1. Opening Questions
What is your experience of God this week?
What words best help you express the reality of God in your life?
In what ways have you experienced and understood God at various stages of your life?
What riches grow out of your relationship with God at this time in your life
What hymns prayers and other writing experess most accurately your experience of God
Say aloud words that you associate with the word God.
2. Summary
Borg presents two responses to the question:
" the God of supernatural theism
- a person-like being separate from the universe
- an all-powerful, all-knowing, lawgiving authority figure who loves us, but who may also punish us
- one who occasionally intervenes in human affairs
"an encompassing reality or Spirit"
- the One in whom we live and move and have our being
- the One in whom we live, as a fish lives in water
- the reality of all that is
- the One of whom mystics speak;
".. .a luminous light shining through everything…a falling away of sharp boundaries between ourselves and the world that marks our everyday consciousness…a place of amazement, wonder and joy in which I see more clearly than ever…"
Consistent with the first part of his teaching, he presents God's nature in two ways:
•a God who is punitive and who might
punish a sinner forever in hell—resulting
in a relationship that includes fear
•a God who is gracious, compassionate
and understood as an expression of
the lines from John's gospel, "For God
so loved the world…"—resulting in a
relationship free of fear and full of awe
3. Questions
a. Where are you now with regard to these two contrasting ways of thinking of God?
b. To what extent have you experienced these two "God" realities?
c. In your case what have been your stages of spiritual awareness, religious activity, and awareness of God.
d. What people or experiences that had an impact on your personal journey of spiritual and religious formation.
e. What difference does the way someone sees Gods character (1 or 2) make to his or her day-to-day living?
f. What challenges and opportunities currently present themselves to you?
g What practices enable you to stay open to the movement of the Spirit
4. Closing
Borg quotes the poem by Denise Levertov (1923-1997), "The Avowal."
The Avowal
"As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace."