More galaxies than grains of sand on every beach of this world.
Taken with the Hubble Deep Field, January 15, 1996

Since it’s a lovely morning, why don’t we take stock of a few things that most of us take for granted. Let’s start with some practical aspects of “reality.”  Here we are— billions of us— whizzing through time and space, on a molten-core spheroid, which is spinning in circles about a thousand miles an hour. We are orbiting a pale yellow star at nearly 67,000 miles per hour. That star is traveling at roughly 559,232 miles per hour;  or 150 miles a second. That’s right;  150 miles per second.

We are buffered from all that velocity by a thin blanket of air.

We are living, sentient beings;  creatures that can think and reflect about our life, and wonder if it has a meaning.  We have learned we are made up of an amazing variety of discrete, infinitesimal “particles” that aggregate for a time in space, giving us each a temporary physical presence; we also know this state of affairs is largely illusion.  That is to say, comparatively speaking, that there is as much relative “space” between our corporeal “particles” as there is between the planets of our solar system.

Somewhere near the top of this collection of atoms we casually call our “selves,” is an even more unique and astounding collection of electrochemical particles that produce “thoughts,” and even attach a sense of “realness” as well as personal identity to them;  we think they’re “ours.” 

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Andy: “. . .That’s the beauty of music; they can’t get that from you. Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?

Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it, though. Didn’t make much sense in here.

Andy: Here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget.

Red: Forget?

Andy: Forget that. . . there. . . are places. . . in the world that aren’t made out of stone; that there’s somethin’ inside they can’t get to; they can’t touch. . . it’s yours.

Red: What’re you talkin’ about?

Andy: . . .Hope.

Red: Hope. Lemme tell you sumthin’ my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. ‘Sgot no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea.

Andy: . . .Like Brooks did?

Hope is a risk. It does take audacity to hope— especially in the face of appalling danger and imminent failure. And we so easily forget our one “inner bastion” that is unassailable, the soul; that “somethin’ inside they can’t get to; they can’t touch. . . it’s yours” as Andy said.

Andy Dufrane hoped for redemption from injustice, redemption for his imprisoned soul. But unlike most men, Andy didn’t need the trauma of prison to get introduced to his soul; he had already discovered it through the beauty of music, and his love for his wife. He hoped of regaining his freedom in the world; he hope to regain a life he knew was real, and waiting. Red, however, needed to be coaxed and gently lured to rediscover the vital role of hope.

Dear Red,

If you’re reading this, you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don’t you? [Zijuatinejo] I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I’ll keep an eye out for you, and the chess board ready.

Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.

I’ll be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.

Your friend,
Andy

Hope, like faith, can grow until it becomes unshakable. But it must be regularly exercised, just like a muscle. And once you realize the genuine power of hope, you’ll be ready to use it in the most audacious way possible: the hope for never ending life. Audacious as that may sound, it is the divine promise from God to man, and is freely offered to anyone willing to accept the only struggle; the good fight of faith.

Let’s append Andy Dufrane’s maxim to reflect the real audacity of hope:

“Get busy livin’ forever, or get busy dyin’ forever.”

Dr. James Dobson exposing gay troubadour and inanimate object, Sponge Bob.

James Dobson cannot speak for me. Before God, as we all are, he may only speak for himself. If one thing could be clear about our relationship with God as a Father, it should be that he loves us as individuals, and he judges us as individuals. When Dr. James Dobson accuses Senator Obama of distorting “the traditional understanding of the Bible,” he is actually talking about his own personal “world view,” and his own “confused theology”— as a single creature before the Creator.

There may be many thousands of other individuals who identify themselves as “members of his flock,” individual Christians who are perfectly willing to compromise the sovereignty of their own personalities by accepting James Dobson’s personal religious experience as their’s, too.

Until the human race progresses to the level of a higher and more general recognition of the realities of spiritual experience, large numbers of men and women will continue to show a personal preference for those religions of authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to the religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of progressive human experience.

