It's Personal

I do believe that it is this idea of impersonal with which I am uncomfortable. Philosophers, scientists and even some theologians that present an idea of something more, something beyond, something higher, a supernatural power existing in the world, they accept the concept of a higher power and yet do not seem to necessarily yield to the notion that this higher power can be personal but is rather completely impersonal. It is referred to as a 'higher power' or Intelligent Design or some other euphemism for God that connotes a totally impersonal 'thing'. Like God is some sort of mass or energy or force that is behind the whole of creation - including personal human beings – that is unseeing, unhearing, unthinking and unfeeling. And I cannot wrap my mind around this. How can the personal (and human beings are undeniably personal) come into being from the impersonal? Our own personal-ness requires that we must interact with other personal beings in order that we survive, it is the way we are made and even a cursory investigation bears this out.

And I often wonder why so many people are so blind to this. I've heard it said that it is a choice, that we actively choose to deny God. Maybe that's true I don't know but I'm not so sure I accept that as the complete answer. I think perhaps ignorance or even laziness would be a better explanation. Ignorance in that nobody ever taught us properly and laziness in that we never really bothered to think about it much. I can look back on my own life, consider my own (what I would now call) blindness and realize that I never gave it all much thought but I can say this: I never, for one minute dismissed the notion of God. I never discounted completely the possibility of the existence of God. I knew that I simply did not know enough to discount the possibility but if truth be told I also didn't have the first idea of how to go about finding out whether or not God truly does exist.

However I can remember many times throughout my life those brief moments of consideration when I allowed myself to ponder the question of whether or not He was there. And I recall that there was always, every time a sort of pain associated with it, an longing present – intense, and I needed to put the thought out of my head in order to dispense with that pain and longing. As if it just hurt too much to think about it because I didn't know and it is clear to me now that the need for Him to be there was so intense that I could not bear the thought that He wasn't. It was easier to simply not think about it.

It is almost comical in a sad and tragic way that all of our science, all of our philosophy, our theology and our psychology – all these schools of thought that are supposed to provide us the answers to the basic questions of existence have frequently done nothing more than obscure the simple answers to these basic questions.

We don't know, we don't recognize the need to look to ourselves, within ourselves for the answers, to look within our own hearts, to trust our own intuition and this is so sad because it is this willingness to see only the external that enables us to deny Him, to look right past Him, to completely miss the truth and the reality of God in all of his personal-ness.