Does God want something from us?

[Katholish]

Tonyrey,

Probably “power-sharing” is a more accurate term. God remains omnipotent. He shares His power with us but He has the power to override any decisions we make at any moment. He does not do so because He knows that without free will we would be incapable of evil but also incapable of love.

Yes, this is a more accurate explanation.

If the world were under His direct control He would be directly responsible for all the disasters, diseases and deformities that cause suffering and death.

God is in fact the first cause of all of these things. The only “thing” which He is not the first cause of is the intention to sin (the determination of the created will away from Him)

If God did not chose to share His power we could not have free will because all our decisions would be determined by God and He would be directly responsible for all the moral evil in the world. Our decisions may coincide with God’s will but not always.

I am not sure if it is logically possible to have an intellectual being with a determined will, but I agree in spirit with what you are saying.

An unfulfilled desire is not a deficiency if it stems from God’s freedom and love. He is not subject to human categories. Therefore His desire is sometimes unfulfilled with respect to the reason why He created us. Otherwise Hell would not exist!

I now see why you want to say that God has unfulfilled desires, but I would still avoid such language as implying a contradiction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills. God does will be people to go to Hell, so he is in no way “sorry” or “regretfull” that those souls ended up in Hell. God antecedently wills all men to be saved, but those who go to Hell deserve to go to Hell and God wills them to go to Hell consequently (based upon their decision and actions).

 

[Detales]

The “god” you people are postulating is utterly materialistic and anthropomorphic. Who or what is the God of your god? you can’t be talking about the Supreme Being!

 

[Katholish]

The “god” you people are postulating is utterly materialistic and anthropomorphic. Who or what is the God of your god? you can’t be talking about the Supreme Being!

Is this addressed to me at all? Are you objecting to the fact that we are operating under the premise that God has a will at all? If so we can address this in a seperate topic if you wish, but God most certainly does have intellect and will, though of course these do not differ from His essence. There is a solid argument behind this assertion.

 

[fhansen]

The “god” you people are postulating is utterly materialistic and anthropomorphic. Who or what is the God of your god? you can’t be talking about the Supreme Being!

We’re admittedly, by nature, unavoidably anthropocentric and materialistic. So we use the best language we have, which does* not* automatically imply that the concepts we attempt to express with it aren’t transcendent in some way in spite of our limitations. People understand the concept of God to varying degrees and in various manners. Do you have something of greater value to add for the purpose of helping the human spirit permanently achieve the full life and happiness it can’t help but want? Perhaps, for whatever reason, you’ve simply never perceived with any depth the God that Christianity strives to point us to.

 

[Detales]

Katholish~~*Are you objecting to the fact that we are operating under the premise that God has a will at all? * Yes. That may be a Being far superior to us, even “next to” God, perhaps the one called Ishwara in one system, but it is not the Supreme Being, Which is without attributes or qualifications. Personalization is one of the fundamental errors of Christainism and the Abrahamic religions in general. This does not deny that, for instance, the God has three facets nameable for educational purposes, but again they are not person even vaguely in the sense I see most Catholics to understand them.

Katholish~~…but God most certainly does have intellect and will, though of course these do not differ from His essence The objectionable word here is “have,” as if the Supreme “has” attributes. If they are not separate from the Essence, they are not possessions or attributes, they are the completeness and totality of the quality irrevocably not separate or distinguishable from the totality.

Katholish~~*There is a solid argument behind this assertion. *OK.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The “god” you people are postulating is utterly materialistic and anthropomorphic. Who or what is the God of your god? you can’t be talking about the Supreme Being!

First of all, I have the same frustration, at times, with people rendering God in their own image. Such a statement as “this is a situation He’s willing to put up with” just cannot possibly apply to God. (Although I imagine that fhansen didn’t mean it literally ).

However, what entitles someone to call entity *x *“god”, if it doesn’t have a will? I will admit that “what we talk about when we talk about God’s will” is, at best, a dim shadow of a metaphor of the truth. But if a god didn’t have a will, then it wouldn’t be a god. The way I see it, such a thing might be a “force” or a “being” perhaps, but not a “god”. How can one claim the historical richness and psychological intimacy of the word “god”, but replace the concept with a concept fully impersonal.

