I was asked this yesterday by a coworker of mine. You would think that, for me, the answer would have been simple: "Of course I believe in God! I am a Catholic, after all." But that's not what came to mind, and that's not what I said. I paused. As I looked at the dumb, ignorant commoners who asked me that question, I couldn't help but wonder what the word "God" meant to them.
Do you realize how profoundly ignorant and common a thing man is next to the perfect? Can you imagine how mundane and pedestrian your highest thoughts would be to Christ? Now how did he meet these fishermen--these often ignorant and common men?
There's the only meaningful answer to your problem.
If the living God who died for them and wept for them and walked among them, not on the noble streets of Rome or Athens, surrounded by philosophers, but along the backwaters and backroads of Israel--if He takes a different approach, you might want to rethink your standard of address and context.
Did they really understand the word?
In the particular? Who knows. But a child could understand what needs to be grasped.
Or does it describe some kind of lovey dovey idea they got from their culture, an anthropomorphic construction that they use to feel better about themselves? Do they believe in a God who loves us pathologically, some great sugar daddy in the sky, and who himsef looks an aweful lot like a man?
Christ looked exactly like a man, loved us sufficiently to ride the cross into death and has come that we have life more abundantly. Funny how a slight change in perspective can alter a conclusion isn't it.
