Monday, July 23, 2007

What is God about?

If God is what Jesus brought to this world, if God is the axis on which everything depends, then the common question of the common man living in the 21st century would be, so...what's the fuss? What is this God, what is he about? What is it to me?

When we hear the word "God", what comes to mind?

The traditional answer to the question "who is God?" is "he is the supreme being". Now that people do not seem to connect much with this, we will have to go further.

Some other answers come to mind:

  • God is all-beauty.
  • God is the only one who can satisfy all the longings of your heart.
  • God is your creator, the one who designed your brain, your bodily movements, your psychological make-up.
  • God is the fullness of life. When you are connected with him, you are connected with supreme happiness.
  • God is I am who am-- ultimate reality.
An answer which Benedict XVI gives, an answer that needs a lot of thinking through, is that at the core of God is "the act of relating."

Today, while reading Tuesday with Morrie, a popular bestseller, I was struck with one of those aphorisms of Morrie, the Harvard Professor who was teaching his former student the meaning of life: "Death ends life, but not relationships." While my body dies, my relationships will last forever. Could this be a path to further illuminate Benedict's words of wisdom?

What does relating mean? Why is it eternal?

A preliminary answer could be, that the basic relationship is love, and love is indestructible.

Why? I don't know the answer. But I could sense that we are touching here the very heart of everything...

God is Love, Benedict keeps on reminding us. Love is at the heart of ultimate reality. It is this love that sustains us, holds us up each minute, and caresses us. It is Love which makes things happen around us and inside us.

And this Love, this God, is our eternal destiny. We are called to eternal bliss with him. And he wants us to answer to this call, through the only path on which love can pass: freely, through the path of freedom.

I choose God, I choose Love, because I want to.

God is Someone. God is not something, a thing we can be indifferent to, a force of sorts, an abstract principle. He is someone, a person. Someone we can relate to. Yes, someone to whom we can say, "I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me that you hear me."

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