An Approach to God: Losing my Religion

written by Rev. Dr. Doug Gay

To some, God is the transcendent power waiting for us in everything;
To others, God is an oppressive power used to bind and blind the wretched of the earth.

To some, God is the creator who breathes the breath of life into our bodies;
To others, God is the creation of an infantile humanity, superstitious and scared to grow up.

To some, God is a motherly parent, birthing creation and holding her people to her breast;
To others, God is tyrannical father, never pleased enough, loathed and feared as he traps us in dependence.

To some, God is a liberator, hearing the cries of the oppressed and moving to help them;
To others, God is a collaborator, deaf to the cries of the oppressed and siding with the powers that be.

To some, God's hands were split open by violence in suffering love for women and men;
To others, God's hands are stained with the blood of the countless atrocities and needless human suffering.

To some, the praises of the church rise like incense to be breathed in by the God of love;
To others, the smoke of Auschwitz and Hiroshima rises like a finger accusing God, like smoke which blinds God's eyes.

Some of us find all our hope and sense of meaning in God;
Others have lost all faith in God.

We are here because God means something to us,
to our worship or our doubt,
to our trust or our fear,
as lover or as tyrant,
as ultimate reality or grand illusion.
We are here to face up to what we do and don't believe about God.