WHICH GODS MIGHT EXIST?

God-Talk Might Be a Way of
Expressing our Spiritual Dynamics

SYNOPSIS:
       
    Even if we have decided that none of the traditional gods exist,
we might still find it meaningful to use religious language
as a way of exploring and expressing our own internal spiritual quest. 

OUTLINE:

1.   EXPLORING CAPACITIES OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
      WITHOUT REFERENCE TO GODS.

2.   DEMYTHOLOGIZING RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE.

3.   FUNDAMENTALISMS GET LOST IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE PAST.

4.   FINDING NEW WAYS TO EXPRESS ANY 'FAITH'.

5.   GOD-TALK AS A WAY OF EXPRESSING OUR SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS.

6.   CONCLUSION: WHICH GODS EXIST FOR US?

WHICH GODS MIGHT EXIST?

God-Talk Might Be a Way of
Expressing our Spiritual Dynamics

by James Leonard Park

    Now that we have come to the end of our series
exploring which gods do not exist,
we can ask if there are any valid ways of using god-language.

    We might now have decided that there are no gods:
(1) who created the universe,
(2) who wrote holy books,
(3) who are watching our behavior,
(4) who are all-powerful, or
(5) who can save us from death.

    These five possible functions of the gods
by no means exhausts the activities
that have been attributed to gods in human history and pre-history.

    And even if we do firmly reject these gods,
this does not prevent us as human persons
from discovering new phenomena
that we might describe using god-language.

1.  EXPLORING CAPACITIES OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
     WITHOUT REFERENCE TO GODS.

    Another series of secular sermons explores the meaning of spirituality:
WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

1. Beyond the Life of the Body, the 'Heart', & the Mind .

2. Ways to Expand Our Spirits .

3. Self-Transcendence, Self-Criticism, & Altruism .

4. Freedom: Transcending Enculturation and Choosing for Ourselves .

5. Creativity: Making Something Genuinely New .

6. Love: The I-Thou Encounter, Discovering Other Persons of Spirit .

7. The Disclosure of Existential Anxiety
and other Manifestations of Our Existential Predicament .

8. Glimpses of Joy and Fulfillment .

    These explorations of the various capacities of our human spirits
do not use any traditional religious language—god-talk.
But historically-earlier explorations of the same phenomena
have often explained creativity (for example) as an effect of the Muses.


2.  DEMYTHOLOGIZING RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE.

    Another way to explain the move from religious language to existential language
is to say that we are 'demythologizing' the religious language.
This does not mean merely rejecting all the false claims of the religions of the world,
but it also seeks deeper truths contained within the religious expressions.
Putting the question another way:
Could it be that religious thinkers of the past
had some valid insights into our dynamics of spirit
which they nevertheless expressed in the religious language
available to them in their time and place?

    If so, we should not merely reject everything expressed using god-talk,
but we could look for the valid insights into human spirituality
that might be contained in the religious language.

    I have made my own detailed attempt
to demythologize the first century book of Romans:
An Existential Interpretation of Paul's Letter to the Romans:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/RM.html

3.  FUNDAMENTALISMS GET LOST IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE PAST.

    Literalism is the downfall of almost all world religions:
When the religion has a sacred text or texts,
those particular words become identified as the truth.
And anyone who departs from the sacred words as established
is declared to be a heretic by that religious tradition.

    But demythologizing does not worship any particular text.
Rather, this approach to interpretation
seeks to understand the spiritual dynamics
that led the original creators of the words
to say what they did.

    For example, as a matter of historical fact, Søren Kierkegaard
believed that the universe was created by God only a few thousand years ago.
He died in 1855 and almost everyone else
from Kierkegaard's time and place also held the same belief.
The Bible tells a few stories of this recent creation of the world.
And most believers up to this time accepted these stories without question.
Charles Darwin did not publish his Origin of the Species until 1859.
But perhaps Kierkegaard had some insights into spiritual matters
that are not limited by his concept of a Creator God.

    Every writer who attempts to express something spiritual
must use the words, images, thought-forms,
& cultural presuppositions of his or her time and place.
Every language is a human creation.
And every religion is expressed in human language.

