I appreciate their dilemma and sometimes chide a class of students to "get over it" because I intend to use the term in part because it's so easy to use as shorthand.
The question is, though, "God" is shorthand for what, exactly?
My prior blog article spoke of a new dispensation wherein a growing understanding is evolving of "God" as something far different than the anthropomorphic "man" on a throne far away who watches our every move, eager to toss most of us into the fiery dustbin at the slightest infraction!
So if you, or a friend or family member, bristles at the notorious "God" word, I have a few simple suggestions:
1. Should we use a new word? That's been tried and like the gender thing (she, he, "they" etc.) it's still a bit awkward. Fellow teachers I know often like to use the phrase "the Divine," and I use it too, but it seems so lifeless, so pallid. God isn't a mere "thing" or dumb "force" like "the Force" or electricity. There IS a personal element to "the Force." Who can love the Cosmic Ground of Being? At Ananda we often follow Yogananda's lead (and Swami Kriyananda's, our founder) in referring to God as Divine Mother. I do too but that's most comfortable among fellow members and less comfortable in public settings (though I still use it there, too). But it can prompt further questions of its own.
2. I am of a mind to simply educate others and help them to "get over it."
3. Think of God, then as the pure joy of a smile; the pure joy of pure joy; the beauty and harmony of nature; kindness; the innocence and wonder of a small child or young pet or animal; I see all these pet and animal and nature pictures on Facebook: see the face of God in such as these!
4. Think of God as the pure love of true friendship: respectful, considerate, sympathetic, yet wise, and mutually serviceful. You may have to imagine such friendship for it is rare. But the exercise is worth it!
5. Think of God as the intelligence, bounty, and joy of the life "flowing through your veins!" The heartbeat of your life, or the vitality, health and energy, within in you; in others, in nature and in the cosmos itself!
6. Think of God as the summation of all the sound and power in the universe, like a mighty roar, the power, awe and beauty of thunder and lightning!
7. Think of God as the light of the sun, all suns, stars, galaxies and the colors of the infinite rainbow of color. A thousand million suns into One!
8. Think of God as the seemingly infinite space of the cosmos: deeply calm and expanding toward infinity in all directions; in which all objects float like island universes! Feel your awareness of space expanding outward spherically. Yogananda wrote, the body of God is space. If you want to feel God's presence feel the space all around you and expand it outward to infinity. Feel the space within your own body, knowing that science tells us that the quantifiable matter of our body, emptied of the space between all particles, would fill but a thimble!
9. See the presence and hand of God in all circumstances, positive or negative; all life flows to and through us according to the magnetism of our own patterns, past and present, in its unending process of becoming. Through life's experiences God is talking to us: have a "conversation with God."
10. Hear God's voice in the voice of His messengers; read His words in the true teachings of saints, masters and avatars; see His actions in the lives of such great souls and apply their lessons to your daily life. Call on those great ones whom your heart feels attuned to for inner guidance. These more than any other manifestation of God in this world are the purest channels and guides to our soul awakening.
Like a hippie friend once said: "Good God, man, get over "It!" "
Or as I like to plagiarize: "There's no god but God. There's no good but God; there's no thing but God; God alone, God in All."
Or, as Jesus put it: "And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."
Joy is within you,
Swami Hrimananda