Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Again, What is God?

"There are over six billion people in this  world and each person has his or her own thoughts about God."    --Madeline L'Engle

Try asking five friends "What is God?"

Odds are you will get at least five or more different responses.

The book God Without Religion: Questioning Centuries of Accepted Truths by Sankara Saranam (which I have not yet read--"so many books, so little time") has an interesting Foreword by Arun Gandhi:

     The central question within this book, and in life itself, is "What is God?" This question has bafled humankind for eons, and it will continue to defy logical understanding...Perhaps, instead of espousing exclusively rational images of God, we would best serve God and one another more faithfully by remaining open to the mystery that transcends our understanding.
                                                             ...
     When asked what he thought of the meaning of God, grandfather [Mohandas Gandhi]said:"There is an undefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen Power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so beyond all that we perceive through our physical senses. While we certainly do experience God's existence, our attempts to reason it out intellectually will always prove to be a humbling and limited exercize.

     Grandfather wrote, "I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever-changing, ever-dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and re-creates. That informing Power or Spirit is God....For I can see that in the midst of death life persists; in the midst of untruth truth persists; in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, and Light. God is Love. God is the Supreme Good.

                              ...

     More to contemplate from Madeline L'Engle:

"If I could comprehend God completely, God wouldn't be worth bothering about.
I'm finite, God is  infinite; the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.
But we get enough glimpses."
    

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