God and Language
For westerners, belief in God is generally considered basic to defining what it is to be a religious person. Just as deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is the idea that God is ineffable or beyond words. Twenty-five years ago I had what was for me a singularly ineffable experience that literally changed my life overnight.
Several months after the experience, I discussed it with a friend who stated that I had experienced God. My thought at the time was that the experience was so ineffable, so unlike anything I’d ever known as a state of mind, that it didn’t bear any more resemblance to the God I’d been taught to picture and believe in than it did to anything else I’d ever thought, dreamt, felt, imagined, or perceived.
When we say the word “God,” how much can we be said to know what we’re talking about? Is a profession of belief the most significant spiritual act a person can make - are words of doctrine that telling of the nature of ultimate reality? Are the words by which we think and talk about God the measure of our nearness to God? And does atheism – disbelief in that Entity which believers describe in words, often in considerable detail – necessarily represent alienation from God?
Consider, for example, that Buddhists are sometimes considered atheists by westerners. Certainly the Buddha never spoke of God in the western sense of belief in a Creator existing in distinction from creation. That said, to read the Eightfold Path is to see that anyone who faithfully follows it would be perceived by Christians as “Christ-like!”
Several months after the experience, I discussed it with a friend who stated that I had experienced God. My thought at the time was that the experience was so ineffable, so unlike anything I’d ever known as a state of mind, that it didn’t bear any more resemblance to the God I’d been taught to picture and believe in than it did to anything else I’d ever thought, dreamt, felt, imagined, or perceived.
When we say the word “God,” how much can we be said to know what we’re talking about? Is a profession of belief the most significant spiritual act a person can make - are words of doctrine that telling of the nature of ultimate reality? Are the words by which we think and talk about God the measure of our nearness to God? And does atheism – disbelief in that Entity which believers describe in words, often in considerable detail – necessarily represent alienation from God?
Consider, for example, that Buddhists are sometimes considered atheists by westerners. Certainly the Buddha never spoke of God in the western sense of belief in a Creator existing in distinction from creation. That said, to read the Eightfold Path is to see that anyone who faithfully follows it would be perceived by Christians as “Christ-like!”
Posted by Paul at 6:32 PM Permalink
34 Comments:
So, to answer your question ... No, profession of belief is not the most signifigant act a person can make nor are mere written words, nor is ones nearness to God for it cannot be proven. Case and point, we would think that the clergy are close to God, however note the charges against some priest and preachers Molestation, fraud, and sincerely, only God knows what else. They are human just like anyone , but are held higher by their church bodies as close to God and as a chosen profession should be setting the example, not lowering their morality.
I some how escaped having a deliberate cultural conception of God placed into my mind, well, at least by my family - certainly by tv and media. But, by and large I think I came this state I find myself in by generally my own stumbling. Or perhaps it was placed there in pre-eternity...
As far as professing, I would ask, professing from where to Whom?
I hold suspect the braggart who goes online or to his neighbor, making claims of knowledge and sole authority. In that sense I agree with the comment above. In my opinion that is the sin of pride.
BUT, in the clean space of a pure and knowing heart the wordless profession TO one's Lord, in whatever conception one knows Him (or I suppose Him/Her/It), THAT I sincerely believe carries weight with our Creator.
Bragging to creation what you think is meaningless.
Talking to your Lord is paramount, in my opinion.
(Nor I am suggesting that discussing between people one's beliefs is necessarily a "sinful" thing, I just think there are degrees. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with even reading and commenting on this fine space of a blog!)
Keshi.
"You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe; and tremble!" (James 2:19) What matters is what that belief evokes in us in the way of response. It is our response that matters.
When we try to describe God, how many words are we permitted to use before we've crossed the line? To borrow from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God -- 'the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable' -- with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God."
Does disbelief in the Entity called God necessarily represent alienation from God? Disbelief in God can cause a person to be spiritually insensitive so that he is less likely to have the kind of transforming experience that you did, Paul. Right now I am thinking of Francis Thompson's religious poem The Hound of Heaven. "I fled him down the nights and down the days;..." My personal belief is that God is in pursuit of us always. I believe it is possible then for an atheist to experience God unintentionally and not know it was God he experienced yet benefit from the experience.
Today's world in many ways turns its back on the past by using technology and politics to dismantle the old ways.
