Who Is God & Do We Need Him? It was Bhartrhari that once said, “Our life is like the ' unstable wave, Our bloom of youth decays. Our joys are brief as lightning flash n summer 's cloudy days, Our riches fleet as swift as thought; Faith in the One Supreme Alone will bear us o 'er the gulfs Of Being 's stormy stream.” Though Bhartrhari presents to us a great truth, it also leaves the reader with a question. This question is simply, who is the “One Supreme Alone” that this author speaks of? Who is God? What makes Him so “Supreme”? Does this “Supreme One” server purpose in today’s society? I would like to argue that this “Supreme God” is sovereign, triune, has many of other attributes that complements His superlative ways, and He is indeed needed in our lives today! God is sovereign. Sovereignty means that “God exercises power over his creation” (Systematic Theology, 216) this means that God has the very right to do what He wants, when He wants and how He wants to do it. He does this without asking any questions or taking up the approval of anyone else. He is His own boss and needs no one else. This is reminded to us in the book of Isaiah 45:6-7 which says, “That people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, and I am the Lord, who does all these things.” God is sovereign. God’s sovereignty is found in His creation of
What does it mean for God to be “sovereign?” This is the question that has perhaps caused more controversy than any other. For John Calvin, God was completely sovereign. Nothing outside the will of God could take place, because everything that has taken place, is taking place, or will take place has been divinely ordained before time began. God is the source of all good, and evil cannot take place without His permission. According to Calvin, all of humankind are lost in their sins, and so depraved that they are incapable of finding salvation without God performing an inner-miracle within them. This being said, God has elected to Himself a chosen people from the beginning of time, not off of merit, but sola gratia.
The common ground of religions in the world is that they claim the existence of god/gods who holds the power beyond human ability. Each religion explains its existence in their own unique ways and implement it to people’s lifestyle. The film, 330 Million Gods, seeks to understand the Hinduism way of explanation. This documentary mainly focuses on the Hindu concept of divine, religious practices, and the stages of life. Also, the documentary illustrates how Indian lifestyle blends into its religion in the big cities – city of Benares and rural areas – village of Bhith Bhagwanpur. The most interesting points of this film presents to me are the idea of many gods with different sets of ability, how the Hindus practice the religion, and the concept
God is our creator, He loves and protect us, He wants us to be safe and happy.
The Hindus call their supreme reality “Brahman,” a God of infinite being, infinite awareness, and infinite bliss. “Utter reality, utter consciousness, and utterly beyond all possibility of frustration is the basic Hindu view of God” (Smith 1991). Hinduism sees their God as an archetype of supremacy with the noblest crown, a parent, loving, merciful, almighty, eternal salvation, and an understanding companion. There is also a distinction between personal (ramanuja) and transpersonal (shankara) notions of God in Hinduism; “God so conceived is called Saguna Brahman, or God-with-attributes or God-without-attributes, Nirguna Brahman” (Smith, 1991). Also, it is important to realize that God’s relation in Hinduism varies on symbolism and what is embraced: the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer who resolves all finite forms of life. They view the world as “God-dependent.” A personalist in Hinduism “will see little religious availability in the idea od a God who is so far removed from our predicaments as to be unaware of our very existence” (Smith, 1991). Were as a transpersonalist sees God serving as a master in their life to guide them through their struggles and becomes possessed by this
Truth, what is truth? This question itself has a thousand answers, no person can ever be sure of what truth is rather, truth can be justified, it can checked for reliability with strong evidences and logic. If the evidence proves to be accurate then it can be established that a certain answer is the truth. However, have we ever tried to think about what intrigues us to seek the truth? To think about a question and set foot firmly on the path of knowledge. Definitely it has! That was the very cause itself which is why this world has witnessed some of the greatest philosophers like Aristotle, Plato and Socrates etc. along with the school of thought. The ability to think and reason is one of the greatest ability humans have, it is what
However you know Him/Her, God is the ultimate Sovereign. He/She rules all that He/She surveys and answers to no-one above Him/Herself. So in the entire universe, God is the Absolute Sovereign, and every force in nature including human conduct is His/her subject and under the control of "The Laws of Nature", i.e. "gravity", "cause and effect",
One Nation under GOD Since 1952 when these four words were first drafted into the Pledge of Allegiance, that phrase has remained synonymous with the United States of America and the spirit of the American People. But what does that really mean? And more importantly, what do those four words have to do with us today? Ronald Reagan once said, “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under”, which raises the question, “why?” Why is GOD so important to the United States of America? To answer that, one must journey to the start of our Country, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was presented and signed by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of a nation. The next question is, if GOD is
1. Because of man’s ignorance and curiosity, arguments for the existence of God have been made over the years. Basically, these arguments are divided into two large groups i.e. logical and metaphysical. Actually, these arguments seek to prove that the existence of a being or having faith with at least one attribute that only God could have is logically necessary.
Before I read Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, I did not know much about Hinduism. For me, Hinduism conjured the images of bright colors, richly adorned statues, and jovial worship and dance. When we visited the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, that is exactly what I saw. Yet, now I know the reason for all these things. Although Hinduism is a largely varying tradition, it is namely about love and celebration. Given the evidence from Prothero’s book and my observations at the Ganesh Temple, Hinduism is a tradition that aims to gives purpose to human’s wandering souls through devote worship to deities and rituals.
First, many theologians have assumed that if God is all-powerful, omnipotent, which the Bible clearly teaches (e.g., 1Chron 29:11; Jer 32:17; Mt 19:26; Rev 1:8; 19:6), that nothing in his creation can ever thwart his will. At the very least, it is reasoned, God
Hinduism and Buddhism are both eastern traditions with much to say about the human condition as well as the reason human beings exist at all. In some ways they are different while also being similar in other ways. In this essay, those differences will be discussed and the similarities examined for their message. In conclusion, we will examine what these two faiths offer to the human beings of the twenty-first century.
The question on whether there is a God is not very easy to answer. There are two many sides to this question. There is the scientific side that shows that man has evolved over time to its current state. Then there is the theological side that says that God created man, the earth, and the heavens. But what is the real answer or is there any answer at all.
The question of whether there is any clear evidence of God's existence, tried to argue for many centuries, by engaging in this enlightened minds, representing both positions on this controversy.In recent years, evidence refuting the possibility of the existence of God have become the cause of many clashes, accusing at the same time anyone who dares to say that he believes in God, a man who believes illusions and irrational.Karl Marx stressed that everyone who believes in God must suffer from a mental disorder which affects its ability to correct thinking.The psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote that a person who believes in God the Creator has the illusion and asserts itself in this belief because they believe in the factor "fulfilling the
The catholic four common core questions, what is our relationship to God, How does one live a life of meaning and purpose, what is our relationship with the natural world and how can we form a more just society for the common good can be answered differently. However, the great books in the Catholic Intellectual tradition answered these questions in a broad distinctive way. This essay will examine the question, what is our relationship with God, from the view point of three writers, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Pope Paul. What is our relationship with God was a better one answered by these writers. Most Christians refer a relationship with God to praying and communicating with him. As an explanation, many well-meaning Christians will explain that you can develop a personal relationship with God by “seeing Jesus. However, the great books in the Catholic Intellectual tradition such as Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, etc. have a broader explanation of our relationship with God. They say a relationship with God is being fully human, living a meaningful life and having a relationship with the triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
As stated by William Blackstone, man is considered to be a creature that "must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. [A]s man depends absolutely upon his maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker 's will (Brauch). In other words, God’s creation should be directed by the will of God our creator. Blackstone suggests that the law of nature relevant to God has full reliance on God. "For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so when he created man and endued him freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid