God: Consciousness

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’* So Abram went, as the Lord had told him... Genesis 12:1-3a

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.... so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:24-26, 27-28a

We have talked about the rather forbidding ideas of the necessary existence of God and God as the condition for anything to exist at all, as well as , more encouragingly, the beauty of god, and God's desire for you. This raises a question in enquiring minds: if God is more like the condition of anything existing at all, and not an object in the universe, then what sense does it make to talk about God as being like a person? All this anthropomorphic language - is it not just a throwback to a more primitive age? Would we not be better off leaving all such talk behind?

Tuesday 4/10/22 at Chalice - Northcote Uniting Church we are going to get stuck into the question. 7pm for byo dinner (which is an important part of the experience)

Image: Sistine Chapel Ceiling: God Dividing Land and Water, Michelangelo, 1508 - 1512