Perhaps it would be better to go the Via Negativa route, and simply talk about what God is not. It is certain that “God is not constrained by our unreliable depictions of Him”, for example. I wonder if you would agree with this one, though: “God is not altogether indifferent to us”.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Fair enough then. Your answers satisfy the questions I wondered about well. Much thanks!

You’re welcome!

 

[Detales]

FHansen,

Thank you for your considered reply. Yes, we are “admittedly, by nature, …anthropocentric and materialistic.” But we are not condemned by our Nature to remain that way. That is the point of transcendence, como no? But the language of Transcendence is learned, and based on an unarguable premise. It is said that even to appear as a human is like a turtle surfacing on the ocean once every hundred years and getting its head in the center of a single wooden ring floating there. It may be similarly difficult to apprehend the astonishing profundity of Self. Between those tow lies the vast spectrum you spoke of where people understand concepts about God as contents in awareness, but not as the even basic self-knowledge that shows up near one end of that.

Do I “have something of greater value to add for the purpose of helping the human spirit permanently achieve the full life and happiness it can’t help but want?” For myself, yes. I cannot help to at least alert others to the possibility of a way from belief that has been available since the dawn of Man, and which by His own words, or words attributed to Him, Jesus Himself Understood.

But we are inheritors of the conditions you named, and do all in our power to keep everyone within those, with few exceptions. The personalization of God is one of those, as well as attributing duration to Eternity. They are equally erroneous, though for the sake of “educational” conversation those are popular, though misleading. There is a wonderful treatment of this phenomenon in a particular “handbook for religious sanity,” though that is an oxymoron. In this regard I would, though, point anyone to the Teachings of any contemporary or past enunciator of Non-Dualism, or Advaita, though they may not be under any such label, that particual Eternal Truth often being consistently and independently Realized. There are many, even through the ages. If you can bring yourself to understand them, you may see why I made that statement about Jesus, and find it accurate.

 

[Detales]

Prodigal, yes, I can understand and feel that frustration as well.

Nevertheless~~what entitles someone to call entity x “god”, if it doesn’t have a will? That is precisely the point, Prodigal. Attributing a will to an entity makes that already entity a person. “Entity” in the sense of God only fulfills one dictionary definition: “being or existence, esp. when considered as distinct, independent, or self-contained.” But even that has the slipperiness of “existence” and “distinct.” Being, as such, is essence, not existence, which implies duality. And “distinct,” from what? The second can be used as an education step in perception, as to some degree the first, but they are not ultimately accurate.

~~*But if a god didn’t have a will, then it wouldn’t be a god. * At least not an anthropomorphic one, which is exactly the point.

~~How can one claim the historical richness and psychological intimacy of the word “god”, but replace the concept with a concept fully impersonal. Historicity and psychological intimacy are just that–they are not God. “Impersonal” does not exclude Love, nor Consciousness, unless we only have a rudimentary and puerile understanding of those. This is why it has been advocated through the ages to “Know ThySelf.” To one awakened to Self (no, silly, not person!) the Love, warmth, and intimacy you speak of has undreamed of and infinitely greater portent.

~~*Perhaps it would be better to go the Via Negativa route, and simply talk about what God is not. It is certain that “God is not constrained by our unreliable depictions of Him”, for example. * Now that is fascinating. The “via negativa” you speak of is a foundational esoteric practice. In another language it is called “Neti neti,” literally (I AM neither this not that) Simply, it means that anything you can think of (contents) is not God. that leaves you only with Being, or you own feeling of “I am” as an avenue to understand and feel the Biblical import of “I AM THAT I AM!” That Biblical statement, though portrayed as personal for the sake of that story, is anything but. However, if you can successfully pursue that route, you can understand the Identity statements attributed to Jesus in and entirely different Light. You will also have a good laugh at yourself for asking if I agree with ~~*I wonder if you would agree with this one, though: “God is not altogether indifferent to us”. *

 

[James_S_Saint]

God IS. To attribute God “wanting” anything form someone anthropomorphises God making that imagined god false and not the God of actuality. God is not a person.

Though it is true that God is not a “person” (a word that actually means “a son”), the attribute of “want”, unfortunately does not merely apply to humans or animals.