The acceptance of the traditional religions of authority presents the easy way out for man’s urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his spiritual nature. The settled, crystallized, and established religions of authority afford a ready refuge to which the distracted and distraught soul of man may flee when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty. Such a religion requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its satisfactions and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent.

— The Urantia Book

Religionists like James Dobson rely on their personal interpretation of supposed inerrancy of scripture as the arbiter of God’s word of perfect, infallible, unchanging, truth. If he’s honest about it, he might also claim that he knows this is true in his soul. But as such, it is a personal experience that only he can verify. It is just such a personal and unique experience for which he now criticizes Barack Obama.

Regarding his own personal religious experience, Obama has written:

It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Every child of the Creator has such a relationship with God, whether or not they take advantage of it in this life in the flesh.

That’s why religionists who recognize that truth must be lived out, not merely traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized, will always disagree with religionists like Dobson. True religion carries over from one age to another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of the experience of knowing God and striving to be like him. It has never been proven that God’s desire is that those who believe in him should become dogmatized and standardized in their beliefs, or should submit their wills to the religious interpretations of even good men. Jesus repeatedly warned his apostles against the formulation of creeds and the establishment of traditions as a means of controlling believers. Christians like Dobson err when they devote their lives to doing just that.

Obama:

“. . .to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of “thou” and not just “I,” resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.”

It is a fact that religion does not grow unless it is disciplined by constructive criticism, amplified by philosophy, purified by science, and nourished by loyal fellowship. —The Urantia Book

ADAM and EVE by Ernst Fuchs

Our friend Sherry at A Feather Adrift has written another thought provoking essay on a range of religious issues. I’ve winnowed out several of her interesting questions for comment here. If you have time I suggest you read it there before you read this response.

Is God fully omniscient in time and space?
It is literally true that God is all and in all. He inhabits the “circle of eternity.” God is possessed of unlimited power to know all things; he alone can be in two places, in numberless places. But even that is not all of God. The Infinite can be finally revealed only in infinity; the cause can never be fully comprehended by an analysis of effects; the living God is immeasurably greater than the sum total of creation that has come into being as a result of the creative acts of his unfettered free will.

As an infinite being, God comprehends the end from the beginning of “time,” because both time and space are “sub-absolute.” Space is not infinite, even though it takes origin from Paradise; we do not know the absolute limits of space, but we do know that the absolute of time is eternity.

It may be helpful to realize there are three different levels of time cognizance:
1. Mind-perceived time— consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration.
2. Spirit-perceived time— insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity.
3. Personality creates a unique time sense out of insight into Reality, plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration.

Why doesn’t God reveal himself scientifically?
To Science, God is a possibility; to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience. Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Reason is the proof of science, faith (not mere belief) is the proof of religion, even as logic is the proof of philosophy. But science must end its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause, because science can never validate God.

Only the personal experience of the faith sons of the Father can effect the actual spiritual realization of the personality of God. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law. Reason then, would demand that a philosophy which cannot find the God of probability should be very respectful of the religious faith which can, and does, find the God of certitude.

And science should never discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that our intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, to take origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of any and all ability to think and feel.

Obviously there is a vast gulf between the infinity of God and the finiteness of man. As truth one may know God, but to understand enough to explain God, one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God, and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Modern science has left true religion— the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers— untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of many of the misinterpretations of life.

Can atheists be “just as moral as the next person”?
Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly super-animal. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive. Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it may be wholly and purely human. But morality without religion fails to reveal ultimate goodness, and it also fails to provide for the survival of even its own moral values. Religion provides for the enhancement and assured survival of everything morality recognizes and approves.

Man can, intellectually, deny God, and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. And in so doing, man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature, and apparently prove his atheistic contentions. But such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness, and God-ascension. In such an experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual.

If you truly believe in God— by faith know him and love him— don’t permit the reality of such an experience to be in any way lessened or detracted from by the doubting insinuations of science, the caviling of logic, the postulates of philosophy, or the clever suggestions of well-meaning souls who would create a religion without God. Live your faith, and it will grow to be of such towering strength it can never be shaken.

