I don't believe it: God & God from Rob Bee on Vimeo.
For those of you who haven't seen the Simpsons movie – WHERE'VE YOU BEEN! Very early on in the film Lisa meets a boy named Colin. He's Irish and the son of a musician ("He's not Bono.") and Lisa falls in love with him. When she gets home she excitedly tells Marge all about him whilst Marge is scrubbing pig footprints off the floor. "Oh wait. I didn't tell you the best part. He loves the environment. Oh wait. I still didn't tell you the best part – he's got an Irish brogue. No, no wait wait, I still didn't tell you the best part. HE"S NOT IMAGINARY!"
I've sat for ages thinking about how I can write a blog on God's existence and I've drawn a blank. It's impossible to either prove or disprove whether God exists or not as for every argument there is a counter argument. Look at any one of the many online forums about belief and you will find countless disagreements between atheists and believers who are all trying and failing to reason out their viewpoint, and it's the same old arguments going round and round and round. So all I can offer to this debate is my idea of who God is and hope that my experience makes you think.
I've never really doubted God's existence, but I am sometimes a reluctant believer. I do sometimes catch myself thinking how much easier life would be if I didn't believe in God; how much time I'd free up if I didn't have to do Church stuff or how little responsibility I'd have to take for my actions. When I was a teenager I had a revelation of God which caused me to stop ignoring my belief, but it had always been there. This was in a real way a 'conversion experience' and it turned me away from my agnostic apathy towards God and started me searching to find who and where he is.
When I was in my late teens and early 20s I used to attend a group for people my age and we'd discuss our Faith. We'd all come from the same Church background and when we began to discuss our ideas of who God is were pretty similar. But as time went on and we left school and got jobs our lives changed and our experience of God changed. Our ideas started differing with others when we discussed and we had some real disagreements. After each meeting those of us who were old enough went to the pub where we'd sometimes continue the debate or just chat. I realized over time that although our theologies now differed sometimes quite widely and we argued when we discussed it didn't affect our friendships and it didn't seem to affect the strength of our faiths. This got me to thinking about God and I concluded that God is bigger than our theological differences and can cope with them. So maybe it doesn't matter if I believe in – for example – creation or evolution. Maybe God isn't particularly interested in where we stand on divorce or predestination. He's simply interested in us.
And that's how I've approached my belief in God since then. I've tried to keep an open mind on what God is like and hear what other people have to say.
If you think about it, it makes sense that we believe different things about God. We all will have differing experiences of him. To my bosses at work I'm the reliable capable fountain of all knowledge; to my underling I'm the demanding line manager who keeps making him do his work again because it's not up to standard; to my parents I'm the Son they're very proud of but they still remember the times when I wet the bed, fell off my bike, threw temper tantrums in shops or hid under my bed after Dr Who because I was scared of Dalecs; to Helen I'm the useless husband who makes a mess, steals the duvet and can't do DIY for love or money. These people's opinions of me all differ because they come into contact with me in differing contexts, but I'm the same person. And as we all have our own personalities our own lives and our own needs the ways in which we come into contact with God is going to be different and we will all form different ideas about who he is; that doesn't make any of us right or wrong automatically, and everyone's experiences and opinions of God should be given a hearing. Just as someone may tell you something about me that you don't agree with ("Are you sure that was Rob? It doesn't sound like the Rob I know.") so we may disagree with someone else's opinion of God.
So who do I think God is? Here is the sum total of my belief, the essence of my search for God so far. All I've found can be summed up in this sentence. God is Love. I believe that God's Love is the creating power behind the universe, it's God's Love that binds the universe together, and provides all the resources we need to survive. It's God's love that keeps us searching for Him and he for us. It's the overriding factor to all of our lives. Many people's experiences of God are governed by strict rules and regulations governing how we act and who we are and come complete with a long list of 'thou shalt not's. But I believe that God filled the World with millions of possibilities for us to enjoy ourselves. I believe he wants us to live life as fully as we can, exploring the limits of our humanity and smile and laugh and enjoy ourselves as we do it. I believe God has a great sense of humour and wants us to use ours as we search for our place in the world and place in his Kingdom. God loves to see us happy and loves us to acknowledge Him in our happiness. God's Love is over all. This then is the acid test for any religion or believer: if they're not motivated by Love, they're not motivated by God.
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