What I believe in, my values, what matters to me, what is precious, sacred, worthwhile, my goals, what I aim to achieve, who I would like to be, what good means, what success means, what love means: all I hold to be true - define my God.
If I pursue wealth, I make money my God.
If I pursue beauty, I make admirers my God.
If I pursue status, I make those in authority my God.
The conversation about whether or not to believe in God is a delusion.
We all believe in something worth our staying alive.
That something is our God, whether or not we call it that.
From here follows the game we play, and the rules by which we play the game; how we make sense of the world, how we organise our thoughts, our code of conduct, our personal ''law of nature'', are derived from this definition of what is worthwhile.
Essentially, the game we play says more about what our personal God is, than anything we may say we believe of God.
Spiritual well-being isn't really about which God we believe in, or what we make our God.
This choice is almost irrelevant.
What matters is the match between what we hold true and the game we play.
Do I stand in my truth and act by it?
Do I develop in myself the qualities I value?
Do I place my hopes and efforts towards something valuable in my own definition?
When our values and actions match, chances are we like ourselves and our life feels worth living.
If they don't, chances are we are in pain, miserable, angry.
When we do live by our values but are miserable, chances are we are living a lie.
When we choose a God, we choose values - ie. God's will. When we choose God's will, we choose a God.
Once we've chosen, what we really have is a guideline on how to be;
we aim to develop the same qualities our God has.
If I examine whether my idea of what's ''good'' is coherent with my idea of what ''the rules of the game'' are, I may find the source of much discomfort.
For example, I may have a very poetic idea of God: love, magic, creativity - and a very punishing idea of God's will - a dark rocky path bordering a cliff of which I mustn't fall off, also it's dark and stormy.