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Can We Understand God? There’s a simple and clear answer: “Yes and No”. No, we cannot understand God. God is the word that describes ultimate reality. It is the ultimate of which we are aware and the “more” we can’t even perceive. The answer is “No” when we think of understanding in the sense that we understand how to troubleshoot a computer, how to study for a test, or what makes life worth living. In fact, we can probably understand all these infinitely more clearly than we can understand God. It has been suggested that ants crawling on a calculator are better able to understand its workings than we can understand the depth, breadth, and extent of God’s nature and purpose. The answer is clear: “No” … and “Yes”.

Yes, we can understand God in the way we understand an artist from observing his or her works of art. Yes, in the way we understand a friend by watching them live life, by talking with them and talking with others who know them about them, and by observing how we feel in their presence. We can understand God by observing the universe – by learning more about the cosmos and the microscopic world. We can understand God by learning more about other life forms, about human beings, and about ourselves. In this way, we can sense the essential nature of God.

The Bible does not explain God. It assumes God. It describes God in terms of people’s experience and perceptions. Can we understand God? “Yes” and “No”. Perhaps the best opportunity we have for understanding God, to the extend we can, is by knowing ourselves. We can look ever more deeply into our inner self and learn because the imprint of God is there.

The best way to understand God is by paying attention to your own life’s journey. To illustrate, for the remainder of this article I will answer the question is “Who am I?” “How have I understood God and not understood God on my journey? I invite you to listen to my story and think about your own story — how you understand God and don’t understand God.

John 3: 16 is probably the most familiar scripture for Christians. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Christian have embraced this verse for generations as a succinct statement of faith. Some have used it as a tool of manipulation. It has been meaningful for my faith throughout my journey. John 3:16 asserts things ideas about God, three actions of God: God loves the world; God gave the Son; and God provides eternal life. As I tell my story, I will share how my understanding of these three assertions has changed and, hopefully, developed.

I grew up in a Christian family. My father was an Army chaplain. We were a Southern Baptist family: very committed, very open, and very accepting. We also moved around a lot. During my early years, I attended ten different schools. My family was how I understood God. God loving the world was inseparable from my family loving me. My family was my life and that life was good as long as we were together. My family went to church and we read bible stories at home. I went to Sunday School, participated in children’s choir, was eventually baptized, and joined the church.

As a child and young teen, I believed that Jesus was God’s Son in the same way I was my parents’ son. That was what the church taught. During those years, I experience the first big loss in my life with the death of my grandfather. That was really hard and really scary. Death was like a monster that had come to my family. That experience brought God’s gift of eternal life to the forefront of my interest. That idea of living in heaven after here was comforting. At the same time, it was also troublesome. Eternity seemed like such a long time. Eventually, I became aware of questions faintly gnawing inside me as I was busily living and growing up: “What else is there in life?” “Is this it”?

Some things did not change in my life as I moved into young adulthood. Those gnawing questions kept gnawing and actually became more focused. I became aware of a strong desire to live with integrity, to be a “real person”. I wanted to really live the Christian life and figure out just what that meant. As I moved into the working world, work for me meant church. This was a time of clarifying and developing my talents and skills – my gifts — away from sports to music and ministry. I felt a hunger to know more about my faith and its tradition, more about the Bible.

I never doubted that God loves the world. I never questioned that God gave the Son Jesus or how that worked. I just accepted it as part of being Christian. What began to matter was how you lived and how you treated people. I never questioned that God provides eternal life, though I tried not to think too much about how long eternity was. I just tried to be best person I could be.

The mind-opening joy of seminary led me along a journey of learning that was so much more than I ever imagined, yet exactly what I always suspected. These were years of powerful emotion in play with the death of my grandmother followed a year later by the death of my mother. This was a time for me to become fully engaged in family life. There was parenthood: the birth of a son and, six years later, the adoption of a daughter. I was fully engaged in ministry and the relationships of church. Consistent with my nature, I was always trying to please the congregation, the senior pastor, and my family. It all seemed like trying to follow God.

