Our Evolving Concept of God

One of my favourite hadith is the Hadith Qudsi that says:

أنا عند ظن عبدي بي

“I am as my servant thinks of me.”

It is a curious hadith. Why would God be as we think of him? We are just flawed human beings and our idea of God differs from person to person. However this is one of my favourite hadith, because it reminds me that all our conceptions of God are just flawed human conceptions and they change and evolve as we change and evolve. It tells me that whatever God is we are unable to grasp it fully.

I often criticise aspects of Islam and religion in general and some mistakenly think I am attacking God. But I’m not attacking God. It’s impossible to attack God. What I am attacking are outdated concepts of God. As the Quran says: “There is nothing like unto Him” He has no likeness. All we have are human concepts, they are all a creation of the human mind. In fact I find the word God itself problematic due to it’s close association with our misguided images of a human god. As the Greek philosopher Xenophanes wrote, “If horses had gods, they would look like horses.” 

From the moment we became intelligent conscious sentient beings we have tried to explain how we and the world came into being. Religions are our inventions. They are our answers to the painful reality of our own mortality and what may - if anything - lie beyond death. We want to know why we are here and how to take control of our destiny and deal with life’s challenges.

Religions have helped us answer our questions, empower us and calm our fears. Our image of god has evolved and changed as we have changed and grown in our understanding of the world. Early Gods revolved around our needs and fears. The Sun that was so necessary for our lives became one of the earliest and long surviving gods, the Bull was another common early God, the mother goddess of fertility often depicted as a figurine of a fat well endowed pregnant woman was another common god symbol. Many of these Gods would control specific areas of nature or man’s destiny. There were gods of the wind and the sea. The ancient Greeks had Zeus a god of sky and thunder and the ancient Egyptians, Osiris the god of death and resurrection. The list is endless. And in a world that was isolated each area had their own gods. So for example the Scandinavians had Thor and not Zeus as their god of sky and thunder.

This has nothing to do with whether God actually exists or not. This is simply our flawed human conception of God and how it has changed and evolved as we have changed and evolved.

As the competing areas and tribes warred with each other so did their the gods - each protecting and answering the personal prayers of their chosen people. As civilisations grew and became more powerful so did their gods and many were combined into ever greater multi-tasking gods. One of the most notable attempts at uniting the many gods into one was pioneered by the Pharaoh Akhenaten who sought to combine the ancient gods of Egypt into one god = Aten.

The most successful in this endeavour - as it would turn out - was the god of the Israelites, a small tribe in the Middle East, who’s god Yahweh was originally a local god of the Jews and who clashed with other local gods like Baʿal the God of the Philistines. Baal is mentioned in the Torah with the derogatory name Baʿal Zebub - بعل الذباب‎‎ - God of the flies - perhaps referring to dung. It’s an almost childish slur on another tribes concept of God - "Your god is a smelly poo face!" Baal was sometimes depicted with horns and cloven feet and it is easy to see how in the Abrahamic tradition he became one of the ingredients in the image of the the Devil - Satan - who evolved into the evil adversary of God. It is of course not surprising that a god of another tribe was regarded as evil by their enemies.

A small number of Jews then split from the majority and regarded one of their prophets as the Messiah and the son of God and began preaching to non-Jews also. With the support of the Roman Empire - Christianity, as this new religion came to be known - began to be evangelised to the multi-ethnic and multi-faith Roman empire as the one God of all humans and so crossed the boundaries of tribal Gods.

Islam grew in that very same cultural milieu - particularly the semitic culture which the Arabs were a part of and the word Allah is related to the word Eloah the Hebrew word for God. Islam placed even greater emphasis on the monotheistic nature of God with the concept of Tawheed. Both Christianity and Islam became strongly evangelical religions - the belief that they must deliver the message of one single universal God to all humanity.

Despite the success of Monotheism, God was still very much an anthropomorphic God and although Islam made great efforts to ban physical representations of God, its texts still attributed human traits, emotions and intentions to God. A God who interferes directly in man’s affairs, answers prayers and & sends angels to help armies in battle. Who is concerned about how we wash ourselves, what we wear and what we eat and drink.

Fortunately some have in recent years begun to move away from such a conception of God. I believe we are in a period of great transition and although the world seems in a worse mess now than it has ever been, it is often after humanities darkest moments that we have eventually made steps forward. I believe mankind has reached just such a crossroad to take one more huge leap in the evolution of our concept of God. A concept God that matches our growing understanding of the universe.

So how can we reimagine God? The first step is to admit we know nothing of such matters for certain. All we have are questions about how this world came about. It appears to have required a "necessary something” - but we don’t know what that something is. It lays outside our present state of knowledge and reason. As a result of this more humble and honest approach to God we must abandon all idea of exclusivity. One cannot say we exclusively have the right answer - or rather; the god described in my favourite scripture is exclusively the right answer. Since all attempts are outside reason and logic - one can't insist one particular scenario outside logic and natural laws is the only correct one while excluding any other scenarios as false because they are illogical.

"Certainty" is at the root of religious fanaticism. The more one is certain they know the "truth" regarding God the more judgmental, narrow-minded and arrogant they become. The more they are willing to force their will on others and put their humanity to one side. Yet when we realise how little we know for certain and how limited and flawed our knowledge is, the more humble, tolerant, non-judgmental & inclusive we become.

We simply have to accept that ultimately we really don't know. That is not a weakness or a failure but a strength. Only by being honest and open to possibilities can we go forward and increase or understanding. Admitting we don’t know and questioning our forefathers assumptions is essential to to our progress as a species. If we never question prevailing wisdom, all we can ever do is confirm it.

It is of course perfectly fine to reach out to God in whatever tradition, culture or religion one was brought up in and finds comfort and peace in - the psychological comfort religion brings has always been one of its enduring strengths and benefits.

But the crucial step we must now take is to embrace an inclusive and universalistic approach and not deny that there are many other ways of reaching out to this “something” we call God. Despite the many regressive and reactionary forces it is encouraging to see that there are also many enlightened Muslims and indeed believers of all religions that now take this inclusive and universalistic approach to their faith. They will describe a God that is the creative source of existence, a cosmic force of of all life. Rather than a separate being - a God that is the centre of being, woven through all existence. A God that gives existence its very structure. They may say God is a power that is infinite and indescribable because it lies behind all that is. That God is not to be found “out there” because there is no out there. A God that is not a static supernatural creature but the essence of the creative process of the universe. A God that does not sit in a different dimensional heaven and watch us go about our daily lives, occasionally intervening for good measure. But a God that is immanent within the universe as its creative power. A God that is the very scientific laws that govern the universe — the randomness and uncertainty inherent in both quantum mechanics and evolution. 

It is clear that our conception of God is gradually evolving and taking new shapes. No doubt the next millennia will see more changes. But whatever human concept we come up with - God is:

سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى عَمَّا يَقُولُونَ عُلُوًّا كَبِيرًا

“Free is he and high above all that they say! Far above beyond measure!” (17:43)