God?

 “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science . . . It was the experience of mystery –even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate . . . it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”  (Albert Einstein, 1879—1955) 

I am an agnostic. I seek to know God, but God is elusive. I distrust those who claim to know for sure, whether it be the certainty of the fundamentalist or the certainty of the atheist.  What I know definitively is that I don’t know. Fortunately, in the milieu in which I was raised, there was acceptance of question, debate, and doubt. 

My parents were not religious. Nevertheless, I attended a Conservative Jewish Sunday school.  I was taught history, holidays, and life cycles.  I was taught prayer, but I was not taught about God.  Maybe for my teachers, some who had numbers tattooed on their arms, it was just too soon and too painful to talk about God.  Still, I was curious. 

I remember the philosophical talks I had in grade school with my friend Paul.  We figured that there must be something in the universe that is as far beyond our comprehension as we humans are above an amoeba’s.  And that’s what we call God. 

As a young teenager, I often went to services hoping through prayer to have an experience of God, but it didn’t happen.  Then one Shabbat morning, a friend called asking if I wanted to play football.  With little second thought, I chose football over prayer, and that religiously observant phase of my life abruptly ended. 

Some years later I tried a new tactic, the lottery.  I bargained with God.  “God, if I win the lottery I will follow your commandments, AND I will give half of my winnings to charity.”  I was offering God the chance for a win-win-win.  I win. Charity wins. God wins. I didn’t win. 

In college I took Intro to Philosophy and learned what the philosophers had to say on the subject.  However, the god of the philosophers was so abstract that God ceased to be relevant.  What I was seeking was not an abstraction called "god," but a personal, caring god. 

My seeking, my questioning, and my un-answering has continued well into my adult years. So now what do I the agnostic say when my children ask if I believe in God? I say that I am open to the possibility that the world is more than just matter and energy.  I am open to the possibility of God. I am even open to the possibility that we experience “God moments.” fleeting glimpses of God’s presence in our lives. 

For me, God remains a mystery.  Perhaps God is Mystery. Despite a lifetime of doubting, I continue seeking. Like Einstein, I too am a deeply religious man.