Tag: science

The rationality of religion and the faith of science

Many today have concluded that religion is fundamentally irrational, and science is the only model of rationality. However, science and religion are more similar than most people think. They both start off beyond reason and become rational later. 

    Anselm in the 11th century defined theology as “faith seeking understanding,” thus balancing those who said all we need is faith with those who claimed all we need is science. In the 13th century, Aquinas carried on Anselm’s agenda of putting divine revelation and human knowledge together. At a time when universities were first forming, these doctors of the church defined the criteria for western scholarship from then on. Since then, most mainline churches have had a healthy respect for the role of reason in religion. In fact, in the Anglican church, they believe the three basic pillars of the church to be tradition, scripture, and reason. Blind faith is immature faith. 

    The great pioneers of science – Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin were religious and hoped their findings would confirm their faith. They believed all truth comes from the one God; therefore, there can be no ultimate contradiction between religion and science.

    It is true that people become religious from promptings of the heart. The heart is beyond reason, but has reasons of its own, as Pascal said. God is most readily experienced through faith, prayer, ritual, and acts of compassion. However, whereas religion is more intuitive and right-brained, theology is the rational attempt to understand religion and is more left-brained and logical.

    Whether you think science is rational and religion is not depends on your definition of reason. In medieval times, thinkers such as Anselm and Aquinas defined reason as the faculty which knows our place in the universe and that there are divine mysteries beyond human understanding.

However, science eventually predominated to the point where some scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, subscribe to positivism, the belief that only what can be proved by science is rational.

    The truth is that science, like religion, starts beyond reason and then becomes rational. Science is based on the faith that the universe is logical. No scientist would begin to do science if they did not have this faith, if they presupposed the universe is beyond understanding. The scientific search for the simplest theory is motivated by the belief that such a theory exists. Charles Townes, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, said: “Science is so successful, we are enthralled. Many people don’t realize that science involves assumptions and faith…nothing is absolutely proved.”

    Beyond that, science is increasingly coming face-to-face with mystery. The strange, logic-defying things quantum mechanics tells us happen at the subatomic level of the universe make Christian theology seem more and more reasonable by comparison. If you don’t reject science because it is full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox, why would you reject religion because it is also full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox?  

    When you plunge into the depths of religion, science, and the universe, you must first let go of rationality and be guided by intuition, imagination, wonder, and awe. However, religion, science, and the universe are all secondarily rational. Religion has theology, science has theories, and the universe has material and spiritual laws.

    Dawkins believes that science and religion are opposites, with science totally rational and religion totally irrational. However, they are on parallel paths of trying to understand the universe, and at a deep level, the differences are superficial.            

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com 

Exploring Divine Love Amidst Human Pain

Why does God, who is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, allow disasters? Why does God not prevent all accidents, illness, famine, and war? Why does God allow suffering in general?

       In 2005, some Christians maintained that, because New Orleans had a reputation for being “sin city,” God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish them. Pat Robertson, a US televangelist, claimed that God had punished Haiti with hurricanes and earthquakes for “making a pact with the devil.” A few centuries ago, John Wesley believed that the great Lisbon earthquake in the 1700s was God’s wrath against sin. 

       Such explanations must be categorically rejected. In the biblical story of the woman caught in adultery, when asked if she should be stoned to death as the Law of Moses demanded, Jesus replied, “Let the one who has never sinned cast the first stone.” All her accusers walked away because they knew they had sinned too. If God struck New Orleans, Haiti, or Lisbon for their sins, God would have to do the same to all of us. 

      God did not want or cause an earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries on our planet. A more widespread explanation for Haiti’s poverty and woes is that foreign countries rejected Haiti when its slaves revolted and gained independence, it has had a string of brutal and corrupt governments, and Haiti is geographically located in a hurricane zone and on a fault line.

       God does not want or cause suffering in general either. We know that God allows human freedom, which is the cause of most human suffering. God also allows a certain freedom in the natural world. Most of the time, nature serves us well, but natural laws will proceed even if humans are in the way. God did not cause the earthquake in Haiti, the shifting of tectonic plates did.

