I used to be able to describe God quite well. ( I hope you don't mind the capitalization. That's part of my description of what God is like for me, I suppose. )
But, you know, life happens. A decade ago the fire in me burned brightly black and white, and my response to this question back then would have been ... well, more than a little embarrassing to the present day me, I'd imagine.
I don't know that I can answer all your questions about God, as God is for me personally,
vison. In fact, I'm quite sure that I can't. God doesn't describe in those terms for me, if He ever did. That is because I believe one of the things that I suppose would "amaze" other, more evolved ( or whatever people who find religious people - well, amazing, or stupid, or weird, or obtuse, or unobservant, or or stubborn or whatever, like to call themselves ) people: that Christians who otherwise seem all right in the head would think in such a way. But to me, it is very logical to believe that I cannot and do not understand all of God - that I do not have the tools, the ability, the capacity, to understand God. A rough parallel, which no doubt can be easily proven to be no such thing: science does not understand all of science. Science has a history littered with great discoveries, but also with partial understanding, such as the history of understanding something as basic to humans as nutrition. Still, scientists discover new "super-nutrients". Still, we apparently do not grok something as basic to life as food.
Anyway.
It is because of this belief I can't answer all your questions. I don't know if God is a "being". What is the definition of a "being", anyway? Something made of atoms? Something conscious? Either way I don't know if God is that kind of "being", because I don't know what God really is. To me, God is a comforting presence.
I don't know if God has the power to interfere with the observed laws of the universe. I believe He does. That doesn't mean He would. I can't prove that He does, or He would. That's what belief is, after all. It isn't something that would stand up to the cleverness of people. It isn't meant to.
I absolutely believe that God will answer prayers. He has answered mine many times. The details of those prayers are personal, of course, but to me that's good enough. Does God answer
all prayers? No. I don't know why not. Maybe because always winning isn't fun? I have a happy life. I have had just enough prayers answered to keep it interesting, I suppose.
I believe God can hear what I say and know what I think. For one thing, both of those are ways of prayer, so it kind of goes with that.
I spent a lot of energy when I was younger anguishing over religion, the nature of God. I had a period when I adamantly believed there is no God. Sure, I was a teenager then, so maybe that doesn't count. It counted for me. Then I had an experience that drew me back to exploring Christianity. That's when my struggle with understanding God and how to live and believe in God began - I had a young adult's mind to marry up with belief and religion. It is easier to believe when you are a young child. It is even easier when you are a young child who also has a happy, sheltered life. I didn't quite have the latter, which is where my whole bent away from God began. But I digress: finally, I had a brief epiphany right in a dark moment, and the feeling in that moment is what finally provided a foundation - I will always believe in God because of that brief moment. It crystallized the essence of my belief for me and stripped away the distractions that were threatening to overwhelm me. The essence - just believe.
But because of all those angsty moments about who God is, what God is, how God is ... it just doesn't hold any attraction for me anymore to try and figure out and understand and make clever arguments about the nature of God. I'm perfectly content to know that I don't know. ( I can totally see how this would puzzle or infuriate some people, by the way. It is like I get mad as heck when people believe that the world's oil supply is endless, that pollution is harmless, that perfectly clean drinking water can run down the gutter if they want it to, and so on. Their beliefs, to me, makes my world and my living worse that it would be otherwise. The religious beliefs of people who use God as a justification for doing bad things to people does the same for other people. Remember, I grew up in a country where white men decided that God meant the world to be ruled by white men and that white women and white children were supposed to obey them and be lesser to them, and men and women of all other other races were ... well, you all know about Apartheid. )
I'll probably be willing to elaborate some more on my post if asked, but I definitely don't care for any argument. I'm not going to bother responding to any posts from atheists or agnostics or whatnot picking apart what I said, either. I already acknowledged that cleverness can very easily pick big holes in what I said. I just figured
vison asked about what God is like, and I'd try to say a little about what God is like for me.
