We Need Hope

I write a lot about God and/or the ‘god concept’ that holds within it the search for all that is good.  The human spirit needs hope.  It is hope that enables us to keep going in the face of adversity.

We seem to be faced with so many disasters in our world today: a government shut-down that highlights the polarization that now grips our nation; the senseless mass killings that seem to have become epidemic; the cascade of natural disasters from out-of-control fires to floods and mud slides to snow and ice storms that take lives and yield massive damage.  So many people are losing faith in the prospect of a better world.

Life has always progressed in a pattern of two steps forward then one step back.  We’re in a backward phase now . . . and that will change.  We need to step back from the immediate and take in the broader picture of the flow of life.  Each era experiences both tragedy and growth while it adds to the wonders to enhance the lives of the next generation.  When the short-term view shows us disaster, we need to call upon the long view to reignite hope.

What primitive man, carving the first image on the cave wall, could foresee the world of communications we know today?  What scribe in the dark ages laboriously hand copying a manuscript could foresee a world of educated people reading and writing as a matter of course?  What physician of the Middle Ages, bleeding his patient to release the ‘bad humors’, could foresee the wonders of modern medicine?  What soldier bombing and killing the enemy in WWII could foresee Germany, Japan and the U.S. as allies working together for peace?

In every century we can see progress in the human psyche.  Our basic human nature, attracted to both good and evil, doesn’t change but little by little there is an increase in consciousness, expanding our understanding of what it means to be human, showing concern for our fellow man, growing in our

capacity to love, employing empathy and compassion; we saw it happening in people rushing to help others (complete strangers) in the recent disasters.  But at the same time malice grows in some segment of society: the Nazis in the last century, the jihadists in this one, and malhuman acts get worse in their ferocity.  The majority of people see the wrongness of it but others are confused and even attracted to it.  We’ve eliminated God from the equation and with nowhere to look to highlight ‘the good’—many feel lost.

God awaits humanity to discover that the only way to sustain this planet is to see it as one interdependent interacting world.  We will survive or perish together.  We have yet to fully awaken the human spirit—to learn to love one another and forgive our enemies.

Can we invest hope in humanity creating a better world?  It seems like an impossible dream, but consider those seemingly impossible advances from ages past.

  

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.

A Warning ?

I deviate from my series distilling Teilhard’s concepts to inject some impassioned thoughts that interrupted my reading as I searched through his books.  He was a visionary who weaves together the strands of human knowledge that arise from two seemingly disparate ways to understand life and the world—science explores the material aspect of being to understand function, religion searches the spiritual dimension to seek meaning—Teilhard sees they are not disparate, but rather interdependent.  What follows are my thoughts combining with his wisdom.

            God doesn’t need us—

            there is a vast universe God is nurturing—

            if this tiny planet self-destructs

            its disappearance will hardly be disruptive . . .

            its loss can be easily compensated for.

            But we need God—

            the unknown God beyond our understanding

            who gives order and balance to the evolving universe.

            A God who calls forth human reason and compassion

            inviting our creative participation in a sustainable world.

            A God who calls forth love and morality

            thus enabling life to flourish.

            There are uncountable galaxies and planets

            beyond our knowing—

            but what we do know of

            is that which we have been given to shepherd—

            this terra firma upon which we stand;

            it alone provides for our continuation . . .

            its fate depends upon us and our choices.

            Only by our active recognition

            of need for the order and balance

            which is represented by a loving God

            who calls us to acknowledge our interdependence

            can we survive our individual selfishness.

Deuteronomy 30:19—“This day I call the heavens and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life, so that you and your children may live . . . “     (NIV)