If no one has ever seen God, how can we fight over, who is correct?
A Hindu friend and I, discussing concepts of God, realized the major problems in human history have been and are over the variety of God concepts. For instance, a fundamentalist Christian would say we are monotheistic and Hindus are polytheistic. We affirm one God and they have many Gods. But he showed me, we don’t practice what we preach.
In India, as you travel around from place to place, you find buildings and things for many different Gods. What we westerners fail to realize is that in India while there are many different gods created in different places, they all eventually owe allegiance to the ultimate source of all reality, Brahma.
We also fail to realize, that as you travel from place to place in our land, you find buildings and things for many different Gods. We have a Roman Catholic God, a Baptist God, Presbyterian God, fundamentalist God, liberal God, etc., that we believe all owe an allegiance to the ultimate source of all reality, God.
Aren’t Brahma and God by definition the same - it’s a language barrier. My God, as I understand it, is presented in the first line of Scripture. (This is same line in Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism and Islamic scriptures - also found in some form, at the beginning of most all religious thoughts of creation.) Without realizing it I assumed you knew my God. Recently it became clear I was wrong. So please let me introduce my God.
All things in life ultimately go back to "bereshith bara Elohim" (In the beginning God created...) and the meaning of all things is understood in light of God. But the light has many sides like a fine jewel. The view is different for every facet of it. The first word in the Bible for God is the Hebrew, Elohim. It is a plural/many faceted word. So any answer is many sided.
Since no one has seen God, any answer to who God is, will require faith. As in math and science - "this is the answer because the above facts have led me to jump to that conclusion."
In high school, I learned parallel lines are two lines that never intersect. Not because we could prove it, but experiments and mathematics have produced sufficient data to make me feel comfortable in proposing that two lines can exist that will never intersect.
In college, I learned two lines projected far out into space, will always intersect, because the universe is not static. Thus parallel lines only exist in a area in space. Learning about this greater view expanded my knowledge, but it still required a leap of faith on my part.
Of course those who still reside in that old static universe think this is a little spaced out.
In my early years, God was a benevolent father high on a throne, a super He (I was taught to see God as a perfect "He") that expected respect and obedience.
In seminary, I learned that there is no direct evidence that there is a God. Instead we have forms of revelation that are interpreted to be about God. These interpretations are leaps of faith. Faith being the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen.
For example: general revelation - in nature we see so many mysterious that there must be an intellectual force behind it all, so we say by faith. Or in special revelation - via writings and teachings, we read and hear things we "just know" they are from God, so we say by faith.
The saddest aspect of this entire endeavor is that definitions based upon leaps of faith divide our world. Conflict in this world is based on religious beliefs, which are formal responses to the question of God. If no one has ever seen God, how can we fight over, who is correct?
A Hindu friend and I, discussing concepts of God, realized the major problems in human history have been and are over the variety of God concepts. For instance, a fundamentalist Christian would say we are monotheistic and Hindus are polytheistic. We affirm one God and they have many Gods. But he showed me, we don’t practice what we preach.
In India, as you travel around from place to place, you find buildings and things for many different Gods. What we westerners fail to realize is that in India while there are many different gods created in different places, they all eventually owe allegiance to the ultimate source of all reality, Brahma.
We also fail to realize, that as you travel from place to place in our land, you find buildings and things for many different Gods. We have a Roman Catholic God, a Baptist God, Presbyterian God, fundamentalist God, liberal God, etc., that we believe all owe an allegiance to the ultimate source of all reality, God.
Aren’t Brahma and God by definition the same - it’s a language barrier. My God, as I understand it, is presented in the first line of Scripture. (This is same line in Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism and Islamic scriptures - also found in some form, at the beginning of most all religious thoughts of creation.) Without realizing it I assumed you knew my God. Recently it became clear I was wrong. So please let me introduce my God.
All things in life ultimately go back to "bereshith bara Elohim" (In the beginning God created...) and the meaning of all things is understood in light of God. But the light has many sides like a fine jewel. The view is different for every facet of it. The first word in the Bible for God is the Hebrew, Elohim. It is a plural/many faceted word. So any answer is many sided.
Since no one has seen God, any answer to who God is, will require faith. As in math and science - "this is the answer because the above facts have led me to jump to that conclusion."
In high school, I learned parallel lines are two lines that never intersect. Not because we could prove it, but experiments and mathematics have produced sufficient data to make me feel comfortable in proposing that two lines can exist that will never intersect.
In college, I learned two lines projected far out into space, will always intersect, because the universe is not static. Thus parallel lines only exist in a area in space. Learning about this greater view expanded my knowledge, but it still required a leap of faith on my part.
Of course those who still reside in that old static universe think this is a little spaced out.
In my early years, God was a benevolent father high on a throne, a super He (I was taught to see God as a perfect "He") that expected respect and obedience.
In seminary, I learned that there is no direct evidence that there is a God. Instead we have forms of revelation that are interpreted to be about God. These interpretations are leaps of faith. Faith being the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen.
For example: general revelation - in nature we see so many mysterious that there must be an intellectual force behind it all, so we say by faith. Or in special revelation - via writings and teachings, we read and hear things we "just know" they are from God, so we say by faith.
The saddest aspect of this entire endeavor is that definitions based upon leaps of faith divide our world. Conflict in this world is based on religious beliefs, which are formal responses to the question of God. If no one has ever seen God, how can we fight over, who is correct?
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