Is God Nowhere or Now Here?

From ‘Focus on Faith’, in Stretton Focus, April 2012

The evolution of Homo sapiens in an evolving universe is the context in which we find ourselves. This is where we live and ensure the survival of our species. Humans have developed brain power and self consciousness, which has given an added dimension to our lives. We now have a sense of responsibility for the physical world, and for the well being of all who live in it.
We can also raise questions about the meaning and purpose of life: and that’s where the idea of God has come from. Our forebears looked into the sky, believing that a god or gods lived up there. These gods occasionally came down for reasons of their own, but usually for a liaison with attractive earthly females (see Genesis 6:2).
Today these sky gods are nowhere to be found (ask Yuri Gagarin). They were merely a projection of life on earth into the heavens. Clearly, we need to be looking elsewhere for the meaning and purpose of life (which is the closest we can get to any credible concept of God).
Using all our faculties, we will have to look into our humanity, which in any case is as deep and complex as the heavens are immeasurably vast and mysterious. Today the old sky gods are ‘nowhere’; but the search for the meaning and purpose of life is ‘now here’, with us and among us. Who am I? And what am I here for? That’s the question we should be asking: it’s the search we should be engaged in.
Whatever answer we come up with, that will be our God, the meaning and purpose of our lives, to which we feel compelled to be committed. It will always be an ongoing search, but an exciting one. It’s really a spiritual quest where you only ‘find’ when you yourself ‘are found’.

Donald Horsfield

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