It's as though the valley has been flooded but the top of a church spire is still visible, adorned with a cross, and people wonder what use to make of it. Some say nothing has changed, but these are the ones who find it necessary to deny the theory of evolution. In the hands of these people the Bible is a dangerous weapon for it incites to violence much more than the Koran.
When we say the word “God,” how much can we be said to know what we’re talking about?
Seems to me we have a choice these days and “God” acquires meaning only through context. When my aunt Avis speaks of God, it is something full of love and beauty and blessing. When I speak of God it is sometimes as the ultimate scapegoat on which to blame human "sin". But this is a personal way of revenging myself on religion.
The ineffable, however I may experience it, I find no need to name, for it is embedded in everything and everyone, and can never be separated out
She says it helps her to think of God as not just a being but an experience.
Certainly the concept of God and the way I understand God changed from what the nuns taught me in school and what observation and experience brought forth throught the years.
Yet, if I really take a good look, is one and the same but, approched from a simpler angle.
Then, God is everywhere (unreachable, aloof, watching, judging - oooooh, scarry!)
Now, God is everywhere - IS "the Universe" - every single particle. From the exuberant blooms to the tiniest breathtaking dew drop... God "made" everything, therefore loves everything.
If it is in every single nanu particle, I am part of it - therefore, we are all part of one another.
Interestigly, I believe science is untangling all this quiet well...
Peace, love, joy and laughter
it is what the world talks.
it is what time protects.
It is what illusions hide.
It is what is destiny
It is what five elements
it is what everyman is.
it is all that the world is.
It is all that is hidden
it is all that we see.
what is god? and who is god?
what lays beyond and after and profound
is like a tale in myth with
insanity as a human base.
What can creatures preach?
what can we see?
what form is too holy?
what water is powerful?
what fire do you control?
what earth you walk?
what sky you see?
what wind do yo breath?
What every that swallows is a strenght
that is all it is divine.
All we claim is maya.
all we feel is maya.
what the sun creates
and what man eats
are all maya.
If not life is nil.
If not what all the statues and gods that stand
are alive then we shall all perish under their weight,yet we live on,keeping an old and ragged spirit alive,in the temples of religious mind.
All that is is.Why fear?why care?
for we are humans,a race on its own.
OM!
KEVIN: I hadn’t thought of that, but I can see how the term “professing” a belief can be read as having showy, inauthentic connotations, and when that’s involved it certainly doesn’t come from a spiritual place.
You allude to something that I know I’ve heard you mention before either here or on your blog: that words about religion and spirituality have their place but also there are limits, and I agree. If all there is to one’s practice is blah blah blah, it doesn’t amount to much. (The preceding sentence was especially eloquent, but still…)
When you use the words “Lord” and “Creator,” I wonder if your thought is similar to SusieQ’s below?
MATTHEW: Which I bet comes from having the extremely strong suspicion that they’re not in any better position to know and describe the heights and depths and ultimate nature of reality any more than you can, what with being a member of the same species and the limitations that entails.
KESHI: I think many people feel that way. Some experience religious institutions as a help but others as a hindrance.
SUSIEQ: That makes sense – that the significant thing isn’t mere belief – or maybe, in Kevin’s usage above, “profession” of belief… but, as you say, how you respond to it, what you do with, by, and through it.
Yes, that difficulty posed by the idea of God’s transcendence in contrast with the finitude of language and therefore the risk for a kind of idolatry around images of God – that’s ringing a lot of bells from divinity school. I have the feeling it’s been something that has come up in theology for a long time.
As to whether believing in God is spiritually central or necessary, it sounds like you’re saying that this belief is always a good and helpful thing. And also that when people have profound spiritual experiences, these are necessarily experiences of God as described in the western world even if the person having the experience doesn’t know it.
I could see someone with a different perspective, one that he or she feels is more accurate than yours, similarly interpreting your beliefs according to his or her perspective. For example, in the poem you mention, a Buddhist would probably understand the Hound of Heaven not as a belief in God that pursues all of us always, no matter how much we may try to deny it, but as an enlightenment experience that pursues us always and no matter how much we may try to deny it.
What if the Catholic and the Buddhist are trying to talk about the same thing but have different ways of thinking about it? This might revert back to the ineffability problem.
THANKS FOR ALL THE THOUGHTFUL COMMENTS, I'LL CATCH UP WITH THE REST ASAP - (probably tonight or tomorrow AM.)
