My six year old niece told me she doesn’t believe in God.
“How about Goddesses?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“A girl God or a woman God, like your mom. She’s a Goddess and my mom's a Goddess too”. She put down her doll and looked at both of our moms sitting across the room, her eyes lit up.
“And you are a Goddess” I added.
“Oh yeah! That makes sense.” She was joyous. She was on board.
I decided telling her that God is in everyone and everything, that it is the most hidden part of us, is best saved for another conversation.
I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean. ― J.D. Salinger
Belief in God must’ve been a topic of discussion at her school. But ‘Do you believe in God?’ is the wrong question to ask at any age. The person has either encountered some level of Godliness or hasn’t yet. They’ve come to know God on their own terms, or... In any case, there's no need for belief.
When I was her age, before ever being presented with a good explanation of what God is, I remember being asked "How much do you love God?". I’d play along, stretch my arms open and say “I love God as wide as the ocean”.
Another child, or certainly a grown up, may have answered that question with more questions. “What do you mean by God exactly? I don't want to commit to loving something I'm not entirely sure of. You might have a different God in mind” and so on. He'd scuffle at the intellectual fuzziness of such question. But for me, at a young age that question planted the idea of God as synonymous with love.
This one worthwhile aspect of religion reached me before notions of obedience or fear of God. This way I unknowingly came to define God as that which is worth loving. God is what my true nature loves.
As I slowly fell in love with the stray cats visiting our balcony, the trees growing in our backyard, my parents, friends, and even the beautiful game of football (soccer), all of this led me to see God within each and all of them, not some entity above or below them. Sometimes I do look up at the sky to connect with God, but this is only because I love the night sky, and it’s my love for the night sky that plants God there spontaneously.
That’s nice