Either We Know God, or We Don't

I overheard this exchange recently, one friend to another:

Friend A: “You talk like you believe in God. Good for you, but I’m not sure I believe in God.”

Friend B: “Belief has nothing to do with it. Either we know God, or we don’t.”

Whether we believe or don’t believe in God matters little. We can believe anything we like, but beliefs are under no obligation to align themselves with reality. When it comes to the reality of God, why settle for belief in God? Belief in God, however faithfully guarded, cannot satisfy our desire to know a divine presence at hand and trusted to have our back, always and everywhere.

In his book “And There Was Light”, author Jon Meachum cites a childhood story about the Rev. Theodore Parker (1810-1860). While walking with his mother in the woods, the young boy came upon a small, spotted turtle sunning himself in shallows of a stream. As he was about to poke the turtle with a stick, he heard an inner voice cry out, “It is wrong!” Completely taken aback, the boy asked his mother, “What just happened?”

“Some men call it conscience,” she replied, “but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak, clearer and clearer, and always guide you right, but if you turn a deaf ear and disobey, it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark, and without a guide.”

We enter this life with a conscience (literally ‘with-knowing’). By listening to our conscience, and choosing to obey it (your will, not mine, be done), we come to know evermore clearly a guiding, abiding presence very much close at hand. Turn a deaf ear, however, heed not that inner voice, and then gradually, imperceptibly, we are set adrift, ‘with-no-knowing’, existentially all on our own, half-believing there may be a God, half believing perhaps not.

Karen Armstrong, former monastic and author in the field of comparative religions, boldly claims that “The desire to cultivate a sense of the transcendent may be the defining human characteristic.” Direct access to the transcendent is not the exclusive privilege of mystics and monastics, but daily bread bestowed freely to the masses, to any and all who honor their desire to cultivate a sense of the transcendent by making use of conscience — our direct line to God.

So, either we know God, or we don’t know God. Either we honor our conscience: Listen to it, obey it, and come to know clearer and clearer God’s presence with us right here, right now. Or we pretend not to hear ‘the voice of God in the soul’, go our own way, speculate with friends about belief in God, having forgotten in dark woods and in bright hallways the way back to the peace of mind and the sleep of babes enjoyed by the cultivation of our God-given conscience.