Nature Unbalanced

Hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, earthquakes and tornados, mountains sides ablaze, wars and terrorism—it is not God’s wrath but man’s refusal to heed God’s precepts that creates this chaos
. . . nature exists in a delicate balance, human actions have unbalanced that balance and God mourns the destruction.  The saving words are “Thy will be done” and they have been ignored.

The voice of the Lord is in nature and nature howls from the pain man has inflicted upon her.  Nature is warning us, calling us to awaken.  In the earliest pages of the Bible God says, “I lay before you life and death, choose life”.  We make the ‘for life choice’ by following The Way of Jesus which is love and forgiveness—but instead we have ignored that imperative and chosen greed and selfishness . . . and the earth groans as man’s choices unbalance the balance, bringing destruction.

We need God in our life, our world and our consciousness.

Once again I invoke the contemporary version of  Psalm 29:

We have not kept your precepts, Lord.

We have not shepherded the earth by your formulation,

We have plundered for private gain

            and trampled the lowly to amass profits.

Ascribe to the Lord, O world leaders,

            ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the reverence due his name

            and take heed of the splendor of his holiness.

The voice of the LORD is heard in Nature,

            the God of glory thunders.

The Lord gives us warning as we despoil the earth;

            the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars

            and howls the winds.

The voice of the Lord shakes the mountains

            and strikes with flashes of lightening.

The voice of the Lord twists the oaks

            and strips forests bare.

Look, listen and know!

The Lord sits enthroned over the waters and land,

The Lord reigns King forever.

The Lord gives warning to his people!

Heed his precepts and principles

            lest man’s choices bring destruction
            to this wondrous earth and all its inhabitants!

        

A Consciousness Change

“The Age of Nations is past,

The task before us now, if we would not perish,

Is to build the earth.”

                                                                                                            Teilhard de Chardin

I believe there is a God and that there is meaning and purpose to our existence: humanity is to evolve and learn to live as God has directed—then we will join God in eternity.  I believe that Father God, who created life and the world, first guided infant humanity.  I believe he gave directions to Abraham to form the Jewish nation in a time when ‘Might Means Right’ was the only guiding principle.  For the nascent nation God chose Moses to lead their development with laws and rules.  This changed humanity’s consciousness.  It evolved from tribalism and led to the first Axial period wherein, throughout the globe, isolated clusters of humanity, led by great Prophets, laid the foundations of civilization between 800 and 200 B.C.

When God determined the time was ripe, God the Father ceased direct guidance, giving humanity full power of free will.  God entered time as the man Jesus, demonstrating how we are to live.  Like rebellious adolescents, mankind did not adopt ‘The Way’ given us by Jesus.  Some saw the wisdom and Christianity took hold, keeping Jesus’ words alive.  For centuries the world progressed physically in adolescent-like rebellion, playing dangerous war games, claiming for profit earth’s natural resources and rebelling against moral order.

We now stand on the brink of self-destruction!  We're children no longer, needing to be guided and led; we can see what the rebellion has achieved.  It is time to accept our adulthood—another consciousness change is needed—to recognize our world is one interacting/interdependent unit that will succeed or perish as a whole.

* * *

                                          THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN

From parent comes child

Who is destined himself to become parent.

From God comes man

Himself to become as God—

One to other

United in understanding

Through shared creation.

Each still is

But they share a being

Impossible without the evolutionary development.

But that is the completion—

The becoming is painful.

To grow under protective care:

                  To have one to give answers,

                  To have one to run to for comfort,

                  To have one to define limits’

                  To have one to forgive mistakes,

                  To have one to answer needs

                  To have one to see in us value . . . . . .

                                                      Childhood and Innocence.

Then to be alone:

                  To search out answers,

                  To endure without comfort,

                  To draw our own limits,

                  To be responsible for mistakes,

                  To find the means to answer needs,

                  To create our own value by our actions . . . .

                                                      Maturity and Responsibility.

The aloneness feels like abandonment;

But necessary for becoming.

It is weakness, cowardice, and death

To run back to the protectiveness outgrown.

It is strength, courage and life

To face the challenge alone.

The challenges to be met?

One cannot foretell.

For some they are few;

For others, many.