Even if you take the stance of the Atheist in thinking that all things are merely the result of inanimate consequence, you have the situation of “want” being formed from “non-want” at some point. But this question does not merely lead to the curiosity of the First Cause for want, but what “wanting” actually entails.

How do you determine if something is wanting or just acting?

Not wanting to get into that here, let me just point out for sake of thought, that the resolve of such a question leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the Principle above all others “Wants” and has “Will”.

Thus it is NOT merely anthropomorphizing (although I’m certain that occurs a great deal).

 

[Detales]

Saint, “person” actually derives from a Greek word for a mask worn by actors and it’s purpose was to amplifiy or direct th voice. See any dictionary.

Principle, in the sense of God, being ALL, and sufficient unto Self, cannot “want” in any sense of the word. To insist so make the entity you are imagining other than the Supreme. That is what anthropomorphization is about, and religionists do it supremely well!

 

[James_S_Saint]

Saint, “person” actually derives from a Greek word for a mask worn by actors and it’s purpose was to amplifiy or direct th voice. See any dictionary.

Principle, in the sense of God, being ALL, and sufficient unto Self, cannot “want” in any sense of the word. To insist so make the entity you are imagining other than the Supreme. That is what anthropomorphization is about, and religionists do it supremely well!

Well thank you, but;

First, where a word came from according to etymologists and what a word means or has ever meant are very different issues.

Second and more to the point, “God” does not mean “ALL” as in “everything”. “God” is referring to the Principle that contrives and governs ALL - “El-o-ha” or “All-ah”. Neither of those mean “ALL”, but rather “the spirit of All”.

The Creator is not the Created although is within the Created and governing it.

Similarly, “4+4=8” is not mathematics, but is created by the CONCEPT of mathematics. Mathematics is within the statement, but is not the statement itself.

“Elohim” refers to the concept of the coherence of all concepts or the Principle which is the sum of all principles or the God that is the “hymm” (the summing) of all gods (hence the pluralization of “Eloha”).

God is not “all things”, but the coherence of all principles governing all things.

The question at hand is whether the Principle that is the One of the sum of all others can “want” or “desire”. And if you look into the concept of what it means to want, you will find that such a principle must indeed have the property of desire.

The Hebrew scribes were necessarily conceptual in nature. Their writing tools were far too limited to waste effort even on scribing vowel signs much less articles and other details of communication. This is why SO much metaphor was necessary (and please don’t confuse metaphor with allegory. A metaphor is a real event told by substituting nouns, but not verbs. Whereas an allegory is a fictional event that typifies real events).

Elohim is the Principle by which things come about.
Nature is those things coming about.
The Principle never changes.
Nature is constantly changing.

It is the difference between the **Creator **and the Created. But this is one of those issues largely misunderstood and misrepresented by “the followers”.

 

[Detales]

James. Wow.

 

[fhansen]

FHansen,

Thank you for your considered reply. Yes, we are “admittedly, by nature, …anthropocentric and materialistic.” But we are not condemned by our Nature to remain that way. That is the point of transcendence, como no? But the language of Transcendence is learned, and based on an unarguable premise. It is said that even to appear as a human is like a turtle surfacing on the ocean once every hundred years and getting its head in the center of a single wooden ring floating there. It may be similarly difficult to apprehend the astonishing profundity of Self. Between those tow lies the vast spectrum you spoke of where people understand concepts about God as contents in awareness, but not as the even basic self-knowledge that shows up near one end of that.

Do I “have something of greater value to add for the purpose of helping the human spirit permanently achieve the full life and happiness it can’t help but want?” For myself, yes. I cannot help to at least alert others to the possibility of a way from belief that has been available since the dawn of Man, and which by His own words, or words attributed to Him, Jesus Himself Understood.

But we are inheritors of the conditions you named, and do all in our power to keep everyone within those, with few exceptions. The personalization of God is one of those, as well as attributing duration to Eternity. They are equally erroneous, though for the sake of “educational” conversation those are popular, though misleading. There is a wonderful treatment of this phenomenon in a particular “handbook for religious sanity,” though that is an oxymoron. In this regard I would, though, point anyone to the Teachings of any contemporary or past enunciator of Non-Dualism, or Advaita, though they may not be under any such label, that particual Eternal Truth often being consistently and independently Realized. There are many, even through the ages. If you can bring yourself to understand them, you may see why I made that statement about Jesus, and find it accurate.

