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PAGE 8—The Georgia Bulletin, September 8,1983
What People Want To Know About God
BY DOLORES LECKEY
“What do you want to know about God?”
I put that question to a number of people while
vacationing recently at the seashore.
I had arrived at the shore with relatively few
encumbrances. But inevitably, some work was packed
among my lotions and books to read on the beach,
including a reminder to get working on this article.
First I posed the question to houseguests.
Gen, a booking agent for music groups, replied that she
wanted to know the “hows and whys” of God.
“How big is the universe?”
“Why am I on this planet at this particular time? Is
there a reason?”
She also wanted to know about creation, “How does it
all work?”
As she warmed to the topic, she offered more. God is
different, she said, adding that she wanted to glimpse
something of that otherness.
Her husband, Mike, a university dean, after a thoughful
few minutes, said that when he thinks about God, he
wonders what God is not. That, Mike said, says something
about who God is.
Heartened by the willingness of two friends to share
spontaneously some rather personal reflections on God, I
moved my inquiry to more public places.
At the bookstore: The young cashier added up my
purchases and was waiting to be paid when I held up the
transaction for a few minutes. “I’m writing an article
about what people say they want to know about God.
How about you?”
Her question about God was straightforward: “Does he
exist?” she promptly answered. “I hope he does but I
want to know, does he?” She looked at me then in a way
that cried out for some definite answer.
At church: A middle-aged local resident at my vacation
parish, who attends Mass every day, is a full-time lay
minister working with homebound persons.
She wonders if after death there is life as we know it on
earth. Does personal consciousness grow and
expand? Will we recognize others who have died? In life
after death is there a kind of community? And how is
God present in it?
On the beach: One brilliant July day, as I enjoyed the
sound of the surf, a young man drew me into
conversation. He is a traveling aide for his employer, a
quadriplegic.
The young man narrated a story of tragedy and
courage. A diving accident some years ago caused his
employers disability. Despite the severity of his physical
limitations he continued with his graduate studies and
with the responsibilities of family life.
As we talked about living with handicaps, I dared to ask
my question about God. I thought surely the young man
would answer along the lines of Rabbi Harold Kushner in
his book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
The rabbi asks why good and caring people sometimes
suffer diving accidents and lifetimes of disability.
But the young man didn’t answer as I thought he
would. Instead, he talked about the stars and the splendor
of the heavens. He wondered if God has breathed life onto
all those faraway galaxies which fascinate him. He doesn’t
want to risk the journey himself to a distant star, but he
hopes someone, someday, will.
The last person I questioned was a vacationing
government executive. He took a long time to answer and
when he did he ventured that he’d like to understand
more clearly what God is saying. He thinks God tells us
things, “bit by bit,” in all the great and small experiences
of the universe.
All in all, my respondents surprised me. I had thought
the first questions they would raise might concern human
woes and the reasons why a loving God can allow evil to
exist in the world. However the people I spoke with
seemed to want to ponder God.
I was reminded of the scene in Alice Walker’s novel,
“The Color Purple.” There Celie confesses that “I been so
busy thinking about him I never truly notice nothing God
make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that), not the color
purple (where it come from?). Not the little wild flowers.
Nothing.”
“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT
GOD? ” - Dolores Leckey posed that question to
several people while vacationing recently at the
seashore. One respondent wanted to know how
big is the universe and why she is on this planet.
A bookstore clerk wanted to know if God exists
while another person wondered if there is life
after death and if so what it would be like. One
young man wondered if God has breathed life
into all the faraway stars and planets. (NC Photo
from NASA)
My people wondered about the kinds of questions Celie
raised. The stars: How do they get there? The ocean and
sun and sand: What are they saying to us? Life after
death: Will we miss the beautiful earth?
After talking to those people, it seemed clear that
questions about God still stir the human heart and
imagination.
Questions People Ask About God
BY MONICA CLARK
“Why has God let me know so much suffering?” asks
54-year-old Dorothy Alexander.
Mrs. Alexander was placed in an Oklahoma orphanage
when she was 2 years old. “I’ve never known a mother or
father or a family that’s loved me. I miscarried all five of
my children. I’ve been escorted out of an all-white church
and had KKK sprayed outside the high school classroom
where I was teaching. I’ve known so much heartache and
so much sorrow. I say to the Lord, ‘Master, why me?”’
For Mrs. Alexander, one of the most universal
questions about God — Why is there suffering in the
world? — rises not from an abstract inquiry, but from the
depths of her continuously wounded spirit.
Her questions and her agonies become one and in the
midst of them she finds God. ‘“Look what people did to
Jesus.’ I say to myself. ‘So what can I expect?’ That helps
take the hurt away.”
Mrs. Alexander says it is during moments of intense
suffering when her question screams the loudest that she
experiences God embracing her with love. “I know he’s
there and when I talk to him and cry out all my troubles,
I feel his presence,” she says. “I know he is with me,
listening to me and loving me and that makes all the
difference.”
Suzanne Franco, a 42-year-old mother of six,
acknowledges that' for her God remains-distant. Though
her life has been relatively free of intense personal
tragedies, interior religious turmoil has been hers since the
age of 9 when she first questioned her father about God’s
existence and found him unable to answer.
Today she still asks: “Is God real?” She adds: “My
doubts won’t go away and that’s tough. When I’m at Mass,
KNOW YOUR
FAITH
(All Articles On These Pages Copyrighted
1983 by N.C. News Service)
(I’ve never missed a Sunday) I look at the congregation
and want to shout out, ‘You are so lucky to believe.’”
Mrs. Franco wants her children “to have a strong and
joyous faith. I don’t want them to have to struggle the
way I do,” she said.
Struggle seems to be common among those who come
to belief. Steve Prince, 29, was baptized three years ago
after a long-search: His constant' prayer,’ “Gbd; If yoo*re'
out there find me,” led him often to a nearby Catholic
church. “God reached out to me and I started believing
for the first time,” Prince says.
His conversion, however, did not end his questions.
“Now I want God to show himself to me more clearly so
I’ll know what I should do with the rest of my life.”
He compared his new faith with love, explaining:
“When I love someone I want to be with that person and
talk with her and show my caring. If God loves me, why
does he stay so far away and make it so difficult for me to
know his will?” Prince asks.
“What I’d like is a lightning bolt or some tangible sign.
Then I could be zealous like St. Paul. Instead I’m always
on the road to Emmaus, unable to recognize that the Lord
is talking to me,” he said.
Prince admits that sometimes he offers a prayer of
anger and frustration to God: “You make things clear for
other people, why don’t you do it for me?”
All three people regard their questions as a mysterious
part of their faith. Their searching for God keeps them
from becoming complacent, they say.
“I can’t pray my questions away so I’ve come to accept
them as my gift,” Mrs. Franco explains, one that’s “not
easy to have but a gift anyway.”
Prince added, “I’m totally in awe of how God works. I
can’t wait to get to heaven to find out just what this is all
.about. I’m going ,tp, ?it .down an,d, ask, ‘What were you
doing Lord? Wasn’t there an easier way to do all this?”