Is God a person or a force? Lent 2023: Day three

How do I see God? As a connectedness, a power, a purpose, a reason... Replace the indefinite article with a definite article and capitalise. The Connectedness, The Power, The Purpose, The Reason. 

There are more... The Ineffable. The Numinous. The Continuous Whole. The Prime Instigator. The Journey from Zero to One. The Ultimate Unity. The Awareness of All.

I see God not a person, but as a ground of being, the underlying substrate, infinite and eternal, a web of consciousness touching all matter. God doesn't have to be a person; we made God one. The very concept of personhood is one limited by our human understanding; God entirely transcends human comprehension. Only a few mystics ever get close. For most of us, we can only approach God through metaphor – and a none-to-accurate one at that. Which is why some religions prohibit the mention of God's name. This makes sense to me.

Ther personification of God requires that God be given a gender and a pronoun (male, he/him). This is folly – a universal God cannot possibly have the biological attributes of masculinity or femininity. Pronouns for God should therefore be God/God's – not God the Person, but God the Divine Process.

The Taoist philosophy, with the Tao being the path of life, the divine field, does not exhibit personhood of itself. Again, this squares more with my worldview than 'God in three persons, Holy Trinity' of Christianity. [I shall be writing about the Holy Trinity in a future post during this Lenten series.]

But in your personal quest, should you feel the need for a person-God – then OK! Everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way. This is an important tenet of mine. I won't be proscriptive as to say that it's wrong to imagine that God is a person. But then militant atheists should not build straw-man arguments to mock those who believe in God by creating a caricature. And here, Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0, prompted to illustrate the question whether God is a person or a force, comes up with this:

The old God – the old Story – has become a difficult one to believe in in these times of scientism. A new vocabulary is therefore called for.

Do we need a God in our lives? For some, a personal God is essential. For me, it is more a case of aligning my path with the Cosmic Purpose, seeing something higher than the day-to-day demands of simple materialism and the ego. A connectedness with the flow of cosmic consciousness, on its way to an ultimate oneness.

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Lent 2023: Day three
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Lent 2021: Day three
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Lent 2020: Day three
Define your Deity