Your concept of God may well be greatly more sophisticated-or just plain truer-than mine, but let me ask if that God could, for example, communicate directly with a human being, as in the case of a word-for-word transmission of a thought originating from a separate mind? You might reply that the question doesn’t even make sense given your understanding of the supreme being and yet I would submit that unless such an entity could do such a thing-putting aside the question of whether or not it would even bother to -then the entity would be inferior to you and I. Anyway, trite or hokey as it may sound, people have had such direct experiences and they reveal something of the nature of God.

The beauty of Christianity is that “the other side” is claimed to have revealed itself to humankind to some degree in real, practical terms-and given us a language with which to attempt to better contemplate and converse about this phenomenon. And there is probably no way this can be expressed without it sounding both arrogant and naive. But the problem is that afterwards, everything besides direct experience comes off as shallow, speculative, or contrived-or in any case ineffectual. Does this mean that people don’t confuse the concepts, learned from others, with the experience, which they probably never had? No, it doesn’t, and people may tend to virtually deify and worship the concepts and miss the experience but this in nowise renders the concepts invalid.

I don’t know-maybe I simply don’t see what you see. To say that this infinitely superior being or entity is ineffable or beyond our ordinary ability to ever begin to fully grasp is a truth- itself greater than any of us have the means to even know-and is Church teaching in fact. But I think you may end up placing limitations on God based on unnecessary pre-conceived notions that tend to exile deity to a sort of vague and barely unapproachable no-mans land-with the result that the concept of this entity can be inadvertently diluted as to the properties or nature we may otherwise actually be privy to.

 

[Detales]

part 1

You continue to ask useful and intelligent questions. More importantly, you do it in a respectful manner, as distinct from the scofflaw attitude of some. I appreciate that, and will do my best to answer your questions.

Your concept of God may well be greatly more sophisticated-or just plain truer-than mine, but let me ask if that God could, for example, communicate directly with a human being, as in the case of a word-for-word transmission of a thought originating from a separate mind?

This sentence has two facets. First, mine is not a concept of God in the sense of an idea contained in mind, as faith must necessarily be. I have experienced a clear moment of Being that destroyed any previous concept of God that I had as a zealous Catholic. It took a while for my mind to catch up, as mentality is timed, and the Eternal has no dimension of duration. So it has taken a while to acclimate to the State I experienced and be able to put words with it that may, for others who have had such an experience, be a pointer where descriptions are less than useless. That is more true of those who have not had such an experience. I am also not special by any means due to having had this, I only know something of Being that others don’t. or seem not to, due to not having “been there.” It is similar to you having been a resident of your home local and being able to talk about it even in shorthand, as a direct experiencer of it, while I would know only vague concepts from your descriptions and have only the option of believing by dint of your sincerity. I would trust you, ie, have faith, while you, of course, know.

The experience of “getting” a “magic picture” is similar as well. I have a friend who to this day cannot look at one and perceive its 3D aspect. He only sees the 2-D or “Noise” aspect of the picture. Yet, the image and third dimension are there, right where he is looking, but not in the right way.

In this way of experiential “perception by Identity,” we find some who have an exceptionally profound and deep experience and familiarity with that State of Being, which in Catholic language, if I can remember correctly, might be called “The Beatific Vision.” It is this perception or Knowledge by Identity that enables one to speak with authority of the Nature of that State, including its significance, meaning, and the appearance of relativity that it gives to those who do not see directly. It is the foundation, then, of an entirely new language based on Fact, rather than faith. It is in this sense that God can, and does, speak to Man. It has always been thus, as the experience itself has no relativity with time and is properly outside it, while being the only Substance there is to it.

You might reply that the question doesn’t even make sense given your understanding of the supreme being and yet I would submit that unless such an entity could do such a thing-putting aside the question of whether or not it would even bother to -then the entity would be inferior to you and I. Anyway, trite or hokey as it may sound, people have had such direct experiences and they reveal something of the nature of God.

