Archives for posts with tag: Spirit

Is God evolving?

January 24, 2010 //
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I mean, it makes sense if you think about it… if evolution is real… and I believe that it is… then why wouldn’t God be evolving?

Now let’s stop and check in… did you have a reaction to that question?  Did something inside you say that can’t quite be right?  If you read yesterday’s article, you might be thinking right about now, well “maybe the answer to the question is God evolving is–it depends”.  Hmmm?  Depends on how you define God?  Let’s think about that….

First off, if your worldview is one that includes what I called the old myth of God (that is of the old man in the sky that is external to us), then you might be thinking: “how can this all-powerful Creator God be evolving?  Would not this God be outside the physical realm of man and not be subject to the evolutionary forces we see at play?”  That sounds logical to me.

Secondly, if your worldview is one that says there is no God and everything is simply part of the physical universe subject to physical laws, then you might be thinking: “the question is meaningless, as there is no God to evolve”.  That sounds logical to me.

Thirdly, if your worldview is one that says there is a God but God is an infinite intelligence and energy that permeates everything such that everything is in God but God is greater than everything, then you might be thinking: “God or Spirit has infused everything with its energy and intelligence as well as created such forces as evolution.  Hence, Spirit is not evolving, but is experiencing the process of evolution through us.”  That sounds logical to me.

So then, is God evolving?  The answer seems to be yes and no.  Within an individual worldview, the God or non-God of that worldview is not evolving.  But if we step back and look at the worldviews of humanity, then we can see that our concept of God is evolving in our consciousness.

The mystic Ernest Holmes wrote “We can know no God external to that power of perception by which alone we are conscious of anything.  God must be interpreted to humanity through humanity’s own nature” as well as “God comes to us as we come to him/her.”  What he seems to be saying to me is that who or what God is to us depends upon our level of consciousness.  God shows up to us in exactly the same way that our own awareness defines how God should show up.  Holmes is not alone in this viewpoint.

Robert Wright, in his recent bestseller “The Evolution of God” agrees as he makes the following points:  God doesn’t evolve, we do.  Our perception of God changes as our cultural needs change.  That we experience continuous positive change in the quality of our lives over time, therefore life has a “direction”.  That “salvation” works to arrange the world so that its people find themselves and think of themselves more and more as interconnected, which is part of evolution’s direction.

Wright concludes  that the fact that there are religions and this evolutionary direction affirms the possibility of an actual divinity:  “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe – conceivably – the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”

So if we have come to a conclusion that perhaps it’s not God evolving, but rather our perception of God that is evolving then how does that come about?  Do we really have a worldview that colors our perception?  If so, then how did it come about?  How does it evolve?  Tomorrow we go deeper with those questions.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Do you believe God exists?

January 23, 2010 //
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People are generally going to answer that question, one of three ways — – yes, no, or it depends.

When people ask me that question, I generally stop and ask them back, “what do you mean by God?”  The common definition of God in our current culture is of an old man with long gray beard who sits in the sky on a throne and judges us upon our death.  If that is the inquirer’s definition, then my answer is “no”.  Unfortunately, that old outdated myth is the common meaning of the word “God” that most people conjure up when they hear it.  It’s usually what the media means when they say God.  This meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “yes” immediately upon being asked the question.  Obviously, Pat Robertson would answer yes.

Interestingly, the same meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “no” to the question about God.  Rev Michael Dowd has a great line on this.  When people tell him they don’t believe in God, he asks them to tell him about the God they don’t believe in and says he probably doesn’t believe in it either.  Although he goes on to say he does believe in God.  Hence, the answer depends on your definition.

What this leads us to is the fact that there is a new vision of what God is.  Frequently people who hold this new vision steer away from using the word God because it conjures up the old myth.  I know I tend to use the word “Spirit.”  There are other words given to this new vision of God.  They include: Infinite Mind, Infinite Intelligence, Oneness, Suchness, Divine Being, Divine Mind and so on.

In this new vision of God, it is a power, a presence, a force, an intelligence, an essence.  One might think of it as an intelligent energy, which permeates everything.  This energy moves in and through everything and gives everything its existence.  This includes all of the world of matter and physical stuff that we can measure and see and sense and it also includes everything that is beyond the world of the seen.  Technically this is called “Panentheism”.

Here’s a few words from Wikipedia, on the definition of panentheism, which might be helpful (especially in distinguishing it from its close cousin “Pantheism”…pardon the technical jargon):

Panentheism is a belief system which posits that God exists and interpenetrates every part of nature, and timelessly extends beyond as well. Panentheism is distinguished from pantheism , which holds that God is synonymous with the material universe. Briefly put, in pantheism, “God is the whole”; in panentheism, “The whole is in God.” This means that the Universe  in the first formulation is practically the Whole itself, but in the second the universe and God are not ontologically equivalent. In panentheism, God is not necessarily viewed as the creator or demiurge, but the eternal animating force behind the universe, with the universe as nothing more than the manifest part of God. The cosmos  exists within God, who in turn “pervades” or is “in” the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God.

So then, God is in everything and everything is in God but God is greater than everything.  The funny thing is many people have never heard this word or this definition, but it’s what they’ve come to believe through their life’s experiences.  Many scientists have come to the same conclusion on their pursuit of scientific truths.  For these people, something leads them to this conclusion (either an inner knowingness or their empirical evidence) that this is what God is… but again, they may not use the word “God”.

So where are we?  When asked “do you believe in God?”  The so-called “believers” who hold to the old myth will answer yes.  Those who hold to a strict materialistic scientific view (often called “scientism”) will answer no.  Then there are those who have let go of the old myth, but have questioned the gaps in the materialistic viewpoint.  They say, “it depends”.

So why do we have these different viewpoints?

In a sense we’re talking about “the evolution of God”.  Robert Wright, in his recent book by that name, tells us that it’s not God per se evolving but rather its humanity’s evolving worldviews that are leading us to see God in a different light.  Both Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory point us to the same conclusion.

The bottom line is how you answer the question depends upon your worldview.  We’ll look at that next.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Satan, Haiti and Pat Robertson Ménage à trois

January 22, 2010 //
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I interrupt my regular post today to bring you a bit of humor.  This crossed my desk this morning and it was too good not to share….

As you know, after the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Pat Robertson declared on his television program that the country has been “cursed by one thing after another” since they “swore a pact to the devil.”  Robertson went on to describe how the pack came to be.  If you are interested, go Google it.  Already for me there is a lot to laugh at already….the ludicrous nature of Robertson’s comments themselves…the fact that Robertson continues to be on TV…..the fact that anyone even pays attention to what he says anymore….all pretty funny (even if tinged with a bit of disappointment that he gets headlines that could be better used for more positive things).

That said, the humor meter went up a few notches when Satan decided to reply to Robertson via a letter to the editor this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (in the words of Dave Barry, I’m not making this up, you can Google this too….the letter is making the rounds on the internet, to give credit where due–the Star Tribune attributes it to Lily Coyle of Minneapolis).

Here it is:

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Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth –glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle.

Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best,
Satan

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Tomorrow’s article will be entitled “Do you believe God exists?”   Depending upon how you answer that question, there are two  corollaries to it: “Who or what is God?” and “Do you believe Satan exists?”  Obviously we know what Pat thinks….

Mark

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Categories Culture, Entertainment, Politics, Uniting Nations