Pattern Seen

How can an otherwise intelligent person conclude there is no God?  I understand rejecting the god-images we have constructed—none are true.  But there is pattern and order to existence, which can be discovered, and that is the product of consciousness.  How can anyone look at the wonder of the universe and conclude it is all there by random chance without direction and intent?  Even the simplest scientific exploration tells us of the amazing delicate balance of elements that allows for existence and life.  Order does not self-create; it is the product of forethought and planning.  Whoever or whatever God is, God is Consciousness and our consciousness is humanity’s link to the unknown God.  Creator of the Universe, originator of pattern and order, I can only bow in humble thanksgiving.

When the species human emerged eons ago, man entered the world of nature as it had appeared to all other living creatures, but the human possessed a unique quality, that of consciousness tuned with reflective awareness—the ability to reason, look back and recall, to look forward and anticipate—the quality slowly awakened and relentlessly evolved; with it the human constructed language and began to alter the environment to his advantage.

Fast forward millions of years and see how the human has changed the face of the earth: from outer space one can see earth’s darkness dotted with lights; we have built structures and machines which have connected all parts of the globe with marvels of transportation and communication; we have made discoveries that combat diseases and enable us to see beyond this small world into the vast universe.  Surely chance plays a role, but it is the result of thought born of consciousness that brings forth the marvels of human effort.  Is that not a reflection of all creation?

Human kind is not just ‘another animal’; the human person is a new species--evolution's goal.  “If a tree falls in the forest and there are no ears to hear, is there a sound?”  Mankind is the being who sees, hears, knows and comprehends the wonders of it all and has the freedom to change what is given—that is co-creation.  We discover truth, we don’t invent it.  The pattern and order is there for us to find and see. 

In the evolution that produced life there is another necessary element which is ‘attraction’ (seeking union; which at its highest level is love).  Atoms join to form molecules, molecules join to form cells, cells join to form organs, etc.  Male and female join to form family units and produce new beings; thoughts and ideas join to form new concepts; enemies that have fought wars become allies to promote peace—slowly it all comes together—human consciousness seeks love and harmony.  We have yet too fully awaken, but the intended pattern can be seen.

  

Cells in God's Being

A central tenet of Christianity is the Trinity.  I accept Trinity but I believe it is a mistake to continue to refer to God as three ‘persons’.  By continuing to refer to ‘persons’, defining ‘Father’ as the first person, we cannot help but conjure up the image of an old man with a long white beard looking down from afar.  I say there IS a God beyond our knowing, who had been manifested to humanity in three ways.

Creator God is the energy force of creation—of the entire Universe.  You can’t fit that into ‘a person’!  Can I understand God as a causal energy force?  Of course I can’t—but neither can I understand how falling water, or wind, or burning coal, or reflecting sunlight can be the cause of the electricity flowing through wires to light our homes and run our machines and computers at the touch of a button.  I don’t understand it yet I accept it.  So too, I believe God is the energy force of creation because I am here, and the world exists.  St. Paul states: ‘God is All in all.   All exists in God’.  The human person is of God and God is in the human person.  We are free to accept or reject that.

God as Savior chose to manifest the God-self as a human to demonstrate how we are to live this life and to give evidence to immortality.  Jesus was clearly ‘a person’, living the individuality of a singular human being, thus demonstrating the sacredness of our individuality.  He shared a limited existence in time.  Time is limiting, sequential, and one-directional.  Eternity is none of these.  Eternity is infinite, all encompassing and a totality.  God’s Being is in eternity.  Life and material being exists in God within that eternity but has the limit of time.  As Jesus, God accepted life’s limitations, in so doing, connected humanity to the God-self—then empowering God’s spirit to guide us if we but make that choice.  God never insists.

That spirit is the third manifestation of God, known as the Holy Spirit.  Teilhard de Chardin added to our understanding of Holy Spirit in his book The Divine Milieu. Divine of course refers to God.  Milieu is a French word that does not have an equivalent meaning in English.  A dictionary may define it as ‘environment’ but the meaning of milieu is so much deeper, it is the ‘everything’ that sustains one—the air you breath, sunlight, nature, the people and things that surround you.  Holy Spirit/Divine Milieu is God’s spirit of love and goodness that envelops us and seeks union.  It is ever-present.  The meaning carried by the term ‘divine milieu’ brings us to see more clearly that we are all connected.  We are of God, we live in God, and we each carry a spark of God within us whether or not we acknowledge and accept it.

We can say all this but it is beyond our ability to actually grasp, yet we are called to trust (have faith) that it is so . . . accepting that it is the key to a higher consciousness wherein we as a people come to recognize our interconnectedness and begin to live differently—emulating Jesus’ call to “Love God with your whole heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself.”

I like the analogy of humans as cells in God’s Being.