And then there's language - n linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. - link
I do think that like in every other aspect of life, what you do, how you spend your time and your money, shows what you value. Ignatius said love is best shown in deeds.
I think there are some major differences between Buddhism and Christianity ... I don't know if I can articulate them though.
Yes, that’s another problem with religious language – that even the most basic terms, like God, can mean such different things to different people.
SOULPEACE: “That which none greater can be conceived” has a familiar ring to it. It might come from the scholastic period and have been used in one of the attempts to logically prove God’s existence during the Middle Ages? It does, in any case, have that quality your friend suggests.
ANGELDUST: The world truly and literally is interconnected – I find that quality significant and inspiring too.
VISHESH: Your language in this poem appears to have contemplative or, as it’s often called, mystical experience as its reference – that sense of unity or oneness that has qualities so hard to put into words. It reminds me of how different traditions use different language to describe and interpret this experience.
Here, for example, you relate it to belief in destiny and to the belief that non mystical experience is illusory. Christian mystics interpret this kind of experience as a matter of coming into God’s presence and often use language referring to Jesus as the Christ. Sufis tend to describe it using Islamic terms, and so forth.
Some interesting books have been written providing first-hand accounts of such experiences from people from various traditions – and also from people not belonging to any religious tradition – illustrating how they appear to relate the same essential experience in different words.
As to Buddhism and Hinduism, what your link suggests to me is that one or both of these religions takes account of and understands the other from within its own framework. Without the ability to look into it further, I’m reminded of what may be parallel situations in western religion: for example, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet. But although Christianity and Islam are very much related historically and Islam takes cognizance of Christianity (and, incidentally, not so much the other way around) they’re distinct enough to be considered different faiths.
N2: It sounds like you may be suggesting that perhaps all belief systems obscure more than they reveal and that there is some underlying truth we may eventually come to. Of course many are convinced that at the end of time their tradition’s belief system will finally be revealed as true.
One way or another, if there’s truth to religion, you'd expect that at some point there would be more agreement about what it consists of than there is at present.
GHETUFOOL, thanks for stopping by.
It was basically a classic “mystical” experience, though I don’t much like that term. However, it happened spontaneously, as they sometimes do, rather than through contemplative prayer or meditation.
CRYSTAL, thanks for the links. Some people seem to find neurological correlations with religious experience disturbing, but that would be another topic (reductionism). Seems like language would be least likely to impact the type of religious experience that it appears may be most implicated in understanding God as ineffable.
I think one major difference is that Buddhists view the Buddha as an enlightened teacher – a person and not God. As I understand it, this is despite the attempt of some of his original followers to deify him, which he explicitly rejected. Jesus is generally viewed by Christians as the Christ – God and Savior as well as person and teacher.
INSIDE: Sorry for the confusion there. In my reply I was trying to paraphrase and not contradict you, so that what you meant to say is what I thought you said. Sometimes communication in print is clearer than in person but sometimes not!
for me: what comes to mind when you think of the term "everything"? sky, ipods, frogs, dust, calculus, etc. what comes to mind when you think of the term "nothing"? simply nothing, maybe anti-matter (which is also something btw). well, God is everything, nothing, and anything in between, because God created even creation itself.
your post is awesome and i appreciate the jud-chr-isl angle.
I question further the end of time revelation of truth. My own impression at this juncture in life is there is no alpha and will be no omega. Alpha always begets the question, what was before it. Omega too gets lost in the apparent cycle of time and times.
This is not to say there aren’t proximate alphas (big-bang) and omegas. But continual evolution appears to me to be more a revealed truth, often overlooked with the science that supports it as a religion in its self.
It occurs to me that thinking of God that way vs. theistically wouldn't detract from God's ineffability and essential mystery or awesomeness. Who knows what the greatest Whole of which our planet, galaxy, and universe even "looks like" - in terms of all its levels of existence and its full extent or sweep? It always strikes me, for example, that science can't look beyond our universe to know whether it's the only one or one of many.
In pantheistic terms, the sheer giveness of existence of being may if anything be more awesome than when we believe in a Creator that explains how it got here. Not that believing in a Creator really clarifies much; we don't know how the Creator pulled off the creative act and we have no better "explanation" for the Creator than something like "(S)he always existed" - which is just a version of saying that being or existence, in some form (here, as the Creator) always existed. Which is a lot like declaring I AM - and if I understand correctly, I AM THAT I AM is an ancient Jewish word or concept for God that basically expresses God's sheer inscrutable ineffable existence!
