God Is What You Conceive God to Be

God Is What You Conceive God to Be

by Craig Hamilton on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 4:39pm

God Is What You Conceive God to Be

A wise Jew once said to me something like, “God is what you conceive God to be.” To be certain, I don’t see how we can get beyond this definition. Ultimately, our view of God is limited the power of our own mind’s ability to conceive of God.

While I was alone in my bed room at college, and I am not drug user, I heard a voice coming from the walls of my apartment. It was a male voice that said, “I am God and I am punishing you.” I was an atheist turned believer, convinced that the voice was legitimate, so, I shouted back, “Why are you punishing me?” I was so miserable at the time that I conceived that if there was a God, then it could only be that God was punishing me. That is, within a matter of a few seconds I felt like I had realized the Source of my misery, and that it was a result of punishment. I conceived of the idea that I had done something wrong, such that I had done something to deserve of punishment. This was a vastly different idea from the idea of God people had told me about, the God that only goes about doing good things, while everything wrong in the world is blamed on Satan. Instinctively, I knew that story – the goody goody two shoes god and the big bad devil - to be a crock, but I believed in the God that spoke from me through the wall. And, it wasn’t that I believed in the wall either, I thought of it as if creation spoke to me, as G-d spoke to Moses through the burning bush.

Not knowing much of anything about religion, and never having even bothered to read the Bible, Christian or Jewish, hearing this voice caused me to believe in God. I transferred to a Christian college because I wanted to find out more about God. The God I heard about there, Jesus, was incompatible with my own inner feeling as to what God was, and Jesus is still incompatible with my belief. Rather, I found the God I had met, and that likely my own mind had conceived of was the God of the Old Testament. Eventually, I even ripped the New Testament out of my Bible.

I have come to believe that it was not God that I spoke to on that night, as the next day I was hospitalized for being psychotic. Then, I took medication and the hallucinations went away, but twice I went off medication and the hallucinations came back, so I ended up concluding that God was ultimately what my mind had conceived of through hallucination. However, the words of the wise Jew echo true to me, “God is what you conceive God to be.” Though some people might believe that God is a rock or a statue or even a person, the God I believe in is the Jewish God, outside of creation.

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• Craig Hamilton
  

  Pete, what is yours is yours. However, it should be that we study an older covenant before we study a new one. Why? Chronologically, the "new covenant" should be understood from the light of the old, as historically the people were presented with the new covenant after they were presented with the older covenants. To evaluate the new covenant we must see it through the eyes of the people that were presented with it. That is from the historical point of view, we best understand things in the light of what came in the past first, or else we are without empathy for those whom are in the stories of the "Gospels."

  
  

  December 29, 2010 at 12:23pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton What is more interesting is that those whom knew of the older covenants reject the new one, with a few exceptions. These exceptions would be those whom we say the mourners caddish for, as they are dead men walking in the same way that the Torah calls Terah, a wicked patriarch, dead while he was still alive.
  

  December 29, 2010 at 12:30pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton Others that accepted it - the early followers of Jesus - were generally lay people, illiterate etc., such that they probably did not understand the "old covenant" in the first place. The Hebrew word for such a person is a, "Peti," and the word is defined as a fool whom has not learned enough.
  

  December 29, 2010 at 12:36pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton One translation for the second level of the soul in Cabbala is that of empathy. Cabbala is a spiritual commentary on the Torah. It is such that, according to the Bible, before we reach a level of being able to empathize, we are merely fumbling about through the world, the first level.
  

  December 29, 2010 at 12:41pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton In conclusion, the proper place to start is at the beginning, with what came first, not a covenant. That is where I started with Alex, study of things such as day, night, evening, insects, rest, fish and birds. For example, Alex knows that the cow says, "Moo."
  

  December 29, 2010 at 12:47pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton
  

  The entire creation week is to be taught to a newborn his/her first week of life. This is why circumcision is to take place on the 8th day. The 8th day is a mystical day indeed. Alex was circumcised on the third day. Imagine my dilemma...See More

  
  

  December 29, 2010 at 1:55pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton
  

  Lol.. The Jews beat Paul for his sins and Paul gave up on them thinking himself the victor. I know of no intelligent Jews that record Paul's supposed genius. The only evidence of Paul's genius is Paul's own self proclamations. Paul did ...See More

  
  

  December 29, 2010 at 8:06pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton I should add that Maimonades book did not include Chinese traditional medicine, which actually seems very promising. Western medicine has really been unaware of Chinese traditional medicine up until the last ten years, and vast amounts of research need to be done on it before its employment at Western doctors' offices. Maimonides book was primarily a summary of Greek medicine.
  

  December 30, 2010 at 12:11pm via Facebook Mobile ·
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  Craig Hamilton Well Pete thanks for what you do. I figure that if Alex is to be any good at life he will have to be able to sort things out on his own. Bringing him to a Christian church gives him the opportunity to do that, in the same manner that bringing him to hear a priest of Zeus would 2,000 years ago. As I say, "Crawl time is for babies." So Pete, your role is important.
  

  December 30, 2010 at 12:21pm via Facebook Mobile ·