Can "God" substitute for "Spirit"?

This is the companion piece to an earlier post in which I took well known references to God and substituted the word "Spirit.” The idea was to “test” what happened to meaning by the substitution. Are the two words equivalent and interchangeable? When I speak of “Spirit,” do you understand that to mean “God”? Are we talking about the same thing?

I’m holding off sharing my impressions, but the post has drawn considerable attention, if little comment.

In that post, I promised to flip the exercise and substitute “God” for “Spirit” in a number of “Spirit” quotes.

But which quotes to use? I found that, like “God,” “Spirit” is used in a variety of contexts which morph its meaning. Some meanings are clearly non-religious, tending to the political or commercial. Consider just one, “The Spirit of ’76,” which turns out to be both. Think of this nation’s independence and the gasoline company, Union Oil.

I found too that the word can be personal in that each of us has a “spirit to survive.” Hence “his spirit was broken” or “her spirit was lifted.” It didn't seem to be spiritual, or at least as spiritual as other references.

“Spirit” or “Great Spirit” is also at the heart of Native-American religious belief, so some quotations are from Native-American historical figures.

Countless passages of Biblical text refer to "The Holy Spirit" as God. Could this be the answer to my questions? Do Christians automatically consider references to "Spirit" as being references to God? Frankly, that hasn't been my experience among my fellow Quakers, as I noted in my first post.

With that, here are some “Spirit” quotes, many from THIS site. They are followed by the “God” substitutions.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit. —Khalil Gibran

Life without liberty is like a body without God.


I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. —Khalil Gibran

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is God.


In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. —Genesis 1:1-2

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the God of God moved upon the face of the waters.


There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence. —John Calvin

There is no worse screen to block out God than confidence in our own intelligence.


All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. —Chief Joseph

All men were made by the Great God Chief. They are all brothers.


I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me. —William Blake

I myself do nothing. God accomplishes all through me.


All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love. —Morihei Ueshiba

All life is a manifestation of God, the manifestation of love.


Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature always wears the colors of God.


In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified. —Hermann Hesse

In each individual God is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.


Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. —Leonardo da Vinci

Where God does not work with the hand, there is no art.


And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. —Black Elk

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in God, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.


It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within - that you can begin to take control. —Oprah Winfrey

It isn't until you come to a divine understanding of who you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, God within - that you can begin to take control.


It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us. —John Ruskin

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts God within us.


All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in the Spirit. —Thomas Aquinas

All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in God.


Finally, and tellingly, this from Voltaire

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and God gives life.

The Death of War

Reading a New York Times business page (business?) story in today's paper about how the media are turning their backs on our wars, I was reminded of “1984,” George Orwell’s classic cautionary novel.

In the book, Oceania had been at war for so long that its people (the proles) simply accepted the propagandistic slogan “War is Peace.”

War had subsumed its opposite and become a meaningless, soul-numbing given. It was not even a question of acceptance. It simply was.

You can imagine the proles’ acceptance as beginning with what is happening to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By degrees, Oceania’s wars became no longer newsworthy and the redrafting of history began. (How rarely do we see the Iraq war discussed in terms of Iraq’s vast oil reserves and the Bush administration’s oil lust.)

Here is Orwell on how wars are manipulated and forgotten:

Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs - all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

Memorial Day is an antidote to an Orwellian world. We set it aside to remember war and its huge costs. To honor the dead. To make their sacrifice visible to those who would forget or ignore.

This day. A single day. Once a year.

And, in contrast to so many other days in recent months, this day often inspires remarkable journalism — much of it about the sacrifice, and yes, the waste, of war. The op-ed pages of today’s Oregonian have three such pieces of writing.

The lead editorial, “One of many, one of one,” and two columns, “Surviving in the not-so-new Iraq” (found elsewhere on the web) and “Sifting memories from a lifetime ago.”

If you have time for only one, read the last as well as that first New York Times' story.

Memorial Day also should honor not only those who fought, suffered and died in wars, but those who fought war itself. In Christ's words: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the children of God.” They fought war by telling of its horrors. By protesting. By going to jail. And, yes, by dying.

I began by saying that Orwell's fiction described wars as simply far-away forgotten, endless parts of existence.

For many, wars are not far-away, but they are endless parts of existence. They can not be forgotten. They a seared on the soul. Those who fight wars know that even after the victory, truce, evacuation or retreat, wars never end. For hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families, wars rage on in their lives and in their hearts.

I pray that some Memorial Day we will mark the death of war. That amidst the sad remembrances, we will have cause for celebrating the end of the killing — that we all, here and around the world, shall reaffirm the pledge of Chief Joseph to “Fight no more forever.”