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While it might seem obvious to some, it's not to everyone: God does not have a particular name.
Naming something is to have dominion over it. (I wish there was another word other than dominion. It seems so stilted, but awkward language is the least of our problems as we try to understand what we mean by the word God.) The logic is that if God had a true name, then saying that name would imply the ability to control God. Therefore, God can't have a name and we ought to be careful whenever we use any name for God.
I want us to look at a fascinating truth about God's name that we find in the Bible. In Exodus 3:14, Moses straightforwardly asked God what he should say God's name is, should the Pharaoh of Egypt ask. God replies in an untranslatable phrase, translated in the King James Bible as, "I am that I am." No name. Just something that the creators of the Popeye would later co-opt. Other translations have the equally enigmatic — but more grammatically accurate according to the Hebrew — phrase, "I will be what I will be."
(Did you notice the Hebrew is in the future tense and the King James translation is in the present tense? Martin Buber wrote that this phrase in the future tense teaches that God is willing to offer comfort in the future to those who will need God to be there for them.)
Erich Fromm, a twentieth century German-American psychologist and humanistic philosopher, believed that God, is just a placeholder for our highest ideals and has nothing to do with the supernatural. He wrote:
"God" is one of many different poetic expressions of the highest value in humanism….
The point is that the English, three-letter word consisting of "gee," "oh," and "dee" is just a placeholder in the same way that these letters in the opposite order are a placeholder into which we place our collective concepts of canines. In Hebrew, the letters "yod," "hay," "vuv," and then another "hay" — also known as the Tetragrammaton — are a different placeholder for the same concept. (Jehovah is an attempt to say this name — YHVH — aloud; traditionally Jews will substitute “Adonai,” the Hebrew word for Lord, instead.)
Think about it: would it matter to God, to the universe, or in the grand scheme of things what placeholder you use? Of course not. That particular groups have different names for God is interesting, but please remember, they are all just arrows that point to the same destination. The arrow isn't the important, the destination is.
It does not matter what you call God — Tao — Allah — The Force — HaShem — Ram — Jehovah — Jesus Christ — Mother Nature — Sally Johansen-Peterson. It doesn’t matter if everyone around you is calling God by the title "Higher Power" and you feel more comfortable with the Aramaic word for father "Abba." (Aramaic is the language Jesus spoke; Abba is also the name of a fabulous, Swedish rock group.)
So why do we use the word God when we refer to God? Look at it this way: the person on the aisle, three rows behind you in a movie theater — his or her name doesn’t matter that much to you because you’re not likely to refer to them. For God, well, we often require a convenient reference, so a name helps.
Moreover, and this is worth remembering, within all monotheistic traditions more than one name placeholder is used for God – God, Lord, Almighty, etc. — and no one thinks this is polytheism, nor are there holy wars within a group over how God is referred.
I use the phrase “(the) God (of your understanding)” to describe God. It allows you, the reader, your own interpretation — which, as you know, I think is very important.
Let me restate the point here: We use the word God as a placeholder. Words are linguistic conventions, containers for ideas. The topic of God is greater than its particular word container.
And to not use the word would lead to greater confusion.
To paraphrase Lewis Carroll in The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland when I say God, I mean nothing more and nothing less than what I mean.
There is room for everyone’s understanding of God and all of those understandings are God.
It doesn't matter to me if you believe God is "out there," "in here," both, or neither — I just want us all to be comfortable understanding that the word God means all of those things. The word God is a placeholder for different people quite possibly meaning different things for each.
I want to make a special note to people who don’t believe in an active, external deity. Please, please, please use the word God to mean what it is that you mean when you use the word God. The reason is that if the only people who use the word God are the people who believe in an active, external deity, then people will only be used to hearing the word God to mean an active, external deity. If, on the other hand, more and more people with active spiritual-religious lives use the word God to mean their highest ideals (or whatever they use the word God to mean) then people will get the sense that the word God can mean something beyond the limited notion of an active, external deity.
To reiterate: I’m not saying whether or not you should believe in an active, external deity. Just that we need to understand that we all have, can have, and should have different understandings of what we mean by the letters gee, oh, dee.
Here's something I have found that might help to explain this:
Science : Truth :: Art : Beauty :: Religion : God.
We know that truth and beauty are concepts. Try to define them and, well, you can't. We know that each is an ideal, something in the distance that can never be contained. The same can be said about God.
Truth is the goal of science. Beauty is the goal of art. Similarly, God is the goal of religion. What we call the goal doesn't matter. And, for that matter, it also doesn't matter if we believe that reaching the goal is attainable.
What matters is that we are facing in the right direction and moving forward.
And, we are.
Spiritual-religious advice for the week: face the right direction.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
