DEAR GOD

April 21, 2008 – 10:51 am

Dear God,

It’s struck me in recent years that I don’t really know who, or what you are, or indeed if you’re even out there and real. When I picture you in my mind I see you as an old man with a white beard wearing some kind of robe surrounded by clouds. Is that you? Are you an old man God?

I once heard someone say that God is the answer when we don’t know the answer. That makes sense to me. Before telescopes and microscopes we had to explain our surroundings somehow, so we gave you the credit, happy to accept our world as the work of an creator unseen. But I’m wondering, did we invent you? Are you, in effect, not the almighty creative power of the universe, but instead the almighty creation of man?

Even if that were the case though, it doesn’t really explain to me why mankind attributed things to you in the first place. What gave us the idea that there was a you to even attribute things to anyway? What drove us, and still drives us, to seek and communicate with you?

Maybe we’ve met, you and I. But the image in my mind of you being some aging man in a robe a white beard and a pissed off look on your face is no longer sitting comfortably with me, that image seems more fable than fact. I don’t just want to accept you, I want to meet you for myself.

Make no mistake though, I’m not looking for religion, I’m looking for you God. It says in the Bible (the only religious text I am vaguely familiar with) something like; “Those who seek me will find me.” Well okay then, would you mind if I called you on that? I hope you don’t because that is entirely my intention. I’m going to seek you. I’m going to track down and talk to people who say they know you, I’m going to go to places where you supposedly are, I’m going to discard that old image of you and try instead to find something less distant, and more real. If you’re out there God, I’m going to find you.

I’ve decided to begin my journey in India. I’ll grant you it’s a long way from St Andrews, the Anglican church just down the road from where I live, but after visiting the region of Tamil Nadu in India back in 2004, I got a sense of the fact that the Indian culture seems more attune with matters of spirituality than the overly distracted way of life in the UK.

I’m going to open my mind to all things, all possibilities. Some of my Christian friends would worry about that, but I rather think that if you’re out there God, you didn’t give us our minds so we could close them. Maybe you could say this is a leap of faith. Perhaps it is, but in truth I just want to find out who the hell is God.


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