I believe in God.

I believe in Him because He visited me – some years ago now – a comfortable and comforting experience I’ve described. Whether He was fact or fantasy is unknowable and unimportant. He was real to me – and where else is another’s reality but in one’s mind? You reading this are similarly incredible and indelible. I sense you; I can hear you breathe; therefore to me you are.

My God is non-sectarian, non-exclusive. There is much I don’t know about Him and never will. In this He’s like any acquaintance. There is much about Jane, for example, I don’t know and never will. Much about myself remains hidden. Any relationship is based on fragmentary evidence. That is why I find theology stupid and tedious, laboriously proving what cannot be proved.

My God is always with me, mostly, I’d say, in a supervisory capacity. The right way for me is one which is not wrong. Sometimes my impulses misdirect me. I think twice when I hear God clearing his throat. “Ahem!” sounds a lot like “Amen.”

My God is not for or against any of the world’s faiths. He made them all, after all, and appreciates their efforts in His behalf. He sighs at how often they’re misused to promote selfish ends. Why would God seek strife among the people of earth? It makes no sense.

Recently, in America, God’s name has been hurled like slingshots. God, some assert, is a plutocrat who deplores science, sneers at truth, and reviles immigrants, women, and people of color. How can this be right? One of God’s designated representatives, New York’s Cardinal Dolan, lauded the incendiary and divisive Charlie Kirk as a “modern day Saint Paul.” One can’t help wondering what his boss, Pope Leo XIV, thought of that.

Because God is good, he urges good and discourages evil. Good and evil aren’t that hard to tell apart. Where they’re a matter of opinion – in politics, say – God leaves it to humans to work things out. Why God doesn’t dispatch evildoers with thunderbolts has long puzzled observers; it just isn’t His style.

No one can discredit another’s God – my God is firm on that point. To each their vision. If the vision be true, the effect on one’s life should be wholesome. My God is my affair, yours yours. If you don’t believe in God, that’s OK too. I didn’t most of my life. Life goes on.

I like my God, listen to Him and seek His approval. He improves me. His presence consoles. I don’t expect an afterlife, so His value is now. I am not angling for better treatment in the beyond.

God’s apparent absence from earth seems an argument against His existence. Why does He permit humans to behave so vilely? Is he indifferent? Sadistic? Impotent? Fed up? If I were God, I’d rue my creation – but then I’m not God.

History suggests God’s influence surges and ebbs. For most of my years, it’s been ebbing. Now I sense it surging. He is more and more in people’s mouths and minds, not just mine. He comes when called. He’s called when humans feel lost without Him, when being without some exalting improbable purpose seems insufficient. A force of nature, like the sun or sea, God moves many to goodness, while others wield Him as a weapon to smite their foes. No one speaks for God, though in some people more in touch with Him we sense His presence. I often wish God issued more specific instructions but not a chance. “You know,” He says tenderly, but sternly.