       Getting back to our question of why God allows suffering, we also have to ask: to what extent should God eliminate suffering? Should God eliminate all pain? Pain, which is part of nature, serves us well in most cases. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain tells you to withdraw it. If God eliminated our ability to feel pain, we would quickly destroy ourselves. Pain is also a great motivator. Most medical and social breakthroughs have come from seeking to alleviate or prevent pain.

       Most of us have experienced a broken heart from being spurned by someone we loved. To eliminate all pain, God would have to make us into robots who could not do unloving things like rejecting people. However, we would also be unable to love since love requires free choice. 

       Pain also serves us well spiritually. The ecstasy of gaining love and the pain of losing it make us more humble, wise, and compassionate. Suffering should not be glorified; no one should purposefully seek it. However, we can use it as a great teacher.

       Just as we suffer if our children suffer, God must suffer with us. In fact, that is what the cross, the central icon of Christianity, is all about. It declares that God knows what it is like to suffer as a human being. God suffers with us. The cross is the universal symbol that God is not in bliss, off somewhere else, while we suffer on earth. God is right in the middle of our pain. God is always on the side of the crucified, no matter what their nationality, race, or religion.

              Sometimes, though, the suffering is so senseless that there is no adequate explanation. As Rabbi Harold Kushner said long ago, sometimes all you can do is drop your theological explanations and be with people, hold them in your arms, and cry with them in their grief. That’s what God does. God does not leave us alone in our sorrow.

       The international response to Haiti was due to God moving people’s hearts and consciences to reach out and help take this crucified nation off its cross. The response has been like the beginnings of a resurrection: God overcoming horrific pain and death. Perhaps, Haiti will eventually be fully resurrected as a much safer and stronger nation than before. Let us all pray that this is what happens.

       Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. www.brucetallman.com

Exploring Dimensions: Angels, Spirits, and Our Quantum Universe

       There is more to the universe than meets the eye: scientists know that 23% of the universe is composed of dark (invisible) matter, and 73% is dark energy. That means only 4% of the universe is visible. Some astrophysicists also believe that our quantum universe is made up of 11 dimensions, not just the three we are used to, or four if you include space-time.          

       Perhaps angels, spirits, ancestors, and ghosts inhabit these other dimensions and have the ability to interact with our dimension. These beings are real, not just the figment of someone’s imagination, and have a real impact. John Geiger in his new book The Third Man Factor, writes about how people in desperate straits are often helped by a mysterious someone who shows them the mountain pass they must go through or steers their boat in a storm when they are too sick to move. 

       Many people believe in guardian angels, and the scriptures of the major religions are full of them. The Jewish and Christian scriptures describe angels guiding people in dreams, protecting them when they are thrown into a furnace or lion’s den, or liberating them from jail.

       It is not always clear what the difference is between angels, spirits, ghosts, and ancestors. 

       Directees (people in spiritual direction) often tell me about spirits appearing at the end of their bed when they wake in the middle of the night. Perhaps our unconscious mind is still open to the seven or eight other dimensions when we are in that hazy state between sleep and waking.

       Some of my Christian directees can see spirits or ghosts when they are fully awake, an ability they usually wish they didn’t have. One woman reported walking into the back kitchen in her old farmhouse and seeing four spirits sitting around a table. Another said she was at a funeral when she saw the spirit of the dead man being led through the chapel by another spirit who apparently wanted the deceased to know the grief he caused his family by committing suicide.

       Others have told me about an invisible someone preventing them from stepping in front of a car or hugging them when they were crying over a deceased spouse. 

       Some friends who immersed themselves in native spirituality were building a sweat lodge when they looked up and found themselves surrounded by spirits. Aboriginals throughout the world believe we are constantly accompanied by our ancestors. This is similar to the “cloud of witnesses” Paul wrote about in the New Testament, which later became the doctrine of “the communion of saints.”

       One of my directees read about a doctor who was driving in the middle of nowhere when a young boy appeared, who then led him to an overturned bus. The doctor was able to save several lives, but one of the deceased was the boy he picked up. When he got back in his car the boy’s baseball cap was still on the passenger’s seat.

