What is God? is an eloquent introduction to the ideas behind God and religion, and brings forward complex ideas in a way children will understand. It is written with a simple clarity and beautifully illustrated with just the right blend of seriousness and humor.

What is God? compares different religions -- Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism -- and their holy books, looks at misunderstandings and arguments among people of different religions, and talks about praying as well as feeling connected to everything in the world.

If you want to talk about spirituality with a child, or introduce them to philosophy or religion, or just help them to begin to center themselves and their feelings about the world, this book is a great beginning.

This book is a good opening for discussions of religion with children (who will eventually grow into adults, with their own experiences, choices, experiences). We can lay the foundation, express our beliefs and hopefully let our lives speak.

This is a very short, brightly illustrated book to have on the bookshelf for those times when a small child asks, What is God? or when you want to bring up the topic. The book answers the questions with "Maybe," which allows the children to share their own reflections.

It also talks very very briefly about different ways people pray, the great teachers, and the different religions of the world - Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, and Buddhism plus a reference to other beliefs.

I like the page that talks about commonality among religions. It also touches on the arguments that happen when people disagree about God. It focuses a lot on prayer, and in the end it suggests ways to talk to God in a universalist way.

This book is not for atheists or fundamentalists of any denomination. Nor is it for anyone set with the belief that their belief is the only Way. It does not question the existence of God, although it does provide different interpretations of what God means, or could mean, to a variety of people. (Best book on this topic, though, is still Old Turtle.)


Mysticism for kids!   April 29, 2000
 29 out of 36 found this review helpful

This amazing little book puts the highest spiritual realization of nondual Enlightenment in language and illustrations that almost any child can appreciate and understand. Mysticism is based on the direct spiritual experience that God is Spirit (or Consciousness, or Being, or Love) and that Spirit is infinite and eternal. This realization, as scholars such as Huston Smith, Lex Hixon, and Ken Wilber have shown, forms the foundation of every major world religion (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Taoism) and can be attained directly by anyone willing to devote the time and energy required to practice a method of meditation or spiritual contemplation. As a cute yet profound acknowledgement of this, Boritzer ends this book with a meditation experiment that children (and adults!) can perform to get a quick taste of the ever-present nature of God for themselves.

Contrary to mistaken perceptions, this book does not espouse the philosophy known as "pantheism," which maintains that God is nothing but the universe. First of all, what this book aims at is a direct experiential realization, not a philosophy. Second, it is true that the universe is nothing but God, as the book explains, but God is _not_ nothing but the universe. The twentieth century theologian and mystic A. W. Tozer explained this as follows: "God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. This is boldly taught by prophet and apostle and is accepted by Christian theology generally. . . . He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them. . . . God is here. No point is nearer to God than any other point. It is exactly as near to God from any place as it is from any other place. No one is in mere distance any further from or any nearer to God than any other person is." And as the 16th-century Jewish mystic Moses Cordovero said, "God is all that exists, but not all that exists is God."

Basically, what that says is that if God really is infinite, then he cannot be opposed to, or separate from, anything that is finite (like you and I), or else he would just be one thing among other things, and that would make him distinctly finite. Some theologians argue that God is infinite, but he "chooses" to remain separate from human beings; however, that nonetheless makes him finite (a self-imposed limitation is still a limitation) and, in fact, bears no relation to the truth as mystics from Jesus to Buddha have explained it. Jesus of Nazareth, in saying 77 from the Gospel of Thomas (which dates from the same period as the four gospels that were canonized into the Bible), says: "I am the Light that is over all things. I am all: all came forth from me, and all attained to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Pick up a stone, and you will find me there." Some scholars have mistaken this for pantheism, which it clearly is not. God is the Light (Spirit) that is over (transcends) all things. All things come forth from God, and all things return to God (which means that God isn't simply the totality of "all things," as pantheism says, but also the Source of all things). Split a piece of wood, and God is there (which means that God is not separate from the world, put permeates it to such a degree that, indeed, the world is ultimately "made of" nothing but God). Thus, nondual mysticism maintains that God is simultaneously the Source _and_ Substance of all that is--which means God really is Infinite in the fullest sense of the word. This "All is God; all is One; all is Spirit" understanding is the most sacred spiritual Truth there is, and anyone who objects to it clearly does not comprehend it (and that's perfectly all right: "Let those with ears listen").