    Most people who explore spiritual matters
find themselves looking to the past.
They might spend their whole lives studying and interpreting
sacred texts created thousands of years ago.
But persons of spirit who look to the future
are willing and able to express their spiritual insights in new forms.

    Most of us come from some religious tradition.
But if we have genuine spiritual insights,
based on our own spiritual changes,
then we should be able to express those truths
without merely repeating words from our religious traditions.

4.  FINDING NEW WAYS TO EXPRESS ANY 'FAITH'.

    In fact, this could be a measure of how well we understand our own 'faith':
Are we able to explain our inward experience in our own words
—with little quotation from our religious tradition?

    Can we separate our own inwardness
from the images, stories, & language of the tradition
that might have originally started us on the pathway
that has eventually led us to our more advanced spirituality?

    For example, our original religious beliefs might
have included lots of doctrines about gods,
which we can no longer believe because of our continuing intellectual growth.
So the question then becomes:
Can we keep the spiritual progress we have experienced
while at the same time rejecting all of the traditional gods?
Put another way:
Can we have spirituality without gods?
Can we abandon the outmoded conceptual tools
without losing our 'faith'?

5.  GOD-TALK AS A WAY OF EXPRESSING OUR SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS.

    But we might take another approach to our religious traditions.
Perhaps we will find ways to continue to use god-talk
as a way of expressing our inward development of spirit.
If we choose this option for spiritual expression,
then, in a sense, these gods might exist for us.

    For example, many forms of faith refer to God as father.
This never means that God is the same as our physical, biological father.
But God-as-father might be a way of expressing
our dependence on something beyond ourselves.
When we pray to God-the-father, we might be bringing ourselves
into the posture of submission and surrender,
which we might find to be very important for our spiritual growth.

    Would it be possible to express and discuss these same changes of spirit
without any explicit reference to supernatural beings?

    It seems to me as the centuries continue to move by,
there will be less god-talk and more discussion of spiritual dynamics
without using traditional religious language.
Right now in the 21st century,
we can choose to use as much god-talk
as we find useful for our own spirituality.
If traditional religious expressions actually help us
to move in the spiritual directions we find meaningful
then we will continue to use those familiar words.
But if our religious traditions hinder our spiritual progress,
we ought to have the courage to abandon
at least the worst parts of our religious system of beliefs.

    Does traditional god-talk help or hinder our spirituality?
If we find that some traditional religious expressions
actually help us to move to the new levels of spirit we want,
then we will (and should) continue to use those religious expressions.
Or to put it in the language of this series,
such gods DO exist for us.

    And if we really understand our 'faith',
we should be able to re-state its basic discoveries
without depending on the traditional language.
What is happening within our own spirits?
Can we express these changes in our own words?

6.  CONCLUSION: WHICH GODS EXIST FOR US?

    We probably cannot claim that any gods exist objectively.
But if we have some new conditions within our spirits,
should we express such inward changes in religious language?
We might decide to use this god-talk only for ourselves.
Or we might find it meaningful to attempt to share our insights of spirit
using religious language because that form of expression
continues to be meaningful to the other people
with whom we want to share our spiritual progress.

AUTHOR: 

    James Leonard Park is an independent thinker on matters of the spirit.
He has written several books on spiritual dynamics,
only one of which uses god-language.
(This book demythologizes Romans.)
All of James Park's books on spirituality
(along with similar works by other writers)
will be found in the Existential Spirituality Bibliography:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/B-XSP.html
Created 10-2-2007; Revised 12-31-2007; 2-15-2008; 3-13-2008; 3-23-2008; 5-29-2008;
10-28-2010; 3-24-2011; 3-26-2011; 8-8-2012; 3-35-2014; 4-17-2015; 4-22-2020;

    This secular sermon: "God-Talk Might Be a Way of Expressing our Spiritual Dynamics"
has become Chapter 6 in
Spirituality without Gods:
Developing Our Capacities of Spirit

Go to other secular sermons in this series:
WHICH GODS DO NOT EXIST?

Go to other secular sermons by James Park

Go to the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM page.


Go to the beginning of this website
James Leonard Park—Free Library