Topic: spirituality
In our post-modern world, that began with World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, many things are called into question by thinking people.
One is our ability to have a personal relationship with a God we have always seen as "loving."
I still believe we can have a very personal relationship with God, and I believe that God IS loving. However......If God is a Spirit, we can't reach out and touch a spirit, and neither can a spirit do that with us, in a physical way. I believe that's the "boat" that most of us have missed for most/all of our lives. It's what the churches fail to "see." In fundamentalism and all of the fundamentalist theology that's wrapped up even in churches that claim NOT to be fundamentalist, people often feel that they need to literally see.
Where there is literal seeing, there is no faith at all. I believe that's why we aren't intended to figure it all out. God (as I understand that term) wants us to be content with the mystery, just relaxing and letting the Spirit flow through us to others. We vex about it all--as if our human fretting would somehow make us equal with God, transcending even God!! As I understand it, wonder is a spiritual exercise. So is doubting. To fully expect to understand it all, however, is breaking the first commandment. Understanding becomes the god before the truly spiritual God that doesn't give us all the answers. Yet it's very, very hard for wounded people to be in a vulnerable, child-like position, trusting what we do not understand to something or someone that is beyond us. It's so much easier to be angry that God refuses to be made into some perfect image that we envision. As we see through a glass darkly, without the benefit of a powerful optical zoom lens.