How do we define ourselves as “sentient” spiritual creatures?
Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt human beings have prevision— insight— we may visualize the future. “Sentience” must eventually come to be defined as self-conscious personality indwelt by Spirit. Animals are not “self-conscious,” thus they can never experience consciousness
of consciousness.

Self-consciousness implies the recognition of the reality of selves other than the conscious self, and further implies that such awareness is mutual; that the self is known as it knows. But you cannot become so absolutely certain of a fellow being’s reality as you can of the reality of the presence of God that lives within you.

Were Adam and Eve real people?
Despite what current paleontology and DNA might suggest, Adam and Eve were real beings, but they were not evolutionary human beings born on this world. As one might reasonably expect, the true story of their “creation,” as it has come down through 37,000 years of word of mouth, has been stripped of nearly all truth and recognition of the original events.

My first recommendation to anyone interested in the real story of Adam and Eve, or any cosmological question, is to read The Urantia Book. There’s simply no substitute for spiritual revelation. Since that is a formidable commitment of both time and mental reflection, suffice it to say for our our purposes here that Adam and Eve were of a material order of divine sons who come to the evolving worlds of space; these Material Sons and Daughters are the last physical link in the chain of personalities extending from divinity and perfection above, down to humanity and material existence below. Their dispensations usually last many thousands of years, as they attempt to engraft the higher forms of creature life on the primitive men of the evolutionary worlds of space. Unfortunately, that did not fully happen on our world.

It’s hard not to think of the story of Adam and Eve in purely symbolic terms if all you’ve ever been exposed to is the Biblical account. The story of creating Eve out of Adam’s rib is a confused condensation of their arrival and the “celestial surgery” connected with the interchange of living substances associated with the coming of a corporeal staff of celestials, more than four hundred and fifty thousand years previously. It’s too long a story to unfold here, but it must be said that the so-called parents of the human race were at once the recipients of the most blessed, and the most tragic of circumstances of all of the several planetary “dispensations” of celestial over-care that have occurred here-to-for on our world.

The origins of the human race, as even our partial scientific understanding must attest, is a complex, multi-faceted mystery of staggering proportions; as it quite naturally impinges on every realm of human experience. That science has no business in spiritual matters is still a difficult hurdle for most critics of religion to understand, and only further complicates the examination of the interrelatedness of our planetary origins with our universe destiny as creatures.

That said, there are still many things about our origins that can be known, and known now, that will take science many, many more decades to factually unravel. That this knowing must use living faith to achieve its certainty in no way lessens its relevance to individuals in pursuit of intelligent and worthy cosmological understanding. It will probably remain a sad fact that many otherwise brilliant atheistic individuals will never discover the true nature of living faith, preferring instead the much more ludicrous but serviceable definition of faith as mere belief.

The fact that vast time is involved in the attainment of God makes the presence and personality of the Infinite none the less real. Our individual ascension is a part of the circuit of the vast universe, and though we may swing around it countless times, we may expect, in spirit and in status, to be ever swinging inward. We can depend upon being translated from sphere to sphere, from the far outer circuits where we are now, to ever nearer the inner center, and our destination, Paradise. And some day, doubt not, we shall stand in the divine and central presence and see him, figuratively speaking, face to face.

There’s a common misconception rampant in political and other discourse in the world today, and it leads to all kinds of injustice, terrorism, and other spiritual horrors. It’s the idea that love of what’s right is the same thing as hatred of what’s wrong. The two are like day and night. One heals, the other leads to endless conflict and destruction.

The world at this time of crisis on many levels needs to focus on strengthening what’s good, not just trying to destroy evil and enemies. We need to keep in mind the warning about the beam and the mote – what’s in your own head and heart when you’re condemning the faults of others – and remember that argumentative defense of any idea or agenda is missing the point not because the idea or agenda is wrong, but because the truth is not in our ideas but in the quality of our relationships with others, at all times, even especially in moments of disagreement.

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