Finding God

by Diane Sprague

Finding God is not easy. We erect structures to facilitate the process of finding Him/Her. Perhaps we can see the structure as a large house with a woman walking down the endless hallways. She is overwhelmed by her choices; there are so many doors she can open. God might be found in any of the rooms or she might just get hopelessly lost inside. There is no certainty, just possibilities.

She opens a door. Inside she finds a room full of people with tastes, opinions, and platforms. They invite her into the room with the promise that if she selects the correct opinions, develops her tastes appropriately, and fights for the correct platform, she will be doing the work of God, speaking for God, and finding the will of God.

A man takes her aside. He gives her pamphlets and tells her about the great evil called evolution. He tells her this position only involves schemes and lies whose sole purpose is to lead a person away from God. He gives her the opinion of creation science. He explains that only when one adopts this argument, fights for it, and angrily attacks those who hold onto evolutionary positions will one find God.

“But how do we see the beauty of God in the creation unless we observe the process by which He/She created? Aren’t there facts around to let us make these observations?” she asks.

“He/She!” he storms and whacks her in the head with his anti-evolution picket sign. “God is not a She. How will you ever find God when your opinions are so wrong? Be off with you.”

The anti-abortionists, King James Version only, prayer in the schools, tongue speakers, Republicans, Calvinists, once saved always saved, we must obtain perfection, Liberals, anti-science factions, Armenians, Universalists, Trinitarians, literalists, agnostics, homosexuality bashers, deists, monalists, and legalists all surround her and vaunt their opinions.

“Ours is the correct opinion,” they all cry. “Adopt our opinion and you will find God. There is no other way.”

They all began fighting. The viciousness with which they tear each other apart is overwhelming.

“Surely, God cannot be found in this room,” our wanderer cries.

She leaves behind the room of opinions and walks further down the corridor.

She walks into another room. She sees a sign: This is the God is a Relationship room. She sees a number of people in the act of worship. The music, the lofty choruses, the cherished symbols, and the sacred ceremonies are there to lift the worshiper into a profound relationship with God. She tries to join in, but she finds the symbols and message are far too many years removed from her time and her thoughts. They have become lifeless and dull. She is not brought into God’s presence, rather she becomes lost in the sterility of a soul seeking meaning in images whose substance has died. She felt that she was made to seek different symbols and different messages. She nudges the worshiper that sits next to her.

“Where do I find a new songs to sing, with new words and new promises?” she asks.

“God is very, very old. If you cannot see the value and goodness of our traditions, you are lost. There are no new songs to sing,” he whispers back to her.

She sadly leaves this room. Ahead she hears rejoicing, music, and laughter. She decides to try this new room. A man with a top hat and a long black robe greets her.

“Welcome to the entertainment room,” he shouts. “God is too hard to find, so we will fill ourselves with the joy of entertainment, distraction, and fun. The wonderful feelings generated by our effort might as well be God.”

Gospel singers are on the stage and they fill the room with their joyful music. When they finish a dynamic speaker fills the room with his eloquence, humor, insight, and inanities. More music follows his words. Then the members of the congregation came on the stage to perform a skit. The theme of the skit is what will you say to Jesus? The only messages that fill the sermon, songs, and plays are a repetition of simplistic truisms or falsisms. That seems to be enough. Everyone seems deeply moved. Everyone except our lonely wanderer. She falls asleep. She has to escape the noise that is caused by the emptiness of having nothing to say.

In her dreams, our wanderer falls through the various floors of the house into the lowest basement. It is cold, dark, and still. She follows her instinct to find a room that contains something she dreads and desires to find. As she wanders through the damp dungeons and hallways she becomes aware of a masculine presence. It speaks to her of a god that is dead. She enters a room and she sees a giant corpse. She is very frightened, but her fascination makes her remain with the corpse. She likes the feeling of death. It is eternal and real.

The corpse changes into a winding stairway. It leads her up many floors to the top of the house. As she approaches what she knows to be the attic, she feels a strong feminine presence. She stops climbing. She can go no further. Her sense of the numinous is far too strong. She does not belong so high and so far away from anything she has ever known. She decides to leave the house.

In the undefined and unrealized world outside of the house, she finds only herself. She has no where to go and nothing to hold onto. She has only the awareness of the masculine presence and the feminine presence that seem to be following her. She turns to face them, but they are only whispers and shadows.

“Where is God?” she asks.

In the distance, she hears the house crashing to the ground.

“God is hard to find. You stand there alone. Seek God where we are joined, deep inside, in the confusion, and in the peace of something that is real.”

The wanderer walks back to the ruins of the house. She decides to seek God in the ruins. Perhaps God hides in our collapsed structures. No opinions, no relationships, and no entertainment exist. Just an attic in the basement, opposites uniting, and the eternal stillness of something very real.