Panentheism

Panentheistic understandings of God have potential to promote equality and to repair relationships with Divinity.  As many in today’s world leave behind the religious traditions they were raised in, progressive churches have the potential to heal wounds left by churches (whether from within our religious bodies or without) by offering a theology that inherently promotes equality and re-articulating understandings of God that can put God at odds with people. Process Theology and panentheism can offer a vision of God that is Relatedness (I will use these words interchangeably)– intimate connection in and with all of life, “beyond” our ability to articulate, unlimited by the physical manifestation of the world.  This vision of God by affirms that connection and love are prime concerns of Relatedness and can allow us to address some problems with “God” and churches that lead many people to leave their communities: unjust hierarchy and theologies incompatible with lived experience.  This imagining of God can be the entrance point for advocating for equality and respect for all of creation.  It can also ease some anger with God for a misplaced understanding that God wills evil or death.  This God as Relatedness can replace the God “whom” people have rejected; in reimagining our language and theology, we can find a God who works in us and through us toward a more harmonious existence.

As Ivone Gebara so aptly suggests, “the search for God is a path we never succeed in leaving behind.”(1)   Many traditional understandings of God imagine God as involved in the human experience from a distance, in a reality wholly other than that of the human condition.  The “othering” of God– imagining God as outside of and separate from the human experience– has allowed for injustice.  By suggesting that God is in “control” (perhaps in an anthropomorphized understanding), or that the happenings of the world, guided by God, are beyond our understanding, we offset our own responsibility to the world /and God.  By imaging God as having interventionary power, we disconnect ourselves from Relatedness and from fostering the connections and compassion toward other beings that manifest God/Relatedness.  A panentheistic understanding of  God places God in the heart of the human experience in a way that both imagines God as wholly invested in our joys and concerns as well as removes God from “responsibility” for cruelty and misfortune.  

Process Theology offers a vision of God that is not all-powerful, but instead is intimately connected and connection.  As Gebara understands, when folks claim that they are atheist, they often stand “in opposition to certain specific interpretations, expressions, beliefs, creeds, theologies, and powers,” but do not necessarily mean to imply that they don’t believe in Divinity.(2)  Such claims often more accurately convey a rejection of a particular theology, hierarchy, or specific religious experience.  These positions often assume a universality of theology among Christian churches, one that doesn’t exist.  Many individuals can find a healing in a panentheistic understanding of God that is also at odds with the theology and experience they reject.  A God that is Relatedness affirms the profundity that our most meaningful experience is relationship– family, love, loyalty, compassion, care, and justice are all informed by the meaning we derive from interacting with others and are rooted in our understanding that true meaning cannot be a solitary experience.  Indeed the world and its people are “expressions of the relatedness that characterizes all things.”(3)  Such an understanding is fundamentally at odds with the suggestion that human beings should “dominate” either the earth, animals, or other people, as well as the suggestion that mutual, loving relationships are in conflict with the will of God.  

Many people leaving churches today consider their theologies antiquated or at odds with their experience.  An understanding of God that puts God in contrast with forms of life, “is obsolete and inconsistent in the face of our world’s violence, our progress in scientific knowledge, and our contemporary understanding of the universe.”(4)  A God that affirms and is loving relatedness cannot condemn same-sex marriage, for instance, because such a relationship is an expression of the Relatedness that is God.  Similarly, the dominance model that has allowed for destruction of our planet to the point of our current environmental crisis is in conflict with God as Relatedness, a vision that sees our connection with all of the world as important; thus, nurturing other life systems and forms is fostering a healthy Relationship– the work of God.  In considering relationships and relatedness to be the paramount expression of God, churches’ work need not be against LGTBQ concerns, the wellbeing of animals and our planet, or the impoverished. Nor can it promote the wellbeing of some to the disadvantage of others.  Churches’ work can be seen to promote loving relationships, compassion, and the thriving of all life, since God is all of life (and also beyond it).  Understanding God as a “thing,” as separate (in any way) from this world (including its inhabitants), in a sense “creates” dualism by abstracting God from us and allowing us to see some beings as unlike what God would “want.”  If we understand that all are part of God and bound into a complex Relationship, each of us is equally valuable to the form and function of God and equally deserving of thriving.  Therefore any injustice, any system that upholds hierarchy of any kind, promotes inequality and is at odds with the spirit of Relatedness.  

A God that has been traditionally considered wholly Other and responsible for the happenings of the world can be seen as to blame for death and cruelty, or at very least, complicit.  The common suggestion that there is a greater purpose for the seemingly senseless death and sorrow that most of us encounter in our lives is unsatisfactory to many of us and has led many to walk away from churches that paint God in such light.  A God that “is in all and [encompasses all]– including suffering, dirt, and destruction” is a God that is present with us in this most intrinsic way, but whose powers are not control or predetermine.(5)  While this can be seen as stripping God of power and perhaps taking some comfort away from people who like to feel that God is in control of their lives, I feel that this initial reaction can be overcome by a deep sense of comfort in knowing that our concerns are God’s concerns, inherently.  When tragedy strikes, it is not a “lesson” beyond our current understanding.  God is with us in every sorrow and joy, in every effort to overcome injustice and seek equality and harmony.  While this God may not be writing the course of history with a divine pen and paper, this God moves through history with us and in us and compels– or lures– us toward compassionate treatment of other manifestations of God.  This God as Relatedness is one with the soul of the world and thus loves it as deeply and thoroughly as every being (individually and in totality) loves what they love.  God seeks harmony in Relatedness.  

Many have rejected the paradigms that imagine God as puppetmaster of the universe– complicit in tragedy, inequality, poverty, and environmental destruction.  However, the search for God continues as surely as each of us seeks meaning in our life.  Panentheistic understandings of God can heal broken relationships with Divinity by offering a cosmology in which God is not dealer of bad hands, but Relatedness.  Such relatedness is intimately within and encompasses all of life.  This God is intrinsically concerned with equality and harmony of existence, affirming love, compassion, and connection as paramount manifestations of Divinity.  This understanding can compel us to dissolve unjust hierarchies of all kinds and lead us to a vision of interaction that values all (humans, animals, and plant life) as valuable, loved embodiments of Relatedness, worthy of thriving.  This vision of God can offer an alternative– a home to the “atheist” who rejects the dogmatic theologies of a church at odds with modern understandings of the universe and with the injustices it has committed and continues to commit.  Indeed this vision of God can be a reaction against it and can contribute to a new understanding of what church can be: a place for the comfort and justice implied by a Relatedness that binds us all in the common goal of mutual flourishing, authenticity, and love.

1. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water, 101.

2. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water, 102.

3. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: 103.

4. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water, 104.

5. Gebara, 107.  

Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999.

mistixs:

I really love this :)
I love being a panentheist!
However, I do kind of struggle with one thing, though. Like, the fact that it’s impossible to live without damaging something else. Like, even if a human is vegan, they will inevitably kill a few bugs throughout their lives, even by accident.
& Of course, the food chain, wherein animals eat other animals.
How do we reconcile this?

I believe we should each try to do our best.  While Jains are not panentheist, many avoid air travel, keep vegan lifestyles, etc.  We each need to decide what this means for our own lives; as is often the case, we sometimes need to compromise.  

For me, this means that I keep a mostly vegan diet and I try not to kill bugs.  I know that my existence requires some other things to perish.  I need to eat and in order to flourish and make positive change in the world, this means driving sometimes, flying sometimes, stepping on bugs sometimes, feeding my cats meat (because they need it), etc.  If I didn’t eat, I couldn’t work for justice.  If I didn’t drive, I would be unable to perform many aspects of my job.  My conception of God affects much of how I live my life, but I also know that conversely, my life likely affects much of how I understand God and the agency I have in responding to God’s lure.

I believe each of us should exercise our own conscience in deciding how to best live in line with divinity as we know and understand it.