As free-thinking Unitarians, I thought we could share some further thoughts on our differing and divergent experiences of God with a view to widening and broadening that part of our spiritual lives.
It's good to be able to stand back now and again and to think anew and to question aspects of our personal spirituality, particularly those aspects which we've long held and almost take for granted.
That was certainly my experience for most years of my life; I always held a particular view of God and it's only in recent years that I've been challenged to perceive and experience God in different ways, which initially was a little unnerving, considering that my earlier Church upbringing has ingrained in me the traditional concept of God and required conformity to that teaching. So, in moving away from that teaching it's natural that some element of guilt or self-doubt is experienced.
New Zealand Theologian
There is a very fine and very readable book entitled "Tomorrow's God" by a New Zealand theologian called Lloyd Geering. I have been inspired by his writings and want to share some of these with you today. He writes that the traditional view of God, with which we're all familiar, is that of the Abrahamic, mono-theistic religions, which teach that there is a God out there, one God, separate to us, who, in 6 days, created the earth and all living beings thereon etc. and it is this God who has revealed to us the ultimate meaning of life through his prophets. (And of course part of the tradition is the male image of God……."His" prophets….)
As you look around you at the world in which we live in this very early part of the new century, you will agree that it has been commonly accepted for many decades that traditional religious answers to the basic questions of human existence no longer satisfy to the degree they once did. This would apply to us Unitarians for we have jettisoned the teachings of orthodoxy. There is also an increasing number of people these days who say they are not religious. Some even go so far as to describe themselves as atheists, possibly as a reaction to the traditional idea of a God in the sky who judges and rewards us for our behaviour in life, an idea which so many people still adhere to and which atheists abhor.
The reason why the traditional religious answers have become redundant in the eyes of so many is that they were constructed to suit a world which looked very different from that in which we find ourselves now. It's a fact that the way we understand ourselves and the earth we live on, together with our relationship to each other and to the earth, have been changing enormously in the last three hundred years.
Copernicus to Galileo
There have been various revolutions of thought in these centuries which turned the world upside down, or perhaps turned it the right way round!: firstly there were Copernicus and Galileo who showed us that the earth is not flat and is not the centre of the Universe, then there was Darwin who explained very carefully, and in the process upset a lot of Church people, as did the other two, that that the origins of planetary life, including our own, was not as described in the Book of Genesis but was rather a slow evolution of species over billions of years.
Thirdly, there was the anthropological revolution in which we came to recognise ourselves as psychosomatic organisms, conscious of self, our feelings and emotions etc and whose life-spans are bounded by conception and death. In other words, there has been a huge and radical shift in human consciousness in a relatively very short time of earthly life as we have known it over many many centuries. We have come to interpret reality differently to the way our ancestors did!
What once appeared to be unchangeable, even unquestioned, truths have been questioned and replaced by new ways of thinking. This is particularly true of religious thought, which has virtually been turned upside down.
All in six days!
For example, it was traditionally thought by Jews, Christians and Muslims that the world and everything in it was created by God who decided and spoke, and it all came about as a result of this decision in all of 6 days! The Genesis story of creation was satisfying and believable right down to the middle of the 19th century. So one can understand that the theories of Darwin and those other scientists would be on the receiving end of huge fury and condemnation!
More liberally-minded Christians, however, came to accept relatively quickly that creation is a long evolutionary process. So while they accepted that God was the Creator of the universe, they were able to adapt their thinking to the concept that creation is a process rather than a once-off past event.
These revolutions in thought over the last few centuries have led to a form of human consciousness in which awareness of a personal God, who is both creator and benefactor, has been fading. Lloyd Geering says that the role vacated by God has, to some extent, been taken over by the human species itself. Traditionally the view was that humanity was created by God. It now appears that the very concept of God was itself created by humanity. So, instead of the world having been created by God, it appears that the world in which we live, move and have our being is largely of our own making.
Let me explain that. Obviously, we're not talking of Humanity having created the physical world and the universe out there. What Geering is saying is that we humans have created the world of our lives and divergent cultures as we know these and which we experience. The basic theme of his book is that we humans are slowly coming to realise that what each of us inhabits is a world of meaning which we ourselves have put together.
