Refining Understanding

Series:  Long-Term Vision  #4

Although I have more yet to say about long-term vision, I deviate slightly from my series today to address a Bible reference.  I have always felt uneasy with the phrase in the Lord’s prayer (the Our Father) which in the English translation is rendered as ‘lead us not into temptation’ and I must remind myself that any time phrases and sentences are translated there are alternate ways to word them.  The final line of Christianity’s most central prayer is, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”  It seems to suggest that it is God who controls life’s temptations, sends them to us then frees us from them . . . that would deny our freedom.  

I turn to the Letter of James 1:13 (Jerusalem translation), “Never when you have been tempted, say ‘God sent the temptation’; God cannot be tempted to do anything wrong, and he does not tempt anybody.  Everyone who is tempted is attracted and seduced by his own wrong desires.”

Why do I mention this? Because I believe it is important to realize that we humans are fallible and all that we know and understand has come through human interpretations.  That is the reality of how we progress, by continually refining the knowledge that is present to us.  It’s important to understand that faulty interpretations do not disqualify the essence—as in this prayer.  Another way to state that phrase might be: ‘guard us from temptation and protect us from evil.’  The essence of the prayer is more than a word or a phrase. 

Some people would be unset by the suggestion there is a better way to express that line from the Our Father . . . as if that is absolute and a sacrilege to suggest a change for it . . . yet we progress by refining what is known thus bringing better understanding.  Newton defined the force of gravity but Einstein’s genius changed how we understand it. –Newton wasn’t wrong; his understanding was just less complete. 

An important aspect of long-term thinking is to remain open to new understanding. 

A New Axial Age?

Has the modern era brought us to a new Axial Age?  Some say so, but what does it mean?  The German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term ‘Axial Age’ in 1949 when he noted that during the period between 800-200 BC there was a shift in how humanity viewed itself.  A turn as if on an axis—a change in consciousness that allowed civilization to develop.  Prior to the shift, tribalism was the dominant form of social organization.  The general characteristics were: small populations closely related, closed to outer influences, lacking individualized thinking, total submission to the group (ultra-conformity), with non-members of the tribe usually seen as ‘enemy’.

During the first Axial Age there was a revolution in human thought.  Independently in most clusters of humanity (China, India, Persia, Judaea, Greece and Rome) there was a change in consciousness that produced great advances in intellectual, philosophical and religious thinking.  Great men arose to define a ‘way of life’ (Confucius and La-Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses and the Prophets, Socrates and Plato).  In each cluster there was some version of The Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’.  Humanity had moved from the isolation of tribalism to recognizing the necessity of cooperation for mutual benefit.  It was a huge leap, laying the groundwork for civilization to emerge.

How is this relevant to today?  The modern era has brought tremendous technological change.  From 1900 to 2018 we’ve leapt from horse and buggy transportation to rockets to the moon and back; in communications, then the telephone was new and cumbersome and today we carry it around in our pocket not only for conversations but also to navigate highways and instantly obtain limitless information . . . it isn’t the same world!   In the early 1900s we were just awakening to the terrifying destructive power we held, erupting in a World War with heretofore-unimagined armament—which escalated to nuclear arsenals capable of destroying all life on planet earth.

This new world requires a shift or change in how we see the world; another revolution in human thought is needed.  War has been the way to settle disputes since man first walked the earth.  It is no longer a viable option—viable means: capable of working successfully.  There is no ‘success’ with nuclear weapons.  Until we ventured into outer space and looked back on this tiny planet in the vast universe, we still believed (although science told us otherwise) we lived in a limitless static world where earth was the center of it all with sun and moon and stars revolving around us, as God sat on a cloud watching our every move. 

That isn’t the reality.  We are a dynamic evolving interacting singular unit, dependent upon each other for survival.  Early in the Bible (Deut. 30:19) God says:  “I have set before you life and death . . . choose life.”  God left it up to us. Whether or not you believe in the Bible or God, that clearly is a statement to us today.

The choosing of death is to continue to war, enlarge the nuclear arsenal, and deny reality.  The way to ‘choose life‘ is to embrace our interconnectedness, change our consciousness to find the way for humanity to work together in peace and build the world. . . thus bringing on a second Axial Age.

I once again quote Teilhard de Chardin:

 

                       “The Age of Nations is past,

     The task before us now, if we would not perish

                              Is to build the earth”

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!

        

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.

In the Dark of the Night

9/11/16 – the 15^th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States by al-Qaeda, Osama ben Laden’s Islamic extremist group which hijacked four U.S. commercial passenger planes and flew two into the World Trade Twin Towers in New York City.  The 3^rd and 4^th planes were destined for Washington DC; one, as planned, was crashed into the Pentagon while the last was diverted and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when passengers charged and fought the hijackers preventing the completion of their mission.  This orchestrated event caused the death of three thousand innocent people and injured six thousand others.  Among those killed were 78 police officers and 200 firefighters during rescue efforts.  TV cameras were at hand; live broadcasting of the events covered the world.

Following is my journal entry on the 1^st anniversary of that event.

       9/11/2002 – it was a year ago today when the unthinkable happened—unthinkable that America could be the victim of such a profoundly horrendous surprise attack; unthinkable that human beings could be so callous as to perpetuate such a heinous act; unthinkable to consider the horror that the people in the planes and buildings must have experienced; unthinkable to realize that people round the entire planet could turn on a TV and watch the towers crumble to the ground in real time; unthinkable to calculate the degree of hatred that motivated such a morally depraved plan; unthinkable to learn that the hijackers considered it an act of worship to their god.  

