Come and share you God-Concepts here:)

[Sonic247]

God is far above and beyond all created things. As the Bible says-

Who [is] like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high, Who humbleth [himself] to behold [the things that are] in heaven, and in the earth!

God is perfect and holy, he also came from being far above everything to dying the death of a criminal to show that he loved the world because he was "wounded for our iniquities", God enjoys making the impossible possible and uses "the weak things to confounded the things that are strong, the foolish things to confound the things that are wise."

 

[autonomous1one1]

A thread to allow everyone to express and discuss what they actually believe when it comes down to 'God'. ...

Greetings. I think you have a good idea here, Alex_G, and wanted to bounce it back to the top in case there are others who will post.

 

[athanasius]

My belief in God comes from the historic Christian outlook reflected in scripture and Apostolic tradition handed down to the Fathers of the early Chruch and proclaimed by the early Church councils(NIcea 325 and Constantinople 381). To summerize my view of God one can read the nicean-constantinople creed.

Basically I believe in only One God. That one God is one but yet three personages. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God is one and unique in his infinite substance or nature and essence but is 3 really distinct persons. This is a mystery of Faith.

God is Love and prolife. God is life. God is truth. God is light. In him there is no darkness. God is infinite and so is his wisdom and mercy. God is also a just God. He has no beginning and no end. The Father and the Holy Spirit are divine and have no human nature. The Son Jesus is a divine person who preceded his incarnation into the human race(Jn 1:1) and came down from heaven and became man. Therefore Jesus who is God almighty, is one divine person(the Second person of the Blessed Holy Trinity, the Godhead) with two natures (the hypostatic union) ,A human nature and a divine nature.

God(Jesus) died for our sins. That is the simplest way I can explain it. God bless you all!

 

[doppelganger]

The responses are all very interesting so far. To me "God" is first and foremost a word representing something. What specifically it represents varies from person to person, with some people preferring to imagine a personality or a discreet conscious being as symbolized by "God" while others prefer the impersonal wonder of the experience of being or love as "God."

To me, "God" represents uncertainty of form and identity. All "created things" are form. And all form is a product of conscious thought and expression - language, words. So no thing (including my own self or being!) can be experienced outside of a system of thought constructed to define the thingness and being of each form in relation to the central thing in reality to which all things relate - namely, "I am." Self-consciousness creates both the observer and the observed. When I become aware than "I am" I simultaneously create the entire universe "I" will experience, merely waiting for me to use my thoughts to acquire and project form and being into the things in that universe of my experience. What this means is that all things, including "I am" are constructed from thought and have their reality from the action of relating them to each other. The result is that "I" can only experience the universe through my thoughts about it - the ever-changing process that is interaction between sensation and memory that creates the illusion of static identity.

But what if "I" were glimpsed for a moment as a construct? Coming back to being "I" it might prompt me to think I had died, been "transcended" or the "subject/object divide" had disappeared. Why? Because the divide between the "subjective" and "objective" is itself a construction of thought and language. But the loss of this sense of self in the wonder of "oneness" or "transcendence" or "harmony" with the way of all things (or whatever you want to call it) cannot be experienced directly (there is no "I" to experience it), so it is only reflected upon as an experience incompletely glimpsed and incapable of being pulled into the world of forms, the universe of my experience, through the only tools I have available - language.

"God" represents this ineffable experience of substance without form - primal chaos without ordered thought - experienced unmediated by language, and without a distinction between observer and observed. "God" is a halting metaphor for the inexpressible substance beyond form, beyond being and beyond time (i.e. beyond thought). Any belief that "God" has been captured in thoughts and language about "God", therefore, kills "God."

 

[BruceDLimber]

Greetings, all!

Robert has invited me to explain the Baha'i view of God here, so I'll contribute this:

In the Baha'i view God (there is only one) is Supreme, All-loving, and All-merciful!

He created the universe, and in particular humanity through His Love for us!

And He periodically sends Divine Messengers to guide humanity by revealilng new stages ("religions") in the one faith, the Faith of God! All the extant major religions have been part of this process, and it will continue forever into the future.

Best,

Bruce

 

[Popeyesays]

God is the Creator and therefore not part of Creation. All of Creation is dependent upon the bounty and will of God, but God is not dependent upon anything.

This makes God beyond our ken, we can know nothing of the Essence of God. Yet we know we were created. We spend our existence searching for reunion with God, even though we know that reunion can never be complete.

