4. What is God Not?

by Tom Minkler

I AM cannot be a “he” because that is a human word specifically designating a creature with certain physical and biological characteristics, including, but not limited to, certain levels of testosterone, and a penis. There is no other definition of a “he.” Every single characteristic that makes a he is driven by chemical and physical factors. There are no other characteristics that are distinctly male or female. Overall, there might be leanings one way or another (such as women are emotionally unstable and men just want to screw anything that moves), but we can't name one human characteristic that is not shared by at least one man and one woman that has ever existed. We know there are men as “effeminate” and “womanly” as many women, and we know that there are some women who are more manly than many men. We know because we’ve seen them, met them and talked to them. The writers of the Bible assumed “he” over “she” due to part of the archaic belief systems that exist throughout the Bible, such as that women were property, and definitely not equal beings. So within the mind set of the time, I AM “had” to be a he. There was no other choice. According to Genesis 1:26, God created man(kind) in his own image, male and female he created them. Both the male and female are created in the image of God, so it wouldn't make sense that "God" has only male characteristics in any sense anyway.

Basically everywhere the Bible says “he” it is technically “wrong,” even if only because it's misleading in its incompleteness. I AM is something so far beyond “he” that using this word is virtually worthless, and actually harmful because of the negative connotations of the word ‘he.” In fact, any human word that we use to try to describe I AM has a negative connotation when compared to the actual perfection and wonderfulness of the real I AM; so by describing God (or trying to) we are reducing it, limiting it, and in reality demeaning her/him/it. So that is why “he” told us to call him “I AM.” Jesus called him his "father" because that is much closer to what God is than the Old Testament version of the vindictive, angry, fickle-fisted ruler they thought he was. Jesus did not have the inclination to explain the actual, complete truth, because they wouldn't have really listened (they didn't even really grasp the "father" part), for example can you imagine him trying to explain to them that E=mc2? And if they did understand, they never would have killed him and he wouldn't have died for our sins and we would all be left to rot in hell, whatever that means.

But if I AM is a woman, then it’s Father Nature, OK?

We can make up things about I AM that aren’t really “real” but yet we ascribe to them some actual meaning. Such as the question “If I AM can do ‘anything,’ can he create a stone that he can’t move?” In reality that isn’t even a real thing, i.e., the thing you have thought up is impossible no matter what you are, because it can’t possibly exist in the first place. Can something that can do anything, create something that it can't do? That is just a trick of words, not a real possibility or even a real "thing." Can I AM make a stone that is wholly and completely green and not blue at all, but at the same time is wholly and completely blue? Can I AM create a stone that is not a stone? These are just word games; they are not even real nor could they ever be. Can I AM create a spliguyhttyrg? At the moment a “spliguyhttyrg” is not even a thing so the answer is really no. If you think it is yes, then could I AM create a spliguyhttyrg without creating a spliguyhttyrg ? Nonsense. But we create these ideas in our heads and try to ascribe them to God, when they could never even exist in the first place.

In the end, anything we can say in human terms about something as incomprehensible as I AM is so far off that yea it’s wrong by definition. And by saying I AM, "he'' is saying we cannot define him, yea he cannot or does not want to define himself any further, by adding any restrictions. If that is how the Eternal Spirit describes itself how do we think we can do better? To use human concepts such as “tell,” “want,” “plan,” and to say "he told me" or "he wants you to" in reference to I AM is like trying to use the properties of a paper clip to describe my mother, e.g., “I used it to clip some papers together.” “It got bent and was difficult to return to its original shape.” (You can see how some might work in an allegoric, symbolic sort of way, but most probably wouldn’t.) Is I AM in its infinite omnipotence more like we humans (homo sapiens) are, than a paper clip is like my mother? Are we more like I AM than we are like other animals? Even if we are created in "his" image, aren't we much closer to being like animals, with all of our physical functions and chemical characteristics, than we are to an eternal, omnipotent spirit that can read all human beings' minds simultaneously, that created the whole universe and might be "in" everything? There are many words that we apply to humans that don't even apply, or that we don't use to describe, animals. But we try to apply human characteristics to God. Who do we think we are?

