Ethical Theism

Humanism is the ethical orientation toward human beings, and in parallel there is an ethical orientation toward God which can be called "ethical theism". An ethical theist believes not just that God exists, but that God is a person, someone who has his own personality, thoughts, feelings, history, his own preferred name or names, his own preferences, his own trustings. To an extent, God is the way he is and we have to come to love him as he is. He does not exist solely for our own benefit, but instead exists in his own right. He is someone who can receive love, be lonely, be driven half-insane with the pain of love, of dealing with our rejection of him (and the pain of seeing and feeling what we do to each other).

There is an atheism that denies that God exists, but another that denies that God is a person, the kind of being who can be seen as a personal being, someone who can really suffer, have needs, have personhood. I'm not sure any existing religion really sees God as a person -- maybe so, somewhere. What I tend to hear is people who think of God as a professional, or an awe-inspiring power, or a king, or a father -- but not the king whose head hangs down at the end of the day, or the father whose feelings can be hurt. It seems often that we want God to be a dispenser of goods, and that God is not someone to be loved in a deep way, the way that we love people we know, or even distant or past oppressed people groups. And because we can't love God that way, for ethical purposes he tends to cease to exist for us.

If we, as ethical people, ignore God in his personhood and suffering, we do something that we find deplorable when done to human beings.

Naturally, human suffering and personhood is widely believed in and undeniable. For those who do not claim to know God, they might say "we know that human suffering and personhood are real, but God we are not so sure about". That uncertainty should not lead us to dismiss the topic, but to have concern that we may be leaving a sensitive being out in the cold. And ethical theism worries that we are misunderstanding human well-being, which is a humanistic concern, but also a concern of God and thus part of ethical theism. If human well-being (what it is or how it is pursued) necessarily involves proper relationship with God, then maybe humans can come to harm if we don't take God's existence and personhood into account. Should God lose his children?

Whether a person ends up believing that the person God exists or not, to not undertake the serious pursuit of the question doesn't fit with the moral logic of campaigning for justice for the marginalized, or of the doing of good for all existing sentient beings.

For those who do claim to believe in God, the question arises of what the facts about God really are. Does God hurt? Does he need? Do we have any reason to believe that? Do we have any reason to not believe that? To want to know the answers to these questions goes along with the desire to love God with all of your being.