How’s that for a question for the ages. I would love to hear your answer to it, especially before you read mine. I usually reserve these types of questions for Sunday, of course, that is because of my Catholic school experiences. The time to think about God was on Sunday, when we all get together for the weekly “pomp and circumstance”. I am currently knee-deep in my study into a deeper understanding of Quakerism, and I’m certain that fact will influence my answer here.

To me, the answer to this question is an emphatic “No”. Without thinking and reasoning beings, there would be no need for God. As the old saying goes, “It takes two to tango”. Let’s look at the basic definition of God as shown here.

Yes, God could rule the universe without us, but moral authority would be meaningless. Then, there is the well recognized “super human being” version of God. Being an avid reader of religious history, I certainly understand how all religions today have been patterned around various people’s thoughts and feelings about God. I suspect that over 90% of current Christian beliefs and practices were developed many years after Jesus inhabited this earth. One theologian after another added their piece to the belief puzzle.

After much study of Christian history, I have come to realize that much of what is in it, came from those who never sat at the feet of Jesus. Primary among those is the Apostle Paul. Christian Nationalists who are now fighting hard to turn the U.S. from a democracy into a theocracy use the words of Paul as the reason to do that. Other theologians include Augustine (about 400 years after Jesus), Thomas Aquinas (about 1200 years), are primarily responsible for the majority of beliefs that define Christianity today.

Getting back to the original question, God, at least as most describe, is most certainly a fabrication of man. Just in the Christian flavor of spirituality, there are more than 25,000 versions of just who God is, and it seems that every one of those versions is convinced that they are the only one who have it right. I guess you could look at this from a different view and say, “isn’t it nice to be able to have 25,000 different ways for you to define the God of your choosing.”

I will finish this post off with a personal belief that there is something that puts morality, empathy, and sincerity into the hearts of each of us at birth. Trying to define just what or who that is, is something that I won’t ever attempt to do. Instead, I just take those things that were put into my heart, and seriously try to live my life as they direct me. In my mind, the teachings of Jesus are the most emphatic way to do that. As Quakers say, there is a light of God in each of us. If we just listen to that, it doesn’t matter whether God is Lutheran, Catholic or any other version of man’s many fabrications.