“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions.”  (Stephen Hawking)

Professor Hawking is one of the most intriguing men of our time.  He is known for his work in the field of physics and was popularized by a book, “A Brief History of Time,” that reached a broad audience.  He is undoubtedly a brilliant mathematician, he can reconstruct the universe in his mind using numbers and formulas, and has basically proved that the universe (including time) had a definite beginning.  But Hawking is agnostic, he sees a big impersonal ‘God’ when he looks into the expanse of space and is probably right about what he sees.

A Small View of God

Many people (religious fundamentalists and atheists especially) subscribe to a small view of God.  They confine God to simple ‘black and white’ human moral or logical thinking (theirs) and essentially demand a God on their level.  But if God is the creative force behind the entire universe, then God is bigger than the universe and also bigger than any of the concepts of morality or logic in the universe.  A big concept of God is a God that transcends universal moral categories and exists above or beyond all human reasoning.  A God bigger than scientific law or religion.

Finding God in Our Humility

Picture humanity as an infant, this earth as our playpen and the universe the house over our heads.  We can see the room, we can speculate about other rooms and theorize about some sort of reality beyond house.  We know house is predictable, the temperatures fall between certain parameters, schedules are somewhat consistent and yet we see through a foggy window that there could possibly be more than the house we are in.  God is like the parent who can come and go, lives beyond the playpen and our childish mind.

Finding God Beyond Our Own Dimensionality

But my concept and understanding of God goes beyond that have a celestial parent or personality.  I believe Biblical personification of God is simply an attempt to explain what is inexplicable.  Still, I do believe God can give himself personality to relate to us and is more than some vague life force or abstraction.  I believe God is a spirit or mind, but one that dwells beyond the rules of science that govern the dimensions of this universe.  In other words, God sees the Tesseract of our limited dimensionality and exists beyond all dimensionality.

Finding God Beyond Material Reality

I know this might not appeal to those with the materialism perspective who do not feel inclined to accept reality beyond their ability (or the ability of their scientific instruments, mathematics and logic) to see.  But science has many limits.  We cannot scientifically prove our own consciousness exists and still accept it as reality.  Not everything of our reality is provable by experiment or calculations, some things we must just know and accept as reality, the reality of our consciousness one of those things and the idea of greater consciousness another.

Finding God Beyond Cold Calculation

“Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”  (Stephen Hawking)

Professor Hawking and other theoretical physicists seek a ‘unified theory’ for their science, an explanation for the paradoxical discoveries that upset a simpler idea of the universe, but the day it is found (if these ‘dice’ were left within our reach) there will be more questions unanswerable by science.  Questions of why, of purpose and morality are probably beyond math.  Why we do not believe it is immoral for a cat to eat a mouse, both sentient beings, the cat remorseless, and yet to kill becomes an issue of morality for us.  Why care if the weak are exploited?

A Unified Theory of God

We are sentient, we are also moral creatures and our morality needs to enter the grand equation or we are left with little more than cold calculus that starts with star dust then ends with the heat death of the universe.  We know there is something more just as we know we consciously exist and therefore we need a bigger view of God than Hawking’s.  We need a God so big he can be personally involved or, in other words, a unified theory of an intimate and big God.  Consciousness, morality and science offer us a place to start a pursuit of God, but we need to pursue further…

The Personal and Intimate God

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”  “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”  The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”  Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”  (John 4:19-26 NIV)

Looking Backwards and Beyond the Universe for God

Many search for God, but do they look in the right place to find God?  The religious are like this woman who met Jesus, they seek God in physical objects like places, rituals or books.  The scientific mind looks further out, they search the universe for answers down to the tiniest particles and up to the lights of the sky.  But both are looking outward to find God and truth.  Could it be our mind is the closest possible connection we could ever have to the realities beyond the material, mathematical and time universe?

Finding God in the Moral Mind

If the entire universe can be compressed to the size of a point as small as the period at the end of this sentence, then a God big enough to be simultaneously small is not such a big leap.  So perhaps Hawking, like that woman talking to Jesus, is looking in the wrong direction to find the person of God?