God is Experience

I’m going to cut to the chase, this article is in response to a post lodged on r/ChristianUniversalism on Reddit. It may be the middle of the night, but I am now wide awake and want to get my ideas and beliefs out there (strike while the iron is hot, as they say). I hope that if anyone beyond the Reddit crowd reads this that they gain something from it as well.

In my Reddit post I alluded to the fact that I believe God is capital “E” Experience, but what does this mean? To explain, let’s take a step back and look at what lowercase “e” experience is, first. These are experiences we can all easily relate to; watching a film, eating a sandwich, hanging out with friends, arguing online. The examples are endless, but the point I want to drive home is that they are particular encounters within spacetime.

By arguing that God is capital “E” Experience, I am arguing that all of these lowercase experiences are merely extensions, finite encounters, of the infinite God. We ourselves are an extension of God, reaching out to other extensions, sharing an infinite of number of extensions, all the while understanding that, due to our finite nature, we are not God.

To give the reader some background, this perspective arose while I was in my final semester of college. My girlfriend of the time was an avowed Atheist, and we frequently had long discussions on God and theology. One night she challenged the idea of an “omni” god with a handful of paradoxes. While in the past I would’ve shrugged these paradoxes off, at that moment it dawned on me that I needed to tackle these head on, as they were massive holes in the modern American (perhaps even global) understanding of God. And after many more nights talking with her, my professor, and a research paper later, this was my answer.

The concept of the “omni” god is contradictory and should’ve never even been considered in the first place. In fact, the idea of God as a being should’ve been shelved once Christians no longer had to live with the impending threat of violent persecution. To assign God any of the omnis (minus omniscience) backs God into a specific binary. If God is all powerful, God cannot also be all powerless and is subject to the binary of power. If God is all present then God could not be lacking in presence (which will be a point I bring up when I return to the Experience argument but know that this is a roadblock for those who view hell as a place without God). And if God is all good, then there must be something (or not thing, or beyond thing) which has true control over morality; God is merely a servant. Omniscience is the only one which stands up to scrutiny as being all knowing means one only knows things that are and perhaps even potentials of what can be, meaning it is actual subordinate to power and is kind of a null point.

God therefore must be that which is beyond binary itself. As when you turn on a sink, you don’t ask whether the apparatus is hot or cold water. Rather, you say both flow out from the sink and that I would be silly to ask such a question. I say the same is true of God. Power and non-power, being and non-being, good and evil, all of these stem from God. Many then may posses the question of infinite regression, if all of these come from God then where does God come from? But instead of regressing backwards infinitely, I point to the infinite and say, “There is God!” God is the Infinite within all of reality resides. This Infinite possesses all potentiality within it, meaning that one could easily call God, “Potentiality.” But I prefer to call God, “Experience.”

I’ve been met with the example of the elephant. All of the kings viziers touch a portion of it and report back to the king an incomplete picture of that which they encountered. Only for the king to pull back the curtain and reveal the whole elephant. This is the epiphany I had while on this journey to answer the question of the omnis. All phenomena and experiences are merely a finite lens through which we can comprehend the divine. Some then make these lens god by saying that GOD IS A BEING. But to say that is to merely worship creation (which is idolatry). No, all experiences are just a snippet of the infinite totality of God. This is why none have seen God’s face, as there is no face to bear witness too. Rather, the best picture we see are in God’s image bearers, you and I. But we also experience God when we go to concerts, when we eat a meal, when we go to bed, when we wake up, when we drive past our neighbors and admire the squirrels playing in the trees. We should realize that in all of these moments, these temporary encounters, these finite experiences, are just a infinitesimally small fraction of Experience. God.

I also want to add 2 Appendixes.

Appendix A

Omnipresence is resolved within the Deridian understanding of hauntology. Hauntology argues that what isn’t present is just as important as what is present. When you are listening to a song, there are both notes being played and notes being not played, and these are what make up a song. Same is true for God. The notes of you petting a cat are being played while the notes of you brushing your teeth are not. All experiences are not present at once in any given moment, and this is God’s plan so that we are not overwhelmed with input.

Appendix B

I stated above that God is not omnibenevolent. This may terrify many as this means that God could do evil things, and that is correct. But God established a world which is to our benefit if we seek after God, God’s goodness, and the goodness of all that is around us. It is quite apparent that while God could side with evil outright and torture us, or be arbitrary and toy with us, God’s creation does not point to either of these 2 options as a likely possibility.

In addition, I believe God has already made it clear in the book of Genesis that God sides with good. Many take the Binding of Isaac story as a story of Abraham’s great faith but quietly accept the idea that maybe God could ask for a kid as a sacrifice? I say this is not so. Rather, God is demonstrating through the story that God is God and can do as God pleases and does not need to adhere to the rules of the universe God has created, but out of God’s love for us God chooses to limit God’s self to goodness. In that moment with Abraham, both sides express faith in the other. Abraham proves that he can be faithful in his devotion before God and God proves that God is faithful in God’s love for us.