Wednesday  |  September 15, 2010  |  00:00 AM

…as small as I see him. God is not even limited to him. God is not white. And God definitely does not look like me. The reason I start by saying this is because how we understand God’s being affects everything. The “I AM” of Exodus 3:14 is the one we spend our whole lives serving, looking to understand. Yet in faith we know we will never comprehend all of the mystery that is the being of God. There is so much of God’s presence that we will never fully know, and we accept in faith that this mystery changes everything.

I recently saw the movie “Eat, Pray, Love” based on the novel of author Elizabeth Gilbert’s experience of one year of her life spend traveling in order to pursue various passions in her life. In India, Gilbert lives in an Ashram attempting to know God through Hindu chanting and meditation and time with her guru. Despite the fact that Gilbert’s way of understanding God is broader than the Christian religion, I appreciate her words on the subject:

"Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy."

The fact that in her own life, her deep search for understanding God took her all the way across the world validates the experience of many of the complexity of understanding God’s nature. And for many of us, other cultures can present new perspectives on God. For Gilbert, Indian meditation helped her embrace the difficulty of faith and broaden her understanding of God. Other faith traditions, like the major world religions of Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, offer insights about God’s mystery, transcendence, and universal love. What Gilbert’s life (and the millions like her) represents is the value for Christianity of inter-faith dialogue.

I believe the Evangelical community often views this topic as confusing and suspect or even deeply problematic when in fact I think the field needs greater energy. Inter-faith conversations are not the first step into relativism or agnosticism. My hope is that it opens up our understanding of God as well as encourage us to move toward a more faithful, creative, and even might I say self-critical interfaith dialogue. So often I think we attempt to fit God into our boxes rather than allow God to blow them up. God doesn’t look a thing like me or even how I conceive of God. And to take the idea a step further, I’m not even sure God looks like how many of us within evangelicalism understand God. This doesn’t terrify me, in fact it reminds me that pursuing God with my whole life is an adventure. As we humbly discern the Spirit, a resource the Friends Church knows well, we allow God to work with what we know in part and understand in part to lead us into greater surprises. We are not the judge and jury for the religious communities around the world. Instead we are learners, servants, “envoys of peace” as David Bosch calls us, holding and being held by the deep faith of the Church while exploring all the nuggets of God’s nature we can find around us. With Christ as our model, we find such a deep example of God’s movement in our midst and our invitation to join in. May you never be limited by a small view of God and may you drink deep of the mystery of “I AM,” walking full speed ahead into the dark.