Robert Thurman, a Tibetan Buddhist (and the “leading American expert” of that religion), said that the idea of a personal God is problematic “from an enlightened point of view.”
Both the apostle Paul and the prophet Isaiah dealt with religious views that would elevate people and lower God. Some things never change—even “new” religious teachings are the same old false ones repackaged. The truth of the Word remains forever current.
The Almighty Creator God as personal is not just an “idea” that, if ignored, will go away. In Ephesians 1:15-23 alone, I count 14 references to the Lord as he/him/his. Read it. It’s personal. C. S. Lewis said (in Mere Christianity) that when people say God isn’t personal, they feel that “this mysterious something which is behind all other things” would have to be more than a person. (And we agree.) But that, in thinking of God as impersonal, they’ve actually made him “something less than personal.”
True enlightenment is also described in Ephesians 1: to “know [the Lord] better.” Paul prays “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” And when you’re enlightened, what do you know? “ . . . the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance . . . and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Isaiah really bottom-lines the topic of enlightenment and puts us in our place: “Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?” (40:13, 14)
Any god less than THAT God is . . . well, problematic.
