Who Is God?

Who or what is God?  If he is, what is he like; if he is not, why then does he seem to be?  The question has been asked so often and so many answers were given, but what did they mean?  Some would say they meant nothing, since an answer was presumed even before the asking began.  The asking, they say, was a framework in which to put a proof for or against the proposition, rather than a response to a possibility.

It is likely there are as many Gods or non-Gods as there are people responding or denying.  But that is them.  What does God mean to me?  God means different things at different times.  There are also times when he seems not even to be.  His face keeps changing and his meaning as well.  Sometimes he seems good and real and very close.  He can make a good deal of sense and be trying hard to say something so terribly important.  Other times, he is gone or never was.  On those days his message is words saying nothing.

It is hard to speak in absolutes about who you do not really know.  it is describing in detail what you have never seen; and God is not so real or visible all of the time.

Some would like to say God is but a projection of the mind, a name given a feeling or idea.  They say he is what we call our need for goodness and justice, an embodiment of what ought to be and source of what we wish were so.  They feel there should be a type of presence, whether it truly is or not.  God in this formulation is a summation of our wishes, be they for holiness, goodness, power, creation, or anything else.  It is an explanation, an answer to the question.  Yet, I am aware of more - a personality rather than just personification, a Godness that is alive and real in more than a symbolic way.  Perhaps what I call awareness is my way of projecting, of fulfilling my need, yet it seems also to be independent of me.  It seems God is.

Seems is a word that fits the question, and beyond it would be hard to go.  To give God less than reality and more than non-being is maybe speculation as unfounded as the response that he is.  And if his being is conjectural, so too are his actions.  The evidence there is as contradictory since in the same day there is enough evidence to say both probably and definitely yes and no.  How God invests in human affairs is at any time arbitrary, benevolent, full, and devoid of meaning.  Whatever is chosen as evidence for either side is well balanced by contradiction.

It may be best to conclude God is because I feel he is, and that he is good because he ought to be.  He is also love and holiness, since I want him to be, or believe that he is so.  More might be said, but like all that has gone before it stands only on faith.  There is no resolution to the question of God, nor perhaps should there be.  The answer may be that God can be sought but never known, felt without being seen, grasped without being held.  Maybe we can simply say that today for me God is.