That “entity” IS ALL. It has no organ of communication in the sense that we might understand it. Due to the impossibility of comprehension of such magnitude, and because of the very real need to feel a connection with the Absolute, Man tends to anthropomorphize the immensity of Being. This is normal and natural, and indeed, I feel, necessary. But all of that is yet, innocently enough, in the realm of mental contents. It is not understanding the vessel and the Light to it by Identity, which is a special case of Knowledge available to some, either as a grace or as the result of endeavor. I do not know. I am simply of the knowledge that it happens. But such communication as might result from such an experience is not of a “personal” nature. It is based on and is concerning Principle and the Nature of Allness.

 

[Detales]

part 2

The beauty of Christianity is that “the other side” is claimed to have revealed itself to humankind to some degree in real, practical terms-and given us a language with which to attempt to better contemplate and converse about this phenomenon. And there is probably no way this can be expressed without it sounding both arrogant and naive. But the problem is that afterwords, everything besides direct experience comes off as shallow, speculative, or contrived-or in any case ineffectual. Does this mean that people don’t confuse the concepts, learned from others, with the experience, which they probably never had? No, it doesn’t, and people may tend to virtually deify and worship the concepts and miss the experience but this in nowise renders the concepts invalid.

That is a big chunk to chew, as it has some underlying assumptions that are not, in my experience accurate. First, the key word is “claimed.” There are myriads of claims as to what is true or not in every arena of human experience. Some of that can be empirically tested, by going there or by repeating the experiment. That is why we can sail over the horizon without fear, and why most of us understand what a car is about, etc. But invoking divine authority is an ancient ploy, or it is in rare cases apparent from the Authority of the Speaker. But in that case it is not an invoking, it is simply a presentation of Self as known directly. That bears its own authority for those who have ears. Few do, and what is surprising about that? For my part, I could not even begin to look at other alternatives to my beliefs until I was shocked into the necessity of that by my increasingly radical experiences in awareness. You can read Areo, Benedictus, etc, and find exactly my attitude and understanding displayed for study. What could have been so immense as to pull out the rug from under me in less than an instant? Doesn’t that bear some consideration? Mine was by necessity, and I spent much time and effort attempting a “catholic” exegesis of what happened. It just didn’t fit. So I lucked out, one might say, like winning the big lottery, but different.

… But I think you may end up placing limitations on God based on unnecessary pre-conceived notions that tend to exile deity to a sort of vague and barely unapproachable no-mans land-with the result that the concept of this entity can be inadvertently diluted as to the properties or nature we may otherwise actually be privy to.

Having had, as I said, the classic Catholic understanding of Deity, I would at this point say that those were my “unnecessary pre-conceived notions that tend to exile deity.” I sincerely and utterly believed the concepts served me on the plate of my mind since childhood. They were my food and drink, my meat, cheese and dessert. I had to have the entire structure of my mind as I believed it to be pulled out from under me for just an instant, and I was never the same again. I could not be. My perception and understanding of my very self was transformed in an instant. The old me had died; though I was wearing that body and had those memories. I could never again look at myself or anyone else in the same way ever again. Can you imagine what that is like? I doubt it.

I was even deemed to be mad and in need of a psychiatrist by my friends. But all my mental faculties were not only intact, but improved, because I had and have a Point of Significance around which to arrange the contents of my experience. That Point is not in time and not in person, though it includes those. Did God shrink and become remote for me? Absolutely not! For the first time in my life I had gone beyond an emotional addiction to thoughts about God to a glimmer of what God actually IS. God is emphatically not a concept, my brother. God is a living experience here and now.

If there is anything God hypothetically wants, it is for us to wake up rejoicing to the fact that like the prodigal, we only have appeared to leave the Father’s Presence in order to, having learned, freely and wholly return to where we always already are.

 

[tonyrey]

If the world were under His direct control He would be directly responsible for all the disasters, diseases and deformities that cause suffering and death.

God is certainly the First Cause but He does not will the occurrence of every single event. As David Hume pointed out, God does not control the universe by direct volitions but for the most part uses the laws of nature to attain His ends. Calvin believed that every drop of rain occurs by the express command of God - which is clearly absurd because it would make Him the direct agent of all the natural evils in the world!

An unfulfilled desire is not a deficiency if it stems from God’s freedom and love. He is not subject to human categories. Therefore His desire is sometimes unfulfilled with respect to the reason why He created us. Otherwise Hell would not exist!