During these years, I began to find my voice. I practiced meditation and began to read mystical writers. They helped me find my voice just about the same time I was beginning to find success and meaning as a pastor apart from music. This is the time I began to embrace a deeper understanding of “God loves the world”. It doesn’t mean “no scars”. It means growing and moving through fear. I became more focused on the God who gave than on the Son who came and more focused on the community of believers here and now with God whose presence is in that community. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection made this community possible. Jesus’ teachings guide us.

The idea of God providing eternal life was still future focused. I began to see it, however, as less a pending judgment day and more a time of gathering and welcoming. Just as childhood gives way to the realities of growing up, there eventually comes a time that you no longer call yourself a young adult, but just an adult. It is the time to become who you are, not in some distant future, but in the present. You can still dream. You can still be open to change, new experience, and transformation. You still need to embrace imagination, but the time to live life is now. Life transitions become harder. There are more family deaths: my wife’s grandmother followed a year later by her mother. This was a time for stepping out, leaving home including the work as an associate pastor I had been doing for nineteen years. My family and I moved to a completely different part of the United States where I began to work as the pastor of a church. It was a time for learning what I think and saying what I felt. It was a time for learning the language of a new culture and a new church. It was a time for finding my voice and helping others find theirs.

The meaning in “God loves the world” is that the greatest force anywhere is love. The enemy is fear. Love displaces fear. God love is image of the underlying force of the universe. God’s love is reflected in the human image of love. Human love imitates the fundamental truth of life. The meaning of “God provides eternal life” is that eternal life is not payback time. It’s not vindication for going to church all those years, but a full knowledge of truth and a full participation in God, in the deep truth of reality, in divine love. Eternal life has everything to do with the quality of your life as well as with the quality of the next life. Death is the birth to whatever comes next.

What do I understand about God now? Let’s return to those three assertions from John 3:16: God loves the world, God gave the Son, and God provides eternal life. I have continually affirmed them at each stage of my life, though in different ways. God’s love is still the elemental force of the university. My capacity to act lovingly — with justice, compassion, and grace — reflects how clearly God’s love for me is focused through my life.

God is big — really big, beyond comprehension “big”. So, how can we grasp the enormity of God in this time and space universe? How can we perceive God in this life? The basic truth of Christian faith is that ultimate truth was focused in Jesus of Nazareth. This focus was so clear that believers have continued to understand that life as identical to God’s life, as much as we can perceive it. God giving the Son involves Jesus’ life and death. His death is vitally important. It was not just an accidental tragedy. The cross is the way — not a punishment visited on the Son by God, but a sign of the full extent of God’s love shown us in Jesus. The cross is the amount of commitment love requires to transform the world and our little piece of it!

What about eternal life? Faith means stepping through the gateway of fear, disillusion, and greed to find the keys of the kingdom. Spirit is not something that possesses us from without. Spirit emerges from within us. She is the co-creation of God and us. The Pentecost Spirit erupted from within that gathered group of disciples when the reality of Jesus’ life, teachings, and actions, and the implication of their mission and their giftedness hit them fully. They challenge us to live today as Jesus would, with the full measure of insight, action, courage, and joy that awakens the divine within each of us. In that awakening, as we gather to be church and as we scatter to be church, as we awaken to the divine presence and the divine calling, the Spirit will erupt from within our gathering. The Spirit will send us into life with courage, with compassion, and with joy.

I still do not understand a great deal about God, but I am not afraid of not knowing. I love questions. I find myself excited by new insights and drawn to people who exude that Spirit – people who are living in that courage. Let me tell you what I really think about all this. We know all we need to know about God, yet we will learn more. We possess all we need to be church in an authentic and powerful way, yet we will receive more. We already have all we need to have eternal life now and in the future, yet, there is more to come. That much I do understand. I invite you to let the presence of Christ, or the Spirit, or whatever other Your name clearly on the fact that God lives and moves within you shine in the heart and great in this world so that when you see people, they will understand more.