God the Answer, God the Problem, God the Mystery
Rev. Ted E. Tollefson
© 2007 


Background: Theology reflects Biography

When preachers talk about God, they often reveal something about themselves.  Let me disclose some of my background so that you might be aware of my biases.  I have taught comparative religion for more than 20 years, currently at United Theological Seminary and St. Mary's University.  I tend to see religions like the blind philosophers who are trying to understand an “Elephant”.  No one has the whole Truth.  They can either listen and learn or argue and fight.  In any event, the elephant may walk away.  No religions are especially privileged; at best they offer partial views of a larger Truth.

I also teach psychology at Metro State University.  I tend to understand religious beliefs psychologically.  They grow out of certain needs.  They perform certain functions.  They change and grow as we do.  They are part of the ongoing story of human development, individual and collective.

Finally I read, write, translate and feel/think through poetry.  I view religious language as sacred poetry: composed of metaphors, myths, images.  I tend to see religion as an expression of the divine-human  imagination.

Root Metaphor:  A Suit of Clothes

I do not believe that religious language is about true or false.  It's not science.  It's not philosophy.  Religious language is not centrally concerned with sensory evidence (how many windows in this room?)  Religious language, as both Kant and Nagarjuna foresaw, tends to generate paradox and contradiction.  It does not conform to rules of logic or mathematics ( A & -A cannot  both be true;  2 + 2 = 4)

Religious language, I say, is more akin to a suit of clothes. Can you remember an outfit that “suited you” when you were in college?  That expressed who you were, fitted you “to a T”?  How many of us could get into those clothes today?  How many of us would want to?  Religious language and beliefs are like a suit of clothes: composed of inherited materials, reflecting cultural-specific patterns, chosen by us or for us, providing warmth, comfort and shelter.  Religious language artfully conveys meaning and mystery, not truth and facts.

I. God the Answer: The Era of Faith

From such a perspective, “God” is a fitting answer to one of life's Big Questions:
    Why is there something rather than nothing?
    Does anybody care?
    Who will be there to welcome us after we die?
    What is the deeper source of human goodness?
    Why do bad things happen to good people?
    What makes life worth living even when it hurts?
    If God is in the world, where in the world is God?

When our lives are relatively free from conflict and doubt, God answers one or more of these questions.  The tricky aspect of theological questions and answers is that they often speak to and from several very different aspects of who we are.  God-talk has a cognitive aspect: it attempts to create a meaningful map of self and world, and the invisible Source of both.  God-talk also speaks to and from our hearts:  providing “blessed assurance”, increasing kindness, fostering community, building hope.  God-talk also has a moral imperative.  It calls us to act: to establish peace-and- justice, cultivate compassion, build bridges of trust and hope.

There are many examples of when “God” is a deeply satisfying response to the questions that trouble us.  I think of Job before disaster hit.  He was surrounded by family and friends, prosperous, respected, loved.  For Job in prosperous times, “God” was a way of thanking what made him happy.  I hope in your life, there have been times when you had enough time, enough love, enough money and health to feel deep contentment.  When was your map of self, world and Source intact?  Phillip Agee writes of such a time of secure faith in a passage which I know you have heard before.  I think that both Frank and I heard it in a class at Starr King School for the Ministry taught by Til Evans one of our beloved mentors:

“On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all.  The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home.  One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.

May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father; remember them kindly in their time of trouble and in the hour of their taking away.” (A Death in the Family )

In such times of secure happiness, it seems as natural to bless as to breathe; for many, the source of both blessing and breathing is “God”.  Like a family quilt of many colors, “God” provides warmth and comfort in the night, a beautiful place for families to behold the stars, shelter for our dreams and a safe place for human love.  For many, “God” is the goodness of our parents written large.

II. God the Problem: The Era of Doubt

This era of serene faith rarely lasts forever.  We grow and change, our blanket of faith develops worn edges.  We begin to notice what parts of our lives are left uncovered.  An eloquent and clear expression of doubt comes from my friend and colleague, Rev. Frank Rivas, as he comments on Agee's evocation of childhood faith:  "I want to voice the words of Agee but I don't know exactly what the words mean. What does it mean to say 'May God bless" when "God" is a metaphor, not a being?

Yet I want to say it: May God bless my people, these people.  Remember them kindly in their time of trouble, and in the hour of their taking away.

My soul longs to say words like these, but a nagging literalism makes it difficult. Perhaps there is a way to be non literalistic and at the same time open to the unutterable richness of life, of our lives." (The Liberal 2/2006)

There are many ways that faith drifts into doubt and “God the Answer” becomes “God the problem”.  We may be overwhelmed by tragedy and undeserved suffering like Job and the Jews in centuries of exile. We may begin to notice the clang of painful contradictions, as when we were told 30 years ago that “we needed to destroy that village in order to save it”.

We may notice the fundamental limits in our ability to know.  For example, there is a 3000 year old creation hymn in the Hindu Vedas which describes how the ancient seers witnessed the moment of creation.  Then the last verse all that we have heard is called into doubt; for the text wonders aloud what if the seers don't know for sure?

