‘God is already within us, part of the natural world as much as our bodies.’

Recently Neil Morgan asked what nontheists are doing when they are discerning. Rhiannon Grant has some ideas

Although I’m not a nontheist, since Neil Morgan mentioned my book Telling the Truth about God (9 August) I do have some ideas for him.

First, what does anyone think we’re doing in Meeting for Worship for Business? Here are four possibilities: making decisions; looking for the will of God; seeking unity; and hoping it will be over soon so we can have biscuits. In any such Meeting, I’m probably doing some or all of those. Do any of them require me to believe something unacceptable to a nontheist?

Let’s pause and consider what a nontheist position is. Although my nontheist Friends differ in their detailed opinions, they usually say that, in their experience, there is nothing supernatural. They cannot honestly say they believe in the external existence of any kind of divinity, and only humans have personal characteristics like being loving or merciful. (Quakers who are not nontheists may also think some or all of these things.) The nontheists I know sometimes avoid the word ‘God’, but accept that poetic or fictional ways of speaking can be helpful in understanding complex and subtle things – it’s often helpful to explain complex ideas this way.

Where does this leave my four things? Nothing seems to stop a nontheist Quaker from joining in with making decisions but, as Neil says, there doesn’t seem to be any reason not to vote unless you also think we’re doing something else. What about looking for the will of God? Doesn’t that suggest the existence of an external divine being who has personal characteristics and communicates with us supernaturally? There are Quakers who understand the will of God in this way, and that should remain welcome among us. But there are also other ways to think about it, and I’d like to offer one possibility here.

If the now-standard Quaker phrase ‘there is that of God within every one’ means that, whatever God is, some essence of God is within all people, then God is already within us, part of the natural world as much as our bodies, and nothing supernatural has to happen for God to communicate with us. Similarly, this God does not need to be external – could be, but the part we experience directly is not only within the world, but within us. And this God might only have the personal characteristics we put on God as metaphors, or by enactment through our own lives: by loving one another, for example.

Perhaps the word ‘God’ is confusing. It’s so easy to get impressions of what God must be from other places, but this is a normal Quaker use of the term. An alternative might be Love, meaning not just individual love, but the overwhelming Love which speaks within us – God’s Love, a God which is not ‘real like the daisies’ but ‘real like I love you’ (to borrow from nontheist David Boulton’s 2002 book). This Love prompts us all to join in unity.

Can we have biscuits now? If that’s what Love requires.

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Comments

Thanks for this fascinating article Rhiannon.
I think Blake said ‘All deities reside in the human breast.’
You might like to read this recent comment on the NFN website:
http://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/about/nfn-membership/comment-page-1/#comment-8430

By trevorb on 10th September 2019 - 22:07

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