Science comes along after the fact and describes how creation, nature, or existence works - that is, that portion of it that it's even aware of. But what in the world the fact of any kind or form of existence is doing here to begin with, how any thing, process, state, or precondition ever came to be and to be itself, whether conceived as Creator or Being Itself - who can say?
N2: I know what you mean. The complete story, in biblical terms, is time-bound - but the Bible and Koran were written when we took our common sense perceptions of time at face value. So it may be that understanding ultimate reality or a final state ("final" - even our language is time-bound) can't be taken literally.
Your idea of continual evolution as revealed truth reminds me of the Catholic theologian Chardin. (Tielhard? I can never remember his first name.) He points out that the universe is a process of emerging novelty - things appear that you wouldn't have guessed at from looking at earlier phases of the universe. For example, back when it was all hydrogen gas clouds, who would have predicted a world where we'd be at our computers doing this?
again i think i haven't communicated properly on the hinduism and buddhaism part...
there more to it....there are lots of evidences and what you saw the dasha avatara is ten avatars or incarnation of the supreme lord of the universe vishnu(in hindu tradition)...because buddhaism spread..the hindu preists weren't happy and they took buddha away from the list and introduced balarama who is supposed to be the incarnation of adisesha(the snake bed of the lord)...it is just a little play...
you may ask me why is this important..what buddha thought is the real base of hinduism....it is just that people have added things to it...
Many of you graduating might be thinking about your future plans and hopes that God has for your life.
Our Lord wants you to succeed and prosper and give you great blessings. As you think about your future, think about what you did to get where you are now. Ask yourselves what you must do to get to the next level.
A close walk with the Father will make your walk in the current much easier to discern. Get guidance from strong men and women of God, and always do your best. Many of you will do great things in your life because God wants to see your best spring forth.
If you give God your all, he will give you what you have in mind, as long as you are walking the straight and narrow.
If you don’t know the will of God in your life, keep searching and he will reveal it to you. Patience is essential to his timing and all you dared to expect will manifest. The heart of God knows what you need and will truly give you the desires of your heart without void, which is better than anything the world offers.
May your success not come from your own selfish ambitions, but from the very plans that God has in store for you. A plan to see you deeply grounded in faith so that whenever life’s difficulties come, you will know that the Father has you in his sight and will never give up hope for you.
Press on, press forward, and dare to share your dreams with God.
That's why I haven't done that in my writing - well, especially in my book and manuscripts. On the blog, sometimes I do get more abstract so sometimes I post poems or prose poems as a way of being sure to "keep it real" or grounded, so to speak.
VISHESH, thanks - I wish I knew enough about the details to respond intelligently! But it does sound from what you say that in general the relationship between Hindusim and Buddhism may resemble relationships among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On the one hand, they're distinct religions; on the other, there are many interrelations both historically and in the content of the traditions. And there are lots of differences in how people within the traditions understand these interrelations.
JOSHUA: I agree with much of the spirit of what you have to say though its relationship to the post isn't clear to me.
One thing I'd tend to caution against is the connotation in a sentence like "Many of you will do great things in your life because God wants to see your best spring forth."
It could be taken to imply something I'm guessing you don't mean: that if you don't end up doing great things in life, it's a sign that God isn't on your side. Sometimes people identify wealth, health, and other forms of success as showing they've done well in God's sight. The problem, of course, with the notion that good things happen to good (or Godly) people, and, conversely, that bad things only happen to bad people, is that there's a world of evidence to the contrary.
Perhaps you simply experienced yourself in a way you never had before. Perhaps you got a glimpse of you minus all your earlier ideas about what you are. Experiences like this defy words, but they change us. That is my experience.
It is tough to find language around "mystical experience." Mystical makes it sound spooky or weird. And "altered state of consciousness" sounds so arid and technical - and possibly drug induced!
I liked William James' word "monistic" - as in "mono" meaning "one." I wish "monistic" experience were in general use instead of "mystical."
Because that sense of oneness or unity is certainly a defining feature, whether people understand it as experiencing the nearness of their relationship to God or how integral they are to all things - "one with the universe."
