God Beyond Proof

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, theologian and passionate campaigner against the Nazi regime. For this "crime", he was imprisoned by Hitler's regime in April 1943, and executed by them on 9th April 1945.

But his faith in God, in God's grace, was untouched by his sufferings. As the Wikipedia article about him comments, "His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential; his 1937 book, The Cost of Discipleship, is described as a modern classic." 

When his fellow dissident pastor, Martin Niemöller, founded the Pastors' Emergency League in 1933, to protest against Nazi interference in church affairs and theology, Bonhoeffer swiftly came on board. The League eventually evolved into the Confessing Church, which stood for traditional Christian values against the German Christians, who supported Hitler's policies.

He once wrote, "A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol." Which is a neat expression of the central paradox of any deistic faith. Because belief in God is essentially a matter of faith, which the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament defined as, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

I agree with him, up to a point. Yes, none of us can prove (or disprove!) the existence of God. For people who believe in Him / Her / It, God exists; for people who don't, God doesn't. But I believe that we can know (in a certain sense) that God exists for us, through faith.  And I, along with so many thousand others, have spent considerable time and energy trying to work out what God means to me, as a Unitarian.

Over the past decade or so, I have come to appreciate that for me, God's presence is everywhere, in our ordinary, everyday lives, if we had but eyes to see and ears to hear. And is also eternal, infinite and real; not unknowable. Or at least, not entirely. I believe we can only get glimpses of the Divine, but we can become aware of Her / Him / It in everything around us, in ourselves, and in each other.

This belief makes me a panentheist, which is defined in Cross's The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church as, "the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him [sic.] but that His [sic.] Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe."

So for me, the Divine is not only beyond proof and eternal and infinite, but also immanent, within all things. As the Quakers would say, there is "that of God in everyone". To which I would add, "and in everything."

The presence of the sacred in the natural world was first shown to me by my father, when I was a little girl. He showed me a flower and asked me to really look at it, to become aware of its intricate and complex design, having petals, sepals, stamens, carpels; each element working together to form that flower and enabling it to reproduce. He asked me, "How can we look at the design of that flower, and not believe in a creator God?" And I felt an inner jolt, which has always accompanied my understanding of a revelation of the truth. The beauty and intricate coherence of the natural world still fill me with awe and delight, and I often stop, on my walks in the forest near my home, to give thanks.

The understanding that this Divine indwelling presence also extends to humankind has taken longer to penetrate. But today, I honestly trust that there is that of God in everyone; and that God is Love at the centre of everything. And that the best way of worshipping Him / Her / It is to recognise that, and to try to live in the world in response to this sacred presence. 

Proof and trust are very different ways of approaching difficult ideas, such as the existence of a Divine Being. It is, perhaps, natural to want some proof, and many Christians cite a list of belief statements as proof of God's existence, in the form of various creeds which summarise Christian beliefs.

But I say again, belief is not the same as proof. We cannot prove the existence of God, but I honestly don't think it matters. What matters is that we live our lives in the best way we can, try to make a positive difference in the world, and do as little harm as possible. And I appreciate that belief in a divine being is not necessary to resolve to do this, but I find that it helps me, as it helps countless others.