PLGRM

Stay with me.

Breathe.

I am not, at all, saying God is not real.

I am saying, “per my last email,” that there is a difference between the actuality of God and the words we use to reference God.

Let me ‘splain.

Even though we use it as such, “God” is not a name, but a description of an entity that is worshiped. Early Christians and Jews before them would often talk of “the name of God.” Our best guess is the word “God” derives from a term used by late Neolithic/early bronze age Europeans that meant “to pour out.”

The “pouring out” referred to pouring out liquids or grains in offering or sacrifice. A god was one who was worshiped and thanked for giving good things and was also the one who could withhold those good things. In our modern, western culture we have lost the original sense of that term. We use “God” in the same way we use names, but it is a title, a descriptor. “God” means the one who is worshiped.

So: “God” is a word we use as a symbol that references something more and beyond all that we can see and know and understand.

Just as Magritte and Korzybski taught us a symbol is one thing that represents or stands in for another thing. In modern, digital life we interact with symbols all the time in the form of phone or tablet icons. When I want to check the weather (this is not precise, but go with me here) I unlock my phone, and I search my phone screen for the icon that represents my weather app. I push it, it opens, and then I learn when it’s going to rain or how hot it’s going to be. Weather info is only a fraction of the information I want to know in a day, so it would make a little sense to put all that information on my home screen. The better option, as we all know, is to put an item on the home screen that will take me to an app that I want at a particular moment.

When I’m looking at my home screen, the icon represents and stands in for the Weather app. The painting of the pipe was not, itself, a pipe, but it did represent a pipe. It stood for a pipe. The word “God” functions the same way. In fact, this is a big part of it all.

All our words function this way.

I am belaboring this point because it is important for us to remember how fragile any kind of communication is, let alone communication about things of utmost importance. If we do not learn this lesson, we risk turning God into an idol. More accurately, we risk creating an idol we call “God” and ceasing to worship the god we are actually seeking to know.

It may have just been convenient that Paul found an altar to an unknown God which he used to make his point, but the reality of that altar and the ideas surrounding it provides us with a truth we have to remember:

Ultimately, our God is unknowable.

So how do we even attempt to talk about God? If using words runs the risk of us creating an idol, what possible solution can there be in responding to the experience we’ve each had of this something beyond/more?

In my opinion, our only solution is to lean into the symbolic nature of language, not run from it.

We should recognize and celebrate the capacity language has to help us glimpse and consider new horizons. Think of a good piece of poetry, a profound song lyric, or a staggering novel, and recall the impact they had on your life.

Think of the best speeches or sermons you’ve heard. They are not boring recitations of facts. That’s not what moves you, is it? No! When you hear a great orator, and come away, thinking, “She just changed my life” the reason it happened is the profound care she used to evoke something deep inside of you. She sparked a fire you didn’t realize could be sparked. The content of her words were good, yes, but it was the imagery and emotion of them that had the effect.

When words do that, we know we are reading or listening to Art. I believe the only way we can avoid making an idol for ourselves and calling it “God” is to accept and understand that what we are doing when we engage in “God talk” – when we do theology – is we are making art.