WHAT IS GOD
What is God, what do you understand God to be, this is one of the hardest questions I have had to answer myself.
As a school boy I was told “God made man in his own image”, but then as I grew a bit older and was allowed to walk by myself to school I noticed an inscription at the back of one particular church. The inscription was in ancient Greek and it translated as: “God is Love”. You can see now my problem. In my young mind I could not grasp how we could be an image of God and at the same time be as abstract as Love. If you go to any church (at least Christian church) God is represented as an old person, as an old man, with a white beard. So when you think of God the picture of an old man always comes into your mind. So what is God?
Before I answer that question please allow me to take you to another subject, the subject of eternal life, as it may shed some light to the subject in question. We were taught to believe that there is life after death, in that case how do we live after death? What sort of form do we take? Does that new form already exist in us? Interesting questions, are they not?
As children we have all read comic books and we have all read stories, or seen movies, about the American Indians, about their sacred sites where the spirits of their ancestors live. We have all read or seen movies of ghosts. So we have all been exposed somehow to the idea of another existence here on earth, next to ourselves, an existence that most of us can not see but only experience the effects of that life.
So could God be a spirit? In which case are we spirits too? That is a possibility. Religion again teaches us that we have a soul, and it is that soul that survives death. Some religions have gone to the extent to say that at some stage we will get our bodies back and that the soul will return to the body. Just think is it not what the ancient Egyptians believed when they were preserving the bodies of the dead? Remember the story of how God created man? He took mud and created the body and then blew life into it. Or perhaps He gave it a soul. So we are alive not because of our bodies but because of our souls, because of the God Spirit within us. So God is spirit and created us in ... His own image. So now the term of OMNIPRESENT God makes sense. As a spirit God can be omnipresent but not as a physical being.
Once I read a description of God. It said (message from spirit):
Think of God as a big bright fire and think of the people as logs. When a good log is placed into the fire it burns strongly making the fire bigger and brighter. When a not so good log is placed in the fire it burns not as strongly, making very little, if any, difference to the fire.
The above explanation adds another element to the question What is God? It simply says that God is energy and we as people can add to that energy, can make a difference to that energy by the way we live our lives, by the way we behave. Now that inscription at the back of that church makes sense. God is spirit, God is energy, God is loving energy, God is positive energy. Let us go back to science, to Newton’s first law of physics which says “Energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed it can only change form”. We can not create God, we can not destroy God, God is eternal and so is our soul, our spirit.
You can not imagine my happiness when I realised that deep inside me I found the answer to the question Who is God? or What is God? I am happy because with my logic I managed to find the answer I was looking for, the answer that made sense to me, to my inner self. Now you have to apply the same logic, the same principles and find your answer to the question.
What is God, what do you understand God to be, this is one of the hardest questions I have had to answer myself.
As a school boy I was told “God made man in his own image”, but then as I grew a bit older and was allowed to walk by myself to school I noticed an inscription at the back of one particular church. The inscription was in ancient Greek and it translated as: “God is Love”. You can see now my problem. In my young mind I could not grasp how we could be an image of God and at the same time be as abstract as Love. If you go to any church (at least Christian church) God is represented as an old person, as an old man, with a white beard. So when you think of God the picture of an old man always comes into your mind. So what is God?
Before I answer that question please allow me to take you to another subject, the subject of eternal life, as it may shed some light to the subject in question. We were taught to believe that there is life after death, in that case how do we live after death? What sort of form do we take? Does that new form already exist in us? Interesting questions, are they not?
As children we have all read comic books and we have all read stories, or seen movies, about the American Indians, about their sacred sites where the spirits of their ancestors live. We have all read or seen movies of ghosts. So we have all been exposed somehow to the idea of another existence here on earth, next to ourselves, an existence that most of us can not see but only experience the effects of that life.
So could God be a spirit? In which case are we spirits too? That is a possibility. Religion again teaches us that we have a soul, and it is that soul that survives death. Some religions have gone to the extent to say that at some stage we will get our bodies back and that the soul will return to the body. Just think is it not what the ancient Egyptians believed when they were preserving the bodies of the dead? Remember the story of how God created man? He took mud and created the body and then blew life into it. Or perhaps He gave it a soul. So we are alive not because of our bodies but because of our souls, because of the God Spirit within us. So God is spirit and created us in ... His own image. So now the term of OMNIPRESENT God makes sense. As a spirit God can be omnipresent but not as a physical being.
Once I read a description of God. It said (message from spirit):
Think of God as a big bright fire and think of the people as logs. When a good log is placed into the fire it burns strongly making the fire bigger and brighter. When a not so good log is placed in the fire it burns not as strongly, making very little, if any, difference to the fire.
The above explanation adds another element to the question What is God? It simply says that God is energy and we as people can add to that energy, can make a difference to that energy by the way we live our lives, by the way we behave. Now that inscription at the back of that church makes sense. God is spirit, God is energy, God is loving energy, God is positive energy. Let us go back to science, to Newton’s first law of physics which says “Energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed it can only change form”. We can not create God, we can not destroy God, God is eternal and so is our soul, our spirit.
You can not imagine my happiness when I realised that deep inside me I found the answer to the question Who is God? or What is God? I am happy because with my logic I managed to find the answer I was looking for, the answer that made sense to me, to my inner self. Now you have to apply the same logic, the same principles and find your answer to the question.
© Copyright 2011, Pakenham Spiritualist Church