For practitioners of mysticism who have children, intend to have children, or have younger siblings who don't quite understand what your practice is all about, this book explains the fundamental unity of all advanced religions, the shallowness of the fundamentalist conception of God, and the fact that God is Love and Love is Everything more simply and lucidly than any book around. It's a perfect gem, and it would be criminal not to share these truths with those young souls whose minds have not yet been locked into the narrow blindness of the average adult ego.


Nicely done   June 19, 2001
 27 out of 30 found this review helpful

How do you bring home to children the point that God is ultimately the only reality and that everything else is God's activity -- that, in the final analysis, the world is just "made of" God and nothing else?

(For that matter, how do you bring it home to _adults_ -- who, especially if they've been warned about this sort of thing by dog-in-the-manger "theologians" who read the words but didn't hear the music, are all too likely mistake it for either pantheism or self-worship?)

Well, really, nobody can bring it home to anybody else; we can only offer each other opportunities to realize it more or less directly. But Etan Boritzer has done a very nice job of giving children a chance to experience this truth, and Robbie Marantz has done some fine illustrations to accompany Boritzer's text.

Boritzer simply raises the title question -- "What is God?" -- and informs the reader that various answers have been proposed, mostly by teachers who lived a long time ago. (Parents of most religions will find this approach as inoffensive as I do, but some Christian readers will likely object to Boritzer's treatment of Jesus as one teacher among others. And all readers should be aware that Boritzer is not introducing or favoring any particular religious tradition here.) He pokes a little bit of gentle fun at the view that God is a white-bearded old man who lives in the sky.

Boritzer then notes that most religions teach essentially the same things, at least as regards the standards of ethical human behavior. (Of course this is a tremendous oversimplification, but it is true at a sufficiently high level of generality.) Moreover, he places the responsibility for religious wars firmly on those people who don't know this.

But never mind ethics; not all religions say the same things about God, right? So can they all be right?

Sure they can, Boritzer concludes. _Anything_ that is true must be true of God, because there isn't anything else for it to be true _of_. God is all there is -- so the wind is God and the stars are God and you are God and I am God . . .

(That's the part that will bother some readers, who may not recognize the difference between Boritzer's claim and the very different claim that _you personally_ are the Almighty and All-knowing Creator of the Cosmos. Suffice it to say that this isn't what Boritzer means, and if you don't see what he _does_ mean, you'll have some trouble explaining it to your kids.)

Boritzer makes a few remarks on prayer and concludes by inviting the reader to experience his or her "connectedness" with everyone and everything else. Parents who want to introduce their children to meditation or contemplative prayer couldn't ask for a better opening.

The whole thing is very well-executed. I won't try to recommend companion volumes for grown-ups, because any parent who buys this book has already got a shelf-ful of the relevant literature. If you know what I'm talking about and you want to introduce your kids to it, this is a good book to use.

The information above says the book is suitable for ages 9-12, but I think it's probably okay for a broader range than that. You know your own young'uns best, of course, but a precocious five- or six-year-old can probably handle this.


Open your mind and say Aaaaaah.   July 11, 2001
 27 out of 28 found this review helpful

This book may not be for everyone-but it was perfect for me. As a Unitarian, I don't have a canned dogma to tell my kids when they ask spiritual questions. This book helped me a few yrs. ago with my older son and recently with my youngest. You have to be open minded and want to raise your kids to be that way, or you might actually be offended by this book's content. It presents God from many points of view, how people fight over God and how they percieve him (her), and lets the reader draw his/her own conclusions. Yes, it's a kid's book, but it's also helpful for adults. The beautiful drawings also were appreciated.


Strong concept, poor execution   June 27, 2003
 25 out of 26 found this review helpful

As a Unitarian Universalist parent, I bought this for my kids (8 and 5). Not a good choice. There are way too many words considering the abstract nature of the book and lack of story line. The oversimplifications, particularly of Buddhism, offended me. The author seems quite taken with his own cleverness, and the humility one might expect from a mystical, all-religions-point-toward-God attitude is missing. The part about religious persecution is completely lost on my kids. Maybe other kids, who ask "What is God" type questions, will get something out of it, though I would caution parents to have their answers thought through and not rely on this book to do it.