MY GOD! YOUR GOD! OUR GOD

By Edwin Cooney

No being or force has a greater effect on who you and I are than does that of God and what we perceive God to be. Our perception of God functions at the epicenter of our concepts of the significance of birth, morality, death and eternity. Hence, God plays some role in all of our lives, even in the lives of agnostics and atheists who are doubtful of God's existence or who insist that God doesn't exist at all. Therefore, God possesses the unique distinction of holding most people's attention, while at the same time remaining a mystery to virtually all of us.

I raise this subject because I am struggling, more than at any time in my life, to understand my relationship with God. I haven't any doubt as to the existence of a living God.

Like most of us, I was born and raised to believe in God, the Father Almighty, who sent Jesus Christ to earth to die for and thus cleanse our sins. Many times throughout my life I've felt blessed, comforted, guided and even protected by God. I've occasionally even believed that I understand God. What I've come increasingly to realize, however, is that I possess only a clue as to the essence of God.

The Reverend Leslie Weatherhead's little book called "The Will of God," which I read about a decade ago, offered me, and doubtless lots of other readers, a lovingly benign understanding that God wishes us well whatever turn life takes. Reverend Weatherhead, a World War II Era British clergyman, suggests that God's will is invariably to be the ruling factor once we enter eternity. Up until then, as I understand the good Reverend, God's work or will, here on earth, must be our work and, for better or worse, our will.

From as far back as I can remember, I've always believed in the Biblical perception of God the creator, God the protector, God the healer, and hopefully, God the forgiver. However, lately, I've become less sure not of the existence of God, but of the essence of God. Those of us who strive to be Christians have traditionally been imbued with the idea that God is our eternal King.

A king, by his nature, tends to be an absolute dictator. As many fundamentalist Christians remind the rest of us The Ten Commandments aren't the Ten Suggestions. Hence, as God is a King or if you prefer, a Heavenly King, God naturally takes it very, very personally when we're not in compliance with God's rules of conduct or worship. Preachers often warn us that God is a jealous God and that God is an angry and avenging God. On the other hand, preachers almost as often assure us God is a forgiving god, a healing God, a God of loving grace. (Some insist that the earmark of a good preacher is one who comforts the distressed and distresses the comfortable!)

It's been my experience that whenever I raise the question of the essence of God with my fellow Christians, steeped as they are in scripture, I'm urged to see what the Bible has to say about it. Invariably the Bible appears to tell me to get with the program or spend eternity in "you know where!," just as Britain's Henry the Eighth would have done.

Occasionally, I'm accused of trying to create my own God rather than accepting who God is. With that, I beg to differ. It's the other way around as I see it. The history of Godly perception is the history of fatherhood (God the Father), military warriors (God the Almighty General), and the King (hence God's kingdom). Accordingly, you and I are to understand that God Almighty is an earthly king with supernatural or Heavenly powers, who is ready to love us and preserve us if we praise and humble ourselves before God's all-consuming majesty. If we don't, well then, we've made another choice and can expect to be banished.

That's where, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, "we shuck right down to the cob." The fact is that the Holy Bible was written by men whose character was established by the sin of Adam and Eve vividly described as "the good book's beginning." As humankind is thus imperfect, they're incapable of writing or doing anything perfectly. Hence, to me, the Bible is the inspired rather than the actual word of God. For me, Biblical truth lies in its wisdom more than in its story.

Currently, I'm reading retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong's book "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." This book challenges many of our traditional Christian perceptions, while at the same time, acknowledging and even insisting that God is real.

I offer you a glimpse into my own struggle because I suspect many of you also, sometimes painfully, struggle to comprehend your relationship to and with God. I like to believe that ultimately, when you and I pass into eternity, the best that is within us will blend painlessly and peacefully with the loving energizing nature of God.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY