The Nature of Our God
When I think of God these days, I am drawn to what He designed for this planet Earth. I see a completely interdependent system of life on this Earth in which every single plant, animal, insect and person is needed to sustain life on this planet. Each and every one of us, including humans, has a purpose on which the planet and all its inhabitants depend. I am awed when I think of how God who I think of more as this enormous heart and mind, rather than the huge male figure in the sky that I was taught to think of as God when I was a child. I am awed at how this planet was created to serve every single plant and animal here which makes the planet a community, a viable community in which all of life depends on every other plant or animal here. And I can’t even imagine what life beyond this planet, beyond this solar system is like. But I do believe that God created every bit of the universe, again, each part as a self-sustaining community.
Science has taught us much about God and all other life forms here; it has supplied the details while Genesis 1 only named the big picture of heavens and earth, light and darkness, sky and the waters, evening and morning, seas and land, vegetation, creatures of the water and birds, and every living thing including animals and humans. Without science today we would not know how wonderfully made it all is and how interconnected all of life is according to God’s plan of this amazing community on Earth of plants, animals, insects and humans—all the living things form a community here because each species has a purpose that provides food and care for every other species. It is this interdependent community that God created. Not one species can exist without all the others. We must face the destruction of species by Global Warming and change the nature of how we humans relate to this grand plan. We must make decisions about our Earth that will support all species here, including ours.
It is interesting that among all the inhabitants on earth only humans have free will and have to choose to exercise their purpose on this planet that helps the community that God created, as they serve God in all that they do. I am reading a most interesting book. Called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins who was the head of the Human Genome Project. He has a great faith in God. He wrote the book “to make his case for God and for science.”[1]
In the church I grew up in in Louisville, Kentucky, God was an angry and vengeful God, ready to zap any of us who did any wrong. I absorbed this lesson as a child but it gave me lots of problems as I grew up. Bu the time I was a teenager, God to me was a raven sitting on my shoulder ready to zap me for anything I did wrong. In my later 20’s I left the church because I could not tolerate the hell-fire-and-damnation message about God even if I no longer believed it. Or heard it every Sunday. Later, God called me to serve Him and I gave my life to the Lord. I wish I had read this passage from Micah 6:8 in my 20’s
“ He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
‘To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God.”
That is really such a lovely invitation to serve God. And then, in the next chapter, Micah describes God without the “hell-fire and damnation” lesson of my childhood:
“Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
You will be faithful to Jacob,
and show love to Abraham,
as you pledged on oath to our ancestors
in days long ago.”(Micah 7:18-20)
One of the best ways to connect to God is as the creator of this magnificent planet, the beauty which surrounds us, the fascinating variety of plants and animals and insects and humans which we see every day. To me there is great joy in observing the clouds, in feeding our neighborhood’s birds outside my living room window, in seeing the glory of the trees in the four seasons. Like right now, I am captivated by the structure of the tree trunks and limbs which are bare of leaves. The trees stand so straight or they lean at difficult angles to sustain, and yet they are not falling over! And this description doesn’t even begin to cover all the beauty of this earth!
If we love this earthly home of ours, then we must love God, too. We must give up our preoccupation with ourselves and focus on the needs of the earth and all its residents near and far. We need to live in gratitude for all that God has given us and how he helps us throughout our lives, even when we are not aware of his presence and his caring. It is a huge wake-up call today in the face of the Global Warming that is making it so hard to live on this planet as fires, floods, rising seas and temperatures, and other disasters these days occur often across the world. If we live in gratitude for all God has done for us or even for small parts of our lives, then we must turn to God and ask what it is that He wants each of us to do to help turn the temperatures and disasters around. If we fail to seek His advice, we will fail to change the circumstances on this our home. Scientist are predicting that 2050 is the turning point after which it will be difficult to turn this huge problem around. That’s only 24 years from now!
If we care about the rest of our lives, our children and their children, all of humanity and creation, and our God who created this wonderful home for us, NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!
An incredible book to read: “The Language of God,” by Francis S. Collins who describes his own relationship to God and how it came about, the fascinating history of the human genome project, and how faith and science are compatible.
[1] Francis S. Collins’ “The Language of God,” (New York,NY: Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, 2006), Back Cover