I now see why you want to say that God has unfulfilled desires, but I would still avoid such language as implying a contradiction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills.

I don’t think there is a contradiction. God creates us with free will so that we can share His life in heaven but He knows we can choose to reject His love. Even if we do He still loves us as His children made in His image but obviously not in the same way as those who reciprocate His love.

God does will people to go to Hell, so he is in no way “sorry” or “regretful” that those souls ended up in Hell.

The impassibility of God is controversial but there is no doubt that the Son of God wept and felt compassion for the afflicted and the fate of Jerusalem. I think it is truer to say people will themselves to go to Hell. Otherwise it means some are predestined to be damned. Jesus died for all, His infinite love knows no bounds and He is always ready to welcome those who repent…

 

[Prodigal_Son]

If there is anything God hypothetically wants, it is for us to wake up rejoicing to the fact that like the prodigal, we only have appeared to leave the Father’s Presence in order to, having learned, freely and wholly return to where we always already are.

For the record, I think there are two stories here, both of which participate in one truth:

1. The “subjective” present: This is where I think you are coming from, Detales. I have had something like the experience you are describing, which I would describe as the mystical experience. In this experience (or, I should say, in *my *experience), the plural collapses into the singular – but this unity takes hold of the soul and carries it into the conviction that “What Is Must Be”. In relation to this experience, all facts (that is, contingencies) become irrelevant, and all discourse becomes discourse directed at experiencing the fullness of this reality. This is the level that deity operates on: when we say that “we are made in God’s image”, we are saying that we can and must live in this unity.
2. The “objective” history: The emphasis here is on discursive knowledge, not the knowledge of acquaintance described above. Conventional Catholicism recognizes that God – who is Subject-par-excellence and transcends history – has nevertheless become a part of history, “to win back what was lost”. When sin entered the world, the subjective experience of the present became obscured by “objective realities” like sin, law, and death. Paraphrasing what you said above, Detales, insofar as God has a goal, it is to reawaken in us a sense of joy and wonder. Jesus Christ is the Way to that kind of rebirth; in Him, God was objectified, subjected to the scandal of human history. If the Church has stopped preaching this, then it has indeed lost its way.

But I don’t think the Church has stopped teaching about the “weight of glory”, the reality of a God who cannot accurately be talked about, only experienced. To be sure, many people will de-mystify God, and many will follow the dangerous roads of legalism and over-asceticism. But the road of the mystic is just as treacherous, if not moreso. To be sure, it is a truer road; I daresay it is the only true road. And I agree with you that, far from taking us somewhere new, it reveals to us that we have always been here, with Him, if only we had eyes to see.

But it is far from clear that these truths cannot find expression in a human tongue. Perhaps all that we say is metaphor, and yet we know that saying nothing is not adequate either. “Three persons, one God.” We are deceiving ourselves if we say that we know what a “person” is, or who “God” is, or, for that matter, what precisely is expressed by “three” and “one”. Still, the doctrinal understanding is – at its best, at least – a united effort of many men (and women) to move from objective to subjective, to move toward relationship with God.

If people use doctrines for other purposes, then they are probably just cultivating their own fields.

 

[fhansen]

part 2

The beauty of Christianity is that “the other side” is claimed to have revealed itself to humankind to some degree in real, practical terms-and given us a language with which to attempt to better contemplate and converse about this phenomenon. And there is probably no way this can be expressed without it sounding both arrogant and naive. But the problem is that afterwords, everything besides direct experience comes off as shallow, speculative, or contrived-or in any case ineffectual. Does this mean that people don’t confuse the concepts, learned from others, with the experience, which they probably never had? No, it doesn’t, and people may tend to virtually deify and worship the concepts and miss the experience but this in nowise renders the concepts invalid.

