When you ask me, "Do you believe in God?" I don't know what "believe in" means and I expect we have completely different images around the word "God", so I cannot answer you.
What I can say is this: I acknowledge an unassailable otherness, and find that it is in my response to that otherness that I uncover some of the truth of myself.
By a Ringwood Unitarian
What is my faith? My "faith" is more like trust, a whole trust. My faith practice is saying "You" to All That Is. Sitting at one and the same time with 'oneness' and 'relatedness'. Seeing, trusting and apprehending existence – what we know as "being" – to be mutual truth and invitation. This challenges me to transform myself for the better, in ridding myself of deceit and also in loving my enemies, so as to live authentically in that state of mutual invitation.
By a Ringwood Unitarian
When looking for meaning in life we are looking for a way to bring all the many things around us into some sort of unity. Only a way of seeing the oneness in the many and yet still having the many in that view can give us what we want AND square up to our concrete experience of life. Our dream is not truly to bring the things together, for they already are; the dream is to understand our place in it.
By a Southampton Unitarian
Well, yes, I would say I believe in "God" but maybe that is not the right word for what I believe in. It has old fashioned connotations of an old man in the sky, possibly an Old Testament God. I believe in "the God in us", Spirit of life, Divine essence. I feel very much that there is "something", because I experience it at work in my life. I give honour and recognition to it, in thanks for what I have, in meditation and in bringing forward people's needs, and in prayer to enable me to be the person I feel I am intended to be. I feel all life is connected in some spiritual way and that we are all part of "God". A pan-en-theist view really.
click here to see Wikipedia entry on panentheism
By a Bridport UnitarianI believe in God – God/Goddess that is universal source energy, a source energy that we are all a part of. I believe in the many aspects of source being human, plant, inanimate and animate objects. I believe we are more than our physical selves, that we are part extensions of a much broader non-physical being which is in turn part of all that is!
The problem is that the question implies the Christian view of God, which I emphatically do not. I do believe in the divine presence within and without me which is part of the Universal energy. I and everthing else then is part of that energy, which I know as Goddess and God. I believe Jesus knew that when he said to his disciples The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
ReplyDeleteYes - how the question is asked says a great deal about where the questionner is right now. Many Unitarians are a bit flummoxed when people ask this question because the question makes so many assumptions that are often not held. If you ask this question to a Unitarian, be prepared to wait for what might be quite a long answer. You will rarely get a simple "yes" or "no".
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