Just saw the title of a book: God is an Englishman. This is certainly not so. It never has been, and yet this is what—more or less—the Western world has been saying for centuries now, and it is this that must be combated if we here in the West are to have any meaningful spirituality in the next century.

I have observed that white people tend to have (I said TEND) a greater difficulty with God and spirituality than other Westerners, and men more than women. Yet the King James Jehovah is someone they invented.

Every age has had to combat the “God is a What I Am” syndrome. The Buddha, wishing to free the divine from Hindu mythology and anthropomorphism took an agnostic stance on God, one that bordered on atheism. He chose not to worship God, but to live a godly life. Christ went to the same place by a different road. For a Christian to live well is to live like Jesus, and to live like Jesus is to experience the Kingdom of God. To declare the nearness of God Christ said, “I AM”. Christians who would wish only to worship, but not to follow fail to realize is he also said, “So are you.”

What now is called for is a radical combination of this insistence on mysticism and a sort of atheism: a refusal to believe in the anachronistic god handed to us from old white men, and a heartfelt pilgrimage to the temple within.

God is great and God is good
In the sky and in the wood
God is red
God is black
God is she
God is they
God is pink,
God is gay
God is you and God is me
God is we