My encounter with God

I don’t have much time so I hope this comes out making a little sense. I was just listening to a Mormon Matters podcast (tangent: Dan Wotherspoon is one of my models that I look to on the path of spiritual maturity, he and Terryl Givens are two big ones.) Episode 261 “Faith and Repentance” and I had some thoughts that I wanted to get out.

I don’t remember the name of who was sharing his story about being a life long skeptic, but I relate to some of the things he expressed. Growing up I didn’t feel like I had the spiritual experiences that people around me claimed. Even in church meetings and on my mission people would say “wasn’t the spirit strong in there?” and I thought to myself “I know there was a lot of emotion, but I’m not sure what the spirit feels like.” I didn’t realize it at the time but now I say my expectations had been shaped to somebody else’s ideas – and as it turned out they were incompatible with my own method of spirituality.

It took a faith crisis for me to know God. I didn’t know how to be completely open, I had prescribed ideas that God had to fill before I could acknowledge anything spiritual at all. My spirituality was hobbled by expectations. After my entire belief system was completely reduced to ashes I realized one day that I had nothing to lose in opening my heart to the possibility of something meaningful in the universe. I didn’t even feel comfortable with the term “God” at that point, I was to the point of doubting sincerity and goodness among humans, was life itself a scam or a cruel mistake? That is when I felt the goodness, I knew that I could be genuine and I obtained faith in the potential of my fellowmen as well.

It is difficult to express all the steps of progression from there but today any arguments around whether God exists or not completely miss the point. The claim “there is no God” is based on an assumption of what God is — or it would be an absolutely meaningless statement. Why don’t we back up and first address that assumption? What is God? That is the magical question in my mind. Today I understand the ideas that God is “Nothing” and “Everything” all at the same time. We can say Nothing because as humans there is no way for us to wrap our minds around the idea, another way of saying it is “nothing that we can define” or “hold in our hand” as an allegory. God even defys in LDS theology a complete comprehension – even after we have gone so far in defining a physical being with the appearance of a man. In my mind God IS. God is what exists, what has or will be imagined… the purposes of these things at least. I imagine a wise sage answering a pupil’s question of “Which path should I take?” with “Any of them.”

Pupil: Any of them will take me where I want to go?

Sage: Any of them will take you where you need to be.

The point is earth life gives us experience and allows us to learn. It is ALL the opportunities to learn that is the gift of life. Yes, some paths will be more meaningful to individuals, but it is their opportunity to choose those paths even if they start out on the “wrong” one. Agency is vital and cannot be overstated.

I have heard Atheists express definitions of Atheism that I could fit into, but I in no way consider myself Atheist. The title feels shallow to me. I realize we all use different words to express very similar things, and that is the point of life I suppose. I take my sense of wonder, my appreciation for life and for the power of love, as evidence that I am “a child of God” and I want to grow some goodness in this world.

I like to say God revealed “Himself” to me once I was open to the unique way that it could happen.