Day: September 16, 2022

Who? What? Where?

Nan God , ,

questioning

With apologies to Barry @Another Spectrum, I “stole” the following quote from one of his blog posts. Apparently, it was a statement made in December 2021 by the pastor (Rev. Dawn Hutchings) of a New Zealand church.

When God is no longer a person up there in the sky, where is God? When God is no longer personified in ways which can be controlled and manipulated by the powerful, who is God? When we stop creating images of God which are mere projections of ourselves, what is God?

Of course, Barry shared personal commentary related to this quote on his own blog, but I saw the words from a much different perspective (most likely even different than the pastor intended) and decided to share my own point of view.

Let’s take it question by question:

  • Where is God? It’s a common perception among Christians that their revered entity lives somewhere “up there.” Yet Pastor Dawn seems to ask … what if this is not the case? Where, then, would one find God? Believers will inevitably answer that God lives “in their hearts,” but is this not a cop-out? If God is as powerful as legend persists, one can’t help but wonder why “he” chooses to stay hidden within the human body?
  • Who is God? This is a great question … and one that has never been satisfactorily answered. Many have tried to personify God in an effort to explain his identity, but since there is essentially no agreement on characteristics, an acceptable-by-all response has never been formulated. And of course, God doesn’t provide much descriptive assistance.
  • What is God? As Pastor Dawn (and the bible) notes, humans were created in God’s image. Wouldn’t that inherently mean that God is nothing more than a metaphysical version of us? And if this is so, is it not reasonable to expect “him” to act and respond in ways in which humans are familiar? Or, as the pastor asks, in ways that are projections of ourselves? Yet many are not content with this perspective and instead prefer to formulate a supernatural being with non-definable powers and “out-of-this-world” qualities.

So, from my perspective, the Who, What, and Where questions as related to God remain unanswered. Perhaps someone reading this post can provide some insight — preferably outside of the popular constructs?