Who God is in Different Cultures | The Story of God

Who God is, is almost universally a great unknown. There are different manifestations of God: different statues, different icons, different sounds, smells, looks of God across cultures. God has a sound. To Navajo, God is a light, bright light to many people.

Christianity in the West, but it can be any of those senses, can be what you don't know. Express what you don't know. God can be a person. If you're a Christian and at Joel Osteen's church, Jesus is the son of God—a person you talk to. You could sit across the table and have a cup of coffee.

If you're Jewish, or if you're Muslim, you don't imagine God as a person. You know, you don't matter as tangible. We went to the mosque in Cairo and spoke to the Imam. He asked him, is God a person? There's someone you can talk to. It's like, well, you can talk to God; you don't think of Him like a guy you're having coffee with.

I think the thing that we found is that we often express our relationship with God in similar ways—through different religions, through different people, and even through time. That, for me, was the most enlightening.