Down to Earth God

What is Faith?

What is faith? I set out on my journey intending to talk about my Down to Earth God in down to earth language. 'Faith' is central to the Christian message but it is the easiest of ideas to get wrong, misrepresent or even lampoon.

I once read an article entitled, 'A New Religion : The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster' reviewing a book 'The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster'. The book, and by extension the review, are essentially an attack on 'intelligent design' and make the argument that if you can take something to be true by faith alone, without any scientific evidence, we can believe in what we like.

Pastafarianism, as the new religion is called, is entirely absurd but intended to be. The premise is that, if we can believe in one set of 'truths' without scientific proof we can believe in anything. I've never been a 'flat-earther' or believed in the literal interpretation of biblical creation accounts. I often find non believers are attacking a version of religion I don't believe in either; so their arguments go right past me but an attack on 'intelligent design' is something else. Isn't that more or less what I believe in I asked myself?

Well, it is what I believe and again it isn't. I don't see God in a white coat with a test tube or wrestling furiously with scientific formulae any more than I see him as an old man with a beard sitting above the clouds. So what do I believe about how the world was created?

The truth is I don't think a great deal about creation at all. In so far as I do it's not about how the universe was created. I'm happy to leave that to scientists and learn from what they tell me. I don't wake up wondering how everything began. I'm more interested in how I am going to get through the day and how I relate to the world and the people I'll meet. I do believe in God as 'creator' but its a not a nuts and bolts belief in how the world was created. It's an understanding about relationships because that is the territory that religion claims for itself. Religion is about how we get on with God and each other rather than an explanation of how things started.

But I do believe that there is a creative force in the universe. I believe that there is a force that holds it together, a context in which everything else happens. I believe that through that creative energy we are connected with each other and with all creation and that we are at our best and most in tune with the people we are meant to be when we make that connection.

I can not prove that this is true but it is not based on whimsy, hear-say or passed on ideas. I experience this sense of connectedness in periods of quiet reflection. I read of it in the writings of spiritual teachers across religions noting the similarity of their beliefs as opposed to the differences in their religious practises. On a few occasions in my life; too few and longer ago than I care to think about, I have felt drawn up into this sense of the oneness of everything, feeling larger than my body, at once part of it and yet able to look down on it. I believe, from experience and practise, that I can tune in to the creative force of the universe. There is as the Quakers say, 'that of God in everyone'.

I am all too aware that this is less than the whole story. Bad things happen in the world, natural disasters, man made catastrophes, loss, disappointment and personal tragedy - but there is nothing in Christ's message that says we will not suffer pain. The early history of the church is one of martyrdom and suffering and bad things still happen to good people. I see creation as an on-going process. God's Kingdom is still being created. We are experiencing, as Paul tells us,
its birth pangs but I believe with Paul that 'all works for good in the hearts of men who love God'. I believe that despite everything, in some way that is beyond my understanding, things will work out for the best. I have no evidence that things will work out for the best but I place trust in the sense of unity and purpose I feel in the world and that in my interpretation is faith.

Faith doesn't mean blindly believing in things we know to be untrue. Faith is trust. We have faith in God in the same way as we have faith in a parent. We place our hand in theirs without knowing exactly where they are taking us but confident that, even if they can't protect us from everything that might happen, they have our best wishes at heart.

This doesn't explain why as a Christian I place my faith in Christ because that is another post for another day. I will just say here that, when I read the Gospels Christ leaps out to me as a real person with insights I find helpful and in tune with my experience of the world. He is a Down to Earth God who questions the exterior practice of religion without evidence of spiritual insight and seems to pose questions that are all too relevant today.

If I haven't got the theology right or sprinkled this with enough scriptural references it's because I'm trying to talk about a Down to Earth God in down to earth language.

My God's a down to earth God
A feet on the ground
Sweat on the brow God.

No up in the sky
Head in the clouds God
A proper down to earth God.