What's in a Word?

[My response to a UUF discussion. Following my response is the query that was the impetus for the this, if you care to read it too.]


What’s in a Word? Part of a UUF Dialogue.

First, I want to thank Art Edison for inviting dialogue on a subject that is sometimes difficult to approach, since people place such value and meaning in their personal beliefs. Like Art, I am optimistic about the future direction of the UUF fellowship. I smile to think that as diverse as all of our places on the religious spectrum may be, we share one thing in common—the care for our church and the people in it. Whatever it is, there is something about this place that keeps us all coming back.

I’m not sure exactly how to best describe my religious stance, since there is not yet a single word I know that embodies my beliefs. For what it’s worth, I took a quiz last month on beliefnet.com, and it calculated that I was a liberal Christian (94%), a Quaker (92%), and a Unitarian Universalist (88%). I suppose what is most essential to my spiritual self-definition is that I feel absolutely comfortable using the word “God.” In fact, I feel uncomfortable with the suggestion that I should not use the word God.

I did not attend a single church service until after the age of twenty. I was raised in an environment where religion was not an issue—my family members may have had complacent religious beliefs, but nobody went to church or really pursued those beliefs except for in the decent attempt to lead “good” lives. God was not something that was discussed unless one of the children asked a question, whereupon it was addressed in the best manner my parents knew how—by asking us questions.

This religious liberty led me in all different sorts of directions. I think I must have been a UU before I entered kindergarten! Growing up, I vigilantly read parts of the Bible, I went to The Temple, I studied just about anything I could get my hands on. I clung to my early beliefs in reincarnation, I experimented with pagan nature religions and witchcraft, and I went through a phase where I believed that religion was entirely invented by humans to explain mysteries that otherwise could not be explained. At this point, I became an atheist, and believed religion, and God, to be nothing more than a scam. Furthermore, I thought that to believe in such a scam would leave me with no authenticity or sense of self. Religion and God were weaknesses—idolatries of the spirit and the mind that limited me and prevented me from discovering the “real” truth.

But my time as an atheist didn’t last long. It, too, was vaguely unsatisfying. Since I had been on both sides of the fulcrum, I chose to commit to the belief that held the most personal power to affect a system of valuable meaning in my life. I decided that I didn’t really care if God actually exists or not, I wanted to believe in God because it makes me feel better and challenges me in a way nothing else has—because, ultimately, I believe in the prevailing force of goodness over evil, and I wanted to give a voice to that.

So I took gigantic leap. I started reading Bible passages without a hardened heart, without cynicism. I took the good and left the rest behind. I started talking to “God.” “God” started answering me. I was able to meditate for the first time in my life, and when I tried to skirt around an issue, "God" was there to remind me of my values, there to encourage me through difficult decisions.

So let me define God, as I see him. God is the infinite source of goodness. God is the force that prevails over evil. God is the truthful and abstract all-knowing source that knows everything about you and loves you anyways, encouraging you to constantly raise the level of your spiritual evolution, your ability to love, forgive, and have faith in the goodness of the world. Of these three, love is the greatest. How could I not love a God like this?

I believe in God because I am willing to believe in miracles.

I believe that this world is filled with evil forces and forces of love, and that when matched with equal quantities of both, love will always prevail. For me, God is the champion of this cause, the leader of the team called "love." For this reason, the word "God" is fundamental to my worship; worship defined as honoring that which is worthy of veneration. For me, it is worthy and necessary to gather regularly to honor that force of love that always prevails over evil. I will do so loudly and with gusto. I will sing God's praises and let my heart be restored with the beauty of God's grace and loving-kindness, my soul be filled with stories of miracles and transformation. This is how I worship. It means the world to me.

Because I am a UU, I don’t believe that God exists solely in the name or the word “God,” but that doesn’t lessen the importance of such a word. “God” is a word connected with the entire judeo-christian-islamic history, and new histories and personal meanings beyond. And while the word “God” may be new to the last 5 or 6 millennia, this history has been large enough to construct multiple various levels of analysis of just exactly what “God” means, analyses which remain continual in their construction and de-construction. I fail to see how using a different word would ever change or alter the meaning behind the particular concept that the word “God” embodies. We could adopt an entire different concept, of course, with a different word, and I would be interested to see this develop, but I am content with my functional concept of “God,” even with its myriad variations from denomination to denomination.

