Who Speaks for God?

I’ve said it before and I will say it a hundred times more: All discussion about God is metaphor. When we speak of the infinite, we cannot truly believe to capture it in the finite worlds of language, hierarchy, and human intellect. When we speak of something behind and underlying reality, we cannot seriously expect to grasp it anymore than a stick figure could understand the 3D world. And yet, despite the obvious impossibilities surrounding speaking for God, we are inundated by people and texts which claim to do exactly that. So, ultimately, who speaks for God?

I’m going to make a claim here that will upset a lot of people who love institutional religion. And, truth be told, it upsets me a little because I, too, love many aspects of institutional religion. My claim is this: All authority apart from God opens the door to idolatry.

I don’t care if the authority we’re talking about is a church magisterium, a collection of religious texts, a council or synod, or any number of other means through which we have declared the will of the Almighty. There is no such thing as infallible authority. No Pope, Council, Creed, or corpus can speak with absolute certitude. When we say that the Bible is our infallible authority, we mistake its human authors, editors, compilers, and judges of canonicity for God. We replace the very human wills and minds involved with the mind and will of God. We may say that the Holy Spirit guided them, and therefore they must be infallible in some sense or another. But how are we to know? This is simply an assertion and an assertion I can easily toss to the side.

The reality, difficult as it may be to accept, is that authority is idolatry. When we prop up institutions and declare them the mouthpieces of God, we invite issues for ourselves. We begin to get all tied up with matters of divine decree - we say the decisions of our leaders are divinely inspired because God would never let them go astray, so they must therefore be correct. But how do we know God would never let our organization go astray? Well, because of the texts selected by the organization say so, and we know they’re right because God would never let them teach in error.

Do you see the problem? This is a circle of authority that simply goes around and around without beginning or end. It’s illogical. What we have to accept is that human traditions and wills are the progenitors of all these ideas. We have to be willing to question our authorities, as well as to disagree with them. We should shy away from anyone that claims access to infallible teaching. And we need to wrestle more openly with questions concerning the nature of our walk with God.

In fact, maybe we should do away with any attempts to speak on God’s behalf. Perhaps it would be best if we all presented our ideas as exactly what they are: our ideas. Yes, I may argue for a certain way of practicing religion or growing closer to God, but I don’t actually claim to speak for God, and I don’t think anyone else should either. When we prop up human creations and call them the infallible mouthpieces of God - be they Bibles, councils, or Popes - we make idols of them. Let us tear down these works of human hands and return to the simple peace of God’s silent presence. Maybe there we will find our way.