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Define your God

   I think I might need to apologize. Somewhere in the past, I have been guilty of bringing judgement on people's definition of God...and i know now how wrong I was. I do, however, want to explain what exactly I mean. Because, there is a line that must be drawn as to what exactly God, in a His divine nature, is.
   I think that most monotheistic faiths (okay the three monotheistic faiths) can agree that God is one thing...love. If we start there, then we can begin to look at the attributes of God. Tonight, in RCIA, we spoke about the nature of God the Father in the Old Testament. Most people, with some modicum of scriptural knowledge, know that God presents Himself in many ways.
In Genesis, we have Creator. In Jeremiah, we have Jealous Lover. In Isaiah, we have Ultimate Reality.
   These very different expressions of the One God, are not wrong nor right in their manifestations to us. In fact, God is manifested to us at different times in our lives in different ways. As we spoke about this topic, I remembered the book: "The Shack" by William Young, in which God is incarnate as a big black woman, Jesus as a young Jewish man, and the Holy Spirit as an sprite Asian woman. These "essences" of the trinity were one man's interpretation of how he visually or conceptually saw them. Or what about Michelangelo. His depictions of God as a white buff man and a flowing white beard is just one way that God has been expressed.
   Are these wrong? Well, I believe there is a reason that God is called Yahweh in Hebrew, Allah in Arabic, and God in the English language...because he has no name, and without a name, no defined personhood. Aside from love, God is manifested to each of us differently. The Holy Scripture alludes to God in the masculine form, but as FB pointed out, He is also said to love as a mother loves.
    That's the beauty isn't it? That God doesn't express himself to me a lover of the written word as He would to a sailor of ships. Nor would He present Himself to a child as He would a grandmother. God is omnipotent. He is beyond the bounds of my simple human understanding...and for the times that I might have ridiculed or blasphemed His unending power and grace, I will forever work out my penance. My faith is as filthy rags, but the love that my God bestows upon me is more powerful than any human depiction of Him. God to me is the "Forgiver, the Sanctifier."
   Who is He to you?

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