Question By Jan
July 12, 2006
I receive your weekly newsletter and look forward to
it very much. I have read several of your books also and agree
with most of your insights and concepts. I also watched your
interview with Geraldine Doogue on the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation Television Station when you were out several years
ago.
The question is this: You say that you still spend a
lot of time praying but to whom do you pray? “The Ground of
Being” as you refer to God seems very impersonal and I find it
difficult to let go of the “father” image I was raised with in an
evangelical church in the 60’s. How does a “Ground of Being”
actually care about me and my family? Intellectually I know that
God really couldn’t care less about insignificant me here on
planet Earth (example Tsunami victims, hurricane victims,
famines, fires, etc.) yet I WANT to believe that SOMETHING or
SOMEONE does – or else what is the point of being born,
struggling through a crappy life and then dying and going to
nothing? I find I struggle with “what is the point of it all” on
a daily basis. I know that you say living life to the fullest is
what it’s all about – but if there’s no point to it all then why
bother caring about anything and living life to the fullest when
it is all for nothing in the end? I know life is for living in
the now – but I can’t enjoy it if I know there’s nothing at the
end of it and all my relatives that I love so much are going
nowhere and I will never see them again. It is all too sad. The
childish part of me still wants “someone” in authority to care
about me and my family. I guess that I really do still want my
God to care about me and “watch out” for me but I know wanting
God to care is childish rubbish and all the concepts that go
along with traditional Christianity.
Can you help me with some of these questions –
especially to whom do you pray and do you ask for help and love
from him/it?
I suppose that it is almost universal for human
beings, who have the ability to embrace the vastness of the
universe and to ask questions about life’s meaning, to yearn for
a protective, supernatural heavenly parent figure, who watches
over us and is the source of that meaning. That sense probably
comes from our childhoods when parents seemed invincible and able
to fix anything or to manage any crisis.
The problem with that yearning for God to play that
role as you point out is twofold. First, it does not work.
Tsunamis do roll over the world with no sense of the trauma it
inflicts on its victims and with no one protecting even little
children. People die in warfare despite the fervent prayers of
both the military personnel and their parents. Second, this
yearning keeps us in a delusional state of perpetual childhood
where we can pretend that we do not have to take care of
ourselves. Delusions can be pleasant but they are not life
giving.
The interesting issue you raise is that you assume
that if there is no supernatural parent figure deity in the sky
then there is no reason to pray and no purpose in life. If there
is no life after death, the purpose for God disappears. In these
ideas you are suggesting that if your definition of God is not
true, there is no God!
Let me seek to unravel some of that by quoting a
Greek philosopher, Xenophanes, who said, “If horses had gods,
they would look like horses.” Have you taken time to examine how
much your image of God looks like a very big, all powerful human
being? I doubt if it will ever be otherwise for human beings
cannot think outside their human experience. A horse cannot ever
know what it means to be human. A human being cannot ever know
what it means to be God. Yet human beings constantly tell other
human beings who God is and how God acts. Therefore, step number
one is to admit that you do not know.
That does not mean that horses cannot experience
human beings in their lives or that human beings cannot
experience that which we call God in our lives. It does mean
that the desire to be deluded does give rise to delusion. But is
the human brain the ultimate reality? Or is there a sense of
otherness? Of transcendence? Of the fullness of life? Of the
power of love? Of the Ground of Being? Can consciousness be
expanded? Boundaries broken? Humanity know transformation? Is
this a God moment? Are these the imprints of the holy ‘other’
coming into our limited understanding?
We have no God language so words become terribly
inept in making sense out of this experience. That is why almost
every religious pilgrimage winds up in mysticism. Prayer is the
conscious attempt to enter the transcendent moment. It is not an
adult letter addressed to a divine Santa Claus.
That is what I mean by prayer. Does it work? That
is not for me to say. Does love surround those for whom you are
concerned? Does love assist healing? Expand life? Is love the
presence of God within us loosed by one to surround another? Do
plants grow better if we talk to them? Is the universe a living,
throbbing, mystical God-infused place? Is God a being among many
or the ground of all that is? Was Jesus perceived as an
incarnation of an external supernatural God or was he so whole,
so at one, that people saw the source of life and love and,
therefore, God flowing through him?
Those are the questions I would raise. God is real
to me but not definable, only “experiencible.” However, that is
what gives every moment of life both its depth and its ultimate
meaning. Life is a tremendous and wonderful adventure that
touches eternity time after time. The idea that something you
call meaningless now would become meaningful by being extended
beyond death is a strange idea to me. I believe in life after
death because I touch eternity and meaning now. That is enough
for me.
John Shelby Spong
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