The way in which we think about god has also become rather self-conscious. We (can) now say to ourselves, “Very well, how can I think about god?” rather than, “I have faith in god, I believe in god, or I do not believe in god.” That is a totally different way of thinking, an entirely new manner of introspective reasoning. It sets aside certainty for clarity. As a consequence, we find ourselves constantly considering and reconsidering, stating and restating, defining and redefining the meaning of god – how we might conceive/connect to god - and accepting or rejecting each and every contemporary interpretation, every current understanding, every new revelation, as well as their various alternatives. The conclusions derived from the process may at times prove to be permanent and fixed; at other times provisional and fluid.
Following the wisdom of simplification, we may benefit from the teaching of Rabbi Arthur Green that the singular, if not the single, question to be asked now of Jews and others is, “In what sense do you use the word ‘God’?”
If you think of god as a great human-like figure with stern or sparkling eyes, sitting on a throne sporting a long white beard, intensely alert to our actions that are registered on a mammoth scoreboard in the sky, you’re probably not reading this website. If you are reading this website and you find there are vestiges of that image and attitude within you, you would be well advised to think again and to reexamine your thoughts especially if you plan to raise Jewish children. They are likely to be, and as members of a minority are encouraged to be, more critical and skeptical about commonly held prevailing ideas than most kids.
It might be a good thing to replace this anthropomorphic idea of god with an image that will work better for this day and age. You may consider many theologies from which to make your selection. You may be soothed, strengthened and untroubled intellectually affirming a Personal God of the kind that existentialists like Martin Buber espouse (a “Thou” who is ever awaiting your deepest self and most authentic “I” in relationship). Or perhaps you’d be more open to - that is, more persuaded by - an abstraction-like concept, a god best understood as a Process, Power or Force in the universe as Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan and other contra-traditional religious thinkers who have abandoned classically-rooted interpretations profess. You might, over the course of time, find that you have been able, artfully and handily or cautiously and deliberately, to uphold several assorted, even contradictory, god ideas at once – and never feel the need to reach any final conclusions. Or you may determine that there are no final conclusions that you, or anyone, can reach in god thinking.
What I have seen is that there are times in life when it seems best to think of god in a particular way. For example, thinking of god as a Person – although totally Other, of course - is very helpful, especially when we need a personal Friend or Parent to turn to as when we are going through particularly difficult times. That’s self-evident. We can then conceive of the deity as hovering in some manner above us and attentive to us. Such a god hears and may choose to answer our prayers. Such an idea of god meets real human needs.
There are other times when thinking of god as a Process rather than a Person is most useful. After all, many readers of this book have had impressive academic schooling in the humanities, liberal arts, and sociology as well as professional training, requiring scientific and technical education. Our thinking has become sophisticated and modern (or post-modern) and many people you meet have been “turned off by organized religion.” They often mean by it that they prefer god ideas which are beyond or post “Big-Guy-in-the-Sky.” They would rather think of god in terms of the Mind or Process behind the organizing principles of the universe or of “reality.”
You will see Process written here with a capital “P.” The capital “P” in Process represents a god-symbol or a god-code, something like a computer icon, evincing rather abstract layers of religious thought, philosophy and theology. Why with a capital “P”? The answer is so that in this context we know that Process references divinity. We will elaborate on the multiple layers, implications and applications of god as abstract Force, Power, Principle and Process further on in this chapter. In fact that is what, for the most part, this chapter is all about.
Also, and perhaps more important for reasons of affirming identity, apart from the meanings we wish to impute to our god ideas, many of us feel it is important to take our stance within a particular tradition to which we are committed and wish to preserve - Jewish, Christian, Islamic or whatever. Clearly, certain religious traditions accommodate abstract god ideas better than others. But, the ever-evolving, regenerating and trans-shaping traditions conceiving of god in recognized, established perceptions, as well as in convincing, progressive, non-traditional conceptions have, in different ways, served to preserve continuity and connectedness to the past. Arguably, it helps to use god language that is malleable and interpretable, just as some rabbis would suggest, contrary to important Jewish philosophers, including Maimonides, that it helps to think about god as advancing, enlarging, “growing.” My own teacher who powerfully influenced many Reform Rabbis as students in his Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion classes, Dean Professor Henry Slonimsky taught the god of the Midrash, a god who, perhaps by conscious divine intent, is limited in capacity, primarily and most conspicuously, in preventing evil - a god, based on rabbinic literature, who suffers anguish and sorrow from the wounds his creatures endure.
Why, Jewish tradition asks, does the liturgy at the centerpiece of every Jewish prayer service, employing the image of The God of Our Ancestors, refer to “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?” (And now, in the Reform prayer book, the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah). Why is the prayer not expressed more simply as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; why the repetition of god three times, once for each of the Patriarchs? The answer provided by tradition is: to indicate that the term god, or the reality of god, and the experience of god’s presence, as understood by one generation, will be perceived differently by the next. Abraham had his way of apprehending and relating to the divine, his son Isaac had his, Jacob his, subsequent generations theirs and we, ours. And our children, surely, will have new ways that are distinctly their own.
The words “father” and “king” are also quite different in meaning than the usage of the words in the past when both kings and parents possessed absolute authority and could decree death to children and subjects. Fathers and kings no longer possess the right of required obedience to their command that they held in previous centuries. And yet we have retained the terms even as their definitions have changed radically. The meaning of the term god, how we perceive god and how we define deity, similarly evolve and develop through time.