Is God real? On first glance, this question seems simple and those of us who are people of faith will answer, "Of course, God is real." On further reflection, the question is not at all simple, and we do well to think through our answer more carefully. One description of God is that God is "ultimate reality." Another one is, "God is Creator and Lord." Still a third response is that "God is Love." For this post, let's put the the second two descriptions aside and consider the first.God is ultimate reality. By this definition God is real but somehow different from the rest of reality, which is mundane rather than ultimate. And that is just about all we can say about God as ultimate reality. What is ultimate reality? How is it different from everyday reality? Is God as ultimate reality bound by the laws of normal every day reality? Will we one day discover some that God has a physical presence in the universe that we haven't yet detected? Our five human senses, the way we perceive reality, are all geared to detecting physical realities and while we acknowledge that some things are not "essentially" physical, such as love, yet they are real in a physical context. Is the same true for God? Is there something about God that is physical?
Or, are there aspects of reality, still hidden from us, that are beyond physical reality? If so, what is the relationship of the metaphysical to the physical, and if God is a metaphysical reality what, again, is God's relationship to the physical world? If we are limited by our senses to experiencing the physical world as the real world for us, then can we even answer any of these questions? Or are they quite literally non-sense?
In the final analysis, we simply do not know how to deal with such abstract questions apart from faith. We can say, "I believe that there is an ultimate reality beyond physical reality and that God is that ultimate reality." Or, we can say, "I do not believe that there is such a thing as ultimate reality." Theism and atheism are our choices, and to date we have no way of deciding which response is the correct one, which fact leads some to a third non-committal response of, "I don't know." Agnosticism, indeed, seems to be the most logical response in face of the difficulties we face in otherwise discerning whether there is or is not a reality beyond physical reality.
From the perspective of faith, in other words, thinking of God as "ultimate reality" doesn't take us very far. If we ground our faith in a God that is "ultimately real," all that we are left with is a bald, formless belief. For, what else can we say about something that is ultimate? Did this ultimate create reality or is it part of created reality? If we affirm the ultimate reality of God, all we can really say about God is that God is Beyond our perceptions of reality. God is Beyond any knowledge we can have of God, at least so far. Maybe some day we will figure out what "ultimate" reality is and thus we can gain for ourselves knowledge of God—or, maybe we'll find a way to prove there is no ultimate reality at all. But we have not reached either such point yet. We either choose to believe in God, not to believe in God, or not to choose. Those are our choices when it comes to God the Beyond. Stay tuned.
