God. This is a word that raises blind spots, anger, hair on the back of the neck and drums up all sorts of resistance and angry responses from all sorts of people, including me.

There was a time when I would see the word GOD and immediately avert my eyes; same with hearing the word. I did not want to know.

I have been in workshops where the facilitator has made a deliberate effort to neutralise the word.  Named it, faced it, acknowledged people’s difficulty with this word and agreed a word to be used for something greater than yourself, before continuing.

Like many other people, I have issues with this word – big issues.

The God of my childhood is ‘a God in heaven’. That is someone on a throne somewhere up in the sky. He is a God who looks down, sees and hears all the things you do wrong and punishes you. If you don’t do God’s will, you’ll go to hell. Even Father Christmas is more kind than that. If you were a ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’ child during the year, at worst you would not get a present.

So I had a fear of this God. This God was more harsh and fearful than the worst I could expect from my parents or teachers on a bad day.

Why would I want to worship such a God?
How can I trust such a God?
How am I to know, always to know, what is right and what is wrong in the eyes of this God?

When these questions came, it felt like blasphemy. How could I question this?

This is GOD we are talking about! Nobody questions GOD and gets away with it!

Many years later and I am still here. Over time I came across material that also questioned God, or rather the view I had of God and offered a different perspective. Louise Hay, Wayne Dwyer, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Eckhart Tolle, A Course in Miracles to name a few.

Now I know that all religions at their core teach the same thing: love, hope, trust, faith – it is the way they teach it that makes for the difference.

I am much more relaxed about this word now. I understand that the God of my childhood is not the God I thought he was – that I got it wrong. That whoever taught me got it wrong too. That what God is, is directly opposite, one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of what I have been taught.

How do I know?

Through questioning.
Is the God I have been taught about the real God?
Did I get it wrong about God?
Should I just believe my five senses or is there more to reality than that?
How can only one religion be ‘the one true way to God?’
What about the rest of the people who don’t know that religion and have their own religion?
Surely God is not so cruel as to simply send them to hell?
If he is that cruel, well then I don’t want to have anything to do with him.

And over the years the answers came.

Am I right? Am I wrong? As Shakespeare said, nothing is either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.

Nowadays I equate God with the power of the universe, the Big U, life force, spirit, something greater than myself.  And I have a lot more peace.

In the end each one has to decide for himself how he sees God, what he understands about God, what he believes.

So it is up to you dear Reader.

Maybe you found this piece blasphemy; maybe you found it helpful; maybe you found it thought provoking or something else entirely.

However it was for you, this I know:   You are loved.