Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 April 2005 07:21:49
My computer got too hot and shut down so I had to stop working for a couple of hours, and while it was off I got to thinking about the nature of God and spiritual experience.
I think that God is always experienced through our needs. This is the reason why the oppressed and poor often appear to have stronger faith than the safely employed middle class. They are more aware of their needs.
The more people need food and shelter, protection or anything else, the more they pray and the more they experience God, whether or not those needs are met. And when they are met, prayers of thanks are offered, but more prayer is only forthcoming for as long as the need is present - even if the need is being fulfilled, if the person sees it as a need they will pray thanks that the need is fulfilled. Once the need is no longer there: that is, once it is no longer present in the person's conscious as requiring attention, prayer is no longer required and communication with God is withdrawn until another need is present.
I'm not saying that prayer is only presenting a wishlist to God. What I am saying is that people are most attuned to God when they are aware that they cannot meet their needs themselves.
Having thought about that thoroughly, I then began to think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Briefly, it states that people worry about their needs in a particular order, starting with physical things like food and shelter and moving through social needs like love and affection to self-actualisation. That's a lot of needs, and a lot of ways to meet God.
Different churches focus on experiencing God through these different needs. Mother Theresa, for axample, focuses on reaching people who need food, whereas megachuches like Hillsong are more inclined to the people in the third group, seeking self-actualisation.
Notice what I'm saying. Even if the churches help meet the needs of the people involved, it is not through the meeting of the needs that God is met, but through the needing itself. Through the hope that there must be something greater than ourselves. Hope fills the gap between what we need and our present reality. God is in the hope.
Now consider people in a position such as myself. I pray most earnestly around tax time and when the rent is due. I am aware that God provides, and it fills me with joy. But when those needs are met, I still feel unfulfilled. I need something more.
I need something, but I'm not really sure what it is. I quite often feel that way. In the past, I have been a bit worried by this, figuring that as a Christian I should feel eternally fulfilled and overwhelmingly happy every minute of the day. But here's the answer: if we had no needs, we would not experience God. So feeling that I need something is in fact a positive force, drawing me near to God.
It's not God that I need, but in needing, I find God.
Interesting.