God in a nutshell
Ian Kirk-Smith reviews a new guide to some big questions
At the heart of God in a nutshell is a deep concern with the discord and divisions that have been produced in the name of religion. The atrocities of today have been happening, in one form and another, for several thousand years. Why? Author Rex Andrews, who is a Quaker, believes that there is an urgent and universal need to find a unifying element between faiths.
God in a nutshell is his attempt to find a common factor. The book is engaging, direct, refreshing and honest. It is written in a clear and attractive style. There is a sense, throughout the book, that the author has spent years of study and reflection on a matter of profound concern to him. Now, knowing the landscape well, he wants to take the reader through it. The author is a Christian humanist and his critical approach is tempered by a tolerant sensibility. He is, consequently, an informative and illuminating guide.
In the first part of the book, Rex Andrews considers various definitions of the deity; violence in religious traditions; problems of Divine purpose; the mystery of religion; the nature of faith; the dangers of an ‘unexamined faith’; and good and evil.
The author emphasizes the essentially mysterious nature of spiritual experience and, in a fascinating chapter, considers the way God has been a ‘man made’ construct. Rex Andrews says, of some famous words in the Bible, that the author of Genesis might just as well have written: ‘And man said let us make God in our image, after our likeness’. Despite attempts in Islam, Christianity and Judaism to resist the tendency to anthropomorphism, countless ‘humanised’ references to the deity can be found in all three faiths. Humans cannot help, he writes, ‘investing other creatures and concepts with human attributes’. It is good to read the prominence he gives to rather nglected figures such as Marcus Aurelius and Baroch Spinoza.
So, what do faiths, at their core, have in common? What is the unifying element to our various strivings for spiritual understanding? The answer to the central question of the book Rex Andrews discerns as ‘the X factor’ or ‘the Power we live by’. When he uses this expression, he writes, he is concerned essentially with the process – ‘the power behind nature, the “soul” of the universe, the energy and spirit that animates it’. Man creates religion on top of this – and, as it is a human construct, it emerges across the world in different forms.
Rex Andrews is rooted in the traditions of the Enlightenment. He is a rationalist. The fact that ‘an idea or custom is traditional or ancient’, he argues, is ‘no proof of its value in different times and situations’. Absolute claims to certainty and knowledge are to be treated with skepticism. He is convinced, however, of the profound mystery at the heart of religion. Science seeks to understand the mechanics of life. Religion is concerned with the meaning of life.
The book contains some fascinating ‘sub-plots’. One involves Richard Dawkins. Rex Andrews supports his position on a number of subjects, such as creationist thinking and the ‘man made’ nature of much religion, but he believes many arguments that Dawkins makes are misguided. Andrews supports Dawkins in denying the supernatural in religion; but, he writes, ‘there is nothing supernatural in the Power we live by’. Dawkins, he feels, does not understand ‘mystery’, nor the poetic and symbolic nature of much religious writing.
Albert Schweitzer once wrote of ‘reverence for Life’. Rex Andrews believes that we need to recognize the value of this principle. It is, he writes, simply another way of saying ‘reverence for the Power we live by’. The greatest miracle is the miracle of life itself. There is no need, the author argues, to evoke supernatural, man made, beings to control it.
God in a nutshell is an honest analysis of the essence of religion and of the meaning of the word ‘God’. It is a sincere personal search for reconciliation and harmony in a world of discord and division. It is a book to be welcomed.
God in a nutshell by Rex Andrews. Fast-Print Publishing. ISBN: 9781784560737. £8.99.
It is available at the Quaker Centre Bookshop and at www.fast-print.net/bookshop.
Comments
Looks like an interesting read and might sit well with ‘Living Deeply’ from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). I’m drawn, though, to consider that the solution to our need for unity is unlikely to arise out of intellectual rationalisation. Sharing the Quaker experience found in silence may be more practically unifying since it requires no doctrinal basis and is already a respected aspect of all religions. In silence there is no need for opinion or argument so no differences are likely to arise. In silence all that needs to be done is done - just not by us. (That is, of course, provided that we get beyond silence as merely a lack of sound).
By BrianH on 5th December 2015 - 16:54
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