I don't think that "God is a ridiculous concept" either, and I think we all have our own variations and relationships with God. In our Unitarian history we have struggled to understand others' words for God; let others struggle to understand the term "God." I don't think the term "God" complicates matters or represents a communication failure with the rest of the world. Just because someone has a personal verbal hang-up with the word does not mean that it should be banished, slandered, or punished. Just because some people use the word in the name of bad things, doesn't mean we should let the word be tarnished. The word was here first, before bad people started doing bad things with it. And if you are counting, I think many more good things are done in the name of God than bad things.

As a UU, I believe in and honor multiple paths to "God," to enlightenment, to trancendence. I would appreciate it if people could find it in their hearts to try to honor "God" as one of these paths too. I'm tired of the anti-Christian backlash. It breaks my heart to feel the anger brewing in such beautiful souls, however justified such anger might be. Claiming the word "God" does not turn one into a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian. It simply opens another venue to the spiritual mystery.

I am sure that for each person, “God” means something a little different. But many abstract words are like this: freedom, justice, etc. Just because some people don’t like the word banana or have a different word for it doesn’t mean I’m going to start calling bananas something else, and it doesn’t mean that bananas don’t exist. I say banana, you say bah-nah-nah, and that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.


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What's in a Word? An invitation to a UUF dialogue
by Art Edison

I am very excited about the future of UUF. We have come through some rocky times over the last year or so, but my sense is that we have crossed the summit and can all look forward to building a stronger and more enriching fellowship. It is in this spirit that I write this short essay, and I hope to read and hear many other opinions on this subject, because diversity with tolerance is the heart and soul of our great tradition.

I am an atheist, and I don't feel comfortable using the word "God." About 44 years ago I was confirmed in the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, and attended the youth group until I was an early teenager. My childhood church was extremely liberal and a refuge for humanist thought in a region of country with a dominant conservative religion. I have never believed in God, despite a breif six month infatuation with the beauty and serenity of the singing cloistered Carmelite nuns in a Santa Fe, New Mexico, monastery.

For nearly twenty years, I have studied and taught natural sciences, and my awe and wonder at the world has steadily increased. I am convinced that there is an interdependent web of life. I have never ceased to be amazed by the complexity and beauty of even the simplest virus or bacterium. One of the most pleasing aspects of science is that as questions are answered, even more questions are posed. It is an area of study where you constantly realize how little you know, and I find this both humbling and stimulating. Will we ever understand everything? I doubt it. However, in my opinion the gaps in our knowledge are a result of out intellectual limitiations and lack of necessary tools to probe the world. Despite the fact that I constantly need to revise my view of how much I understand about the world, I am more convinced than ever that God, in the traditional sense of the word, doesn't exist.

I think that the teachings by Jesus as relayed to us through the New Testament are some of the most important guides to living in harmony in a complex world. I firmly believe that "what goes around comes around" and that "we reap what we sow." I have also studied the Tao Te Ching, practiced Tai Chi, and had fleeting but wonderful moments where I thought I felt what I thought might be Chi. I firmly believe that there are things that we experience in life that can't easily (or ever) be explained by science. There is a spiritual side to things that is not easily distilled into a periodic table of elements or genetic code. However, the traditional idea of God doesn't fit into my understanding or experiences in this spiritual dimension of life. I believe in nature, in human connectedness and interdependence and think that it is all under the influence of physical laws, evolution, and natural selection.

Despite pleas from Revern Sinkford to reclaim the word "God" from the fundamental religions, in my opinion it is hopeless and counterproductive. Call me cynical or in need of phsycological help, but these are the sorts of things I think about when I hear the word "God": He is the (male) entity who supports the USA in our war against terror, Iraq, and any other threat to our way of life. He is in whom the nation trusts in our currency. He is Jesus' father and was likely responsible for Gainesvill being spared the wrath of hurricane Charley (although, it isn't clear who was responsible for Sanibel, Punta Gorda, and Orlando). He created the world in 6 days and is responsible for the fact that most Americans continue to question the Darwinian evolution. When the Gators beat the 'Noles in '96, it reaffirmed that God loves the Florida Gators.

When I hear the word "God" spoken at UUF, I always cringe. However, atheist and scientist that I am, I do have a spiritual side that I think is not too distant from many UUers who believe in God and who don't have the verbal hang-up that I suffer from. I don't think that "God is a ridiculous concept." I just don't believe in the "Big Christian God Sitting Up in Heaven" and feel that by using the word we complicate matters and are not properly communicating with the rest of the world.

What do you think?

(Published in the Millhopper, September 2004)