KEY POINTS:
Recent articles and letters on the nature of atheism, agnosticism and Christian belief all suggest that beneath the secular veneer of our common life, the old questions from which the great religious traditions emerged continue to be asked.
The discussion is about more than what a Bishop said or didn't say. Within the debate lie questions and possibilities that can contribute to the renewal of our cultural and social life.
Religion is intended to be a set of values and perspectives by which life is bound together and the people of a community, a nation, a world, are enabled to live in harmony and peace.
We commonly identify religion with what happens in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples but the word has a more universal meaning. We all have a religion. It is made up of the qualities we most value, our bedrock convictions.
There are good and bad expressions of the religious impulse and we need to be vigilant lest what we assumed to be a positive expression of religion contributes to the world's pain rather than to the renewal of life.
Linked with religion is spirituality, which refers to the personal and moral outcomes of what matters most to us. It includes our attitude to other people, to the well-being of our community and to the natural world.
At its best it refers to a gentleness of living, openness to mystery, sensitivity to neighbour and an imaginative, questing approach to life. But history also witnesses to the shadow side of spirituality when it descends into dogmatic certainty, moralistic dismissal of those with whom one disagrees and violence sanctioned by an imagined all-powerful god.
What of the word God? The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber wrote: " 'God' is the most heavy laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. The races of man, with their religious factions, have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their finger marks and their blood. Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest!"
He concludes: "We cannot cleanse the word God and we cannot make it whole. But, defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great concern."
Within the Christian tradition, the word God describes the sense of "more" that humans experience in life. It refers to a purpose, a love, a creative energy at the heart of creation.
The Jewish Scriptures present a variety of images of God - shepherd, wind, king, mother, potter, judge, friend. The overlapping and conflicting images witness to the ultimate incapacity of humans to fully grasp or describe God.
Before the mystery and the essential goodness of life, and aware of the limitations of human language, Christian theologians agree we should tread carefully lest we use the word God in a casual manner or to serve our own advantage.
The dominant tradition within Christian churches has tended to describe God as an inflated human being who is all powerful, all knowing, and who is, above all, judge and punisher of human error.
Forty years ago a group of young theologians startled the church with the statement that "God is dead". When the dust had settled and the media had stopped to draw breath, it became clear that the god whose death they celebrated was the inherited image of God as an all-powerful oriental despot.
Many who describe themselves as atheist seem to be denying this despotic picture of God that has been discarded by thoughtful Christian believers.
The emerging Christian view of God finds the essential clue to the Divine presence in the love embodied in the life and death of Jesus. God is the "glue" that holds life together, the energy of creative love, continually breathing possibility and purpose into human living.
Creation is an ongoing activity in an evolving universe. The great destiny of humans is to be co-creators of a future shaped by love, justice and hospitality.
At each moment of human living and communal decision-making, we choose what sort of future we seek for our world. We ally ourselves with the creative, loving possibilities embodied in Jesus and present at the heart of life or we choose futures that set aside the possibility of justice, peace and community.
Belief in God has less to do with an answer at the end of an argument than a way of life shaped by generosity, forgiveness and awareness of mystery.
The experiment of living without any sense of the Divine, the great heresy of "secularism" (secularity regarded as a religion), has failed.
Some want to recapture a sense of God as the all-powerful being whose chief work is that of judge. It is the very image of God that has authored wars, crusades and intolerance.
Within the second view of God, hinted at above, lies the possibility not only for a renewal of the Christian way but for all who seek purpose in life.
* Keith Rowe is a Christian theologian who has held positions in the Methodist Church of New Zealand and the Uniting Church in Australia.