But the greater the challenges met and overcome,

The greater the one overcoming.

Refuse the challenge

               Deny the worth of the struggle.

                                 Give no example to those who follow,

                                                   Destruction . . . . . . .

                                                                     And worse yet,

                                                                                       Responsibility for that destruction!

Refusal, denial, and the killing of hope

Will not eliminate the responsibility inherent in maturation.

There is no choice but to go forward and build,

To find within the self

The ability to become as the One who gave being.

God is not dead

His infinite wisdom sees the necessity

Of Man’s accepting the responsibility

Of his own destiny.

The pain?

                  The suffering?

                                    The aloneness?

                                                      To be endured!

Instead of receiving,

It is now ours to give

The child must now become the father.

Musings in this Holy Season

In this season of Passover and Easter, my thoughts are drawn to mankind’s search for God and Wisdom and how that is relayed in Bible Stories.  I approach those stories with 21^st Century reasoning while keeping in mind that each generation’s search reflects their society’s stage of development.  Do I believe the Bible is God-inspired?  Indeed I do; but God’s inspiration passed through the minds and hands of men in an era of limited knowledge.  Before there was writing, information was passed on orally thru story telling with no requirement for factual accuracy.  The Bible writers were from that tradition and used stories to convey the wisdom that was beyond their ability to fully reckon with.

In our present information age, we read stories to find the essential facts or points the story is making—that was not the ‘norm’ four thousand years ago, they just told interesting stories to get something across.  I’ve considered some essential points from stories in Genesis.  The first chapter of Genesis is the story of creation; I’ve selected the wisdom points that it conveys.

1)   God is the Creator.  Can we translate that to mean ‘that which called being into existence’?  [Being = materialization; (i.e. the universe, world, life forms, humanity . . .) existence = the known and experienced reality]   

O.K., that’s a bit much to process, but the rest of Genesis’ wisdom is easier.

            2)  It describes an order of creation (1^st day, 2^nd day, 3^rd day, etc. that

                  agrees with Science)

3)  God made man in God’s own image (able to create and bring order)

4)   In contrast to other creatures, humans had the unique ability to make choices (free will)

5)   some of the choices made by man would be to his own detriment. (sin,. . . Atomic bombs?)

From Creation, my thoughts take a jump to Abraham and the ‘chosen people’.  Chosen how?  Why?  For what?  The story tells of God directing Abraham to “leave your home country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation . . .”  [Gen. 12, NIV]

The point seems to be that the Jews were to make a significant contribution to the world and civilization.  (they have)

Some four thousand years ago (estimated to be the time of Abraham) humanity was emerging from the primitive world whose only rule was largely ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘might means right’ with honor going only to the rulers and virtual enslavement of the masses.  Yet since the beginning of civilization there is evidence of humanity’s reaching for ‘something’ beyond the immediate experience of life—1) burying of their dead, 2) collecting and honoring totems, 3) developing dances and rituals, 4) calling upon spirits . . . the ‘something’ sought was vague and without a clear direction.  The descendants of Abraham and Sarah were to begin the movement of humanity toward a God of purpose and direction.  God as God truly is.  Over time the Jewish people (the ‘chosen people’)  established laws, both for settling disputes (legality), and of personal conduct (The 10 Commandments); to teach of One God; and to assemble sacred literature (the Old Testament/the Torah).  From my vantage point I see that as the advancement of civilization.  But the essential point was not that the Jews would advance civilization, but they were chosen to be the genetic line from which the Messiah was to come.  Messiah:  “the one chosen to lead the world and thereby save it”,  “the anointed”, “God’s appearance on earth”.

Approximately two thousand years after Abraham, Jesus entered the world.  Jesus was a Jew.  He instructed people in how to live with compassion and kindness, forgiving enemies and caring for all in need.  He performed miracles, prayed to God, calling him ’Father’; his followers—first Jews then others—believed him to be the Messiah, but the Jewish authorities did not.  He was crucified and rose from the dead.

Stories of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were added to the Bible as the ‘New Testament’ for Christians.  For Jews, the Torah alone is their sacred scripture.

Each year Passover and Easter come at the same time.  I am pleased that there is mutual respect and at times there is sharing together of their celebrations.