What if God is a Verb?

I’ve personally chosen to hang onto the word “God,” but only because I’ve redefined it for myself--from a noun to a verb. You may end up somewhere different in the end.

What If God Is a Verb?

If you grew up like I did, you were taught that God was a person.

Not just a person—a specific kind of person.

A white-bearded old man in the sky.
A judge.
A cosmic traffic cop.
A Santa Claus keeping track of who’s naughty or nice.
A distant father who needed to kill his son before he could even look at you.

For a while, that version of God worked for me.
Until it didn’t.

IYKYK

Let me be clear—I don’t care where you land.
You may not believe in God at all anymore.
Or maybe you still believe in something—but the word “God” no longer serves you.

I get that. Truly.
Today we’re just looking at my personal journey as an example of how language can be transformed through deconstruction, if we choose.

I’ve personally chosen to hang onto the word “God,”
but only because I’ve redefined it for myself.
It took years. Decades, really.
So if you’re early in that journey—give yourself time.

My path looked like this:

There is a God (noun, person).
There is no God.
Actually… maybe there is a God—
but God is not a noun.
God is a verb.

To me, God is not a being.
God is Being.
God is Love in motion.
Compassion in action.
Presence. Forgiveness. Mystery.

That’s why I call myself an agnostic—
not because I don’t believe,
but because I no longer claim certainty about the nature of the divine.

And that’s also why I call myself a mystic—
because even without certainty,
I still experience something sacred that can’t be explained.

And here’s the wild part:

If there is a God—especially the kind I’ve come to believe in—God doesn’t need you to believe in God in order for you to experience the Love I’ve chosen to call God.

The Mystery doesn’t need your certainty.
Just your openness.

So for me, God is a verb.
And the verb is love.

And if I’m wrong?

Well then I “wasted” the second half of my life believing that Love is so big and mysterious and powerful and central that I made it Divine in my own mind.

I can live with that.

“With this access point, God becomes more a verb than a noun,
more a process than a conclusion,
more an experience than a dogma,
more a personal relationship than an idea.
There is Someone dancing with you and you no longer need to prove to anyone that you are right, nor are you afraid of making mistakes.
Another word for that is faith.”
—Richard Rohr, Yes, And...: Daily Meditations