These are of course, just my personal beliefs, without intention of putting others down for their chosen journey to serve God. That is, of course, God as each of us understands God to be.
The notion that God, by definition, must mean the exact same thing to everyone is rather silly. We can only comprehend what we are capable of comprehending through our own actual experiences matched with the wisdom we have attached to it. Since we can believe information in our head without having it coincide with our hearts, it takes years of experience to build congruency.
Hopefully, for each of us, there comes that great space in time, when we have walked through enough murk and mire to draw solid conclusions, aligning our minds and hearts as one.
That said, from my own experiences and study, God is not a gender or a body...basically the word God is nothing more than a sound our mouths make when trying to define the concept of how positive energy and the connectivity of our human spirit gives us power to transcend the physical world.
The word "God" is used in connection with the practice of nurturing the non-physical world that thrives in the heart and inspires people to share their journey with others. How people choose to do that is their personal freedom. Commonly, in religious context, written works and testimonies are used to teach and share this wisdom.
We understand through birth that love feels better than hate, kindness is more attractive, a smile can radiate from a persons' soul and be felt by another, and that many things exist that we will never see - at least with our eyes. Since our culture defines and shapes the context of our thought processes, we learn to both conform and question its logic.
In effect, angry cultures beget angry people and loving cultures beget loving people. How those cultures surround the family, state, country or globe depends largely on the type of wisdom being taught.
In our physical world there is love and anger, and equally in our spiritual world, there is love and anger.
Spiritual wisdom based in love brings vision to the heart promoting goodwill, nurturing and acceptance. Loving spiritual wisdom acknowledges human imperfection as natural and by practicing humility, forgiveness, gratitude, and generosity, an individual can find peace. Who can argue with that? Maybe people who have never felt the depth true love can reach (whether through choice or ignorance) would deny it's worth. By this definition, I connect loving spiritual wisdom with the word God. For me, God is a feel-good word. Many religious teachings are based in this wisdom.
Spiritual wisdom based on shades of anger (human emotion) bring deception to the heart promoting judgment, conformity, static beliefs, shame, guilt and fear. When spiritual wisdom acknowledges human imperfection as sinful and wrong, it leans toward promoting continuous suffering. By this definition, the word God becomes more defined through human emotions than supreme connectivity. Many religious teachings are based in this wisdom. (What comes to my mind is the Adam and Eve story. It appears to be based on the assumption God didn't understand human nature well enough and therefore was disappointed because they acted like average human beings. I've always wondered how God could be surprised by His own creations.)
If the word "God" is connected with negative energy like the practice of condemnation to Earth or Hell (which makes people cringe) how can believers spiritually transcend above judgmentalism? Judgmentalism creates chaos. Chaos creates confusion and that's said to be of...you know....Hell.
I think at a certain point, most people who have learned religious concepts, take the best of it, apply it to their lives, and set aside what is contradictory - without feeling a need to argue about it. Because they understand the concept of "God" as a spiritual guide is important to them.
Since the word "God" is simply a sound we make with our mouths, and we attach our own meaning to it, then we ought to be specific about what we want to feel when we say it.
For example, I don't concern myself with those who feel disdain or disgust about the word "God", because they designed their own meaning and they have to live with that. I sure won't avoid saying "God" in front of those persons either, in fact it amuses me to watch "haters" cringe about a word they are responsible for giving a bad meaning to. Especially when they blame others for that negative creation.
Figuratively speaking, God is one of the largest words there is...
