She said: “I’ve enjoyed your class on the Sacraments, but I have a more burning question that I hope you can help me with.”

I replied: “I’ll try. What’s your question related to?”

She responded: “I want to understand, better know who God is.”

I replied: “God “is - whatever there ‘is’ is God.”

“Cute,” she replied. “However, Tom, I’m not looking for cute, I’m searching for truth.”

I’ve been asked many times to explain God, to clarify the concept of God. Many have challenged me to put the concept of God into an understandable package, embraceable for themselves as reality and truth. I’ve shared these thoughts before, a process that takes a “first three steps.”

But understand this: belief is faith, faith is born of education and acceptance, and acceptance is embracing what oft can’t be proven or seen. Now relax and breathe deeply, journey with me - close your eyes for we don’t see God, rather we perceive the One in all that surrounds us, all that is within us, in all the “is.”

The first step of our journey is to eliminate human terms such as father, king, ruler, punisher and judge. These are terms used to describe God in words we ascribe to ourselves, but this fails for God. For describing the unseen is impossible, describing the One in human terms implies God is like us - the One is not, and that in itself is a profoundly liberating thought.

The second step is to eliminate human necessity such as reward and punishment, status and position, power and wealth, admiration and adoration. These are human necessities we’ve affixed to God from the foundation of religion. Education and the reality of history reveals religions were given birth by human necessity for social control, consolidation of wealth and political power. God is not like us. The One requires no sacrifice, no glory, no admiration or adoration. Aside from love, what possibly can we (the created) give to the One (the Creator) who “is” everything?

The third step in our journey begins with an educated quest to understand the most powerful of human emotions - love. For it’s in the discovery of love’s essential meaning that we eliminate the human concepts of Hell, damnation, rejection and Jihad. To understand the One is to understand that God does not reject, condemn, hate or seek death and punishment, only humans do. The One is not human. We hardly know ourselves - we know almost nothing outside of us, maybe when we know ourselves we’ll begin to know God.

It takes these “first three steps” to begin to understand God. Know this: the journey will be an endless quest. To understand the incomprehensible meaning of God will take a life time - on both sides of the “now” and the “then.” There are these essential truths: God is One - what “is” is because it comes from and is sustained by God, the One requires nothing for nothing is missing in the One. What saves “humanity from humanity” will be our acknowledgement of the indispensable value of love - we will discover that when we fully use the greatest “power” God has given us - intelligence.