       The Bible tells us that God created man in His image . . . a being with intelligence and reflective awareness capable of knowing right from wrong.  To this being God gave free will—the power to choose any path in life.

How can we reconcile this in our minds?

--a segment of a religion has so perverted the image of god so as to perceive him in terms of pure evil!

--that is contrary to the Muslim religion which, like Christianity and Judaism perceives God as the creator of order and source of all that is good.

--could awareness of the unthinkable horror of which humans are capable spur us to work together to make conscious choices for the greater good?

Animals are programmed by instinct; free will is unique to humans.  It is with that freedom we create our personal world, but beyond that, our actions affect a wider world.  We live in a closed system within a vast universe, all activity in a closed system effects everything within that system.  Whether God-given or the result of random chance, we hold creative/destructive power and our actions shape the world we occupy.

Events of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries have made us aware of mankind’s destructive powers:  WWI, WWII, holocausts and genocides, atomic and hydrogen bombs, world-wide terrorism—the unthinkable has happened—that makes it imperative that we recognize we all share a common humanity, thus a common destiny; planet earth is one closed interacting system.  The ‘unthinkable’ calls us to use our freedom and creative powers to actively identify and embrace values that can underpin a sustainable world.

The dream of a better world may seem impossible but consider how far humanity has come in creating a better world thus far:

--from the beginning of time most people were uneducated—after the invention of the printing press people gradually came to recognize the importance of education and now, all parents seek it for their children.

--it took until just 150 years ago for civilized society to acknowledge the absolute need to abolish slavery—and it came to be.

--the technological advances in the 20^th Century connected all parts of the world by transportation and communications leading to the recognition of our home planet as one global world.

--following the ‘Great War’ leaders awoke to the need for nations to work together for their common good.  After two decades of struggle, in 1942 ‘The United Nations Declaration’ established the UN.  It’s importance and value has not yet been fully recognized because humanity’s advances are measured in centuries, not years—long term perspective is needed.

--in 1948 the UN adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.*  It has been translated into hundreds of languages—the most translated document in the world.  It is a beginning.  It identifies the values needed for a sustainable world, fundamental values, which can be embraced by all peoples, as they are not connected to specific religions, yet can be found among all the world religions.   It is the blue print for that ‘better world’—which can become a reality when adopted into the curriculum of all schools.

                                                                                                                                             (* Google it)

                  line from a song:  “Let there be hope in the dark of the night”

Teilhard Series - 4th

If we are to realize the contribution of Teilhard de Chardin to our contemporary perspective, the most fundamental point of departure is: ‘Everything is interconnected’.  From the Bible to St. Francis of Assisi to Albert Einstein, to Pope Francis we’ve been told of the connectedness in different ways, yet it seems to not reach our understanding.  In 1972 scientist James Locklove originated the Gaia Theory that tells us that the entire earth functions as a single living organism; in living organisms injury or damage to any one part affects the entire organism.  He sounded an alarm we have failed to heed.  Einstein’s search for a Unified Field Theory arose from his conviction that all forces of nature answer to a single law—clearly he believes everything is connected.

Through his life-work in geology and paleontology, Teilhard came to realize the key to understanding how ‘everything is interconnected’, lies in understanding evolution and he presents scientific data that discloses the underlying pattern that ties all orders of development together.

Perhaps since the dawn of consciousness the human has been dimly aware of life’s interconnectedness but the demands of survival narrowed his focus to that part most critical to survival in that place at that time—yet stirring within the collective unconscious, has been the desire to know and understand more about ‘the big picture’—the everything.  That impulse led to the development of philosophy, the search for Wisdom—the true, the right and the just.  The search was once of a whole but at the time of the Renaissance the wisdom search split into seemingly opposing camps—Science and Religion.

It was a combination of necessity, circumstances and habit that led us to consideration of life from a narrow focus.  As knowledge advanced, uncountable pieces of information accumulated and it became necessary to compartmentalize it into manageable units.  Now, in the modern era we’ve been conditioned to see our world in separate units and that inhibits our wider vision.  When confronted with a problem we look only at the ‘box’ from which the problem arises.  We have a box for economics, a box for government, a box for technology, a box for psychology, a box for industry, boxes for religion and multiple boxes for science . . . we make our choices from within the box of the problem; we haven’t developed the means for dealing with that bigger picture of ‘everything is connected’.

Einstein said, “We must learn to think in a new way.”  To help us learn that new way Teilhard gives us the study of evolution.  He first brings us back to the beginning, when the earth was being born.  There is a pattern: we see movement from the simple to the complex.

       Geologists have defined the zonal composition of our planet; each layer necessarily            

       preceded the subsequent one and transformed it, and only because they developed

       as they did, was it possible for life to ultimately emerge:

            (the lifeless inorganic layers)

-       barysphere: central and metallic

-       lithosphere: it rocky surrounding crust

(the layers necessary for evolving and sustaining life)

-       hydrosphere: the fluid layers—earth’s waters

-       atmosphere: the air or gaseous surroundings

     to these 4 concentric layers, science identified another layer

            (the living membrane)

-       biosphere: living organisms

    Teilhard recognized and named another layer of transformation

            (the thinking layer)

-       noosphere:  of mind or mental processes

It is this quality of mind, mental processes or reflective awareness that sets the human apart, not a mere changes of biological state but a change of ‘being’.  The awakening of thought “marks the transformation that affects the state of the whole planet” (Teilhard’s words).  The presence of the human species has changed the face of the earth.  That is what we are called to fully recognize; we must expand our vision to see the whole picture because our collective choices set the course we travel.