In seeking "the perfect religion" for myself, it was recently suggested I start by figuring out what I believe. I already know this isn't the issue, but if I were to follow this rabbit trail....
Do I believe in God? What kind of god?
Yes, I believe in a personified, transcendent, panentheistic Creator-God, the Source of that Exists, That Which Sustains the Universe and Life in It. No other details can really be known. I don't like the idea of the Trinity, as it is a Western Koan to try to show the unexplainability of God precisely by trying to explain God. In that regard, I guess I am a Unitarian.
Do I believe that God reveals Godself to humanity? If so, how?
Hm. I believe in universal revelation in nature, and I believe in personal revelation directly to an individual's heart and mind. I don't know about prophets in the traditional religious sense of the word. I believe that those things that God wants everyone to know, God reveals to everyone through nature, which is assessible to everyone equally. I also believe that God may have different missions for different people, and therefore reveal Godself differently to different people. Perhaps the problem is with some of those people taking it upon themselves to act as prophets and try to convince others of the revelations that were given to them personally? I don't think any personal revelation will be contradicted through universal revelation.
In this regard, I'm not really a Deist, because I do believe God communicates with us and is involved in our lives, not just through nature. But I'm not a Trinitarian Christian, Muslim, or Jew either. Each of them believes in representative revelation, where God supposedly speaks directly to select prophets who are then tasked with passing on the message to others.
What do I believe about the nature of God?
Other than what I mentioned under the first question, in that God is a mystery and cannot be explained nor defined but only experienced, I also believe that God is love (all-good) and omniscient (all-knowing). I do not, however, believe that God is "all-powerful", as this would create a logical impossibility with the other two factors and the fact that there is undeserved suffering in the world. I do not need God to be "all" powerful. If God is powerful enough to create the universe, set it in motion with natural laws and principles, and sustain life, that is plenty powerful for me. That is sufficient power for me to believe that such a God is worthy of worship.
Does God expect to be worshipped? How?
This is I think where we start to unravel, because I do not think that God "expects" it, but I personally desire to worship God. But I need to back up a minute and define what I mean by "worship".
To worship God is to remind myself of my relationship to God; in other words, to humble myself before God. It is to recognize that God is God and I am not God. It is to express gratitude for my life and all the many blessings God has given me. It is to express remorse for disregarding Who God ought to be in my life (priority), and for failing to strive to be the best version of myself that I can reasonably be at any given point in time. Worship is to praise God, which in turn helps me feel safe and secure in a world governed by a powerful, loving, wise God. I worship because of how it makes me feel, and what it reminds me of, not because I think God will get angry if I don't worship God. Worship is for my own benefit. For this reason, I do not believe God "punishes" people who do not worship God "in the right way" because there is no one right way, nor is there even an expectation to worship. People suffer the natural consequences of not worshipping God by lacking direction in their lives, or by failing to improve themselves, or by harboring resentments against others. We create our own little hells, in that regard. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Worshipping God, or not, does not change the fact that God's arms are always open to welcome us. We either come to God in our lifetime and soften the harshness of earthly reality for ourselves, or we suffer through to the end, and finally come to God after death. Better late than never, but why wait if you can experience God's presence sooner?
Religion for me is not about God, ultimately. I am happy with my understanding of God without the input of religions or other people's experiences of God because I have my own experiences of God. Religion for me is about belonging. I don't have a place where I fully belong, and I assumed a place that gathers to worship God ought to feel like a place of belonging. Only it doesn't.
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