What is God?

Right from my childhood, 3 things have always fascinated me; human existence (what are we doing on earth and how did we get here?), human relationships and actions (why do we do the things we do and how can I relate better with people so that they can understand me and I can understand them?), who is God and what is God's endgame? Of course, I became a teenager and sex and sexuality were automatically added to the equation.

Religious and scientific explanations of how we got here have, at different points in time and place, and to different extents, sufficed to quell my curiosity. After years of human interactions, and more than my fair share of sociological scholarship, I still don't understand people and they mostly don't really understand me. I have learnt that is OK and I will keep trying. Initially I thought sex was an unnecessary and disgusting exchange of bodily fluids, bacteria and germs. Eventually my hormones betrayed me so I started having sex. I tolerated it. Then I enjoyed it. Then I enjoyed it even more with people I felt something for, be it love or lust. I try to stick to that.

I was born a catholic. I was baptised few weeks after birth. I took Cathecism classes and learnt the foundation of the church's theology, beliefs, and traditions with regards to God. I received holy communion and after even more Cathecism classes, I received the sacrament of confirmation on the 8th of December of the year 2000, just a few months after my 9th birthday. Graduating top of my confirmation class was one of my proudest moments as a kid. I was the youngest there and most of the adults didn't take me serious. I thought being top of the class would change their minds. I was wrong. So wrong. Anyway, I went on to serve at masses for the next 6 to 7 years till I went off to university. A catholic-ish university.

It has always seemed like the older  I got and the more I learned about God, and the world in general, the less sense it all made and the less I understood. I have given up trying to make sense of it all few times. Then I sleep, wake up and continue trying to make it all make sense. Rinse and repeat. Having been mostly exposed to Christian and Catholic doctrines, it's only normal that I mostly see this puzzle from a Catholic and Christian perspective. The Catholic concept of the trinity makes sense to a certain extent. You have God the father, God the son and God the Holy spirit. Cool family. Almost.

Almost, because the holy spirit would then be either female, asexual or Jesus has 2 heavenly daddies. Ergo the very first same sex union and family was God's. I don't know a lot of Catholics who would like any of those possibilities. Thinking about it though, it's most likely possible, because, according to the bible, the Holy Spirit descended on Mary and Jesus the earthling was conceived. Mary is female. Humans don't make babies asexually.

If we assume or agree that the Holy Spirit is asexual and therefore has no gender, we get closer to the teachings of the Jewish and Islamic religions. From my, very basic, understanding of these two religions, they believe that God transcends gender. That makes sense to more sense to me. Now, considering that Catholicism, Christianity as a whole, and the very concept of one supreme and true God - Monotheism are offshoots of Judaism. It looks to me like somewhere between deciding that there had to be one true supreme God and worshipping this God through the Catholic/Christian way, Humans assigned a gender to this God. 

I know the bible quotes Jesus as referring to God as 'father' so many times. I wonder if he did that just to make it all make sense to humans. You know, since most societies at that time were patriarchal and most people considered the father the head of the family. It would make sense to just go with the human formula and not complicate things even further. I mean they already had a hard enough time believing he was God's offspring, seeing him defy the few laws of physics they knew back then by walking on water, turning water to wine and the rest.

Perhaps he knew that God could be anything they needed God to be but since most people had daddy issues, he let them have a dad and got on with his ministry. Anyway, I include Jesus among the men who gave God a gender. I wonder if that's part of the reason the 2 other Abrahamic religions say he's just a prophet. I mean if you don't know the gender of the 'being' you claim is your dad, I would have a hard time believing your claimed parentage. That's just me and my trust issues though.

Recently, while contemplating this idea of God transcending gender, I started wondering if gender is the only thing God transcends. I mean if we accept that God transcends gender, then why stop there, why stop at the transcendence of gender, why limit God with our poor human imaginations? Why not transcend every thing else, including the entire universe.

The question then becomes, NOT how or if God created the universe but what if God IS the universe in it's infinity and every thing, humans, all the planets and galaxies, known and unknown, exist within the infinite time and space that is God? So the big bang and evolution is then just God evolving from an earlier state that is currently beyond our human understanding because God is every thing that ever existed, every thing that exists and every thing that will ever exist!