Who is God?

There are just under seven billion people on this planet (I Googled it) of whom around five and three quarter billion express a belief in a god or gods (Google again!).

I imagine that a significant majority of those expressing a belief will pray, at least occasionally, and, in all probability, present their preferred "deity" with a shopping list of requests whenever they do.  It is surely inconceivable that the same believers would all (excluding perhaps some whose faith is particularly strong) continue to pray, and indeed to believe, if their prayers were never answered, or if the ratio of those answered to those ignored did not exceed that of random chance.

Of the believers, again according to Google, the largest single group are Christian - 2.1 billion with Islam just behind at 1.5 billion.

I recall a conversation I had a number of years ago with a evangelical Christian pastor.  He was of the view that Muslims believed in a different God from that believed in by Christians because they called their God Allah.  But can he possibly be right? I think not.

I was born and raised as a Christian in the UK.  Therefore, I pray to God.  Had I been French, I would have prayed to Dieu, if Spanish to Dios, Zulu to Nkos and if Russian to Boch.  All the same God but with different names.  Is it such a stretch, therefore, to believe that Allah is also the same God, after all both Christianity and Islam share a holy book, or at least part of one, as, for that matter, does Judaism.  Certainly I think that no one would doubt that the Christian and Jewish God is one and the same.

I do not think there is more than one God.  I understand that most polytheistic religions recognise a creator with the other gods being subordinate to that creator.  Is that such a huge step away from a belief in Angels?  Maybe, that is for you dear reader to decide.

What I would suggest is clear that someone answers the prayers of even those , roughly 2 billion believers who are not Christian, Muslim or Jew.  Certainly some will argue that the powers of darkness might answer prayers in order to mislead.  There can be little doubt that is true, if it were not there would be no suicide bombers.  No one can seriously believe that God wants you to murder innocents, yet for centuries some have argued precisely that, misled I believe.

Given that prayers are answered more often than not - in my experience upwards of 95 per cent of the time, it cannot matter what you call God, he is still listening.

I think it is futile to speculate on the nature of God.  God embraces both the male and female aspect, after all God creates.  I have no reason to doubt that God created the whole universe.  It is highly likely that life exists on other planets so God must be able to split off fragments of His self to be able to keep track of all of us living things.  To an extent Christians accept this by the Trinity, God the father, God the son and God the Holy Ghost, three aspects of one God, explained by  St Patrick by reference to a shamrock.

The bible states that God made man in his image - I would suggest that cannot be literally true, all men and women have different images.  I prefer the interpretation that God gave us free will, but that is for another blog.

I do not think we can ever truly understand God.  All we can do is give thanks that he is there for us.  God is not just great, God is awesome and indescribable from the point of view of mere humans.

Thanks again for reading.