"God" Cannot and Should Not Be Limited by Our Language

Too often we try to control, limit, or define God through our symbolic human language. However, human language is always limited and it can never completely capture the nature or extent of Ultimate Reality, who many identify in English with the word "God," who is unlimited and eternal Being itself, and the Ultimate Mystery who is always beyond our comprehension. Hence, we can appreciate Scripture's recording of "God's response" to Moses's request for God's name as being YHWH, "I am who I am," or "I will be who I will be" (Exodus 3:14). This name was considered too "holy" by Jewish people to be uttered, except at specific times in the Jewish Temple before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. Therefore, in the Hebrew Scriptures you will find the term Adonai, translated as "my Lord," being used in place of YHWH.

Even the term "Lord," which is also a human construct, should never be used as a limiting term for who "God" is. At best, we can only seek to describe who "God" is not. For example, even when Scripture says "God is love" (1 John 4:8), that term can only be interpreted as a construct of what humans understand that term to mean. It can never approach "God's" understanding of the meaning of "love." Therefore, we should be careful in so easily dismissing others who may choose to use other symbolic human language to identify their understanding of who "God" is for them, such as "God" is "Mother," or "Creator," or "Ultimate Mystery," or "Presence," or "Lover," or "Life Giver," or some other meaningful symbol.