My mom finds it offensive to refer to God as IT, correction–she thinks God is probably offended by being called an IT.
I think being “offended” is a state of our fragile human egos–rooted in our insecurities and egoic needs, something which I am sure most people would say GOD is way beyond–even if they see God as a superhuman-like character!
The universe and what lies beyond, is an “IT”.
Time, destiny, the past, the future, all objects and concepts, concrete and intangible, manifested and unmanifested are “IT”s.
Humans are small, puny, fragile, relatively insignificant & unconscious, tightly defined He’s and She’s…while the whole of Humanity is a diverse, multifaceted force and is an “IT”
What is a “HE”? Simply a male human, (or animal)…subject to ego, time, wants, needs, desires, pain, death…a mere male-puppet in the play of life on earth…very limited indeed!! Even a “She” or a “Woman” can contain a “he” or a “man” within herself, and therefore is a somewhat more complex vessel of humanity.
“He” is for many, a very off-putting/alienating/and restrictive term to refer to GOD. It immediately conjures up patriarchal, social, psychological factors deeply rooted in a specific culture which is itself rooted in a particular time frame of human history.
I cannot relate to someone’s concept of GOD when they refer to it as HIM…
Most believers of GOD would freely admit that GOD is far more complex than the human mind can imagine–yet will have little trouble giving you a list of GOD’s traits, likes and dislikes, demands, expectations, and predicted behaviors. Why is that? It often has to do with believing in the BIBLE or some other holy book, as an exact description of GOD. Relying on someone’s understanding and limited way of describing GOD; rather than meditating themselves and coming to their own understanding of GOD.
The bible was created between the second & fourth century AD, from a multitude of selected spiritual writings, some of which were rejected (and destroyed) by the Roman Catholic Church–along with the people who supported them. In 1945 some old writings were newly discovered. The Gnostic texts were found safely buried in the Nile valley and give us just a glimpse at how divergent the interpretations of Christianity were and how slanted the existing “bible” might be. A main theme of the the Gnostic central belief was that “divinity is not an external force but an inherent internal capacity available to every human being” How’s that for different? (sounds quite yogic) We can easily see why the Catholics didn’t want that kind of understanding to prevail…how would they get and keep control of people and their money?
A little know fact which has completely upended any belief in the current version of the bible is that the ancient Hebrew in which the first 2/3rds of the bible was written, had no real NOUNS–really NO NOUNS…everything was expressed as verbs. Can you imagine, God as a verb?? As a doing, or a being… (and I don’t mean like the noun “human-being”) I mean like the intransitive verb “being still, being good, being everything…
In fact, in ancient Hebrew, there aren’t really any nouns, either. In languages like English, nouns are the masters and verbs are their slaves, with adjectives and associated forms dancing about to serve them. In Hebrew, verbs rule. Big, little, wise, foolish, king, priest, eye, ear–all of these sound like things, but in Hebrew they are forms of verbs. In fact, according to Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz (1560?-1630), author of the classic Shnei Luchot HaBrit, everything in Hebrew is really a verb. Everything is an event, a happening, a process –flowing, moving, never static. Just like when you were a small child.
In Hebrew, there is not even a present-tense. There are participles, but the idea of a present tense only arose later. In real Hebrew, nothing ever IS–all IS movement.
click on the quote to read more…
Its very difficult to share a notion of GOD with others and in my extremely humble opinion, it is impossible to be a true Atheist. It seems to me to do so, a person must presupposes some definition–no matter how loose, of ‘God’; which they, then can deny exists. But any so-called ‘Atheist’ is aware of their own consciousness, they believe in themselves (and in their own opinions); therefore, they believe in my definition of GOD, and hence un-define (making up my own verb here…) themselves as atheists. If you believe in anything at all–you believe in your own opinion, your own consciousness–then you believe in God. Call IT whatever you like. Atheists dont exist.
becoming Lotutopia 