"Wert thou to consider in this station the last of them to be the first, or conversely, thou wouldst indeed be speaking the truth, as hath been ordained by Him Who is the Wellspring of Divinity and the Source of Lordship: "Say: Call upon God or call upon the All-Merciful: by whichsoever name ye will, invoke him, for He hath most excellent names."32 For they are all the Manifestations of the name of God, the Dawning-Places of His attributes, the Repositories of His might, and the Focal Points of His sovereignty, whilst God - magnified be His might and glory - is in His Essence sanctified above all names and exalted beyond even the loftiest attributes. Consider likewise the evidences of divine omnipotence both in their Souls and in their human Temples, that thine heart may be assured and that thou mayest be of them that speed through the realms of His nearness."
(Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 34)

Regards,
Scott

 

[Random]

GOD is like a pretty flower, with pretty petals and a pleasant aroma. Yes. :flirt:

 

[ayani]

GOD is like a pretty flower, with pretty petals and a pleasant aroma. Yes. :flirt:

haha! i like that. prettypretty.

here, i'd like to share this : Beautiful Names of Allah: Numerically Sorted Index

attributes of God found in the Quran. beautiful and clear explanations of the names, interesting for its own sake, too, Alhamdulillah.

 

[Sonic247]

Self-consciousness creates both the observer and the observed. ."

Well then you shouldn't be to upset with me telling you of the coming of God's judgement because you yourself created your observance of it, unless that is what I observed to be happening in my own creation of the universe and when you read my posts their about choclate ice cream and unicorns.

 

[doppelganger]

Well then you shouldn't be to upset with me telling you of the coming of God's judgement because you yourself created your observance of it, unless that is what I observed to be happening in my own creation of the universe and when you read my posts their about choclate ice cream and unicorns.

What you observe in your universe doesn't necessarily have anything do with mine.

 

[Sonic247]

Maybe I don't observe anything in my universe because I'm not real apart from you're self-conscienceness which created me, or at least the posts you see.

 

[Willamena]

Maybe you give away your reality to others to create.

 

[Sonic247]

It sure feels like that sometimes.

 

[autonomous1one1]

Maybe you give away your reality to others to create.

Greetings. You and sonic are too much, Willamena, --- so, let me add more. Actually, your true Self created my consciousness out of itself in a way to make me think i am separated in space and time, somewhat free and autonomous. But, I have been able to overcome this finitude to reunite with MySelf and now 'we' are One. If I may quote Paul Tillich when writing from one perspective about the Trinity, "The doctrine of the Trinity does not affirm the logical nonsense that three is one and one is three; it describes in dialectical terms the inner movement of the divine life as an eternal separation from itself and return to itself."

 

[doppelganger]

Maybe I don't observe anything in my universe because I'm not real apart from you're self-conscienceness which created me, or at least the posts you see.

Maybe. I wouldn't know.

 

[Wandered Off]

The concept that best reflects my thinking at the moment is a deistic definition from an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn:

An impersonal Primal Force, Power or Law that set the universe in motion but is neither aware of its existence nor involved with its activity. The idea requires initializing powers but rejects beliefs, intents and purposes, active consciousness, self-awareness or even passive awareness. There is no interaction with creatures.

 

[autonomous1one1]

The concept that best reflects my thinking at the moment is a deistic definition from an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn:

An impersonal Primal Force, Power or Law that set the universe in motion but is neither aware of its existence nor involved with its activity. The idea requires initializing powers but rejects beliefs, intents and purposes, active consciousness, self-awareness or even passive awareness. There is no interaction with creatures.

Greetings. You pose an interesting concept. For clarification, would you say that these 'initializing powers' created the universe or just set things that were already there in motion? Or does the 'setting in motion' include creation of existence?
Regards,
a..1

 

[Cynic]

Well, I'm probably going to be accused of crackpottery, but here goes:
My concept of God is an infinite continuum of everything that will be, and everything that is. It is the "beginning," a state of latent but infinite potential; Every thought, every passion, every fear, every life experience, every moment in history, every world, every universe, every possibility, exists in this infinite "pleroma" latently, where space and time do not exist--but becomes manifest in an infinite multi-verse of universes of incomprehensible complexity, grandeur, and beauty--with different laws of physics; most being unimaginable to the human mind.
I believe every aspect of ourselves: our thoughts, desires, actions, lives; are facets, pieces, parts to this infinite pleroma, that eventually "return."
*Puffs on hash pipe*

 

[Cynic]

Hmmm... Looks like I scared everyone away... :sad4:

 

[lilithu]

Hmmm... Looks like I scared everyone away... :sad4:

Silly monkey, it's Sunday during a holiday weekend.

You're view isn't that different from mine, as I understand it. God is infinite potential which gets expressed as finite actuality. Or as Tillich put is, God is the "ground of being."