Where Is God?
“Man Shall Not See Me and Live” (Exodus 33:20)
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Prophets, theologians, and religious writers have insisted for thousands of years that God is ineffable, unknowable, and utterly beyond anything we could imagine or experience. In short, when we talk about God, we do not know what we are talking about. … There is a lot to be said for silence with regard to religion. Silence would have saved us all a great deal of trouble.
But the debate goes on, and people rarely change their minds. Atheists do not become believers; believers do not become atheists. Faced with that impasse, the argument then turns not on whether there is a God or on the truth or untruth of any particular religious doctrine but on whether you personally experience a spiritual dimension that reveals God. God must come to you. …
The great monotheistic traditions have all come to regard and to adhere to a set of documents as “sacred scripture,” and their followers spend enormous effort—literally mountains of paper—to demonstrate that their scripture and not some other is God’s word. Why do we have all these bizarre and wildly unbelievable tales of how God formed the world and delivered the word to particular communities? If God is otherwise remote and unknowable, then figures have to be created who can reveal and speak for God—angels, spirits, prophets, and holy men—together with stories and miracles to establish that these figures speak for God. Without them, God disappears.
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About the Book
The monotheist God evolved in the Jewish tradition and was adopted by Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism in turn: unknowable and ineffable. Religious writers have told us for thousands of years that this God is beyond all human comprehension. How can we know if a God is out there? Even if such a God exists, scripture claims that it means death even to look upon him. How, then, can we come to know God?
Pagan polytheists had no such problem. Their world was full of Gods. They often appeared in human form and interacted with human beings. They could be unpredictable and had to be handled carefully. Monotheism replaced all that with God that is a complete mystery. He cannot be found. He cannot be seen. He cannot be understood by human minds.
If that is what religion has come to, we may as well face the fact that we are alone in the universe. We shall have to learn to live with that. There s nothing out there.
About the Author
WILLIAM JANNEN has been a lawyer, a teacher, and an investor, but he has studied theology and religion for most of his adult life. At Brooklyn College–CUNY, he taught modern European history. In 1997, he published The Lions of July: A Prelude to War, 1914 with Presidio Press.