Sometimes doubt is activated by bad news.  We may be told “that spot needs to be biopsied”.  Or we may begin to wonder exactly what we are getting for the $450 billion spent to “liberate” Iraq.  Do we have to destroy that whole country in order to liberate it?

Sometimes doubt arrives through the gate of moral ambiguity.  If “God” loves justice as the Hebrew Bible proclaims, why do the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer?  If “God” is in the world, where in the world is “God”?

I believe that doubt has often been under-rated.  I believe that doubt is the co-creator of faith.  As the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich might say: “Doubt keeps faith alive”.  Let  me list some of the lively benefits of doubt.  It clarifies belief and its often unspoken assumptions.  It holds belief accountable to real world consequences.  It reveals the made-up, provisional nature of belief systems.  It keeps the advocates of faith humble.  It's idolatry insurance.  And finally, doubt opens us up to new possibilities, new knowledge---like the voice of the Great Mystery murmuring to Job out of the whirlwind.

III. God the Mystery, God as Metaphor

In the ancient world as in our world, there are alternatives to the tug of war between faith and doubt, God the Answer and God the Problem. One alternative is direct religious experience, what our early Christian ancestors called “Gnosis Cardia” or knowledge of the heart.

Sometimes, direct experience takes the form of “Awakening” to a fundamental Truth.  Awakening is where Buddhism begins.  This is also the root of  our long-standing opposition to religious or political discrimination begins.  To deny equal rights to people on the basis of skin-color, gender, or love preference cuts against the grain of a more fundamental truth: we are one human family!   Sometimes we awaken to Beauty. The Hindu Upanisads say that when we are transfixed by the beauty of a mountain or sunset or a child and we say “Ah!”, in that moment we participate in divinity.  Sometimes we are awakened by a call to Stand Up! for what's right.  This congregation has a remarkable history of standing up for peace and justice.  This is what we do because it expresses who we are.

There is another pathway towards God the Mystery and that is “God” the metaphor.  It begins with imagination: a non-literal reading of religious language.  Several years ago, many fundamentalists sported a bumper-sticker which said: “The Bible says it, I believe it and that's that!”   Many of us were tempted to reply with a counter message: “The Bible says it, I don't believe it and that's that!”  This kind of religious jousting can be fun and it provides hours of family entertainment.  But I believe it is founded upon a fundamental myth-take.  It myth-takes religious language as sign-language, not metaphor.  But the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.  Eating the menu will never satisfy our hunger.

God-talk is metaphoric.  It evokes something invisible, it does not point directly at something we can measure.  Unlike sign-language, it is ambivalent, richly textured, provocative.  Let me give you a secular example: “The road is a ribbon of moon-light.”   We know this is not literally true.  But the power of metaphor carries us into a realm of non-rational awareness: the roughness of the road merges with the silkly smoothness of ribbon and both are colored by the cool light of the moon.  Metaphor is an act of linguistic fusion: it joins together seemingly diverse elements in a new way. It awakens our capacity for unitive knowing.  When Jesus says “the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed” we begin to see the Sacred as something tiny and alive, if planted with care it can take over a hillside, flavor a soup, or bring tears to our eyes.  So too when we plant seeds of justice-and-compassion and nurture them, our world can change very suddenly.  When our deeds our watered by our tears, “Heaven” -----our  highest ideals---take root in our lives.  We become gardeners of the common good.

When we open ourselves to the power of metaphor, everything changes.  We encounter the “God the Mystery”, the God beyond “God”.  From such a perspective “God” is not a large, powerful being with a bad temper.  God is a metaphor for the Ground of Being, the invisible foundation of all experience.  Along these lines, Joseph Campbell quotes a Polynesian proverb: “We are standing on the backs of whales, fishing for minnows!”  Do we really need to devote our religious lives to fishing for minnows, or arguing about who's got the best catch?  What about the whale?  What about the ocean in which the whale and all beings live, move and have their being?

When we tune into the riffs of metaphor, the universe breaks into song.  Creation is not a once and for all act.  It is an ongoing process.  It is the 8th day of Creation and we invited to join in.

If the universe is Jazz, free  improvisation upon established forms, then God is more like Charlie Parker than thundering Jehovah.  God is a junkie hooked on human freedom and the possibility we'll pick up the tune and play along in some sweet, slow and sassy version of “Amazing Grace!”

When our heart/mind/body are moved by the transforming power of metaphor, our steps become a dance and our words move towards song.

So I close with a poem adapted from my mentor Hafiz who is the Miles Davis of the Sufis, a soul who blew notes that angels and hipsters hear in their dreams:

    Every child know “the Holy One”.
    Not the God of Names and Forms.
    Not the God of Do's and Don'ts.
    Not the God of Big Ideas
    Or tiny footnotes.
    The Holy One only knows 4 words:

    “Come dance with me!”

IV. Resources for Further Study

Robert Bly, The Kabir Book.
Martin Buber, I and Thou.
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-Soul”
James Fowler, The Stages of Faith.
Hafiz, The Gift (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Sally McFague, Metaphors of God.
Mary Oliver, New and Collected Poems (vol. 1 and 2)
Bob Samples, The Metaphoric Mind.
Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning.
Alan Watts, The Supreme Identity.