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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What comes to mind when you think about God?
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
AW Tozer apparently said:
"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God."
So what comes to mind?
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Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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Mary LA
Shipmate
# 17040
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Posted
I've been reading articles about and selected writings from Hildegard of Bingen and she describes herself as 'a feather on the breath of God' which makes me think of a very gentle and powerful soft movement of Spirit.
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“I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.”
― Muriel Spark
Posts: 499 | From: Africa | Registered: Apr 2012
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Nicodemia
WYSIWYG
# 4756
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Posted
Not sure I have the words to describe God - but I 'see' a vast, enormous, tremendous power that encompasses everything, from the galaxies (just think Andromeda) to the microscopic beauty of any sort of life on earth (think bacteria or viruses)
Its the vastness that gets me!
Posts: 4544 | From: not too far from Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
Struck by a tremendous Holy Awe which raises me out of myself to a place where I feel deeply loved; nourished and protected where I know it all makes sense and that difficulties and tribulations are nothing in themselves but a test. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I find it quite hard to think about God, to be honest, at least in any abstract sense. I find it a lot easier to think about Jesus, which is where the Incarnation and, indeed iconography, helps.
'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us ...'
That said, I insist on the strictest Trinitarian formularies.
There have been times when I've had a strong sense of the numinous but I'm not sure I actually consciously 'think' about God as such in any deliberate 'let's-sit-down-and-think-about-God' way.
Some of the Orthodox mystics, of course, taught that we need to clear our minds of any physical or imaginative construct if we really wanted to get to grips with the reality of God.
I'm not sure it's completely possible to rid ourselves of anthropomorphic or physical concepts - and I'm conscious of what J I Packer was getting at when he wrote that it's idolatrous to have any kind of physical image when we think of God. I can see what he was getting at but I'm not sure that such a thing is entirely possible.
We are not Buddhists. We believe in a physical Incarnation. What our hands have touched, our eyes seen, concerning the Word of Life.
There's not a void nor an ineffable stillness and silence. There is a presence.
How we apprehend and realise that is the interesting issue, though.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
If thinking about God is about summarising who or what God is to us, then it does say a lot about who we are.
If thinking about God is about exploration, discovering more of the vastness of who God is, it may be one of the ways in which we worship God.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
Unlike Gamaliel, I find it very hard to think about Jesus and much easier to think about God: a powerful force for good, in everything and through everything. And with very strong arms to hold it all up.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
AW Tozer apparently said:
"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God."
So what comes to mind?
How lousy he is at keeping his alleged promises. How he seems to be utterly averse to plain speech, since his alleged words have to be reinterpreted, redefined and qualified before they match real-life experience. How (as I've said here before) if He and I are supposed to have some sort of "relationship", it wouldn't kill him to pick up the phone once in a while. And what a bloody awful employer he is.
Does Tozer mean that I'm bad at all those things too, then?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
AW Tozer apparently said:
"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God."
So what comes to mind?
Kneeling.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
How apophatic ...
Mind you, I found it very difficult to answer Ramarius's question. I've gone from a quite goo-ey 'hwyl' pietism mixed with a very propositional and 'modernist' form of quasi-Calvinism towards a position where I find it difficult to articulate anything 'concrete' about God other than that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek him ... even if, as per Adeodatus, he doesn't always seem to answer his phone or his emails ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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EJ.
Shipmate
# 9063
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Posted
Nothing. And I don't mean to imply I don't believe in God, I do; I just can't imagine anything that'd be enough, so to speak.
Posts: 137 | Registered: Feb 2005
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Amen EJ.
Since I became Orthodox I have ceased to meditate for precisely this reason. Shared meditation in a group is even more fraught with difficulty. It is desperately easy UNWITTINGLY to manipulate peoples' feelings with perfectly straight forward biblical meditations, (of the affective sort I mean). The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross (in the west) and St. Dionysios and St. Symeon the New Theologian (in the east) offer a safer path I think.
[ 21. June 2012, 11:23: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Fuff
Apprentice
# 14655
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Posted
Light and Love in that order.
Posts: 22 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2009
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
I think about God as a friend. The greatest Friend I will ever have. A Friend who happened to create me in Her/His own image and loves me so much that I can't even wrap my mind around it. And, like Father Andrew M. Greeley, I now see God as my Lover. It's scary to admit that here because I open myself up to charges of blaspheme or some such rot but that is the way I think about my God.
Certainly, it's not all peaceful warm feelings. I also feel awe/wonder/some healthy fear bumping up against the magnitude of God but I also feel Her humor, Her mercy, grace, tenderness, and sometimes Her anger when I do something to hurt Her, i.e. hurt another creature or myself.
