For me God is the recognition of something over and above what my individual will can do, accomplish, fathom, and comprehend; I believe in God when I recognize there are forces, factors, or powers outside of my control that influence the outcome of my everyday life. What are these factors? Well there are a number of them. How do they work? Well I don’t know. I can neither comprehend, nor understand the full force of contributing factors that have come to influence my life and affect how it has sometimes played out; no matter how hard I’ve tried to control my life there have been and are factors and situations outside my control. Where that sense of the incomprehensible reigns, God for me exists as something.

It’s the same when I try to process some overwhelming feeling, or sense of awe, times when I have been overwhelmed by the sight of nature, a beautiful woman, a shooting star, or a smiling baby. At other times I have been completely overcome by an attraction and the feeling of being in love; I have felt that power over the senses; I have tried to comprehend that force behind it only to be left feeling bewildered. It is like calculating the symbol ‘Pi,’ the sense of the immeasurable and incomprehensible just going on and on and on; the feeling and the fathoming are like a repeating decimal.

Many times in my life I have been uncomfortable with using the word ‘God.’ I have gone through a lot of phases of thinking where I was highly influenced by this or that philosopher or this or that school of thought. But even at my most logically oriented, logically positivist thinking I still felt uncomfortable saying that I did not believe in God or that I was an atheist. It did not seem or feel right to me. Nor has it always felt right to say I believe in God, call myself a deist, a theist, or anything else in this respect.

The question then often arises, “Do I believe in God?” Well it depends. It depends on what one means when he or she talks about God. If by God one means some person in heaven, some reified concept specific to one religious faith and system then the answer is No. But if instead one refers to something along the lines of an entity or force that can’t be comprehended or defined but somehow seems to exist as part of something bigger than what one can personally comprehend then Yes, I believe in God.

Another question: Why even use the word ‘God?’ In talking about an inability to control or understand life’s circumstance and happenings why not use the words like ‘chance’ ‘fate’ or ‘luck?’ Or if language is so imprecise, then why say anything at all? I do use other words sometimes but I feel I use the word ‘God’ because it conveys my respect I have toward that power and because it does seem to me to be a living force for me, though I’m not sure of what kind. The word just has an appropriacy perhaps due to some of the connotations that are connected with it.

I often think of the way one uses the infinity symbol to denote infinity. As a place holder the symbol denotes a concept, but as a symbol it is limited in its ability to do justice to the totality of infinity itself. Does the symbol show infinity? Yes and no. It successfully represents a concept but it cannot represent infinity in its entirety. That is how I think of the word ‘God.’ It denotes something but that something can’t be fathomed. It is more appropriate to say the word ‘God’ denotes the absence of.

It is unfortunate that terms become loaded with connotations the way they do, but then again, it is some of the connotations that make me use the word instead of another. Some people develop such an aversion to institutional fundamentalist religion that the word ‘God’ owing to its association with the later makes a person reluctant to embrace the word on any level. Connotations also affect the word ‘atheist.’ Some people may in fact call themselves atheists owing to its usual reference to the lack of belief in a kind of God associated with more literal interpretations and yet still believe in some kind of force or power over and above human will and comprehension that has an ability to evoke awe or a kind of divine zeal.

I think in any case it is important to look at all language as innately flawed. It is such because language can only be a representation and no representation can ever fully depict a thing or a feeling. Language is an incredible creation and its flaws should not keep us from ever expressing ourselves, but its limitations have to be embraced along with its capabilities. Any conversation, expression or communication through language should remain open-ended with an ear for the connotations and intentions that can’t always be translated into words. Even at its most beautiful or most precise, language cannot do one’s thoughts and feelings justice. And that’s a good thing, a wonderfully frustrating thing.