That is a big chunk to chew, as it has some underlying assumptions that are not, in my experience accurate. First, the key word is “claimed.” There are myriads of claims as to what is true or not in every arena of human experience. Some of that can be empirically tested, by going there or by repeating the experiment. That is why we can sail over the horizon without fear, and why most of us understand what a car is about, etc. But invoking divine authority is an ancient ploy, or it is in rare cases apparent from the Authority of the Speaker. But in that case it is not an invoking, it is simply a presentation of Self as known directly. That bears its own authority for those who have ears. Few do, and what is surprising about that? For my part, I could not even begin to look at other alternatives to my beliefs until I was shocked into the necessity of that by my increasingly radical experiences in awareness. You can read Areo, Benedictus, etc, and find exactly my attitude and understanding displayed for study. What could have been so immense as to pull out the rug from under me in less than an instant? Doesn’t that bear some consideration? Mine was by necessity, and I spent much time and effort attempting a “catholic” exegesis of what happened. It just didn’t fit. So I lucked out, one might say, like winning the big lottery, but different.

… But I think you may end up placing limitations on God based on unnecessary pre-conceived notions that tend to exile deity to a sort of vague and barely unapproachable no-mans land-with the result that the concept of this entity can be inadvertently diluted as to the properties or nature we may otherwise actually be privy to.

Having had, as I said, the classic Catholic understanding of Deity, I would at this point say that those were my “unnecessary pre-conceived notions that tend to exile deity.” I sincerely and utterly believed the concepts served me on the plate of my mind since childhood. They were my food and drink, my meat, cheese and dessert. I had to have the entire structure of my mind as I believed it to be pulled out from under me for just an instant, and I was never the same again. I could not be. My perception and understanding of my very self was transformed in an instant. The old me had died; though I was wearing that body and had those memories. I could never again look at myself or anyone else in the same way ever again. Can you imagine what that is like? I doubt it.

I was even deemed to be mad and in need of a psychiatrist by my friends. But all my mental faculties were not only intact, but improved, because I had and have a Point of Significance around which to arrange the contents of my experience. That Point is not in time and not in person, though it includes those. Did God shrink and become remote for me? Absolutely not! For the first time in my life I had gone beyond an emotional addiction to thoughts about God to a glimmer of what God actually IS. God is emphatically not a concept, my brother. God is a living experience here and now.

If there is anything God hypothetically wants, it is for us to wake up rejoicing to the fact that like the prodigal, we only have appeared to leave the Father’s Presence in order to, having learned, freely and wholly return to where we always already are.

My experience was somewhat different. I never bought into the Catholic teachings I was raised with as a child-at least not once I left childhood- but later I began to seek truth on my own-sometimes desperately, and anywhere I thought it might possibly be found. To my own surprise I found myself back at Christianity, doing much reading of the bible and other spiritual works. I was to be blest much later with a taste of the Beatific Vision-I don’t need anyone to believe that and I could never hope to succeed in explaining how I knew I had “seen” God-but it was absolutely an indescribable experience- so I agree that God is not a concept but an experience-like any other in that particular sense-and how could He not be, if we really think about it?

But many years after that I was very pleasantly surprised to find, within Catholic literature, people I could relate to. It was revelatory for me to read people like St Teresa of Avila. Even though her experiences were much more frequent and regular than mine, I knew I had found a kindred spirit in the sense of having someone who knew what I knew, going by her descriptions of the mystical experiences she had had. So I don’t know what any of this means but, like her, my experiences did not detract from my Christian faith but actually supported it, even though the experiences were of a living God and tend to make anything we think we know about Him, well, like straw, as Aquinas put it.

 

[Zundrah]

I came across this thought in my head after discussing Spinoza one day:

Questioning God Almighty, are we, huh? Tch… (LOL)

Does God wanting something from us?

No not really… “Desire” maybe yes but “want”?.. NO! See it this way; he would take pleasure in it if we did it but he does not want… that is a human and animal thing… we call it lusting.

If so, would that make him imperfect?

Not at all. He desires us to be with him and so forth he desires that we stop sinning so that we can be with him because that would be “pleasing” to him. Beautiful isn’t it?

God wants us to stop sinning

Would like us to stop, but does not “want”.

If God wants something, it means he does not have it

Correct!

If he does not have it, it means he is incomplete

Aww, you are breaking my heart! You will not be incomplete if you recieve Christ. God may be less “incomplete” if we all go to him (eventually).

If he is incomplete, it means he is not perfect

Don’t be silly! :b

Since God is perfect, he has everything he wants

Err… God does not want or need. He is everything and everything is Him. Does that sound incomplete?

Discuss.

I just did.

Love and endless blessing I send you!
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