Slices of God? Are we dissecting God as though we were in a biology lab, looking for clues to the structure and function of the Supreme Being? No. Are we dicing God up into bite-size pieces we can handle? No, though that is appealing in some respects. Cutting God into slices implies that we think we have a complete view of God! The primary thesis of this book is precisely the opposite: we have nothing to work with but slices of God.
Can we adequately put such slices together, constructing a greater understanding of God? Unfortunately, our humanness often gets in the way. We efficiently equip ourselves to believe in and live with only a few slices: little fragments we assume are God. We have stared at these few slices of God for so long that our sense of their nature being anything other than slices has gradually diminished to nil.
We need a reconstruction process to piece together slices that, individually, have wrought discord, war, death, isolation, and even the abandonment of the God concept. What have we to lose? What have we to fear? Some may argue that such an attempt to reconstruct God is idolatry. I argue that holding a few slices up for the rest of the unenlightened world to worship is the epitome of idolatry. We worship finite pieces of God. If God exists, wouldn’t he want us to know more about who he, she, or it is?
MC Escher understood the concept of slices. In his Rind sketch he aptly illustrates the process I believe we need to employ. (Figure 1) One can clearly see he intended the rind to represent a person. However, if the rind were strewn on the kitchen counter, as if having just been removed from the fruit, it would not resemble the original image at all. Carefully arranging the rind portrays the entity it was removed from; not perfectly, but enough that we are able to “fill in the gaps.”
Figure 1. M.C. Escher’s “Rind” Copyright 2014 The M.C. Escher Company – The Netherlands. All rights reserved.
So, who or what diced the God concept up into slices in the first place? Who cut the rind from the fruit? While this will be addressed more fully in Phase 3, for now we may want to consider it our doing. We dice God into pieces with our need and insistence that God is tangible and reachable, consistent and complete: and on our terms. In doing so we end up with only fragments of slices of God.
Insisting that we have the real slices of God, and others do not, is what religion does best. It is a mistake, and in many cases a fatal one, to assume that peoples from other faiths and cultures have not seen slices of God. Stories abound from cultures and traditions around the world that include such slices.[1]
For far too long people of faith have argued over such slices, instead of embracing the mystery of the slices of God with joy. Because of our need to systematize slices into our version of order and consistency, we are forced both to be selective as to which slices we will use, and to venture into exhaustive explanations as to why we exclude inconsistent, paradoxical, and even contradictory slices, continuing down the road to a view of God that is not only a slice, but perhaps a slice of a slice. Even if we are so disciplined as to ignore our own preconceived ideas about who God is and have the ability to approach all evidences with an open mind, the process of weeding through the slices presented therein is tedious, complicated, and difficult.
We live in a cosmos comprised of estranged fragments, yet drift through physical and spiritual space convinced we are complete. The denial of our fragmented nature is in itself evidence of the problem. There is so much more to this life than the illusion that we see it all. Our desires for answers dictate so. We would not be burdened with such an assortment of wishes if there were not more to be had. C.S. Lewis addresses this conundrum well in Mere Christianity: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.” Desires unfulfilled in this world point to an ultimate existence in another world.[2] Our desires are slices of more to come.
– Sam Augsburger
[1] I highly recommend reading Indian Spirit, by Michael Oren Fitzgerald. When I read it I weep for slices lost. When you read it you will see why.
[2] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 136-37.
