"Our images of God - All in God"
Knox, 6 March, 2011 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 139, Colossians 1:15-20
The last two weeks we have talked about various images of God that we use. And I intentionally started out with ways of thinking of God that put the emphasis on how God is distant from us. And so we talked about that idea of a God reigning as a distant king on some throne in the heavens but far removed from the concerns of our daily lives. And we also talked about the clockmaker God of the Deists – the God that they imagined as winding up the universe at the beginning of creation and then just leaving it to run on its own ever since.
The main problem with both of those ways of thinking about God is that they keep God at such a distance. Either God is sitting on a heavenly throne in some reality that is completely removed from our daily life and concerns, or he is totally uninvolved in this world’s affairs at the present time. And so people today often reject both images of God. In fact, many people who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics today do so because they have specifically rejected these kinds of ideas of God. They have no use for a God looking down upon us and perhaps judging us from a distance.
And so, it seems, we are in need of another better way to think about God – some way that will put the emphasis not on God’s distance but rather upon his presence with us. Fortunately modern thinking – and even some of the discoveries of modern science – has opened the door to ways of imagining God that actually have a lot in common with some of the things that the Bible has to say about God.
We have begun to see the universe in some startling new ways in recent decades. We are learning that there is a basic consciousness that permeates the universe. Scientists can perform for example, a double slit experiment where photons of light are fired one at a time through two slits in a barrier. They have discovered that these photons behave differently depending on whether or not they are being observed as they pass through the slits. In other words, individual photons demonstrate an awareness of whether or not we are watching them.
In the cloud chamber experiment scientists are able to observe that subatomic particles of matter are coming into existence (or being created, we might say) and being destroyed billions of times every second. They have also been able to demonstrate the principle of quantum entanglement which means that particles that are created simultaneously are able to communicate with one another instantaneously even if they are separated by vast distances measured in light years.
The universe is a place of wonders. And many people have suggested that, in some way, God is intimately involved in these wonders. In the Letter to the Colossians, the apostle says this about Jesus whom he calls “the image of the invisible God:” “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Of course, when that letter was written people had no understanding of quantum mechanics or subatomic particles although the idea of atoms had at least been proposed by philosophers.
But despite the lack of knowledge, this passage seems to fit with a modern understanding of the universe. The universe is indeed made up of things that are both visible and invisible. And there does seem to be a force – a consciousness, a sense of will or whatever you want to call it – that holds all things together. Is it unreasonable to look at that consciousness present in every particle of matter, at work constantly bringing sub-atomic particles in and out of being, and call it God? A number of physicists are quite willing to say that.
And remember that when the Bible describes God, it doesn’t just describe him as a being enthroned in some far-off heaven. It also sees him as almost indescribably close by. “Where can I go from your Spirit?” asks the psalmist. “Where can I flee from your presence?” And he goes on to actually list every single impossible location that he can think of: the heavens, the depths of the sea, at the impossible place where the sun rises at the dawn and even on the far side of the sea. These are all places where the psalmist has not been and, practically could not even imagine going to visit, but in every case he affirms that if he were to manage to go to these places he would find that when he arrived, God would already be there.
And surely we would have to affirm the same thing. If I were to go to impossible places: to fly to the far side of the sun, to light upon the distant moons of Jupiter, why even if I were to pass beyond the event horizon of the black hole at the core of the Milky Way Galaxy “even there,” I would have to confess to God with the psalmist: “your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”
And the Psalmist doesn’t just talk about God’s presence in the oddest places but also in the most intimate places. God is there in his thoughts, knows his words before he can even say them and was even there knitting him together while he was in his mother’s womb!
For me, anyways, it seems easier to understand how God can be in all of those places if I also understand him to be present in some way in every particle of matter, every atom, every cell in the universe. The idea is not that God follows me around as I travel through this life but rather that God is already present wherever I go because God’s presence permeates everything that exists. God knows my every thought and every word before I speak it because he is present in every brain cell where those thoughts are conceived and the words are chosen. And God was knitting me together in my mother’s womb because he was in some very real way present in the stem-cells of my body as they chose whether they would become liver cells or skin cells or bone cells or whatever.
This past summer when I was having so much fun talking to atheists and other non-church folk, one of them brought up a recent discovery in the field of neuroscience by Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. Apparently this researcher has been able to discover the very spot in the human brain that is responsible for spiritual and religious experience. At least, when this part of someone’s brain is large and well developed, the person will be much more likely to be religious or very spiritual while people who do not have much development in this area are not inclined to spirituality. They have even found that direct stimulation to this part of the brain can lead to the person having visions and other mystical experiences. It is very interesting research to say the least.
So this person asked me if these discoveries led me to question the reality of God because, after all, if it is possible that all spiritual experiences actually originate in the brain and not from outside the person, wouldn’t that prove that God doesn’t exist? Well, no, not as far as I am concerned.
I suppose that if you could prove that all visions or experiences of God (even those of the prophets and other Bible writers) originated inside the brains of the people who had them, it might prove that an external God – one who lives in some far-off heaven and has to transmit his message from there – doesn’t exist. But it hardly proves that God doesn’t exist – especially if God is already present in every atom and thus in the very cells of my brain. If God is already present in a very real way in my brain, why would there ever be a need to send a message or an experience of the divine from the outside?
So that is primarily how I like to think of God – not as being in some far off heaven, not as really removed from us at all but rather present in and around and under and above everything that I meet. Of course, I am not the only one. For a very long time many people have proposed that this is the best way to imagine God – and not just in those Bible passage that we read this morning. An ancient Celtic prayer, called the Breastplate of St. Patrick, speaks of God and of Christ in much the same way:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
Now, such a way of thinking about God does raise one issue. Some have wondered, if God is truly present in everything that exists, does that mean that if you gathered together all of the matter and all of the energy and everything else to be found in all the universe – if you gathered the sum total of everything that is – would you therefore have gathered God? In other words, is God exactly the same thing as the universe and the universe the same thing as God? This view of God is what some have called pantheism – a word made out of the Greek word for all which is pan and the word for God with is theos. Pantheism, therefore is that idea that all is God.
But pantheism doesn’t quite seem to capture it. It seems necessary that God should be somehow more than just the sum total of everything for how could God be contained even in something as vast as the universe? And wouldn’t that also mean that somehow God’s existence would be limited by the universe – that God would come into being with the big bang and disappear at the end of the universe? And so some have suggested that the word should not be pantheism but rather panentheism.
Rather than saying that all that exists is God we should say that all that exists is in God. So we will add the Greek word for in which is en: panentheism. That is to say that God in all his vastness is able to contain and enfold and to nurture everything that exists. So it is everything that is in God rather than God being in everything. It is, I know, a subtle distinction but I think it is an important one. It is also pretty much how it is put in Colossians: “in him all things hold together.”
But the main point is this, because we can understand the universe around us in some pretty amazing new ways, we are also coming to see and relate to God in amazing new ways. It is not surprising that the old images of God – the old man on the heavenly throne, the God watching us from a detached distance and maybe occasionally getting involved – don’t work for people any more. It doesn’t make any sense. You know, when I have had discussions with people who have rejected the notion of God altogether, the God that they have rejected is that far off God.
But that is not the God that we worship. Our God is one who is closer even than a husband and a wife are close. Our God is closer than the closest friend because the very cells of our bodies are in God. Our thoughts run through the medium of God. We cannot take a step but he bears us up for he is the ground. God is that close because not only is the entire universe in God, you are entirely in God – your very cells held together by the power of God. All in God.