Evolution, Why Does it Matter?

I return to considering the works of Teilhard de Chardin.  His two best-known books are: The Phenomenon of Man (renamed The Human Phenomenon in a newer translation), it is his scientific treatise on the evolution of the earth and the human species; and The Divine Milieu, his mystic understanding of the God-humanity relationship.  A scientist and a Jesuit, his life was devoted to reconciling science and religion, the two seemingly conflicting paths for understanding who and what we are.

Science shows evolution to be the underlying principle of all that is; Teilhard fully accepts the reality of evolution and that it is God’s great plan, filled with meaning and purpose.  He has identified the ‘law of complexity-consciousness’ as the pattern that gives direction to evolution.  In that observable pattern, over eons, life progressed from single-cell entities to ultimately reach the purpose inherent from the beginning: the emergence of the human, a complex being created in God’s image possessing consciousness, thought and feeling, free will, creativity and the ability to love.  Teilhard refers to the evolutionary process as a ‘genesis’, a vast coming to be.

Full consciousness in the human species is not some random ‘surprise happening’; it is God’s intended goal for evolution.  Throughout, as organisms became more complex, simultaneously consciousness increased until, with the human, reflective awareness emerged with the birth of thought.  More than a change in degree, it was a change in nature to a new species.  With thought came the freedom to choose (free will) and responsibility for the direction chosen for the future.  As we advance in our ability to control and direct, it is clear that those abilities can have both wonderfully positive and horribly negative consequences.  We have yet to realize our world is one interacting/interdependent unit that stands in danger of self-destruction.

The search for knowledge and understanding has proceeded haphazardly without clear belief in a direction or goal . . . science and religion have argued over the preeminence of the world vs. God; science—in its arrogance—has suggested there is ONLY world and God is illusion.  Mystics of all traditions have recognized a link between God and world.

The poem in my previous entry is about the God-human relationship, co-creating a world on planet earth.

The wonder and order of the Universe; the intricate balance of the elements of our earth that support unexplainable, inexplicable life is proof to me of God . . . random chance cannot justify that level of order and balance—so I believe in the mystery that gave rise to such wonder and call the Mystery, God.  God prepared us to encounter life together and gave us the freedom to shape our world.  I can’t understand or explain God, but I’m convinced that we were given what we need and God has sprinkled humanity’s search for wisdom with clues that lead us toward understanding the why and who we are and our place in the great mystery of life. 

One of God’s ‘sprinkled clues’ as to our self-identity is found in the process we witness daily in observing human development from embryo to mature adult.  Begun in mysterious darkness, emerging with only primitive abilities, dependent and needing guidance, gradually discovering skills and abilities, growing into beings capable of shaping their own future.   –We’re adults now, God gave us the tools we need for survival and the rest is up to us.

I encourage you to turn back to my May 28 entry and read ‘Child is Father of the Man’ with these thoughts in mind.

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.

As God Loves

       Easter season continues until Pentecost, so I look again at the Easter message—Jesus died for our sins.  It has always troubled me when preachers say Jesus died for MY sins—indicating a personal thing.  Beyond personal sin, there is societal sin—a far greater offense!  Our world is a singular unit in the vast Universe.  We are one interdependent/interacting world.  We’ve not acknowledged that, we’ve not learned to love as God loves, we’ve held self-interest above universal concerns so our world is in crisis: Climate Change breeds weather disasters, our institutions are failing and in disarray, angry rebellion and wars are widespread, refugees flood neighboring nation’s exhausting their ability to give aid . . . because we haven’t learned to love.

       With his Passion, Jesus lived evil’s consequences.  Jesus did more than just free us from our personal sins—God could have done that with a wave of his hand—but not without canceling free will.  That freedom has given us the right to shape our world by our collective choices.  In Deuteronomy God’s edict to mankind is:  “I lay before you life and death, choose life.”  That points to freedom that carries the burden of responsibility. When we maim and steal, maliciously exploit, abuse our neighbor and ignore their needs we are choosing to sin.  Individually it is personal sin, but when adopted by a culture it is destructive to Humanity.  God, in the human form of Jesus elected to live out sin’s long-range effects . . . he endured the harshest, cruelest, most malhuman acts of which man is capable—unfettered venomous hatred and complete utter destruction—that is sin’s consequences.

       Jesus lived it out for our understanding.  He endured it and his body was destroyed, but his spirit rose.  Only love is strong enough to conquer evil—hatred and wars are its fuel.  The Passion addressed our human need to see proof of the effect of not learning to love.  God loves us that much; to become the material evidence of sin’s overwhelming destructive power.

       In this 21^st Century humanity cannot continue to be a world of ‘us’ and ‘them’.  Thousands of years have been spent exploring, discovering, developing and connecting the ‘parts’ of this one world, and, if we but look, we can’t help but see we are One interacting, interconnected single unit in a vast Universe—we survive or perish together.  Jesus’ entire earthly message was ‘love one another as I have loved you’.

       The Passion was God’s pure love showing us the outcome of the path we are walking—until we learn to love.  He died willingly to bring the message:  God loves us this much!  Because Jesus rose from death, we esteem him, praise and honor him—for our theology tells us that doing so is a guarantee of our personal salvation . . . but do we understand the message?  It’s more than Jesus saves each of us; the call is salvation for all of us.  God awaits humanity together, to choose for life.  We are called to return God’s love by learning how to love as God loves.

