God of Many Names
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There are many names spoken and unspoken that help us describe those epiphanies we experience —all those sacred and not-so-sacred moments when we realize the miracle and mystery of existence. But somehow we’ve got to see the individual nature of it all. Belief is individualistic and that is why we have a principle to remind us that each has “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” It is an individual search. Over time, some may be seduced to believe our faith, Unitarian Universalism is the way, truth and life, but it is only OUR WAY, OUR TRUTH, and OUR LIFE. We should share our belief with others but we have to know what we are doing is subjective and tribal. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s day but for me, the God of many names is the god we build in our own image. There is one universe—one cosmos (how majestic it is!), but there are many gods on earth. Did you hear what I just said? (Repeat)… And we each have our own version of IT. Our god’s powers come from our creative personalities; their words from our vocabulary; their commandments from our idea of what life should be. Sometimes our gods mesh real well with other peoples often times not. Either way these gods are as alive as they were with Zoroaster. They are active in our midst—active in our sphere of influence. Our sheer belief in our god gives us power because we are all connected to the stars—to that divine substance in the universe. And there is power in belief! But even with all of that said, there has to be somecorporate good that comes from this private opium. The good comes, I think, when our god speaks to us and calls us to the higher aims of serving humanity. For me, that means feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and to be a peacemaker and to speak up for the rights of the marginalized and oppressed. When our gods ask us to love more and care more, and forgive and bless instead of curse—this is when our gods do the most good for the human race. This is when people manifest their greatness. If you want to keep the old stories, that’s fine with me. But the poetry must not be mistaken as prose—the literal must turn metaphorical, and the stories must be modernized and our gods must call us to a higher humanity! If there is to be hope for our nation and world, that hope will be that we will introspectively look at our god and ask it to evolve from tribal to multicultural, from particular to universal, from homogeneous to heterogeneous. And for me, that would be a god worth serving; that would be a god I could believe in; that would be a god worthy of praise! But this will not happen until we make it happen in our minds, until we wake up and realize how much pain our narrow visions of God have caused the world! As Sam Harris said, poignantly, as I close, “We are bound to one another. We are the final judges of what is good, just as we remain the final judges of what is logical… The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature—reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind—ignorance, hatred, greed, which is surely the devil’s masterpiece.” Amen. |
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Copyright by Rev. John T. Crestwell. All rights reserved. Please contact him for permission to use. |
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