Defining God

Have you ever tried to define God? Some have said that God is the creator of the universe, but I don’t think that is a helpful answer. Scientists can try and try to figure out how the universe began, but they won’t ever know. A better definition of God would be the collective thoughts and emotions of everyone on Earth. You might wonder why we might limit ourselves to Earth when there are definitely other planets out there that are governed by universal laws, but I don’t think we know enough about the universe to broaden our definition to include them. A more useful definition of God would be limited to Earth because that’s all we can really handle right now.

The God that was written about in the Old Testament was actually smaller than a God of the entire planet. He was only written about by a small portion of the planet. He was mostly concerned with the wars and relationships in the Middle East. He seemed to ignore the Europeans and Asians. They didn’t write about that same God. They wrote about some totally different stuff.

Jesus had a better idea about defining God. He said that God loved everyone on Earth. He said that God wants people to get along and try not to hurt one another. This brought about an awesome transformation in human culture that made people a little bit less selfish. They gathered in Churches to be taught why we should serve one another and serve God.

Today we can see another transformation happening right before our eyes. The internet has created a way for us to learn about people on the other side of the planet. People are much more informed about world events. We are becoming a more global community. It’s time we redefine God as the collective well being of everyone on Earth so that we can work towards that goal. It’s time we understand that we are all part of God and God is in all of us, and the only true way to do that is to admit that the God written about in the Bible is not our God. There are many differences. Our God is characterized not by his separation from us but His connection to us. Every choice we make has an effect on the world and there is no bigger effect than ours.

What does Society Need

I think society needs a place to go that doesn’t cost anything. We have put a price on everything, and that price makes it part of the money system. People need a place to escape from the money system. I admit that the money system works well for us, but it is not all there is. Traditionally we would go to church on Sundays, and that was a place for people to hear about God and Spiritual things, but it was also an escape from the money system. It was a place where we would give instead of be charged. Today fewer and fewer people attend church, because the church has become stuck on a few things. The church has recently hit a wall that it can’t get past. We have entered an age of free information. The internet has become a place to find answers, and so it has replaced the church as the main place to go pray for help. The internet has replaced the church as the authority on truth, but the internet lacks the human experience that we all desire. Going to work is not a real human experience, because you have to fake it. You have to act like you like your boss, and you have to do things you normally wouldn’t do, because you want to get paid that money! Then you go to the store and you look for stuff to buy, and you don’t really care about the sales people because you know they are just trying to sell you stuff. So if your buying or selling then you aren’t interacting with people like you normally would if it weren’t for the money system.
Secondly, there needs to be a public space for debating political issues. It has bee said that you shouldn’t discuss religion or politics with friends, because it often starts a fight, but we can’t totally ignore these subjects! These are two of the most important subjects on Earth! So if we had a place to come discuss spiritual and political issues, we could make an agreement to keep it civil and avoid getting too emotional.
I think that we need something to replace the Church that is failing us.