My friend, Aria Nostic (self-proclaimed agnostic, if not atheistic) asked me how I pray to God, if God is not a personal god. “We know there is no supernatural god in heaven intervening in nature and human affairs.”

“You’re right, Athia. Many people leave the church thinking a supernatural god is all there is. I believe early Christians misunderstood Jesus. It seems they were too deeply ingrained with the age-old understanding of theology, in that Egyptian, Greek, and Roman gods continuously intervened in human affairs, including having sex with human virgins to give birth to new gods. Apparently, they couldn’t see a god in any other way.

“Athia, Genesis claims God made humans in the divine image. In contemporary terms, I understand we humans have within us that image—a divine nature, where we might say God resides.”

“Is that like pantheism or panentheism?” she asked. “Not at all. In general terms, pantheism asserts that everything is God and panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. I believe God resides within us as the image in which we were ‘created’.”

I said this idea can be inferred by several things.

The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek word “entheos” which means the God within.

Jesus said, “I am the branch and you are the vines. You abide in me and I abide in you.”

The Apostle Paul said it was not he that did good things, it was the Christ within him.

President Lincoln referred to “the better angels of our nature.”

In the June 8, 2017, NY Times, Kristin Wong wrote:

The fairly common habit of talking aloud to yourself is what psychologists call external self-talk. And although self-talk is sometimes looked at as just an eccentric quirk, research has found that it can influence behavior and cognition.

‘Language provides us with this tool to gain distance from our own experiences when we’re reflecting on our lives. And that’s really why it’s useful,’ said Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

When we talk to ourselves, we’re trying to see things more objectively, Mr. Kross said, so it matters how you talk to yourself. The two types of self-talk you’re likely most familiar with are instructional self-talk, like talking yourself through a task, and motivational self-talk, like telling yourself, ‘I can do this.’

Trying to put things together, I continued, “Without being able to identify the appropriate parts of our human physiology, I suggest the connection of this self-talk to prayer and our spiritual lives is our natural conscience and intuition that can be nurtured and disciplined to reflect agape love, compassion, empathy, righteousness, godliness, faithfulness, endurance, and gentleness—those elements that reflect God’s image. Praying with this understanding aids our cognition of the 24/7 presence of the divine. It is our divine nature to have the ability to objectively recognize the holy and the sacred.

“When the Apostle Paul encouraged his people to pray without ceasing, I suggest we do so by always being aware of and respond to this divine part of ourselves. Self-talk in prayer enables us to walk the talk, always sensitive to what God would have us do and be the people we can be.”

I added one important thing. “Athia, I know you like to go it alone — your own way; but our prayers and our spiritual lives are enriched by community. The people are the church, not the doctrines and dogma. They separate us.”

After a few minutes of silence making sure we had downed our whole cups of coffee, we smiled and parted ways.