I go back and forth about whether Jesus is God. Most of the time I think of him as my much older, infinitely wiser brother. I don't think he minds this at all. Jesus and I have an understanding. He knows I struggle with the concept of him as fully human and fully God.
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
AW Tozer apparently said:
"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God."
So what comes to mind?
How lousy he is at keeping his alleged promises. How he seems to be utterly averse to plain speech, since his alleged words have to be reinterpreted, redefined and qualified before they match real-life experience. How (as I've said here before) if He and I are supposed to have some sort of "relationship", it wouldn't kill him to pick up the phone once in a while. And what a bloody awful employer he is.
Does Tozer mean that I'm bad at all those things too, then?
Give him a break. He has to deal with humans all day.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
what comes to mind when you think about God[?]
That we had to invent Him because He didn’t exist.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick
That we had to invent Him because He didn’t exist.
An "invention" that is part of the evolutionary process then. And of no different status to any other idea, given that all ideas originate through this process (according to the philosophy of naturalism). Therefore this idea is as valid as any other idea.
Which shows how self-contradictory naturalistic epistemology really is, in which all ideas derive their validity through their utilitarian function, and yet this same theory declares that some of these ideas are not actually valid, because they are not "true" (whatever that means). So how can an idea be both valid and invalid at the same time?
More evidence that these smug "new atheist" declarations are incoherent and irrational.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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Ambivalence
Apprentice
# 16165
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Posted
Creation, observation, morality, a potential afterlife, and how these can be reconciled with each other. A scientist's approach, I suppose.
Posts: 22 | From: Peterlee | Registered: Jan 2011
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
The Judge. Always watching. Always knowing. Who demands perfection as a minimum standard. For whom nothing we do can ever be good enough.
The sort of Father whose first words, when we come home on a Sunday evening full of the joys of having scored our first ever half-century on the cricket field, are "so why wasn't it a century then?"
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
One huge big contradiction.
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Caissa
Shipmate
# 16710
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Posted
Singularity
Posts: 972 | From: Saint John, N.B. | Registered: Oct 2011
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The word God
Yep, that's what I get.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
More evidence that these smug "new atheist" declarations are incoherent and irrational.
![[Snore]](graemlins/snore.gif)
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
The question may tell us more about A W Tozer than it tells us about ourselves - although, in fairness, he was of a rather mystical bent. But I'm a bit suspicious about the question as it seems to have an inbuilt judgementalism about it - as if to separate the sheep from the goats - which is God's prerogative and not ours.
But that might be a judgemental perspective on my own part ...
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Felafool
Shipmate
# 270
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Posted
Alien - totally different and 'other', yet the essence of goodness and unconditional love. Slow to anger, swift to bless.
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I don't care if the glass is half full or half empty - I ordered a cheeseburger.
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PerkyEars
slightly distracted
# 9577
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Posted
Big and multicoloured. A sort of friendly presence that lurks almost out of sight because if we saw too much right now we'd be scared shitless.
I have trouble with letting go of concepts of God and thinking 'nothing', since God to me is a definate entity. I can admit I don't know everything about my mate, but I can't empty my mind of notions about them.
Posts: 532 | From: Bristol | Registered: May 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That He's thinking us from autonomy to glory.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The Judge. Always watching. Always knowing. Who demands perfection as a minimum standard. For whom nothing we do can ever be good enough.
The sort of Father whose first words, when we come home on a Sunday evening full of the joys of having scored our first ever half-century on the cricket field, are "so why wasn't it a century then?"
That sounds like my cat.
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
The Judge. Always watching. Always knowing. Who demands perfection as a minimum standard. For whom nothing we do can ever be good enough.
The sort of Father whose first words, when we come home on a Sunday evening full of the joys of having scored our first ever half-century on the cricket field, are "so why wasn't it a century then?"
I remember a "God" like that. He was a projection of a particular church leader I once had some dealings with.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I remember a "God" like that. He was a projection of a particular church leader I once had some dealings with.
Wasn't that AW Tozer's point when s/he said -
"The most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God."
That we are all projecting - thus what we think of God says more about us than it does about God?
[ 21. June 2012, 17:56: Message edited by: Boogie ]
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
Parent.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie
That we are all projecting - thus what we think of God says more about us than it does about God?
Not necessarily.
God is not just an empty canvas on which we paint our own picture (which is really just a form of practical atheism). He does actually have a character, as revealed in the Bible, and especially through Jesus. And this true character is revealed through the witness of the Holy Spirit.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Someone who 'loves' me but doesn't like me very much.
Indifferent. Someone who has a different idea of what suffering means than I do.