God is the plants, the trees, the waters, the beings of the land, sky, and sea. God is mother earth and we feed upon her breast, rely upon her cycles, and drink the waters of her birth.
To quote Keshi, "There needn't be a religion to believe in a God. I lost my religion and I found God."
Yes, one of the Hebrew names for God in Judaism (given to Moses by God in Exodus) is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh," I am that I am, also interpreted by rabbinical scholars as, "I will be what I will be." (The word "asher" has several meanings in Hebrew.)
Thank you Paul, for your perceptive and thought-provoking posts and comments. We need to have our thoughts thoughtfully provoked. :)
So which is it: God is the "supreme good" or God is, or is closely identified with, EVERYTHING. Because once you start going down the route of the plants and the trees and nature itself, you notice that nature includes many harsh as well as beautiful realities...
Ah yes Paul the perpetual quandry! I use the word "God" only for convenience sake. I should stop. It's confusing. When I say Divinity I do not mean an Omnipotent Entity up there somewhere requiring us to worship "Him," "Her" or "It", judging us and gazing down upon us. I just don't connect to that concept.
So yes, Divinity is Supreme Goodness (like yummyness) and nourishment of mind, body and spirit.
Divinity exists in Mother Earth and Nature. Things that can harm us do as well. i.e. Natural disasters. How do we reconcile that? Are natural disasters mostly the result of humankind's unnatural corruption, plundering, and destruction of the eco-system and the earth's resources? Not as in Divine punishment but as in upsetting and destroying the natural balance, triggering a plethora of unnatural "natural disasters."
If the balance was restored and Earth's bounty replenished as we lived gently upon Her, would the "natural disasters" be as many or as devastatingly harsh? Or would we be better equipped to co-exist with all of nature's elements as perhaps nature intended?
Why are there devastating earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, etc? Is that nature's harshness or is nature so drastically out of balance that nearly everything aspect of nature in greatly exacerbated?
Is there "bad" in nature or just nature itself? Nature is not consciously bad or destructive. How much of what we consider to be the "bad" or "destructive" in nature do we bring upon ourselves by greedily encrouching upon land, pushing the animals out of their natural habitats?
i.e. If a bear eats humans because we have deprived them of their natural habitat by encrouching upon it, that is not the fault of the bear. Yet for some this is an indicator that there is destructiveness in nature.
We no longer live respectfully with nature and the non-human beings of the earth. Nature is not deliberately harsh, cruel, destructive etc., yet many human beings are and we possess that capacity.
Do poisonness bugs and critters exist for a purpose? Do they have an essential function in the eco-system? Is nature harsh because a poisonness critter bites us?
I eagerly await your responses and those of your readers. Thank you for provoking once again.:):)
PS I've moved to a new address.
No doubt that compared to life as we know it, life would be tremendously and almost unimaginably improved if people treated each other and the planet wisely. That said, nature is by no means cruelty-free.
All kinds of injuries and illnesses that are minor today meant instant or prolonged and agonizing death prior to modern medicine - broken bones, simple infections, appendicitis. And of course seeing footage of lions, tigers, or wolves bringing down mammals makes an impression one might like to forget. And that was the fate of a whole lot of humans back when we were mainly scavengers and were ourselves the game of big game...
So that whole "nature red in tooth and claw" element is there.
For me, trying to solve this problem by isolating just those aspects of nature that people generally like - for example, beautiful landscapes and not, say, dying of exposure in a beautiful landscape - and calling that "the divine," felt arbitrary.
I also had problems with the idea that as long as it's part of the larger ecosystem it's OK since this doesn't diminish the suffering of the individual. And for that matter, you get stuff like asteroids hitting planets and mass extinction of species. And even if that sort of major random catastrophe doesn't occur, species go extinct anyway by dying out or morphing into something else.
And eventually, our own ecosystem looks like it calls for the sun to blow up and fry the earth!
I dont think this is all necessarily as bad as it sounds and I'm not having a bad day, LOL! Just going with the flow of your ideas and pointing out how I found myself responding to similar considerations.
I created some dedicated space to continue the discussion on mine with a link to your site. One wonderful apsect of blogging is meeting people whose posts prompt us to post!
It's a good idea. I've noticed that only the blogger, who gets the comment by email, tends to be aware when someone continues responding to a prior thread, so by posting you can give the topic added life...
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