The Oneness of God
Opening the Boundaries of the Numeric Mind
When I was in first grade, I loved math. It was my favorite subject. I loved the way the numbers connected to each other and how new meaning came to life through simple equations. There was a little wrinkle, though, I am dilexic. My parents were not aware of it, and I am not sure my teachers knew what dislexia was at the time.
As I started second grade, I began to learn about multiplications. This is when things started to get difficult. I started to get frustrated. Numbers made sense in my head, but not on paper. When it came down to reading equations and writing the answers down, the numbers got mixed up. I wrote the wrong answer. Sadly, the rest of my schooling was marked by math teachers who made it even harder. I passed with the minimum grade required, and learned enough math to just get by through high-school.
So, math is not my thing. I am so scarred by my math experience that I get anxious when my seven-year-old daughter asks me about simple subtraction and addition. I am afraid to give her the wrong answer. I am afraid of being wrong.
The one number that got engrained in me is “one.” The reason is that in church we were constantly reminded and indoctrinated in the fact that we believed in The One and Only God. We learned Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Ephesians 4:4-6, and all the other verses in which the Bible says that God is one.
As a result, I saw and understood the One God as our sole possession. I was imbued with the ideology of a numeric mind in which our monotheism is a source of conflict. In other words, if we worship and possess the One and Only God, nobody else in this world can worship or possess God outside of our religious boundaries. If they want to be connected to the divine, they must join our way of believing.
This way of understanding God has created a lot of conflict. It has paved the way to justify our violence in the name of God. We have come to believe that the One and Only God needs our protection and defense against the other lesser gods. Consequently, if others believe in a different deity or don’t believe at all, they are wrong, lost, dammed, and destined for hell.
But, what if we got it wrong? What if God is one but not in the way we think about math? God’s oneness is not necessarily about numbers and the possession of the truth. It is about a characteristic of God, for God being the One in everything and everyone becomes a unifying force. The numeric mind cannot grapple with this idea because it is limited by a tribalistic understanding of the truth and God. For affirming the oneness of God would affirm the unity of our world. And, that is very hard to understand amid a highly polarized society.
I believe that the numeric and tribalistic mentality in Evangelical Christianity is a source of conflict. We are still debating about who has the truth, when we ought to turn our eyes to the most vulnerable of our world. We are still trying to possess The- One-and-Only-God, instead of stopping the sacrifice of society’s most expendable at the altars of our idols—the market, politics, morals, progress, and so on.
When we recite the Christian creeds and read Scripture, could we read the One as Unifying? If we do so, our beliefs and theologies would become freed up form petty apologetics that try to prove we possess the truth and God. We could be liberated to build true relationships and friendships with others who may not think, believe, and worship in the same way we do. We would actually believe in true freedom of religion and the basic dignity of all human beings. In other words “instead of a unit, the ‘oneness’ of God affirms a unity.”1
As I grow older, I still get nervous when calculating the tip at a restaurant. I get confused when I do my taxes. I get anxious when I work the budgets for the projects that I lead. I have grown bolder, however, when it comes to speaking my mind about the oneness of God. I have relaxed in the fact that God brings everything together in and through Christ. Even if that does not align with my tribalistic evangelical upbringing.
Not too long ago, a friend who grew up atheist asked me: “why do you still believe?” My response was: “because if we truly believe in a God in whom there is no violence…” and then I quoted James Carroll, “monotheism is not a source of conflict, but the source of conflict resolution” and transformation.
Caroll, James. Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How The Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Pg. 61
“There was a little wrinkle, though, I am dilexic”.
You got me with this. Great piece!
This is seriously awesome, Joel. Thank you for putting it so simply. The "oneness" of God doesn't name his exclusivity to those who get him "right", but names God as the generous convergence of every earnest desire.