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Comments, complaints, broken links, disappointed hopes - please contact the caretaker. 31/07/2009 |
[Back to index] [Introduction]
Imagine you had lived all your life in one room in a house—a large room, with lots of people, but with only one window. Through the window you can see a garden. Over the years generations of people in the room have studied the garden very carefully. They can tell you a lot about the trees and flowers in it. They recognise squirrels, cats and a fox. But reports of a small four-footed creature covered in spikes have been conclusively dismissed as myths. From the birds that appear and disappear they deduce that what they can see is only a part of what’s there. Elsewhere in the house there are other rooms with windows looking out into the garden. What they see is different. For a long time there were violent arguments between people in the different rooms as to who had the true view of the garden. Sometimes the arguments would break out within a room, and then a group might storm out looking for another room to be in. Nowadays many people (but not everyone) accept that they have different views of the same garden. And lots more people simply got bored with the whole thing and stopped looking altogether. This is like the way we see God—from one limited perspective. What we see is rich and wonderful and in many ways utterly different to our day-to-day experience of life. But what we see is always limited. The people in this imaginary house could not conceive what the world is like beyond their view. Even if they all managed to agree to combine their views of the garden they would only have a small and partial picture. They couldn’t imagine the arctic wastes or the Sahara desert, nor the rain forest or miles of open savannah. They couldn’t begin to imagine the diversity of animal or plant life. They could have no conception of the sea. And we can’t begin to have any conception of what God is like beyond the little glimpses we have been given. God is so much, much bigger than anything we can imagine or conceive. And God is not like us. I suspect that as we are used to calling God ‘Father’ and ‘Lord’, and thinking about God as revealed by the person Jesus Christ, we are in danger of forgetting that God is not a person, however big. God is God, and anything we say about God from our ignorance must be said with considerable caution.
1.b Sources of our knowledge of God Our knowledge of God does not spring into our heads without a framework and context.We know God through:
And all of these sources of knowledge of God are channelled and patterned through the inheritance of our society, and through the teaching of the church. So although we only have a very limited perspective on God, and cannot see very far, what we do have is a rich range of sources on which to work. With creative imagination we can both reinforce the knowledge of God we have received, and make it our own, and also explore further. Key: The ways in which we may perceive God are the same things that limit our vision. [After the discussion it occurred to me that we had missed from our list of human capacities the capacity to seek and see holiness.]
1.c What we know of God from the Bible Question: What do we know of God through the Bible? The Bible does not give a single or straightforward picture of God. We had a quick brain-storm on ways God is portrayed in the Bible: God is:
What do we make of this diversity? Theologically we need the diversity for a rich understanding of God. Spiritually, however, we focused on two themes. In the way we address God in our prayers we tend to use either terms that conceive God as in charge: Lord, Master, Almighty God. Or we use terms that are more intimate - Father or friend - and from God we seek support, care, understanding, hope, and perhaps guidance. Perhaps a loving though perceptive and critical friend would characterise this perception of God. In church tradition, the diversity of themes is essential for the vitality of faith. It enables Christians in each generation or facing new challenges to go back to the treasure-store of perceptions of God, and to draw out and dust off some old spiritual truth in order to make it new in our own experience.
1.d What can we say about God from our own experience? The strongest theme that came out of our discussion was the idea of God as consistent, faithful, caring, supportive: God is always there, like the love of a mother. God surrounds us and holds us ('underneath are the everlasting arms') so that we are never alone. The feeling and knowledge of God's presence gives peace and reassurance. God can be seen through the seasons - and in every aspect of nature from the smallest plant to the greatest tree - and throughout all the changes remaining constant and reliable. The feeling of God's presence is especially important at times of difficulty. God answers our prayer. And there is something else that is partly hidden and partly shown at the same time as God gives us comfort. God also inspires us, disturbs our complacency, and causes us to re-think our own relationships with other people and with God. God does not simply leave us with the conviction that we are always in the right. And for some people ideas of awe and the holiness and fear of God, and the feeling of the absence of God are also important.
1.e What can we say about God as shown by Jesus Christ? In the course of our discussion we said that God:
We touched on two wider questions:
We also recognised that Jesus enables us to think of God as like a person, whose nature and qualities are like human attributes and relationships. But we recognize that this is only a metaphor - God is always much more than people. [Back to index] [Introduction] [Top]
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