SC#12 (Special Edition):

”God” Is a Dirty Word

The use of the word God has a number of implications. To some, this word simply means what it has always meant. To these people God is the force that guides their lives.

But to many people today, maybe more than ever in human history, God is a dirty word. Just the mere utterance of it scares them. It disgusts them. It makes them cringe. It brings up all sorts of distasteful beliefs about God and religion. It likely incurs instant judgement towards the one who is speaking about God. After all, the argument always goes, horrible acts of violence, murder and war have been committed in the name of God. And God is the judge, lays out guilt, puts us in fear of damnation if we don’t follow the teachings correctly, and the reasons can go on.

So simply saying the word God to these people really does more harm than good. They may have trouble understanding a different view of God, even if it is offered. And there may be no convincing them that there are benign, even beneficial, even awesome reasons for speaking of God. This matters not in the least to those who have already decided that God is a dirty word. They may simply hate the idea of God altogether.

And I should know. I was one of these people for many years.

God-Hating People

Are you one of those people who simply turns right off when the idea of God is brought up? I was like that for at least a decade and a half, if not longer.

In today’s society there are a great number of people who believe that “God” has no place in reality. They do not believe in God. They simply do not give any power to the idea of God. In fact, they have turned full circle and in many ways have become haters of the idea of God.

Why would they hate God?

Many God haters point to things that prove we do not need God, or that God and religion have done more harm than good. There have been numerous atrocities done in God’s name, to start. There has been judgement and condemnation and inquisitions and massacres and witch trials and crusades. There are those who abuse God’s “word” to meet their own ego needs. They use God as a way to control others, to get what they want, and it often seems that they do not care who gets hurt in the process.

Why do we need some all-powerful overlord anyways? Science understands the formation of the universe by now, right? And we don’t need a God to make laws or systems of morality, do we? Doesn’t God just get in the way and muck things up? One group’s version of God seems to have different ideas about all this stuff than another’s anyway.

These may be good questions and they can become valid points on which people lose sight of God in their lives. But God is not a religion maker, an explanation of creation, or a reason for morality. God is not a judge or a war monger or a getter of ego needs.

God Is Not About That Anyway

“What’s he getting at? What’s the point of this post?”

I would like to recalibrate the idea of what God is and what the word can mean. I have done it in my own life. So let me tell you how I see God.

God does not have to be that figurehead that traditionally God has been made out to be, though if that works for you so be it. But if it gets in the way of a new understanding of God that may resonate with you, take away the face and the history of God. Remake God to be eternity and infinity. God is represented throughout time and space and in the infinite variety of things in creation.

The idea of God should be better understood as All That Is. There cannot be anything without God. If there were no God, there would be nothing. But even the idea of nothing implies its opposite: something, even everything. So to have nothing would mean to have everything, and to have everything means you have God, because God is All There Is. Everything is of God, and there can be no other way.

Whatever name or face you wish to have for God matters not, as long as you don’t force it on others. Because we are all entitled to our own connection to what God is, which is really everything all around us. Let us feel free to call it what we will. But let us also agree that we are speaking of the same thing, by any name.

So to those who hate the idea of God, you may want to throw out any replacement terms for God, too. Words like “Cosmos,” the “Universe,” the “Divine,” the “Buddha,” “Source,” whatever you may call it. For in using these words you cannot deny what you mean to say, and that is that you are really saying the same thing that the word “God” means. It means that overall creative energy of the universe. It is the spark of everything. It is you and me and all that is. You know it is there. You live and breathe it. You feel it, you think it, and you cannot deny it, though your words and mind may try. Your soul always knows better, if you listen.

With of Without God, I Can’t Live

Today I can’t see living any other way than with an understanding of God. The years I spent without God proved this more firmly than if I had never lost touch. It comforts me greatly to know that there is an overwhelmingly loving presence of God around me, taking care of everything and constantly creating the universe. This does not mean my life is good and well all the time. I have ups and downs and struggles and challenges still. But now I have something to count on to help me through, to know there is something greater assisting all the universe, whereas the tough times without God were simply that much tougher.

In my teenage years I decided for myself that I could live without God. I had gotten to a point where the God of my upbringing didn’t make sense to me anymore. The idea of some bearded old man sitting on a throne in the clouds, judging my actions and putting fear in me to act the right way. A God who dealt in shame, condemnation, and punishment, loving me only if I were to live by the book and the instruction of those who would espouse it in their own interpretation.

Other considerations threw my mind in circles in my search for meaning in what God is and could be for me. While the idea of life ever after in an endless heaven may sound nice in theory, I imagined that after some hundreds or thousands or millions of years of it even the best of pleasures could get old. Things would start to be redundant, boring even. Eternity is a long time, after all.

