NathanJohnsonBlog.com

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. 

The Things We Leave Behind...

    On my recent adventure to the Oregon coast I had an opportunity to go to Crater Lake; an ancient lake settled in southern Oregon that is approximately 2,000 feet deep. This immense lake was created from a volcano eruption thousands of years ago that was so powerful that it imploded in on itself and created a huge void that was to be slowly filled only with rain and snow and finally reach the present day depth. There are no inlets to the lake rather it only dispels its water through a few small outlets, maintaining an astonishing clear and pure water source. The color is such a fantastic blue that there is no escaping it's piercing draw. In fact I found that the water was so blue it seemed fake, hardly believable from the normal blue I have seen in many other lakes. I found myself looking at it so much that I almost fell out of the boat...or was I being pulled in? In fact it is because the lake is so deep that it can reflect the color blue that it does when the sky is blue and the sun shines. Beauty, true beauty has that effect on me and often I never know where it is going to come from.

    This volcano lake, like many of our lives, have this type of a crisis moment. It could be moving on from an unhealthy relationship, a career shift out of a dead end job, or choosing to draw closer to God...Love's Eternal Flame. We all have times of expelling things from us in the search for the truth of who we are but often we have no way of telling what will fill the void. What I find very interesting are the many things we leave behind us, like a wake of sediment that flows out and away from us as a tidal wave of destruction and new beginnings...a desire for blue. What we leave behind says much about the beauty and strength to come. Had the volcano only had a small eruption the depth of the true blue beauty  and magnitude would have been limited to the likes of a small lake,pond, or puddle...a small effect. In a sense the volcano emptied itself of all it knew for the unknown...much like the journey of our own spiritual formation.

    There is also such a strong sense of loss and void left by the eruption, that sometimes we wish we had those same things back in our lives...sort of like sentiment for sediment. It is here we must abandon control and we must become the one who opens...opens wide for the Creator of life to pour forth into the crater of loss, sadness, and confusion. When the heavens pour themselves into us it may feel very unpleasant at first because we have not known this life for so very long. In fact it could be very unclear, appearing as dirty water as it mixes with all the leftover familiar ground. We must continue to receive and not be so concerned about the appearance now, because true formation takes time. There will be times when God pulls back the veil for a little while to let you see what you are becoming; a deeper truest you reflecting the heavens blue. 

It took thousands of years to create a beauty this strong...ours will not be much different. A friend of mine recently reminded me that if we focus on the past we can become resentful & bitter, on the future we become overwhelmed & drown. If we simply receive the present and we become more and more ourselves...thousands of feet deep with fresh water able to reflect from our deep crater. God desires to lavishly pour himself into us but often we are not able to hold the water because we leak. The funny thing is that he knows that already so he just pours more into His creation for our deeper formation. Kinda makes you want to dive deep into that coolness of God doesn't it!