Holy Thursday 2017

                                     

       In January, I was riding home with my 16 year old grandson from a very moving Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Atlanta . . . we’d sung a beautiful song that kept running thru my thoughts.  I asked my grandson for his thoughts about Holy Communion.  After a pause he said he wasn’t sure; what they taught in Sunday school makes it seem ‘like magic’—the priest says some words and poof, the wafer turns in to Jesus—that’s pretty hard to believe.  I agreed.  I asked if he wanted to hear my thoughts on it—he said yes. 

       I said that to me, it was like the words of the song we’d just sung "because we called, you have come".  God is everywhere and in everything.  The Bible quotes Jesus as having said: “When two or more are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst.”  In church as we pray and sing we are calling God to be with us; the ‘Godness’ that is everywhere becomes more concentrated and focused on the host as the priest’s words are said.  Our valuing something makes it MORE than just the thing itself—like a wedding ring or a trophy for winning a tournament—it carries meaning far beyond the metal of which it is made.  So it is with the host. 

       He said he liked that explanation.  Some time later I wrote the following.

                                                       * * *

                                                  Eucharist

Because we called,

            You have come . . .

Candles flicker, hands bless,

            words are said . .

Not magic here—

            but mystery profound . . .

a humble offering

            is transformed.

                           There was a long, slow Coming-to-be

                                    --human hands, with hope

                                       planted seeds in the soil

                                    --God blessed the earth

                                       with sun and rain.

                           Seasons, and eons passed

                               as nature gifted humans with harvest

                                    --grapes fat on the vine

                                    --wheat bursting its husks

                                                            and mankind was fed.

Jesus came to tell us of the mystery of God

            we hadn’t yet comprehended:

                        “This is my body,

                        This is my blood”

His words lead us to see that God’s blessings

            have joined with human labor

            in a co-creative offering:

                        --grapes to wine

                        --wheat to bread

Your presence, God,

            steeped in the All

            is called forth.

           

And because we call,

            You come closer.

Not magic . . .

            but the revelation

            to us, of that which 
            is already there.

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.

The Letter 'o'

The difference between ‘God’ and ‘good’ is the letter ‘o’.

In all that I say and do, in all that I think and write, that which is of prime importance is God—not the god of the images we have rendered, the theologies we have developed, nor the religions we have created—but the God of the reality of our human existence.  It isn’t of concern to me what church, synagogue or temple you attend, nor even the images and institutions you may have rejected in coming to unbelief.   What is of concern is how intentionally we each live our lives.  Are we consciously seeking ‘the good’?  I believe that is God’s concern also—many Bible passages state that rather than burnt offerings (sacrifice and ritual), God wants clean hearts; and in Matthew 7:21 we find, "Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father.”

 I believe we are created in the image of God—but most of us have a very murky idea of what that image is.  God is so beyond our ability to comprehend, we cannot know God—and those who are sure they do know, are wrong!  In our unknowing we have constructed multiple and massive falsehoods that have caused great human suffering and led many to reject the concept of a God.

What I believe about God is not only ‘God is good’, but that ‘God is in all goodness’.   You may say, “What is goodness? . . .Who can say with any certainty? . . . Isn’t it just a matter of opinion?”   But I would argue, “No!  What we like, what we champion or what we want is a matter of opinion, but what is fundamentally good is implanted in our soul and can be recognized and agreed upon when honestly evaluated.

My daughter sings a lullaby to her little one each night as she tucks her in—that is good.

A neighbor yells loudly and harshly at his son whenever he messes up—that is not good.

Genesis tells us that as God created each element of existence, “God saw that it was good”.  The issue here is not the ‘how’ of it, but the issue is of the goodness of it.  Life is the essential good; ‘to be’ opens the door to experiencing, feeling, knowing and understanding. 

What follows is that ‘the good’ is what sustains and enhances life, both materially and spiritually; while what is not good is whatever destroys life either physically or psychologically.  If we back up all the way to humanity’s first recognition of the basic good of relationships we find some form of what we call the ‘Golden Rule’ that has appeared in every society and religion.  ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’.

 When we earnestly seek God, we seek the good; and when we seek the good, we are seeking God.   God contains only the good, and too, God is contained within all that is good.

* * *

Are We There Yet?

All religions are fallible—

Each structured by fallible men.

Yet each one discovers

some aspect of the Divine

that leads its followers

on a numinous path to God.

But oh how rocky the path

and circuitous the route!

Have faith, God is patient,
Evolution is measured in eons.

Heed His Precepts

In his 2015 Encyclical On the Care of our Common Home Pope Francis spoke of “irresponsible use of the earth” and exhorted all people to take heed of Climate Change.

On a regular basis now, we see record-setting storms: tornados, floods, windstorms and hurricanes.  The ice caps are melting and oceans rising.  NOAA & NASA released their global temperature data: 15 of 17 of the hottest years on record have come since 2000, and 2016 was the hottest ever.

Presently uncontrollable wildfires are raging in our country’s Heartland, in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas over a million acres have been incinerated—this, following years of severe drought.  Also this week in New York, windstorms sent trees crashing on homes, cars and power lines.

 When will we wake up to the reality of this threat?  Our planet is in crisis!  The key to our world’s smooth functioning is equilibrium—our careless actions have upset the balance.

Pope Francis’ Encyclical made me think of Psalm 29 in which David was addressing the leaders of his time, telling them to be mindful of the mightiness of God and His great power in nature.

In my contemporary version I change from David’s voice to that of Pope Francis, exhorting our leaders to better care for our Common Home and attend to what is happening with climate change, for we are failing to honor God in Nature.

It begins with a confession—

Psalm 29  (B. S-C contemporary version)

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!