We humans have over a period of some three thousand years been through a series of cultural development phases in which the focus was firstly on ethnic and cultural awareness and experience and then secondly, on religious development where the world became divided into three areas of religious focus, viz the Buddhist Orient, the Islamic Middle East and the Christian West.
A global view
And in more recent years the emphasis of human development is on the global view. It could also be called the Secular phase, in which the world has largely detached itself from the influence of religion, and particularly institutional religion. In this third phase of the development of human culture we have come to focus our attention on the human species itself as part of the bigger planetary biosphere. We have become aware of what we humans have in common, despite our differences. We have come to the realisation that we are concerned about such things as human rights and how we are abusing each other as humans.
We have come to the realisation that we live on a very fragile planet and that we are merely part of that planetary environment - part of it but not owners or masters of it, and that as the planet is threatened so our very existence as humans is threatened. Despite the world's detachment from religion we've come to realise that we simply can not continue living the way we do. We have to make some major and radical changes to our life-styles and to our attitudes about natural life on which we are so dependent, about such things as war, growing poverty and major health pandemics, violence, greed and corruption.
We know that we have huge capacity to both destroy ourselves and everything around us and to create, but it is also true that there is a growing consciousness in humankind that we are a part of the planetary biosphere and of the oneness of all life, of which we as humans are one species among hundreds of thousands. As Geering says "We humans now find ourselves to be an essential part of the complex living earth and also responsible for its future. On us is the onus for creating a meaningful and worthwhile future."So, where does all of this leave us in relation to the God of Tomorrow?
Traditional teachings redundant
If the traditional teachings of religion are now redundant and institutionalised religion has lost its purpose, this places a huge responsibility on each of us, particularly those of us who have long recognised the irrelevancy of those outmoded teachings and have opted for our own free-thinking, personal responsibility for our spirituality, a responsibility on each of us to teach and to set an example to others which will enable the world to see that there is a religion to which all can subscribe, a religion that will not enslave or limit us.
It's the religion of tomorrow, or what Martin Prozesky, in his talk to us at the National gathering of Unitarians last September called "The Soul of the Future". It is the religion which enables us each to find within ourselves and to truthfully reflect on the deep meaning of who we are in terms of our own guiding values and principles which give us a sense of purpose and a dignity that sets us apart from all other living species on this earth. It is that meaning within each of us that enables us to look anew at our fellow human beings, and all other forms of life, so that we can transform ourselves and our attitudes towards others in order that we may care for each other from the centre of our inner being, based on love, compassion, fairness and justice.
Caring for each other and Mother Earth
It is the religion of caring - caring deeply for each other and for our Mother Earth who gave us life and continues to sustain our lives. All the hopes, values, goals and devoted service traditionally associated with heavenly places must be transferred to this earth. All life and the whole earth must become re-sanctified in our eyes and in our hearts. This imperative to care must take precedence over lesser loyalties and over all differences of race, nationalities, gender and personal beliefs.
It is a love which is ready to sacrifice individual self-interest for the greater good of the whole. Geering says: "We will be required to limit our own earthly pleasures and expectations in the interests of the generations yet to be born." He goes on to say: "Like Moses of old, looking down on the Promised Land, we need to show our concern for a future world that we ourselves shall never enter". This calls for the kind of self-sacrificing love that the teacher Jesus showed us in his own life.
The God of tomorrow
If we choose to speak of God, indeed even if it is a personal God for you, (and that's a concept that is very beautiful) we shall be using this term to focus on all that we supremely value and on the goals which make human existence meaningful and worthwhile. Geering says "There is no thing and no place in which we do not encounter this God. All reality is nothing less than "the body of God". This God is in the physical earth of which we are a part and this God is to be found in all living creatures. Most of all, this God is rising to self-awareness in the, as yet, confused collective conscious of the global human community. This is tomorrow's God, calling us from a world yet to be created. But to create this world, this God has no hands but our hands, no voice but our voice, no mind but our mind, and no plan for the future except what we plan."
So be it! and may the God of tomorrow be your personal experience !
With acknowledgement to Lloyd Geering in "Tomorrow's God" 1994)
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