Inaffable. Distant. Seeming careless with the world except for a few lucky people here and there. Careless of the suffering of the innocent and powerless, and thus must enjoy us more when we are dead than alive.
You didn't ask about Jesus....
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I rather think that it was still Tozer's point, though, EE.
I suspect his judgement on someone's position viz-a-viz God, salvation etc etc would depend on their answer. Which may or may not be the case. How do we know?
If we are Christians then of course what we know of God is revealed in scripture. But it's how we interpret scripture that's the point.
No, God isn't a blank or empty canvas but neither do we 'look' upon him in scripture or elsewhere save through the lenses of our own particular tradition or viewpoint.
I submit that we all anthropomorphise to a certain extent and that with all of us our view or image of God is going to be partial and is going to be flawed. How can it be otherwise?
Sure there's the witness of scripture (and tradition?) and there's the witness of the Holy Spirit but we still 'see through a glass darkly' and only 'know in part'.
I'm now going to sit back and wait for you to accuse me of practical atheism ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie
That we are all projecting - thus what we think of God says more about us than it does about God?
Not necessarily.
God is not just an empty canvas on which we paint our own picture (which is really just a form of practical atheism). He does actually have a character, as revealed in the Bible, and especially through Jesus. And this true character is revealed through the witness of the Holy Spirit.
I was asking if Tozer was hinting at this in the quote, not saying I believe it myself.
I suspect there is a lot of truth in it though. We can't but project (Even when looking at the words and revealed character of of Jesus)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The word God
So the word 'God' itself has no meaning to you?
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie
We can't but project (Even when looking at the words and revealed character of of Jesus)
I disagree.
I find that I can only comprehend the character of God through the revelation given by the Holy Spirit. If I try to "work God out" by natural means simply from the events recorded in the Bible or in the news, I am often left in a state of confusion. It's hard to imagine a God of compassion when meditating on, for example, the punishment of stoning prescribed in the Old Testament or trying to comprehend God's character and purposes when thinking about the experience of the Haitian child dying a slow death in the rubble of her house after the earthquake.
So in the light of this, why is it that I am convinced that "God is love"? This revelation cannot have come by natural means, because nature (and even the Bible) often defies this conclusion. It has come via the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, which is not a matter of my projection.
Certainly if God is nothing more than what we project about him, then the atheists (or at least the deists - i.e. practical atheists) are right.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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WhateverTheySay
Shipmate
# 16598
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Posted
Loving creator of everything. But too big to imagine.
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I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am going
Posts: 872 | From: Lost in Space, without a map | Registered: Aug 2011
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The Judge. Always watching. Always knowing. Who demands perfection as a minimum standard. For whom nothing we do can ever be good enough.
The sort of Father whose first words, when we come home on a Sunday evening full of the joys of having scored our first ever half-century on the cricket field, are "so why wasn't it a century then?"
Sounds like one of my school teachers.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mockingale
Shipmate
# 16599
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Posted
Timelessness. Beauty. Justice.
Posts: 679 | From: Connectilando | Registered: Aug 2011
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
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Since I became Orthodox I have ceased to meditate for precisely this reason. Shared meditation in a group is even more fraught with difficulty. It is desperately easy UNWITTINGLY to manipulate peoples' feelings with perfectly straight forward biblical meditations, (of the affective sort I mean). The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross (in the west) and St. Dionysios and St. Symeon the New Theologian (in the east) offer a safer path I think.
Amen, Father Gregory.
I think there is much cheap watered down "mysticism" available in books, groups etc.
Christian mysticism - the genuine inner path - requires competent guidance lest the would-be "mystic" gets totally lost and possibly gravely psychologically damaged as well.
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
EE, I think you are putting 2 and 2 together and making 5 again. I can't speak for Boogie but I'm certainly not saying that God is nothing more than what we project upon him.
Whenever we have this kind of discussion it tends to get all binary and either/or.
All I was saying was that our apprehension of God can only ever be partial at best. How can it be otherwise? And yes, let us praise God that He gives us His Holy Spirit of truth to lead us into all Truth - otherwise we wouldn't have any apprehension of God to begin with. 'He has set eternity in the heart of man ...' etc.
We see in part and we know in part, but one day we will see clearly and fully, as indeed we are 'fully known'.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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angelfish
Shipmate
# 8884
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Posted
I think of a person wearing a big cloak, with it spread out wide, ready to wrap me up with him when I get there. In a word, Abba.
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"As God is my witness, I WILL kick Bishop Brennan up the arse!"
Posts: 1017 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2004
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
The word God
So the word 'God' itself has no meaning to you?
Course it does. I can pick it apart.
It's just the word that seems to occur to me first.
p.s. Care to explain why God is a massive contradiction? Are we speaking Theodicy?
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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