Yeah, I hear ya Dave… when it comes to God, there’s always gonna be stuff we don’t understand… well, stuff I don’t understand anyway.
I guess I was just saying how I would put the concept of panentheism in the simplest terms I could, at least as I understand it, even if it doesn’t really explain everything, because no matter how few words we use or how many, I don’t think any of us can grasp the depths of God, let alone describe them, and especially when we all see ‘through a glass darkly’ as we do. We’re just reaching our hearts and minds out there into the dark, trying to make sense of things, and sometimes we may be closer to the mark, other times further from it, but I doubt any of us are ever gonna be right about everything, or will know or understand everything, or at least not as long as we’re on this side of the grave.
I guess how I look at it, and why the concept makes sense to me, comes from my experience of God in my life, or at least as I understand that experience.
For example, I feel like I’ve experienced God’s closeness in some of my darkest times (though I feel like I’ve also experienced a sense of God’s distance, or even a sense of abandonment, or a perceived abandonment anyway, in those times), or the sense that God was closer than my heartbeat, or inside of me somehow, the spirit of God at one with my spirit, holding me together, keeping me from caving in or falling apart… and I also feel like I’ve experienced this closeness in moments where in my heart I was touched by something in a story, a song, an image, or, most of all, in a gesture of love from another person…
But on the other hand, I feel like I’ve experienced the distance of God (though a different kind of distance, a more positive distance, if that makes any sense) when looking up at the stars at night out in a field by myself, or looking out over the ocean, or walking through the woods… there is this sense of greatness, of some presence that is vast and mysterious and hard to define, though it is felt as something wonderful, something beautiful, even though it is beyond me, while, at the same time, being right there with me.
So God is both like the lover who intermingles with us intimately, we are inside of God and God is inside of us, and the stranger whose name and story we don’t really know, but who fascinates us and still attracts us despite our lack of full knowledge and understanding.
This is kind of how I understand my relationship with my fiancee Kaylyn as well. There is this intimacy I have with her, a closeness, a kind of understanding that is familiar, but at the same there is a mystery about her, things I can’t define or even understand.
She is my mate, but she is also a mystery to me in some ways, and I don’t know or can’t grasp everything about her that makes her who she is.
It’s kind of the same in my relationship with God I think, these two overlapping realities, only increased exponentially, though, if I really think about it, my relationship with my fiancee in particular, and my relationship with others in general, is wrapped up in my relationship with God, because we can all be God’s voice and hands to each other…
Of course I’m coming at this more from the perspective of a poet or maybe a mystic than a scientist or a mathematician… like this one Coldplay song, The Scientist, goes, ‘questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart’, and that’s kind of where I’m at.
But I say all of this as someone who has days where he barely gives God a thought and who enjoys playing video games or chatting about geeky stuff more than discussing theology or my beliefs usually. I have my ‘deep’ moments, times when I wonder why I’m here and what this is all about, and want to be closer to this something or this someone that I’ve wrestled with through much of my life, have at times felt deeply abandoned by and at other times deeply loved by, but most of the time I’m kind of an airhead.
With that said though, I think most people, when it comes to God, are like, to give an example, people who know how to drive, though they know next to nothing about how what they’re driving works, and they honestly aren’t all that interested (though some are, to be sure) about how it works, only that it works, that they can drive it and get from point A to point B.
I think this is kind of where I’m at somewhat.
So I guess in my mind, though there is a part of me that is curious about how God is close to me, there is a bigger part of me that just wants to know that God is close to me, is with me, sharing in my life in some intimate way, that I’m not alone, and though there is a part of me that wonders whether the Trinitarians or the Unitarians or whoever is closer to being right about ‘how God works’, or at least in a more scientific and mathematical sense, there is a bigger part of me that just wants to know that God loves me, and can help me through each day, and can help me find my way home, wherever home is.
I try to see God as spirit and not as some really old dude sitting on a throne in some other dimension, and not flesh and blood, even if He speaks through and works through many things and many people, and shares in the experience of flesh and blood in some mysterious way… and I tend to think of God as something like the Force in Star Wars, though personal rather than impersonal, and without a dark side (well, I’d like to think so anyway) but when it comes down to it, there’s so much that I don’t know or understand about God, or heck, about life itself (although God and life may be synonymous for all I know).
And I just want to know that I’m loved, that I’m not alone. I just want to drive, even if the thing I’m driving is a mystery to me in a lot of ways.
Not sure if I’m making any sense at all. I might be saying something important here, or I might just talking out of my butt, I don’t know.
Whatever the case, thanks for the interesting discussion, and may you all be blessed
Matt