For example, it is a common belief that I AM has a "plan" for the life of each human. But how can something that knows what's eventually going to happen, have a "plan"? For humans, a plan is something we decide we will do in the future. Say we plan to go to the store tomorrow, it means we have decided that we will do it, circumstances permitting, without knowing what will actually happen ahead of time. But if God is timeless, or omnipotent across time, that means simply that he knows what we ended up doing. God can't "have a plan" for me to go to the store, that might or might not end up happening. He simply knows whether I did or not. The only way a human being can picture this, to see things from an omnipotent God's point of view, is to pretend that the end of time is right now, and the complete whole of time, all of existence is in the past. Pretend you are God, now is the end of time and you are "looking back." Now picture the life span of, say, Abraham Lincoln. What if Lincoln says, "God (you) has a plan for my life"? What does that mean? Does it mean you (God) could have something that you wanted Abraham to do, but he may or may not do it? No, it simply means that you know everything that Abraham ended up doing. There is no "plan"; there is only what was going to exist since the beginning of time, which is what happened and what will always and only exist. Our lives end up going how they were going to go, no matter what. There never was any different reality. If God is omnipotent, whatever is going to happen to you is already known by God. God can't even say he "wishes" you were going to do this or that, because such a wish is completely meaningless; he knows exactly what you ended up doing. And if he's omnipotent, he knew it all at the moment he created everything.

Which is how we get ourselves into trouble, that whenever we are devastated by a loss, or an accident, or a crime, it hurts us mostly because we didn't expect it. If we knew we were going to get into that accident or whatever, then we wouldn't be surprised by it. We would have had our whole lives to mentally prepare. Not to stop it, but to mentally prepare, since the event was always going to happen. What happened was the only way reality was ever going to be. By creating the false reality, by imagining a reality that never existed where we aren't going to get hurt, we have lied to ourselves and set ourselves up for disappointment. Of course we can't know, except to realize that all of our dreams, plans and ideas are completely fake. We have made them all up. Not that they won't eventually happen in some general ways, but never exactly the way we picture them. If we could know in advance, it doesn't mean that an accident or a loss still wouldn't "hurt," especially physically, but the surprise, anger and resentment would be severely diminished. This is part of the meaning of realizing that we could die any minute.

So if God is not a "he" or any type of being we can imagine exactly or picture perfectly, what is that "thing" that I feel and talk to? What is that spirit I feel in my mind, heart and soul that I KNOW knows and loves me, that makes me cry my eyes out? What is it that I talk to, beg, plead, cajole, bargain and make one-sided deals with? Forget about all the doctrine, all the circular discussions about theology -- this feeling, this real awareness of the real presence of I AM is what it is all about. You can actually FEEL I AM and know that it, he or she or whatever it is, is there, in the room with you, even if it is just in your mind and/or the minds of those with you, that it is something real, something besides your own brain, that is there, understanding and communicating with you. It is the deepest, most real, wonderful thing you can ever feel. That is what makes all the difference to me. That is who all these people are talking and singing about. That is who many of these people are dying for. That is who many of them are thanking after athletic events and awards ceremonies. And that is why all types of people from all different walks of life throw all reason to the wind and end up looking stupid, because they want to know what it is, although they are trying to define the undefinable.

For the rest of this book I’m going to use the pronoun "IT" for I AM wherever convenient, in place of "he," since God can't possibly be a male in any sense of the word. Using IT instead of "he" will seem weird, and I don't want you to think I have abandoned the "he" concept completely, or that I don't still think of I AM that way, because that is how I came to know and love "him" as a child and that's how I've related to him and thought of him my whole life. But I think we need to think of IT more realistically, or at least try something else, specifically for a change, to get us out of that straw box we've been put into since childhood.