BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Do your friends ever ask you whether you believe in God? If they do, what do you answer? If you’re like most Unitarian Universalists, whether children or grownups, there is no easy way to answer. It’s a yes or no question, but just giving a simple “yep” or “nope” doesn’t really seem like it will do the trick. You get the impression that they must be asking: “Do you believe the same as me?” But somehow they never seem to start out by saying what it is that they believe, so how do you know where to start?
Of course, this question often happens in a different way, when kids ask their parents or other grown-ups, “Do you believe in God?” Or even, “Do we believe in God?” Well, if you feel pressured when a friend asks you about your religion, just imagine the kind of panic this can set up for parents. After all, we parents feel like we’re supposed to be good role models for our kids. We may not have all the answers, but we like to feel that we at least have a good way of tackling the important questions. So if you’re bored and want some entertainment, try asking your parents or another UU adult if they believe in God, and watch them squirm.
The question, of course, is unfair. How can you say whether or not you believe in God when you don’t know what version of God the person is talking about? And there are a lot of different versions. More like a mega-lot. Would you be asking about believing in Ceres, the Roman goddess of grains or Elegba, the Yoruba god of disorder and destiny? Even if you stick with a Biblical God, in the Hebrew Scriptures (often called the Old Testament) there’s God who’s like a sheltering mother bird and God who blasts a whole city to oblivion for bad behavior. And Jesus talks about God as “Father,” but it’s not clear whether he meant “my father” or “everybody’s father.”
A better question than “Do you believe in God?” would be “What do you believe about God?” You might believe that God is like love, something that is real, but not something that you can see or touch. You might believe that God is the spirit shared by all things, the energy or creativity that makes things grow and change. You might think that God is like a warm, comforting blanket, or like a tough coach who wants you to do your best, and is willing to yell to get your attention. You might think that God came up with the rules that govern the universe, set the whole thing in motion, and just backed away, or you might think that God is active in the life of each person, helping out as you go through your day. Or you might think that God is more like a unicorn—something that is nice to imagine, but you know that it doesn’t really exist.
Of course, there are some versions of God that you are not likely to find in a UU church. Chances are that if you ask a UU grown-up about God, they won’t believe that God is a guy with a long, white beard who lives somewhere up in the sky. We have satellites and rockets and space probes and the Hubble telescope out there in space, and no one’s ever seen a guy in a robe hanging out on a cloud. Chances are also very good that if you ask a UU about God they’re not going to believe in a God who decides that some people are the good, chosen or saved people and that some people are the bad, unwanted, damned people. We have a long tradition of affirming “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and it’s hard to imagine believing in a God who didn’t share that viewpoint.
But that still leaves a lot of room for what God might be. The one thing we know about God is that no one has the one right version of exactly what God is. But that doesn’t mean that when someone asks you about God you should just shrug your shoulders and hope they let it slide. After all, no one has the one right version of what a painting or a poem is, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother making art. In fact, if you’d like to explore your beliefs about what God might be like, you could try making your own God art. Draw a picture of what you think God is like, or write a poem or make a sculpture out of clay or create a dance that expresses your sense of what God might be. That way, if someone asks you “Do you believe in God?” and you want an answer that is more complicated than just “yes” or “no,” you will have come up with an answer that is all your own.
