GOMY – the God Of My Youth

From a member of long standing of a large UCA congregation:

I am not sure if i have anything of interest to add to the subject of progressive Christianity but one thing I am certain of is that the God Of My Youth, The God  that  I call GOMY, for me, no longer exists , if in fact he ever existed.    Now that I have come to that conclusion I have to decide what sort of God do I need in my life, if I wanted a God that makes sense in the 21st century.   The difficulty is that GOMY  is probably the God that by and large is the UCA  God .  So where do I go now?

God  that  I call GOMY, for me, no longer exists , if in fact he ever existed.    Now that I have come to that conclusion I have to decide what sort of God do I need in my life, if I wanted a God that makes sense in the 21st century.   The difficulty is that Gomy  is probably the God that by and large is the UCA  God .  So where do I go now?

See for forty years I have been a proud member of the Uniting Church  and some thirty years prior to that in one of its founding churches .  One night many years ago it dawned on me that GOMY  doesn’t talk to me . I pray to him but he doesn’t talk to me .  Now that is not a difficult thing for the creator of the world to do I would think.  But no not a word not even a throat clearing  or whisper.  So the next question that occurred to me was, does GOMY, or did GOMY ever really exist?  Is the God that I was taught to pray to just a figment of my imagination.

What sort of God could I expect, in the 21st century, to be a legitimate and acceptable God. You know the sort of thing , a God that has been around for billions of years, not for no more than eight thousand years .   Would this modern God want to be worshipped and can  I pray to this God , can I ask this God to do stuff or change the weather?

For the past 10 or 20 years I have tried to do the GOMY – modern God shuffle.  You know the sort of thing, try to change words during the hymns and prayers to words that make sense to my current thinking .  Trouble is that the pattern  it is too incessant and there is nobody speaking my language .    I am thinking that it is all too hard . I am never going to change the GOMY worshipers in my church .   I will just keep enjoying the fellowship of people I have known for many years and keep  doing the shuffle  .  Still I can dream of a 21st century church . Sounds like fun.

oOo

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