How do you think about God?

A couple of nights ago I was watching the comedy news show  Colbert Report which was, per usual, very insightful in an “inside-out” kind of way. If you are not familiar with Stephen Colbert’s comic approach he basically takes a conservative position on issues and hugely parodies them — all the while sounding completely serious and making exactly the opposite point. (But then again, maybe he isn’t???) Incredibly hard to do but dang the guy usually pulls it off to huge gales of laughter by the studio audience (and me in bed!).

So! I am watching the last segment which is always Stephen interviewing some really smart person who he may or may not agree with. Doesn’t matter because Stephen is so freaking smart that he plays off the guest’s statements and turns them around to make (yet another) insightful point. Typically I watch this part with 4 parts anxiety, 6 parts admiration because the guest is ALWAYS on the disadvantage because, well, because it’s Stephen’s show. (They usually come off ok because everyone knows it is a really tough gig — but of course Stephen comes off brilliant.)

Back to the segment. Stephen is interviewing the current president of Bard College who is evidently some major intellectual, having been a college president at age 23 (we were never told which college however). There was the usual bantering about current topics then for some unknown reason the Bard guy mentions God in passing. Stephen asks directly, “Do you believe in God?”  And he answers in a roundabout way that made me think he doesn’t or maybe isn’t sure. (BTW, that was the Bard guy’s earlier point that intellectuals are people who ask questions and know that they don’t know everything.)
The conversation continued and we got to the basic gist of the Bard guy’s belief that humans invented God so it is unproven whether He really exists or not. Stephen responds that, well, God had to have put that idea into the humans’ thinking for them to invent Him, right? Phew.

I am HUGELY interested in what people think about God because, according to a recent study by Baylor University describing American views about Deity, how people define Him relates directly to how we live our lives, socially and politically. According to the study, the people’s view of God (almost 90% of Americans believe in a higher power) is not monolithic (like, one definition). It is incredibly diverse and complex. Witness the Bard guy and Stephen Colbert. In fact, the study describes 4 definitions of God, as revealed by the research: Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical, Distant.

Nation — that is Colbert-speak — none of these definitions relates to my understanding of who God really is and how He relates to all of us. And I know I am not alone! How I think about Him and relate to Him comes from the study of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures — a revealing Bible commentary that illuminates who God is, who mankind is and what our relationship is with God.

This short passage sums up the definition that works for me:

“Creator. Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating divine Principle of all that is real and good;”

There are thousands, could be millions, of readers of Science and Health throughout the world (it is translated in several languages) who study these ideas and apply them to situations in their lives.  The ultimate value of the ideas in this book is that they can be proven to improve anyone’s daily life. IOW, the existence of God as an active, good force, is proven to any individual.

It seems to me that my understanding of God (which goes well beyond “definition” because of actual proof) contrasts with each of the Baylor definitions this way: God is all-Loving, all-good, ever-present and close as breathing…and all this is All there is.

“In the Saxon and twenty other tongues good is the term for God. The Scriptures declare all that He made to be good, like Himself, — good in Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual universe is good, and reflects God as He is.”

Ok, why is this so important?  This isnt just quibbling about “my God or your God or that person’s God.” Think about one of the main points of the Baylor study — that how we think about God impacts how we relate to society and even make life decisions. This makes it imperative, seems to me, that people who understand God as Love and good and near, need to be more public about that…cuz it isn’t showing up on the radar screen! Therefore, its impact isn’t as great as it could be.

Every morning I like to think about a particular quality of God (intelligence, grace, order, harmony, etc. etc. — there are a gazillion ways to describe the Divine, but you get the idea) and relate it to all mankind and then apply it to me and whatever I am doing that day. It really makes a difference to how the day shakes out.

What I realized, in thinking about the Baylor study, is that when I do this  — when I am aligning my consciousness with the Divine — I am kind of putting this thought into the general consciousness of the universe. I am, in a small way, establishing this good thought in the atmosphere in order to benefit all humanity. And I have lots and lots of friends who do the same thing!

Imagine what would happen to the world if gazillions of people did this too?