Questions About God

Is God, like, a person, or is God a feeling? Or a thing? Or an idea? Or a joke? Or a lie?

What do people mean when they say they love God? And what do they mean when they tell you God loves you?

What’s the relationship between God (whatever or whoever God is) and the actual physical world we live in?

Why do some people kill or hate each other because of arguments about God when one of the things a lot (a lot) of people say about God is that God is all about love?

What happens if you’re wrong about God, if you get the idea of God completely wrong?

What do people do when they meditate or pray? What happens when people say they have heard something from God or that they have told God something?

What’s the relationship between what people tell you God told them and their own ideas or desires or agendas? Are those separate things or the same thing? How can you tell?

Why do so many people want to tell you that God is angry with you, or that you’re disappointing God, or that you’re not worthy of God’s attention?

Why are some people so sure about God and some people so unsure?

What are the benefits of believing in God? What are the drawbacks?

Is there any evolutionary advantage to be had from belief (or disbelief) in God?

Why have so many people believed in God over human history, and why have so many people lost faith in God over that same history?

What’s the relationship between a certain idea of God and physical or political power?

Do you have to believe in God all the time or can you take breaks occasionally?

Is there just the one way to understand God or are there lots? If there are lots, can you pick and choose different ways or do you have to pretty much commit to one way? What does it mean if you used to think about God one way but then you got older and learned some more stuff and had some more experiences and now you are thinking about thinking about God in some new ways? Did you change or did God change? Or did just everything change?

If you believe in God does that mean you’re really deep? If you don’t, does it mean you’re really shallow?

What’s God’s relationship with tradition or ritual? What place do those things have in our human lives?

Why are some people very concerned with disproving God?

Why are some people very concerned that you think about God the same way they do?

Can you think a lot about God and also think a lot about the world? Can you live in heaven and on earth at the same time? Do you have to spend a lot of time thinking about your self, your personality, to be able to think about and maybe talk to God, and if so, who takes care of doing the dishes?

What’s the relationship between loving other people and loving God?

What happens if you hate a lot of people, can you still love God?

Can other people bring you closer to or keep you further away from God?

What’s the relationship between God and art?

Is there more of God in certain physical places in the world? In certain actual individual people in the world? If so, does this just happen or is it something that people can control and change?

What’s the relationship between happiness (or sadness) and God? Does having some sort of connection with God make you automatically happier or sadder?

Does God have a name? If you know a couple of different names of God, are there specific ways or times or places to use them? How do you use God’s name, anyway? What for?

Does God resemble people in any way? Does God resemble two-toed sloths or Pacific octopuses or blue-green algae or redwood trees or granite rocks or anything people might recognize?

Does God have a specific political persuasion?

What’s the difference between some very old books that people have written about God in the past and whatever I write about God in my online or paper journal this week?

Why do a lot of different religions (with their different ideas about God) have a lot of similarities in terms of how to live in the world as a person among other people?

What’s the relationship between how we treat other people and how we think about God?

What do people mean when they say they are worshipping God? What is the purpose of worship? How does it work?

Why does listening to other people talk about God sometimes feel really boring, or really insulting, or really awkward?

Does God find you or do you find God?