The human yearning for God...

So far as we know, all peoples, all cultures and all societies think about God.

There has never been a culture or a society to whom questions like "where did we come from?" or "what's it all about?" did not occur. More to the point, there has never been a society which didn't find those questions interesting, even compelling

Not all societies have thought about God in Christian or Judeo-Christian terms. They don't necessarily think of One God, for instance. They don't necessarily think of God a personal God — God can be a force, or a living principle. They don't necessarily think of God in moral terms, as the source of right and wrong.

But they do generally think of God in terms of a creator, and this tends to give rise to some sense of purpose in life. And they do generally think of God as supernatural; above and beyond and outside of what we experience in nature.

Even people focussed on the practicalities of immediate survival — food, shelter, clothing, reproduction — are interested in questions about God. They develop beliefs, they develop rituals. Interest in God is not something confined to societies which have the material security which allows for leisure, for reflection, and for learning and philosophy.

What this suggests to me is that that curiosity about the supernatural, a desire to know about God, a desire for some kind of relationship with God, is an innate part of the human condition. We are driven to ask ourselves these questions, just as we are driven to breathe, eat and mate.

A Christian Perspective on this...

Christians would say that this is because it is our nature and our destiny to be with God, and we cannot be truly happy until we are. So, at both a conscious and a subconscious level, we feel the need to approach God.

We explain this in terms of the Fall, illustrated by the story of Adam and Eve. We are intended to walk with God. Our nature is damaged, impaired by separation from him, and so we are cut off from living the life we are supposed to live, and from being the people we are supposed to be.

At some very deep level we feel this. Our innate spirituality is a seeking after something that we feel is missing, even though we do not know what it is that is missing. Our speculations about God are an attempt to work out what it is that is missing from our own lives.

So a need to seek after God is innate in us; it is part of what makes us human.

And, if God made us, then the need to be with God, and the desire to know God, is itself a gift of God. So God is both

• the source of our quest to know him, and
• the object of that quest.

Answering the God Question

A curiosity about God, an openness to God, or a desire to know God are not in themselves guarantees that anyone will come to know God. We may all ask ourselves the God-question, but as already pointed out we come up with an amazing variety of answers (including atheism and agnosticism). Many of these answers are inconsistent with one another, and every one of them can be met with objections. In a sense, each possible answer to the God-question is in itself an objection to all the other possible answers.

How can we discern the true (or truest) answer from all the answers offered?

The Christian answer to that is "revelation"; we can know God because he has revealed himself to us.

Revelation

Revelation is the 'flip side' of our quest for God; it is God's quest for us.

We see revelation as a gradually unfolding process, not a blinding moment. We also see it as a process in which humanity co-operates. The quest is a mutual one, and our own search for God, and our attempts to answer the God-question, playing their part in the process

Very 'primitive' images of God represent our first attempts to answer the God question. We imagine god in a number of ways:

• The God of nature- fire, thunder, the sun, the moon.
• A more abstract God — a "life-force", a "principle of good", a "higher power".
• A more concrete God — an idol.

In our own Judeo-Christian history we can see elements of all of these images of God, and indeed traces of them survive (for example, the traditional orientation of synagogues and church buildings towards the East, where the sun rises). But our tradition also records how we moved through those ways of conceiving God, and looked beyond them.

In the mythic history of the Jewish people contained in Genesis, God is often a nature God. He is a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, a burning bush. He creates massive floods, and sets rainbows in the sky. Such images of God are not only presented unchallenged; they are presented as showing the greatness of God.

But in a later phase of Jewish history, the Jews move on from this way of imaging God. 2 Kings describes the prophet Elijah looking for God in the storm, in the earthquake and in the fire, but finding that God is not there. Only when these things have passed does Elijah hear the "still small voice" of God in "the sound of sheer silence". The point is not only that God has become a still small voice; it is that Elijah looks for him in impressive natural phenomena, and he isn't there.

The Jews emerged from a culture (before the time of Abraham) in which there was a vast pantheon of gods. There was a god for everything and everyone. These gods were very limited beings, each interesting itself in only one thing. The only way to approach a god was to approach him in connection with the one thing in which he was interested. A dealing with any god was a self-contained transaction. I pray or sacrifice to the harvest god for a good harvest. My prayer is answered, or it isn't. but either way I have nothing more to do with him, or he with me, except in connection with the next harvest. If I'm not a farmer or a member of a farming community, then I probably have nothing to do with him at all.

The Jews' great revelation was not only that there is only one God, but that he wants us to have a permanent and enduring relationship or covenant with him.

Christians, of course, have taken this further. God's love and compassion for us is such that he not only wants an enduring relationship with us; he has united himself with us, to share our experience — the Incarnation.

We see the Incarnation as the summit and climax of revelation. God reveals himself to us by becoming one of us.

The Role of Faith...

And yet there is still a gap. We have humanity reaching out towards God because we are driven to do so by an innate nameless longing. We have God reaching out to humanity because it is his loving nature to do so. If the two outstretched arms met and grasped one another, then everyone would be a devout, convinced Christian. We would be driven by our own needs to accept the truth of revelation.

The Creation of Adam, Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel Ceiling

But we aren't all Christians. And the reason is that the two outstretched arms don't quite meet. God's revealed truth (as Christians discern and express it) is not the only possible answer to the God-question that we are driven to ask. There are other answers which are just as coherent and consistent as the Christian answer (including atheism and agnosticism) and which many people evidently find more appealing.

For Christians, what bridges that gap is faith. In my case, I think of faith, as a choice — the choice to trust that this is the answer to the God-question, rather than that, even though I concede that that is a possible answer.

And when I say that I trust that this is the answer, I don't mean I am convinced of it. If I was convinced of it, there would be no element of trust involved. And, in any case, you can't choose to be convinced of something.

No, what I mean by "trust" is that I choose to live my life, and to conduct my relationships, in reliance on the Christian answer to the God-question. I trust that doing so is going to get me to where I should be going. As part of that, I try — and largely succeed — to believe in the truths of Christianity. But I think the foundation of my faith, and I suspect the faith of many others, is not ultimately belief, but a decision to trust.

Photo Credits:
The main image titled "God the Father" is by the Russian poster artist, Igor Kamenev.
URL: www.poster-24.de/igor_kamenev_5.htm

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