Is God Personal...Really?

Last week in my Spiritual Formation class a question was asked that really made me think. The question was, "What difference, if any, does it make to you whether or not a personal God is included in your spirituality?" I hope you enjoy my answer below.

If God was not personal then even the concept of spirituality would be meaningless at best and sterile at worst. So I guess I have to start there because no other premise or origin can suffice as a platform for adventure into spirituality. It is not a question of "what is spirituality" (which keeps spirituality distant and separate from me like a plant or a piece of furniture) that I might engage with it when I want to and leave it at my earliest convenience. “WHAT” in connection with the physical world is not sustainable because creation is not sustained by itself but rather with its connection with another and saturation of life from another. This is where we find that the heavens declare God's majesty- words being the origin of life.
The quest and question we must ask ourselves is “who is spiritual”? If we have desires that exist in us to love and be loved, to understand and be understood then we have to ask “why that desire?” If we want spirituality to be apart of our lives then we could not have created this desire on our own, the desire comes from a sacred place within that has and will be there all of our lives. God is spiritual and therefore we are also spiritual and this truth is of heavier weight than that of the physical world. When God spoke the world and mankind into existence by spiritual rhema (breath or word of God) it was not just for a single purpose use as to create but it was also used to sustain and grow the physical world. Words carry the power of life and the power of death as they are functionally used to communicate either a blessing or a curse. If you ask anyone about wounds they received when they were young, the most longstanding wounds are carried by words, with or without physical action. Even if a horrific action has taken place, the action is given validation by the words that accompany it either from the enemy of our lives or by a person close enough to us to deliver the words of death. Therefore words connect the spiritual and physical in a very significant way. The word that most connects the two worlds is beloved…but more on that later.

Next is the evolution from the question of “who is spiritual” to “why spirituality”. Why do spiritual beings exist if they are not showing us the very nature of a God who is by nature spiritual like us in many ways. The creator forms its creation from some place within- with similar ideas, function, and purpose. God is also spiritually unlike us in many ways because the creator simply sees more and therefore is always greater in understanding and love than the creation in idea, function, and purpose. This is not a distant “greater” but a necessary one. This understanding of “like” and “unlike” form the very mystery of God’s nature and the nature of the world God created. There is then a sense that spirituality is essential to the soul world like water is to the physical world. Without water the physical world is simply unsustainable and without spirituality the soul world is unsustainable but in a greater degree and effect because the spiritual is greater (in the consequence of eternity and origin) that the physical. This is why it deeply saddens me that many people do not know they need the spiritual at least as much as the physical. They live as if they were body mainly sustained only by the physical world. This is why the deep waters of spirituality within are rarely plummeted and discovered…it is simply not on their radar. Only at times of pain & sustained suffering or beauty & love does the spiritual knock on the door of the physical. For many, it is at the end of the physical world where the spiritual is finally addressed and entered into, but usually for a very short time. It is a matter of sustaining and growing life with spirituality that many do not understand. The spiritual calls out to our soul that THERE IS MORE. The soul through the heart cries out to the body I WANT MORE but usually the body attempts to sustain itself with the physical only…a shortsighted and lethal mistake. WHY SPIRITUALITY? Because the whole person must live and live abundant and free.

The reason God must be personal is because God by nature of being creator must be in both worlds to lovingly sustain and grow them. If God was not personal then our very existence has no true purpose other than taking up physical space in a physical world. In all the stories we read in the Bible and even other spiritual books, we see God interacting with man, we see an invasion into the human world and our daily dilemma because without personal interaction we die. It is similar to infants and their need for physical touch. If a baby is left for a significant time without nearness, closeness and touch from another human being, they die inside out. If spirituality matters then it matters most to us personally. When we hear a word from someone spoken to us that is life giving we immediately take this as personal- in other words directed to us and for our consumption and regeneration. God could not be any different in that sense, nor would we want him to be. What good would an impersonal God be to us? If that were true then the answer God might give us on any longing we have might also be not only impersonal but very unhelpful. It would be like getting a map of the world when all we need to figure out is how to navigate from Denver to New York. We might get directions on how to fly an airplane when what we really wanted was peace in the middle of a rugged flight. It would beg the question maybe it is not God who is impersonal with us but maybe it is we who are impersonal with God. Perhaps we view God wrong and then call God what God is not. God is personal or spirituality simply does not exist beyond the word itself…and neither do we. 

Comments

[aaronp]

Well....I find our reasoning rather wanting, and disagree with pretty much every statement you made, except perhaps excerpts from the first ("meaningless at best and sterile at worst") and last ("spirituality simply does not exist beyond the word [sic] itself") sentences. But I guess you could have expected as much from me :-).

See my post on 'God Is Real(?)' for a completely opposite take on the subject. http://lognosis.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

[Lee Maize]

"It is a matter of sustaining and growing life with spirituality that many do not understand. The spiritual calls out to our soul that THERE IS MORE. The soul through the heart cries out to the body I WANT MORE but usually the body attempts to sustain itself with the physical only…a shortsighted and lethal mistake. WHY SPIRITUALITY? Because the whole person must live and live abundant and free."

I don't know why this part hit me like it did - i need to process it... I know GOD IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS...that we can no more separate him from this creation then we can separate us from ourselves. As finite beings having temporal understanding..we make the leap that we have it all figure out and sit in the mess of our "superior/ignorant" intellect like a baby sits in his own mess...understanding or having a rational thought...for the moment makes us intelligent in our own mind until we understand the next thing...at which point we realize we knew nothing to begin within... it seems as though humility and seeking understanding is much wiser then jumping to absolutes and breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back... I like much of what you said... knowing you and the glory of who God is making you to be... brings deeper meaning to what is written the what you actually wrote... what is the quote " the glory of God is a man fully alive?" When we deny a personal God we deny a part of who we were intended to be like a new Christmas toy without batteries or instructions... we have no power... no clear purpose no understanding... nice to look at - lots of potential but worthless....God being who he says he is - is the only thing that makes this all make sense...have purpose and keeps us all from putting a bullet between our eyes... we can talk about purpose outside of a God enmeshed world but it is all ultimately self serving, me focused and ends with you or I sitting in a nursing home with no love... having lived without adventure... never truly tasting, seeing, feeling or experiencing anything of real value...worse we never become more then what we are...we actually become less - willing participants lost in our self made oblivion of self righteous ignorance... ...study languages...the human body, the human eye by itself is beyond any word we have like amaizing.. or look at the stars...the bombardier beetle..the giraffe, the hummingbird and the hog nose snake... all impossible by random chance...no second chances in evolution...one mistake and the whole series is blown... and yet we have a bug that mixes fire out of his ass and animal that reroutes its own blood to keep the pressure from blowing out his brains every time it takes a drink... a bird that doesn't concuss itself every time it eats and some how manages to open and close its eyes between every pecks and a snake that swallows frogs alive and has a bone in its throat the only purpose of which is to pop the inflated air sack of a frog when it tries to keep itself from being swallowed... We serve a very personal involved God... we will never come to the end of who he is and He will never cease to amaze us. We have so much to learn - He has so much to show us.

[David]

"God is personal or spirituality simply does not exist beyond the word itself…and neither do we."

That pretty much sums it up.

Without a personal God, are faith would be no different than those who believe in New Age theology where everyone is their own god and our power to live comes from an obscure "cosmos" energy.