Yeah, I really like omnitheism, too. I think it’s a great “ism” I believe that wisdom can be found in all religions and all spiritual paths, and that no race or culture has a monopoly on Love, or God. As you said, every faith contains a grain of the same truth. One of my favorite sayings is: “We are all children of the same Universe.” To me, that signifies that we should study all relgious paths, and try to learn from them, even if we don’t necessarily believe what we read.

I’m a huge supporter of interfaith dialogue, and omnitheism helps me see things from several different points of view. I think that so much of “man’s inhumanity towards man” could be ended if the separate parties made an honest attempt to understand each other’s faith.

I agree with what you say about free will and choice. We cannot fulfil our full wonderful potential as human beings if we are being controlled by what I’ve somewhere heard referred to as a “watchmaker God”. And fear – yes, fear feeds hatred and greed, which is the root of our wars.

The questions of disease etc are of course much more difficult. Similarly, I don’t believe they are directly caused by God. (“Hmmm, I’m a bit bored today, perhaps a quick cyclone over East Asia…” ) But again we have choice in how we react. Over and over we see ordinary heroism – which is actually extraordinary – as strangers fight to save each other’s lives in floods or whatever. Sadly the reverse can be true, as we see with looting in hard-hit areas. And the courage of someone dying in pain can be inspiring.

Incidentally, I really appreciate your respectful language, although actually I don’t think of God as male and try not to refer to God as gendered. It isn’t easy, as “he” has become such a shorthand, and of course is used constantly in liturgical language. And it can make for clumsy expression of language, as in my sentence above.

Finally thank you for the word Omnitheism which I had not heard before. I had to look it up and understand it to mean the belief that every faith contains a grain of the same truth and belief in ultimately the same God. I can absolutely sign up for that!

Like others have posted, I believe that the answer lies in God’s grace to give us free will. I believe that we are put on this Earth to experience the physical world in a way that God never could-as limited physical beings. We are also here to learn, grow, and evolve into better human beings. In order for us to do that honestly and effectively, God had to remove Himself from the equation…meaning that He had to give us the freedom to choose “good” or “evil” for ourselves. If He were to intervene whenever someone chooses “evil”, then we wouldn’t really be free to choose “good”. I think most of the “evil” in the world is a result of humans choosing fear over love. They react out of fear, which causes most of the pain and suffering we see in the world around us. Since the bible tells us that “God is Love”, whenever we choose fear, which is the opposite of love, we choose to turn our backs against God.

This leaves the questions of disease, disability, and natural disasters…but I don’t have any good answers for those problems. Perhaps they are ways to help us grow into better human beings through compassion, love, and humility, but I am not sure. Your thoughts?

An interesting question and an interesting discussion. When I say your question to myself (‘what good is God?’) it sounds as though God is/or should be seen as, some kind of crutch – rather like, ‘what good is the toaster?’ or ‘what good is the rail network?’ I have found myself thinking about God in this way in the past, as a thing to serve me. Perhaps the question should be: ‘what good am I?’

Abdur Rahman

If someone asked me ‘what good is God?’ I would respond along the lines of ‘should God be good?’ Whilst I have a relationship with Deity and I know my Goddess and God, I don’t feel that they exist simply to make my life better. Sure, they intervene, they support my personal and spiritual progress, but they don’t exist to serve me. Deity Is. I find it as simple as that.