And hell and damnation just seemed so cruel. How could a God who is supposed to be all about love allow anyone to be in hell. Worse still, how could God decide to put them there just to suffer for some of their actions in life?

Those and a myriad of other musings in my teenage mind convinced me that something didn’t add up. And I decided to walk away from God and religion altogether. That’s because God was so tied to religion that I couldn’t conceive of throwing out one without the other.

So I lived the next half of my life in the dark.

It didn’t occur to me until I came out of it just what this God-less darkness had done to me. I didn’t make the correlation of it as being the same years of my life in which I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. All those years I spent in mental confusion, fear, and self-denial. My loss of power over my life and my choices, my thoughts, my feelings. My lack of comfort in being myself, in being who I am. My doubt in my ability to shine and to follow through on my dreams.

No, it didn’t occur to me that these may have been side effects of turning my back on God. Somehow they were separate from that experience. I was separate from my true self until I returned to God.

The Separateness of Us and God

For most people God is something out there, outside of ourselves. This idea puts us “down here” on Earth and God “up there” in heaven. If God is up there and we are down here, we are separate. And being separate from our God causes a chain reaction of separateness in our experience. And if you and I are separate, then we can choose to like or dislike each other. And there are no consequences for hurting each other.

This goes on ad nauseum. What do you think causes one religion to tout their beliefs over another? Or pits political parties against each other? Or causes war between countries, quarrels between neighbors, and any number of conflicts we face in our day to day life? The north versus the south, east versus the west, black and white, have and have-not, smart and dumb, you versus me versus everyone else, dog eat dog until there are no doggies left… Separation is the root of all evil.

And it all begins with the concept that we are separate from God. And we cannot be. We are of the same material. God inhabits all and creates us from the very core of our being outward.

But if we are all in a mentality of separation, and so many of us are, it can become acceptable to go into conflict against another, because they are not you. And when another person is so unlike you that you have difficulty accepting them as they are, you may agree to hate.

God Hating, Gotta Love It

So some get to a point of hating God. God itself becomes a dirty word. But this level of hate just shows the level of separation you have from the God that is within all and is all things, including you.

To hate the idea of God precludes you from the experience of the truth of who you are and the truth of your reality. To hate God is to hate All That Is. To hate God is to hate yourself, in essence. Because you are of God.

But the word “God” has baggage. Yes, it has tons, and tons, and loads and loads of baggage. Years and years, countless decades and centuries. I get it. For so long has the word “God” been associated with religious persecution, wars, hate crimes, murder, violence against women, control, fear, judgement, condemnation and even hell.

In light of these ills, it can be easy to understand how some people may hate God. These ideas have become so entangled and enmeshed with the idea of what God does that it can be hard to extract the true beauty of what God is.

And that is that God is simply All That Is. That God is you and me and the butterfly and the tree and the sludge and the muck and the light and, yes, even the darkness. But most importantly that God is love. That love that we all wish to feel and to give. Love is God at God’s greatest.

So instead of separation of us and God, we could choose reunion with God. We could choose oneness with God, Unity in All That Is. And that means unity with each other, too, our neighbors, different religions, different ideologies, different backgrounds of all kinds. If we could fathom the beautiful connection and unity we all share, we would no longer have need to go to war against each other. We would not agree to hate, for we would be in our knowing of our ability to be loving and to see ourselves as part of the same wholeness of God, that is All.

So, instead of considering God a dirty word, simply reframe the idea. Think of God as the all-encompassing, all-loving, creative presence of everything and nothing and the something and the in between. That God is All That Is, All That Ever Was, and All That Ever Will Be. God is the Source of all creation, the Creator and the created. God is the source of your being. God is within everyone, every man, woman, child, animal, plant and flea. Every molecule in your body and every star in the sky.

God is the faceless and the nameless but is in all faces and in all names.

God is the creator, the actor, the doer, the be-er.

God is in the furthest reaches of space and in the smallest particle.

God is the knower and the knowing as well as the unknown.

God is the answer to all questions, the understanding of all mysteries.

God is the backing of all creation, the spine of the universe, the structure of infinity and the eyes of eternity.

God is the creative force behind All That Is, the power that infuses life and that which is beyond life.

God is the known and the unknowable.

God is the landlord of all institutions, the student of all sciences, the solver of mathematics, the pen of writing, the muse of art, the keeper of history, the inspiration of religion, the leadership behind politics, and the teacher in all schools.

God is the friend, the lover, the mother, the father, the sister, the brother, the neighbor, the stranger.

God is you. God is me. God is them over there. God is the animal, the plant, the mineral, the cell.

God is all.

And most wonderfully, GOD IS LOVE.

Remember who you are. Remember you are of God as well, and God is of you. Remember you are Love!

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope you learned something of value here.

 

Please comment with your input and share to spread the conversation.

Many, many blessings to you all,

Matthew