Recently, through my involvement with the Valley Interfaith Council--an organization that consists of Muslims, Christians of many denominations, Jews, Baha'is and Buddhists, I have been thinking about the nature of God.
Since September, several traditions--adherents of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and just this past Wednesday, Unitarian Universalist traditions have presented talks on how our traditions understand war and peace. These conversations naturally involved a good deal of talk about the ways the various faiths believe that God interacts in the affairs of humans.
As a result of these talks, once again I have found myself re-examining questions such as is there a divine presence in the world? In what ways, if any, does God influence the course of humanity? Does God possess the powers that many believers attribute to the divine? Does God meddle in the affairs of individuals and nations? And, well, you get the drift.
All of this thinking brought me back to a little book that Naomi Pigeon lent me over a year ago and which, I must admit I dismissed as so much "new-age" spirituality. The title of the book is "What God Wants: A compelling Answer to Humanity's Biggest Question". The author is Neale Donald Walsch who is also the author of the series "Conversations With God."
Now the very first question the reader of this small book needs to discern comes from the title of the book itself. Is "what God wants" a question or a declarative statement? Are we going to explore what might be on the mind of God or are we going to be told exactly what God wants of us human beings? Are we going to be asked to explore our own beliefs or are going to be told by yet another "expert" exactly what to believe?
The book is divided into essentially two parts: the first part asks questions; the second part attempts to supply some answers. This sermon will consist of two parts: the first part will present the questions and the second part will attempt to be a response to the author's questions.
So, to begin:
The dust cover of Walsch's book tells us right from the start that, "This book is dangerous. It explores with startling freshness the most important question you could ever ask, and offers with breathtaking courage the most extraordinary answer you could ever imagine. That answer is so theologically revolutionary and so spiritually empowering that it could change the course of human history."
Now much of this book is written in a rather simplistic and hyperbolic prose. Walsch goes out of his way to try and make the reader believe that the message of his book is a threat to all of the standing religions of the world. He asks if the time hasn't come when the followers of most of the world's standing religions must change their understanding of how their God works in the world. In fact he states that throughout history some of the world's greatest problems have been caused by what people believed about the nature of God.
Walsch tells his readers that:
It's people who thought they knew what God wants who created the crusades
It's people who thought that they knew what God wants who hanged men and women in town squares, and burned others at the stake.
It's people who thought they knew what God wants who passed laws making it illegal for human of differing races to marry or for same gender people to marry.
But mostly he points out many of the inconsistencies in how people represent God. Some people have been told that there is but one God while others have been told that this one God is divided into three parts, and some have been told there is no God at all.
Many believe in a God of love and justice; yet others believe in an angry and vengeful God. Some have been told that God is a compassionate and merciful God; while others have been told that God sits in judgment of every human soul. People have been taught to both love God and to fear God.
And Walsch concludes that it is humanity's ideas about which God they believe in that influences how they feel about the value of life and how they act toward other people.
He writes that so many thing aspects of daily life are influenced by an individual's beliefs about God and what God wants.
He notes that some believe that since God is male then men shall have control over women in business and in the home. Others believe that God intends individuals to have sex only for the purpose of procreation or that various forms of sexual expression are "unnatural" and laws against certain practices have been enacted by those who believe that God does not want certain sexual experiences to occur and that God sends people to hell for violating these laws.
Consequently there are people who believe that "God hates fags" and that same-sex relationships are not what God wants. Therefore laws and constitutional amendments are enacted to see that what God wants is the prevailing law of the land.
He tells us that people have been assured of God's unconditional love if humans do what God wants. When they don't they'll be condemned to everlasting damnation.
Additionally, Walsch takes us through many other topics such as free will, suffering and death. In each case raising up how different people in different religions and cultures have used their understanding of what God wants as a basis for social control.
Concerning free will Walsch speculates that while yes individuals have been granted free will this is really just a rouse since unless a person does what God wants he or she will "pay for it with continuous torture through all eternity." clearly no people are clearly free to choose anything if they face the most horrendous outcomes imaginable if they don't do what they are told.
Walsch continues by observing that many believe that suffering is good for us since it is a force for improving ourselves and "purifying our souls." In fact, Walsch contends, a central tenet of Christianity holds that individuals are reconciled with God through Jesus' suffering.
"Thus," he concludes, "suffering has been established as a redemptive experience." I suppose the logical end to this way of thinking is the old saying that holds, "God never gives us more than we can handle. Therefore, the more I suffer the better I am as a person.
And concerning death, Walsch informs us that humans have an unnatural fear of death because of the uncertainties over whether they face eternal punishment or glory. "One result of this teaching," he continues, "is that many humans consider that death is a terrible thing, and something to be feared. It's the end of the line, the final curtain call, the closing bell. Nearly all of the imageries surrounding death are negative, fearful, or sad...thus a street that goes nowhere is called a dead end. A person who is badly mistaken is dead wrong. The spirit that comes to retrieve your soul is the grim reaper....On the other side of death, many people feel certain, is the Final Judgment. If you have not been good, (that is if you haven't done what God wants) it's at this point that you'll go to hell.
