God in Tractates

  • Nov. 2, 2015, 7:28 p.m.
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God is a title we give to something we cannot fully comprehend. We say the being God is eternal, with a limited understanding of what that entails. The being God has no beginning; God has always been. It is hard to fully grasp this though we may have a vague notion of its meaning.

We say God is limitless. Yet, if this were true, there would be no creation for there would not be room for it. Also, to say anything is limitless is ironic. If it is truly limitless, it cannot be limited. If it cannot do a thing, that is a limitation. So if it cannot be limited it is in fact limited by this.

From a human logic, this is hard to grasp. This is because our thinking is set to see things in modes of duality. A thing is or is not. A thing to us can be limited or not limited for example. And therein lies the problem. God, the Being that is beyond our understanding, does not adhere to the rules of dualism.

I speak more about duality in another tractate, but here I will state briefly that, while we see a thing as is/is not, God is bigger than that. For example, we tend to masculinize God. “Our Father” in heaven is not a male. Nor is God female. God lacks gender. But we cannot say God is neither, for if God were neither male nor female, mankind made in God’s likeness would be neither male nor female. Nor can we say God is both, for if God were both, so too would humans be both. What then should we say God is? God is potential. Within God are all attributes, male and female, while God is neither male, nor female, nor both, nor neither. Just as a human in the womb is sexless until it develops further and has the potential for masculinity or femininity, so too God is the potential of both.

This non-dualistic thinking leads us to other realizations. One often wanders how a loving God could allow hatred. God too can hate as well. While we say “God is love”, this is only one part of the truth. God is love. God is also wrath. God is mercy. God is also judgement. The problem humanity has is that we see these things as being in opposition to each other, when in reality they are pieces of the whole. When we realize that God is not love, hate, both, or neither, and see that God has the potential for all things, we realize it is not God that is the problem, but rather the limitations of human thinking.

Outside of duality, there is another problem with our thinking- separation. We separate us and God. We think of God and say, “God is love”, yet we realize we, as humans, can love, hate, kind of dislike, really dislike but not quite hate, and so on. Why make ourselves so multifaceted and yet make God so one-dimensional? The simple answer? Fear.

We think a God who is not all and only love, all the time, always, will hate us, strike us dead, and throw us into hell without reason. We confuse being just with being vindictive. We assume that if someone hates a person, they will be cruel to that person. But, if we make God as multifaceted as we have the potential to be, we realize that God’s potential for mercy and forgiveness outweighs our own and outnumbers the times that potential could lead God to wrath or judgement against us.

We, as humans, need to expand our thinking about God and remove ourselves from our small-minded dualistic thinking. There are many realizations I have reached that I have left out of here for the sake of brevity. Expand your own thinking on God and see how much God expands to you.


Last updated November 02, 2015


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