Christians sometimes say things about God that really makes little sense, given what we know about our world and the universe today. How many times have you heard a Christian refer to God as:
“The Man upstairs!”
Really, God is a man? Okay, I get the anthropomorphism: Ascribing human characteristics to God.
The Bible does it all the time, but these anthropomorphisms are metaphors that people used to help explain who God is or how they understand him.
For example, in the Bible God is pictured as a “rock” or as a “Shepherd” or as “Mighty Warrior” or as a “Father.” All metaphors not to be understood literally of course.
But this isn’t what irks me about the statement describing God as the “Man upstairs!” It’s the “upstairs” part that needs some qualifying. At least when I hear folks say this I no longer correct them by saying: “You shouldn’t refer to God as a man!”
Instead, I say: “Where is upstairs?”
Do Christians (non-Christians say it too) who say such things really believe God is up there, somewhere above our heads? How can anyone conceive of such an idea given what we know today about how the world and the universe are designed?
And if God is believed to be “up there” is this where heaven is? Of course, the opposite would be true of hell as being located "down there” somewhere below us.
Okay, this is why I prefer the updated software version of how we talk about God, for example, Paul Tillich’s description of God as the “Ground of all being.” This metaphor makes so much more sense to those of us living on a round planet (where is upstairs located on such a planet?) in a cosmos so vast that the human mind can hardly comprehend it.
Perhaps the Christian mystics had a better comprehension of where God exists: Deep within us at our deepest core.
Sort of in compliance with the Apostle Paul’s version of God:
“For ‘In him, we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).”
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