Tell Me About This God You Don't Believe In ...

As part of my preparation to become an ordained minister I took a unit of C.P.E. -- clinical pastoral education.  Simply put, for a year I became a part-time hospital chaplain.  I learned a lot!  Perhaps especially because I am a Unitarian Universalist, the need to be able to be of service to people with a wide variety of religious and spiritual beliefs was excellent training.  For those not familiar with the religious tradition I serve, Unitarian Universalism does not demand that people assent to a particular creed.  Instead of asking "What do you believe?" as our foundational question, we ask, "What kind of world do you want to see?"  We think that if we agree on the vision of the world we would like to create together -- if we can agree what justice looks like, for instance, or how inclusive community should strive to be -- then we can recognize each other as religious/spiritual kin.  The question of belief only comes up secondarily -- I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because I believe Jesus Christ shows us the way.  I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because I believe that all things have Buddha-nature.  I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because there's nothing but us and we need to take care of one another.

In a Unitarian Universalist congregation you can find Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Wiccans, Transcendentalists, Spiritual-But-Not-Religious folk, and atheists sitting next to one another as one community.  This same diversity exists for hospital chaplains.  You can walk into one room and find a Seventh Day Adventist, and then walk into another room to talk with a Buddhist.  One challenge I found, and others have encountered as well, was walking into a room and being greeted by, "Thanks for coming, Pastor, but you don't need to spend your time with me.  I don't believe in God."

My supervisor taught me a response that I have used many, many times in my career.  (I have since seen it pop up in other places, so I'm not sure of its ultimate origin, but I'll always be thankful to my C.P.E. supervisor for it.)  When someone would say to her, "You don't need to bother with me.  I don't believe in God," she would respond, "Why don't we talk about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God, either."

To some people, the only thing that qualifies as "pizza" is the kind you can get by the slice in New York City.  For others, "pizza" means deep-dish, Chicago style.  When I was in Japan I ate "pizza" with a crust so thin that it was like a cracker.  And these very different foods are each called "pizza," and each is considered by some the only way that word should be used.  "It's not pizza if you can't fold it in half."

This is true of the way people use the word "God," too.  Some people believe that you can only use the word to refer to a male, interventionist deity who judges all of our actions within very narrow proscriptions.  Others, when they say "God," are thinking about an all-loving Mother.  Some people understand "God" to be singular, others a trinity, and still others a multiplicity.  And some find the word to be utterly meaningless, like "purple tap dancing unicorn with dentures," or "flying spaghetti monster."  And, as with pizza, there are people who think that their understanding of the word is the only understanding of the word.

The dominant culture in the West seems to reinforce the idea that "God" is a triune being, who actively intercedes in people's lives and who ultimately stands in judgement of us all.  (That judgement being, more often than not, condemnation.)  And since that seems to be the predominate understanding of the word "God" in our culture, people who don't find that understanding to be true often end up believing that that have to reject the idea of "God" altogether.  In other words, there are a great many people who "don't believe in God" because they reject a particular understanding of "God."  And, so, the invitation:  Tell me about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God either.

Over the next few weeks I'll exploring some of the ways people understand and experience what they call "God."  For now, I'll encourage you to think about the God(s) you "don't believe in," and to try to define more clearly -- and personally -- the "God" that you do believe in.

Pax tecum,

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