After the trials were over (and Job “passed”), Job basically asked God, “Was that really necessary?” God’s answer in short was, “When you are God, you’ll have the right to ask me that question. If you’re not God, you don’t have that right.” I know that sounds harsh coming from a loving God, but it’s also amazingly true. We just choose not to think of God that way most of the time. When you love someone and need someone, you want them to love and need you as much as you do them. This usually works (in ideal cases) in marriages, but then, men and women are equal before God (depending on your theology, of course). We can’t claim equality with God (this is somewhat modified if you’re a Mormon, since you have the ability to become a “god”, at least if you’re male). If God is absolute and sovereign, then He doesn’t need anything from us. We can’t possess a quality that, without it, God is unfinished or lacking. If that were true, God wouldn’t be God, God would be a more highly advanced being, but still with limitations.

As human beings, we are finite and mortal. We lack the capacity to truly, completely, conceptualize and understand an infinite and immortal God. How do we cope? By bringing God down closer to our level. We “understand” God by recreating a more “limited” God, a God more like us (which is what the Romans, Greeks, and a whole bunch of worshipers of idols did throughout history). We can’t help ourselves. Trying to truly understand God would blow out every last brain cell in our collective skulls. We can’t do it. It’s like asking a five year old to tell you why the Sun burns in the sky, or why you can breathe something you can’t see. It is completely and totally beyond us. We thus anthropomorphize God.

I’m not saying I doubt the Bible as the inspired Word of God. I don’t. If I did, then my litmus test for examining the spiritual world, and my own spiritual experiences would go away, and I’d have to question all of my subjective perceptions and find no answer. However, traditional Jews can say the same thing about the Torah, and Muslims can say the same thing about the Koran. The quote from Irshad Manji’s book I posted at the beginning of this article, suggests that each time God revealed Himself to people, we turned to idolatry, so God had to “try” several different solutions to finally get it “right”. Some Christians believe that God sent Jesus only after His revelation to the Jews “failed”. These suggestions imply that God is imperfect. He’s like us. He creates a plan, puts it into operation, and sees if it’ll work or not. If it doesn’t work, he tries another plan. He can’t tell in advance what will finally do the trick. Of course that means, He’s not really God.

But God is God. He doesn’t “try” to do things. He doesn’t change His mind. He can’t be wrong. If those things were possible, then God wouldn’t be God and in fact, it would mean that we flawed, imperfect people have the ability to affect God’s plan, and to affect God. We can change the program written by the programmer. It would be as if the figures painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel could “re-paint” themselves, independent of their painter. It would be like a house being able to redesign and rebuild itself after the architect and construction crew had finished their work. The painter is “sovereign” over the painting, and the architect is “sovereign” over the structure. God is Sovereign over the Universe, including you and me (regardless if you are or aren’t a person of faith, or regardless of that faith).

I’m not trying to “prove” anything, including why my theology is “right” and yours is “wrong”, though my beliefs are no secret. I’m only trying to say that we need to stop being so arrogant in our relationship with God. Moses was characterized as the most humble of all people, despite the fact that he spoke to God face-to-face. Jesus, the Son of God, and Sovereign King, demonstrated humility, by washing the feet of his own disciples, and then undeservedly dying the death of a criminal. Where do we get off copping an attitude about God? Regardless of who you are and what you believe (and even atheists “believe” in something, even if it’s only a randomly generated Universe), at the end of all things, we will all face an objectively existing God. We will face a God who has existed for all time, and who will exist for all time. In fact, we will face a God that authored the very nature and character of time, yet who is completely unaffected by it, or anything (or anyone) else.

Imagine it. Facing God. We can’t, not really. It’ll happen anyway. When it does, all of our assumptions, theological biases, and beliefs will be stripped away, as we confront God as He really is. I like to think that when the Messiah (Christ) comes, he’ll straighten us all out. He’ll “fix” all of our misconceptions. He’ll give us all the inside track, all of us, all at once. No more misunderstandings. No more misconceptions. No more theologies. There will only be “the truth”. The truth is already there, we just “see it through a glass, darkly”. The only problem we all have, is that we see God through rose-colored theologies. We can’t even see our holy books with complete objectivity, let alone God. Not to worry, though. God knows who He is. Seeking Him isn’t futile or irrelevant. God reveals Himself to us. We just need to get past the filters we use when we try to see God. That won’t fully happen until Messiah comes. It’ll happen. Be patient. In the meantime, just remember, there’s more to God than meets the eye…for everyone.

Afterthought: Quoting from Irshad Manji’s book wasn’t intended to be a pejorative of her, her beliefs, or her writing. I included the quote and mention her here, only because reading those words inspired me to write this blog. They really did result in me considering and pondering, how we all come to our conclusions about God’s specific nature and identity. When I’m finished reading The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, I’ll post a review.