The Question of God

The question of God prompts any number of answers.  The response each of us offers will be adequate for no one else, and for us only for now.  In general, God as he is in and to himself cannot be known.  Although he has given some indication of his nature or cahracter, and while attempting to make himself known through Scripture and events of history, they are only indications.  Even in Jesus there is no definition, none that does away with the essential mystery.  God remains mostly unknown.

The questions we ask of God may only suffice for today, just as questions asked yesterday were right only in that time.  There is now a need to know and so ask something else.  This is so because the perspective from which we examine the question has changed, and so has God.  Neither of us is the same, nor should we be.

We can begin defining him by saying God is, even though we can say so only through faith.  The statement can be supported by no scientific evidence, nor need it be.  It is a faith question, and so is subject to neither proof nor denial.  Assuming, then, that God is, what do we say about him?  It follows (or should) that he is a God concerned with the well-being of creation.  This is the testimony of Scripture, and Jesus who says God should be called Father, someone willing to forgive our past and share our future, wishing us completeness and offering us freedom.

In light, however, of evil we might wonder about his goodness.

My own inclination is to say that God is good, that he intends or desires goodness, but the same is not always true of us.  This is not an adequate response, but it seems true that God created goodness, entrusting it to us, to use as we wish even if it will be misused sometimes.  If we use poorly what is available to us, we are free to do so, and where the evil is beyond even us, then is it God's?  Where it seems to derive from nature, from the nature of creation, then maybe it does.  Maybe it is a part of the system of creation that there are aspects beyond anyone's control, where choices are not available and things simply are, and are to no one's fault or credit - neither ours nor God's.

I usually find myself saying that in spite of the evidence we sometimes say God is good, and he is so because we believe him to be.  As we say he is thought he may not be, we say he is good in the face of suggestions to the contrary.

The same thing occurs when we consider any other attribute or quality.  When we say he is forgiving, real, alive, active in the life of individuals and the process of creation; when we say he is concerned about us and seeks closeness to us, there remains a possibility that this is not so.  Each question begins and ends in faith.  We simply say he is and is acting in a particular way, that he is possessed of certain qualities that add to or define who he is.

There is never proof.  There may be contradictory evidence.  Faith is all.  It is all we have to draw upon and invest in, and is made more real by the propect it may be the wrong answer.  Even if not wrong, it may not be adequate.  Were it adequate all of the time it might then not be faith, since faith must grow and does so only as doubts and new questions arise.