Click for Audio: The Creative Life Force
Many have thought of God as a personal being. The statement that God is Principle chills them, and in terror they cry out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him” (Jn. 20:13). … God is the name we give to that unchangeable, inexorable principle at the source of all existence. To the individual consciousness God takes on personality, but as the creative underlying cause of all things, He is principle, impersonal; as expressed in each individual, He becomes personal to that one—a personal, loving, all-forgiving Father-Mother. –Emilie Cady
In this passage, Emilie Cady addresses the age old question of the personal and the transcendent nature of God. For some, the concept of God as a bearded old man watching over the world from a throne in the sky is comforting. Others find such imagery counter intuitive, irrational and illogical enough to debunk all of religion. Cady helps us understand God as both the universal energy and intelligence that permeates every aspect of the universe and as the personal, all-sustaining presence that numbers even the “hairs on your head.”
My preference is to know God as the Creative Life Force whose nature is to perpetually express more life, love, power, and intelligence through all of creation and through me specifically. As such, God is my guiding, healing, prospering Source that beckons me to be still and know when I am seeking the highest and best both for myself and for others.
The universal nature of God assures that my personal thoughts and actions do not affect or change the behavior of God; they only change and affect the way I relate to God. I cannot disappoint God any more than I can disappoint the law of mathematics by insisting that 2+2=5. God, “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17) is personal and universal, a present help and an eternal support of all that I am and all that I desire to be.