A Personal God

 

For most of my life I believed in a personal God -- one that interacts with human activity, one who interacts through science.  I never saw a separation between religion and science, partly because I come from a secular, educated nuclear family, but mostly because Quakers have made significant contributions to science.  To me, religion is organized spirituality that can include deities, but can also involve spiritual practices that do not include personal gods, but rather deal with energy or explorations and discovery of a higher self.  Neil deGrasse Tyson defines "religious" as a belief that God answers your prayers.  That is an incomplete definition of religion or religious.  Not all religions have gods. To me "religious" means practicing one's spirituality communally or individually, often within a particular context (Quaker, Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Sufi, neo-pagan, etc).

Take liberal Quakerism, for example.  Increasingly among liberal Friends you get ambiguous answers as to what or who God is. For what I believe to be a minority of liberal Friends, that God is revealed through Christ our Savior/Teacher/Friend.  For others Jesus is not God but a teacher or rabbi, and Friends would state that he had the fullest measure (or a full measure) of the Light and he is a or the central religious figure. Still others would say they believe in God, but they cannot or will not definite it. Others don't believe in a personal God, and still others are non-theist or atheist.

Early Quakers emphasized a personal God that one could experience and one would experience this God as Love.  This was a radical departure from the distant judgmental God of the Puritans, or the God only accessed through the rites of the church (through formal prayers and practices).  Quakers went so far as to argue that water Baptism and Communion do not a Christian make; that seminary degrees and training do not a Gospel Minister make.  They put great emphasis on being "regenerated"  or made anew through a personal experience of the Light searching their minds and hearts like a search light, shining like a beacon on that which separated them from God and from a full life of joy, happiness and love (regardless of circumstances -- that peace that surpasses understanding).  That same Light, though, was also a guide to clarity, seeing the truth of things, and served as an inward prophet, teacher, guide, friend or counselor.  They knew this Guide to be the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, or Christ within.   As they were faithful to the Light of Christ, they became friends of Jesus.  The entire message of early Friends was of that personal experience with the Power of the Lord which was over all.

But for many contemporary Christians, this personal Jesus is found through confession, prayer and Bible Study.  There is an emphasis on sin, heaven and hell, of salvation from hell, and a preaching up of sin.  You don't have to go to a fire and brimstone fundy church. Even some of the big mega churches preach up sin (or worse, the Prosperity Gospel).  Everything is about the problem (sin), and the solution is to confess belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and personal savior.  If not, well there are eternal consequences.   The hope is for a reward of eternal life in heaven with God.  It's not the most hopeful of gospels.

While early Friends would not challenge humanity's "fallen" state and the need for redemption, they emphasized freedom from sin, in the present day, and so beyond pointing out where they saw sin, they found that "preaching up sin" was not the approach to take. It made sin a trap out of which no one could climb, not even with the Spirit's help.  People may be depraved, but are not condemned to a life of sin.  For some Calvinists -- the Puritans in particular, believed that most of humanity was condemned to hell, except for the pre-elected.  For Quakers, all who came unto the Light and minded it and followed it would be saved. Even those who did not know the name of Jesus.

Friends found that the Power of the Light was over the Power of Darkness.  If one found themselves in the darkness, Friends counseled to sit still in it, don't pay attention to it, and be patient. Light arises out of Darkness and leads.  Again, this Light of Christ, the Resurrected Jesus, the Comforter, was one we could experience personally and corporately.  Many Christians today profess a belief in this personal Jesus. Quaker teachings influenced Wesley who used Quaker tracts in his ministry, and the Great Awakening and later Methodist revivals re-influenced Quakerism.  But it was the Quakers who re-introduced this personal experience of the risen Christ in the 17th century.

What hangs many modern liberal Friends up, and I include myself among these Friends, is that Great Chess Player in the Sky.  That God that concerns itself with the mundane aspects of life.  That sentient being in the cosmos that somehow pays attention to each and every person's choices. And no matter how good a person is, no matter how much they follow the teachings of Jesus (knowingly or not) they are condemned to hell without confessing belief in Jesus.  

According to Early Friends' reading of Scripture, that Light of Christ was in all people whether they recognized it as such or not.  It was the true and universal Light that enlightened all who come into the world.  No matter the outward confession, the Still Small Voice instructs all.  The Inward Life was evidenced by outward behavior; not by confession.  However, Friends often believed that if one heard of the story of Jesus they would often make a connection to the Inward Reality and convert; though the focus of convincing others of their need to mind the Light within was often to those who already considered themselves Christian.  Later, when the majority of Friends would become Evangelical Christians in the 19th and 20th centuries, proselytization and evangelization of non-Christians would become a priority for them.

This universalist understanding in modern times is not so ethno-centric.  Liberal Quakers do not all see that Light tied to Jesus insofar as the Light is Jesus. Instead, Quaker ministers like Elias Hicks began to see Jesus not as a God but as a Pattern.  Whereas most Quakers in England and the United States were affected by the Great Awakening and the Methodist revivals, other Quakers began to downplay the specifics of Christian religion and over the next century and into today would decline to profess belief in a personal God at all; certainly not one that manipulates, rewards and punishes people.

I think it's a false choice, however, between a micromanaging deity and no personal experience of the divine at all.  For years I declared myself a non-theist, because I bought into this binary choice. Either God is a personal God, a sentient manager of my life, or God doesn't exist, or if God exists it's a term for a reality we cannot really know or understand.

What does make sense to me is the early Quaker teaching that I have experienced personally in myself and in community.  There is a Light that shines inward from the Creator.  This measure of the Light, that of God within us, is what can guide each person's conscience into right living with the rest of creation.  It is also what makes each person equal in the eyes of the Source.  It's what connects me to my neighbor.  It's what triggers the hormones and the neurotransmitters that bring us together, that bonds us and unites us (I'm not a scientist, but you get the point I'm trying to make).  It's that Power that helps me to altruistically,  selflessly, charitably.  It's that Presence that calms and brings patience when frustration and fear come.  It's that Peace that we can't understand, but is there if we wait on it.

So I can articulate what it's like to experience the divine.  I don't believe I can understand divinity whether that is a natural aspect of Creation to which we attribute supernatural powers because we don't understand how it works scientifically, or whether God and what we experience of God is truly supernatural. But as I have continued my Quaker practice which has consisted of occasional prayer, reading, Bible study, journaling, blogging, regular attendance at meetings for worship and meetings for business, participation in Quaker committees and meditation, as I have continued in these things, all the while claiming a non-theist approach to "God,"  I continued to have these experiences of truth being revealed to me, of a transforming power that helped me overcome some of my attachments and show me how to overcome others (still working on it).  Love showed up when my heart was hardened.  Clarity showed up when I was confused.  Peace showed up even in my most anxious moments. I continued to be led to speak in meeting, an experience which never allowed me to let go of the notion of God, at least. Regardless of my theology, I continued to experience The Other Within.

What helped bring me back to an understanding of a personal God is when I heard a Friend who serves with me on Baltimore Yearly Meeting's  Ministry and Pastoral Care committee speak about what a personal God is to him.  This led me to my own understanding: A personal God is a higher power that we experience, however we experience it.  That Light that guides us to live justly and peaceably.  That motion of Love that heals us or leads us into action.  That teacher who reveals truths about our lives and our experiences. That counselor who supports us in navigating challenges.  That guide that shows us the way forward.  All of those are experiences that are personal to us.  Each of us can have those personal experiences.  That, by definition, is a personal God, because we experience God in our own way, in our own time.  Anyone who has had even the smallest of those experiences, has experienced God.  And that God can show up in nature, alone or in community. God can be known in peace and in strife in prosperity and in poverty in freedom or in bondage.

What trips us up, perhaps, is when we think God "cares" or "loves" or "is displeased."  These are human emotions and feelings. God is not human.  God just Is.  But the only way we can understand God is through our human experiences.  So it is natural to believe that when the Seed Within grows and shows us how we are living is not in keeping with the Spirit, the spirit is "disappointed" or "wants" something different for us.  Sure that can be our own judgments, but we can sense a dis-ease when we are not yielding to the Light within.  Sometimes it's obvious and other times more subtle.  We find ourselves become restless, irritable, contrary, or maybe we are trying to manipulate situations or people.  The discomfort within can be something we may be tempted to try escape somehow, turning to maladaptive coping mechanisms.  

Perhaps we have have achieved a goal, we have won a competition, overcome a hardship.  We are full of love in our hearts, of gratitude and of glory.  We may say "God is Good" and "I am loved/favored/blessed."  Or, we may be so full upon finding a new font of love that there is no room for the anger, hate, resentments, distrust or fear we were holding onto.  We have found forgiveness that we could not understand before.  We have witnessed self-sacrifice and are touched by the beauty of the gesture. We may say "God cares" because it is evidenced in the actions of others or in an inner change. We say "God is Love."  

God is none of those things.  God is not human.  God is all of those things, because we are conceived by the Divine.

In truth, if we are in the Light, in these moments of continual revelation through experience, we are in unity with God, and so our caring, our condemnation, or judgments are the human responses to a spiritual experience.  

Are you still with me? I went down a rabbit hole again.  So, sin. Redemption. How does this fit into a personal god? Because as we come to identify that of God within us, we can test it and learn how to follow it. That Light within shows us our true selves, as we really are.  No matter what we have done, or who we have become, no matter what has been done to us there is a power to heal and overcome. Each day we choose to listen to that Light rather than ignore it, we are renewed. We are changed.  One step at a time. One moment at a time.  We come to trust the Light as a personal friend, even though this Light is in all people everywhere.

So, my dear reader, I offer to you that those experiences you have within of a power greater than you, or a power deep within you, or a power higher than you, are your experiences and therefore personal, whatever language you use to describe it.  And that power, in my experience, will regenerate you, will make you whole and new, though if you are stubborn like me, it may take a while.