Honest to God

I came across an article yesterday on the BBC website. it was written by Mark Vernon and a reflection on how the book by John Robinson 'Honest to God' had changed people's ideas of God.  it was a move away from anthropomorphic images to images such as Paul Tillich's Ground of our Being, more  suited to what we know of science and the cosmos.  Vernon seems to suggest that these images are more meaningful to people but that the images offered by the Church are meaningless.  He decries this as he recognises the good religious practices and traditions can have in developing people's spirituality.   I resonate with this.  So often I find God language quite unintelligible and off putting. Somehow religion, and here I speak of Christianity, forgets that anything we say of God is metaphor and analogy, that God is mystery.  I like Etty Hilsum's way of putting it when she talk of the Absolute, the Source of Life which for convenience she calls God.  All religions grow up in a particular context and are influenced by that.  Often images and names for God reflect a particular history or experience but they do not say all that there is to say about God.  It is here that interfaith relations can help us.  I find that to understand the images of God of another religion is to widen my appreciation of the mystery of God and to realise the inadequacy of all images. 
This is particularly so with Buddhism which is refusing to speak of a personal, creator God reminds me that there are some unanswerable questions and that when faced with the mystery of God the only adequate response is silence.

---