Can we define God?

A young child once asked, 'Who created God?' In the mind of a child, if we can trace everything back to a moment at which it was created, then God too, must have been created. The logic is sound, except that creation assumes that there is a prime mover.

Philosophers such as René Descartes would argue that this prime mover is God, but the quest to understand who God is represents a journey that each of us must undertake in the context of faith.

Catholic tradition has always defined God as the author of good, and classically pits good agains evil, which it defines as the absence of God. Modern-day theatre such as J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings and George Lucas' Star Wars both deal with the age-old questions of good and evil.

In the case of Star Wars, what some refer to as the 'spiritual rhelm' is defined as 'the Force'. The Jedi seeks to harness the Force and to draw energy from that which 'surrounds us and penetrates us ... (and) binds the galaxy together' but unlike the Christian understanding of goodness and blessing which are gifts from God, the Force also has a dark side. In the words of the Jedi master Yoda, 'Anger ... fear ... agression. The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join ou in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your desitny, consume you it will ...'

Like the Jedi who is in search of harnessing the Force to do good, Christians also are on a quest to identify good and evil - blessing and curse. This divine mystery, properly understood, leads the believer to realize that all human beings reach a point on the journey when we appreciate the importance of the virtue of humility. When humans meet God in prayer, one of the first lessons we learn is humility - that we are not in charge: of our own lives, of our own destiny.

The Church father Augustine believed that 'if you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility and the third is still humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not precede all that we do, our efforts are fruitless.'

Being strong in the Force, like Yoda, Obi-Wan and even Darth Vader is therefore akin to the Christian understanding that the purpose of our being is to seek, know and serve God. The further we are along this journey of discovery, knowledge and service, the more we grow in our understanding of the One who created all things.