Who Is God to You?
By Celine Stoco
The concept of God varies across different religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions. There isn't a universally agreed-upon definition. However, when most people describe this entity, they use words like powerful, ruler, creator, divine, transcendent, or eternal. These words have gravitas, but also create a feeling that God is far away, distant.
While there is a general concept of God, every person has a personal understanding of who He is, too. For some, it is love, for others God is the only way, the beginning and the end, or even the alpha and omega. Unificaitonists believe that He is a personal God.
So how can you find your personal God?
“God is without form. If we should conceive of Him as large, He is infinitely large, and if we should conceive of Him as small, He is infinitely small.”
As we can see from this quote, creating a personal relationship with God can be difficult since God can take any shape but no shape at all. So if we truly aim to achieve a relationship with God, we need to use more than just logical thinking since who/what God is cannot be placed in a box.
“We should not perceive the existence of God only vaguely and conceptually. It is impossible to understand the existence of God through logic alone.”
Even though it can be hard to connect with God, it is not impossible. The best way to start is to find a way that you can feel God or talk to God, through prayer, songs, reading, or nature.
“You should know how to love nature and love people. Because all things of creation are symbols for God and because people are substantial beings, those who know how to love all things of creation and people will come to love God.”
Unificationists, for example, believe that “God, the Creator of all things, is the absolute reality, eternal, self-existent, and transcendent of time and space. The fundamental energy of God’s being is also eternal, self-existent, and absolute. It is the origin of all energies and forces that allow created beings to exist.” (Divine Principle 2.1)
Thus, God is not a bearded guy on a throne in the sky. We believe that God wants to be with us, His children, all the time, and even though He is not able to directly communicate with us due to the fall, He is still closer than we imagine.
“God’s home is in the middle of our heart.”
If you are feeling lost about where God is, don’t feel bad. It’s like that for a lot of people. For me, it has always been hard to build a personal relationship with God, since He has always seemed so far away. But as I thought about it more, I saw that God is with me all the time. He is with my family when we are having lunch together, within my niece when we are playing, in nature. He is in every little thing we do. If we start to pay attention, we will see that He’s there.
God is with us in the happy and sad times. He is in the small and big things. That is what God is all about. Meeting God is something personal, and as we work on it, and acquire experiences, this is going to be the most precious thing in our life of faith.
There is no right or wrong answer. You need to build your unique relationship with God. This relationship will change over time. It’s about putting in the effort. So who is God to you?