But eventually, Walsch gets to what I think is the heart of what he is trying to say and that is that the theology represented by our traditional teachings is a theology of separation.
And he goes on to state that a theology of separation produces a sociology of separation and a sociology of separation often fosters a pathology of separation.
How else, he asks, can we overlook the violence in Darfur; the violence of the death penalty, the violence of racism; the violence of slave labor; the violence of the sex trades?
And here he asks the central question of his book. "What if something very important that humans think about God is simply not true?" Is it time, he asks, to rethink the answer to what God wants?
And in a cute, if disingenuous way, at the end of the first part of the book he provides the answer to this question about what God wants by presenting the reader with a couple of blank pages. His answer, then, to the question what God does God want is one word--nothing.
In the second half of the book Walsch strives to give us a picture his new and supposedly radical image of God.
Basically, his idea can be summed up like this:
1. Tomorrow's God does not require anyone to believe in God.
2. Tomorrow's God is without gender, size, shape, color, or any of the characteristics of an individual living being.
3. Tomorrow's God talks with everyone, all the time.
4. Tomorrow's God is separate from nothing, but is Everywhere Present, the All in All, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Sum Total of Everything that ever was, is now, and ever shall be.
5. Tomorrow's God is not a singular Super Being, but the extraordinary process called Life.
6. Tomorrow's God is ever changing.
7. Tomorrow's God is needless.
8. Tomorrow's God does not ask to be served, but is the Servant of all of Life.
9. Tomorrow's God will be unconditionally loving, nonjudgmental, noncondemning, and nonpunishing.
"Taken collectively," he suggests, "these differences will produce a strikingly different form of spirituality, which in turn will produce a strikingly different form of life, a different way of being with each other."
Well, I have a little surprise for Mr. Walsch. This strikingly different form of spirituality already exists. There already is an organized religious faith that professes the unity of God and the universality of God's love and that urges its followers to love one another in a radical way by upholding the worth and dignity of every person. That tradition would be known as Unitarian Universalism.
Far from being a new-age concept, our values around such matters as love, compassion and equality have been around for hundreds of years.
In 1770 the Universalist preacher John Murray uttered the words that came to characterized the theology of the Universalist tradition. Murray said, "Go out into the highways and by-ways. Give the people something of your new vision...Give them not hell, but hope and courage; and preach the kindness and everlasting love of God."
And in 1819, in sermon given in Baltimore, Maryland, the great Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing raised many eyebrows when he proclaimed, "Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. We believe that God, when he speaks to the human race, conforms, if we may say so, to the established rules of speaking and writing...(and we) believe that God is infinitely good, kind, benevolent...good in disposition as well as in act; good not to a few, but to all, good to every individual, as well as to the (universe)."
And, finally, consider these words that seem to be taken directly from Walsch's book but were written in 1989 by the radio commentator Paul Harvey.
"Do you think it matters whether you call Me God, or Yahweh, or Jehovah, Allah, Wakatonka, Brahma, Father, Mother, even the Void of Nirvana? Do you think I care which of My Special Children you feel closest to -- Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed or any of the others? You can call Me and My Special Ones any names you choose, if only you will go about My business of loving one another as I love you."
But, Mr. Walsch, these comments are not really intended to be criticisms; they are merely intended to point out that your wonderful new God and your new spiritual direction are based on longings of the human heart that have been around for as long as humans have pondered these questions.
So, what does God Want? I'm not sure I know. In fact, I'm not always sure what I mean when I use the word God.
But I do know that debating over beliefs about God and the proper formulation of creeds, and saying you are saved or damned on account of your belief in God misses the point.
My Unitarian Universalist faith informs me that all kinds of ideas or beliefs about God--whether there is just one God or many; whether God is a he, or a she or they or even the belief that there is no God are valid because we come to them of our own free will and by our own process of discernment free from the fear of what may happen to us after we die.
Unitarian Universalist faith tells me that it is more important to put values at the core of our tradition than beliefs. Now this doesn't mean that we UUs have no beliefs; it's just that our beliefs are those that build up community and celebrate all people who live there and we oppose those beliefs that separate us and that tend toward exclusivity.
In that sense, unlike some other religious traditions, we do not see our Unitarian Universalist movement as a gated community where access is provided only to those who believe a certain way; our community is open to all.
I believe that most people, regardless of what they believe about God, uphold the same values--love, peace, justice and compassion. I believe that there is a universality to those beliefs that transcends the particulars of what kind of God we believe in. So let's stop arguing and excluding. Let's stop making war because we think that is what God wants and start making peace because that is what humanity wants.
"Tell me about the God you don't believe in," quipped the wise sage, "Chances are I don't believe in that God either."
And thank you Naomi for letting me read your book.