A Ramble About My God

I have written a great deal about Who and What I understand God to be. Mostly though, what I want people to understand most is that this Being whom we commonly call “God” is real. He exists, and in fact the very name in Hebrew that He gave Himself, Yahveh (hayah/havah, 3^rd person masculine imperfect piel: Y'haveh → Yahveh) means just this, except in an intensive form, “HE EXISTS!”

Yahveh isn't a fantasy, and he doesn't just exist in people's minds like an imaginary friend. His Being is impossible to understand and this inability to comprehend ends up looking like a darkness as we try and compare Him to things to which He is incomparable. But our inability to fully comprehend Him does not negate His reality, nor does it negate His personality or His attempts at reaching out to us to break through our own collective insanity.

What is most disturbing to me at times is how much those who profess to believe in Him treat Him as though He is imaginary, and I have seen this from both layperson and clergy. They do not expect Him to interact or respond to them when they pray or when they ask for anything, and see it as some unusual or great thing when He does, or else they cannot explain it at all. This latter is especially true when He responds in a way which contradicts the way they believe the world and He work, as though He is a mechanism or a law of physics.

This latter concept is fundamentally ridiculous.

Yahveh is a person. He is a person with will, emotions, intelligence, and self-awareness. He acts when and how He thinks is best regardless of what human beings think He should or would do. What is more, He acts with the best interests of everyone in mind, as both individuals and collectively as a species, and as I have written previously, He is in a unique position to know exactly what that may be. It is this overarching compassion, justice, and mercy more than anything else which informs and constrains how He will respond to any given human request or situation, and quite frankly He doesn't answer to us or anyone else. He answers only to Himself and His personal character.

He knows how many times I have struggled with the circumstances of my life, and how many times those circumstances have resulted in pain and hardship for myself or my family. He is responsible for neither my decisions, either helpful or harmful, nor the decisions of other human beings which caused me either pleasure or pain. Those circumstances He is responsible for were put in place with my best interests in mind, as well as the best interests of all those around me and the best interests of the human race as a whole. Just because they cause me pain or I don't like them doesn't make them bad or wrong (it is the hamartia disorder which twists my mind into seeing them this way). It means I'm having an adverse reaction to them instead of accepting them and moving on, and that is a malfunction of my own human psychology.

Why does He allow human beings to hurt each other? Because He respects our free will more than we do, and the truth is that He has gone to several lengths to keep the damage at a minimum in spite of us. He has in the past culled several groups of human beings when they have gone too far past the point of no return so that those who are less harmful or self-destructive can thrive. The only cure for human derangement is death. The symptoms may vary, but the underlying problem is hereditary and ingrained into human DNA.

I've known Him, talked with Him, been talked to and at by Him, and interacted with Him now for decades. I have no idea what His long term plan is, or even His plan for the next five minutes. His instructions are a lot like a GPS system that won't tell you what the destination actually is, but continually tells you to “turn left” “turn right” “go straight and turn when I tell you.” When He tells me and my wife to trust Him (something He says a lot), He virtually never tells us what's going to happen when we do. Thus, we need to trust Him that it's the right move to make or the right thing to say.

Why doesn't He tell us? Truth be told, because there are too many factors at play that can be altered if He does. Things that need to happen, and things that shouldn't happen. It's kind of like quantum mechanics where you can measure either a particle's position or its velocity but not both, because measurement of one changes the other. Us knowing the outcome or the reasons why we need to follow His directions would or could change the outcome He desires, and this could cause a cascade of outcomes which would result in circumstances which would be worst case scenario for everyone. This is also, I believe, the reason why when He does reveal something in the future, its usually only a snapshot of a scene or a short clip like a video without any context to the events leading up to it, if not an outright obscure riddle. These things are far less likely to affect the outcome than straight up explanations. He knows all possible outcomes and timelines and steers us towards the best one possible under the circumstances, even if it doesn't feel like the best one possible to me personally.

The Being I know as “God” (and this is a serious understatement calling Him that, capital “G” notwithstanding), is real. He exists. Not within space and time, because dimensional space and time rely on His Being for their own existence, but that is another discussion altogether. What is more, He wants you to know this and to understand it even if you can't understand the how and what. He wants you to try and get to know Him as a person. He understands the difficulties involved in it, but He wants you to try anyway, and He is patient with both honest mistakes, and explosions of frustration or anger when you don't understand or when what He does or says seems to hurt. He knows why you do it, and where it comes from because He knows every thought and emotional process which happens in your brain. He knows with precision the firing of each individual neurotransmitter in each synapse between each neuron. He knows exactly how you feel, how you think, and why that is. He knows this for everyone on the planet.

My God is real. He is fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind. He is the underlying existence for all other existences. There is no box, no mental image, no constraint by which we can control or “make use” of Him and such thinking is ridiculous. To truly contemplate what He is, the depths of power and control He has over everything that exists is more than mind-boggling, it is paralyzingly terrifying. Moreso if you don't really know Him, and believe Him to be angry with you for something. But if you do get to know Him, and understand that what He does He does because He gives a rip about you and those around you (which thought should be paralyzing in its own right), then it should give you at least some peace to know that He is, at His core, on your side even when you aren't on your side.

Finally, my God is so real He caused a human virgin birth to show us what He is really like, and give us something to work with as to His personality and character instead of the myths and legends and misunderstandings which grew up over the millennia. He is so real that this singular human being's impact continues to reverberate throughout history. He is so real that He wants you to get to know Him as a person through this one person who demonstrates everything He is as a person. He knows you won't comprehend His “physical” existence. He doesn't expect that and it's not important that you do. He wants you to get to know Him in a real relationship with Him which involves give and take, highs and lows, good times and hard times, spending time with Him as you would in any serious relationship with any friend.

This is my God. This is the Being I know and have gotten to know over my lifetime as Yahveh, and very personally as the person who became a father to me when I was a teenager. Anyone who says He is something different than this, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't actually know Him at all and is talking about some figment of their imagination.