God must speak and has

The really big question concerns God, because if we can get that one answered we have a basis on which to build what may well turn out to be divine guidance for our many existential questions.

So let’s rethink. We don’t want God simply as an assumption. That would be pure wishful thinking with no basis in reality; that would not help us, but would continue to bury us under the load of unproved assumptions. We cannot “assume” God is there, because the next task would be up to us to put content into the God we have dreamed up – it would all be in our minds. 

No, what we need is for God to have “got in touch” with us. That bright French thinker Blaise Pascal saw it clearly, when after saying that only the rich man is entitled to speak properly about riches, and only a king can speak properly about kingship, he said, “God can well speak of God” (Pensée §303/799). Only God is entitled to speak properly about God. So we must listen, if we can, to God himself, if he should speak to humankind.

Now unfortunately, many down the centuries have taken it upon themselves to speak as if in God’s place, telling us so-called religious “truths” we ought to believe about God. But it is not necessarily the case that God did actually say those things himself; they were put in his mouth by gurus of all kinds. So we must use our discernment.

And yet, occasionally – indeed rarely – God has verbally intervened in human history: he has spoken! This is the key we need to finally find authentic answers to our human dilemmas.

Clive Every-Clayton