To speak the word God

To speak the word God

1.                  If we say that God deliberately allows all things

We might imagine a God who holds Tuesday morning briefings

On who shall get sick and raped and shot this week

We imagine a God willfully signing off on the world’s worst horrors

For this we might agree with Job

God’s apparent double standard on who may or may not test whom.

2.                  If we say that God merely holds all things, good and bad

This might get God off the hook for direct responsibility

But we cannot help but imagine this God as a little boy

Helplessly crying with a precious broken toy in his hands

For this we might agree with the Psalmist

God’s bitter injustice of any justice left undone.

3.                  Even if we say that God impartially cares for all things so purely

That he himself should not interfere with our own just deserts

We are left imagining a God perfectly detached in our darkest of hours

We imagine an aged Father whose grayish wisdom is not quite beyond rebuke

For this we might agree with Jesus

“My God!  My God!  Why have you forsaken me?!”

4.                  In the end, it seems that any time we speak of a God

Who is clothed in these kinds of contingent conundrums

We blatantly admit we have imagined a God

Which is not really above our image of ourselves

For this, we must in all sobriety beware

That on this cliff there stands a cross our faith to bear.

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Yet then how to speak of God?

In short, I submit a three-fold imagination; a Father, Son, and Spirit of sorts

I.      I submit with Tillich, a Father

That God is none other than the Ground of Being itself

Our metaphysical foundation

The unmediated universal attribute of all existence; the ‘I AM’

II.      I submit with Hegel, a Son

That God is the Living Word that remains and resurrects in spite of all that comes to pass

Our phenomenological temple

With an altar flowing with new life rising from every death

III.      And I submit with Campbell, a Spirit

That God is the inner meaning of Myth

Our shekinah glory streaming out through the curtains of mystery

Alas the holiest sanctum of our faith

For this is our gospel proclamation:

That we have sought and found
Our deepest Concern, our Living Reason, and our truest Tale

That we may live into a Love and Justice greater than we may imagine.