       A long time ago I was lost on the prairies when my car broke down. It was January, and I was slowly freezing to death. Even though I was an atheist then, I shouted at the sky “God, please help me!” Out of the blue a car appeared, and a man poured antifreeze into my gas tank. When I asked who he was he said “I’m an angel of the highway.” I followed right behind him until we finally came to a town. He turned to the right and when I looked down the street there wasn’t a car in sight. I don’t know if he was indeed an angel, but in our strange universe I don’t discount any possibility.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

The Absurdity of Atheism in Maher’s ‘Religulous’

 “Religulous,” a mockumentary, is a two-hour assault on religion. The not-very-subtle message is that to be “religious “is “ridiculous.” The title combines the words.

       Bill Maher, the host, delights in skewering the seeming absurdities in religion: babbling in tongues, silly hats, the manipulation by televangelists. I think Jesus himself would likely laugh or weep over our folly. Religions need people like Maher. He is like the court jester employed by wise medieval kings to point out when people were getting too pompous. 

       Maher also attacks the dangerous side of religion: the holy wars, suicide bombings, anti-science, and potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of nuclear end-times. Maher does religion a service by courageously showing us when it is absurd, mindless, and destructive. He mainly attacks Christianity and Judaism, but also dares to criticize Islam. 

       However, he does religion a disservice by presenting the extremes as the norm. There is a danger the uninformed might think this is all religion is.

       He conveniently leaves out when religious people live according to their true values, have a deep spirituality, found service agencies and hospitals, educate and feed the poor, protest war and injustice, promote the sacredness of life and marriage, and constantly remind us life is more than the unbridled pursuit of money and self-centered pleasure.

       He conveniently leaves out the many profound and very rational Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers: Abraham Heschel, Martin Buber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, and Averroes, to name a few.

       He conveniently leaves out the constant progression in religious thinking and that atheists are stuck in a time warp in their criticism. Sure, there were absurd things written in the scriptures 2500 years ago, and God was often portrayed as an angry despot. Sure, there were crusades, and the church condemned Galileo hundreds of years ago. However, most believers today have repented of those ways of thinking and left them far behind. 

       This is where Maher totally misses the mark. The inconvenient truth for him and other atheists is that most people in the mainline synagogues, churches, and mosques are not extremists but moderates who believe in a loving God, are in favour of rationality and science, and are themselves critical when their traditions become absurd and dangerous.

       Maher also conveniently leaves out that atheism itself may be dangerous and absurd. Without religion, people make up false gods, for example, absolute ideologies like capitalism and communism. Maher conveniently leaves out that atheists like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed 80 million people in the twentieth century, more than all the religious wars in all of history.

       He conveniently leaves out that it might be more rational to believe there is a Supreme Intelligence behind all the order of the universe than to believe it all just happened by chance. He conveniently leaves out that without God, life might seem ultimately absurd when you are suddenly downsized, become sick, or lose a loved one. He conveniently leaves out that God and religious faith may, in fact, be the only real answers to life’s absurdities and dangers.

       Thank you, atheists, for keeping religion honest and accountable, but please don’t try to convince people that religion is all absurdity and destruction, and please be as self-critical as you ask religious people to be.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Seeing God and Humans at Work in All Avoids Pitfalls

If you understand that God works with, in, and through things without violating their essential nature, you can avoid many contemporary pitfalls. 

    To begin at the beginning, God created laws of nature, such as the law of complexity/consciousness, which means God and nature constantly co-create more complex, conscious, and free creatures. 

    John Polkinghorne, a physicist and Anglican priest, stated in his “free-process defence” of the existence of God in spite of evil: God allows nature a certain amount of freedom because it is better to have a creative world free to make mistakes than a mechanical world ruled by a cosmic tyrant.

    Evolution is so full of false starts that it would be easy to conclude it is just a random process. However, it is a divine/natural process that, overall, is heading in a spiritual direction: from matter to life to thought to spirit. We can see this in the movement from our planet’s original chemical soup to plants, animals, humans, and religions. Sri Aurobindo (Hindu), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Christian), and Ken Wilber (Buddhist) all agree about spiritual evolution.

    The increasingly free natural world co-created with God free human beings. God made humans with free will because it is better to have a world with people who make mistakes than one of perfectly programmed machines. Robots cannot love. For love, you need freedom. This is the “free-will defence” of God’s existence despite evil.

    With nature, God co-created humans with the intrinsic law of love: a deep desire for absolute goodness, truth, beauty, and love. In other words, what everyone wants is God, whether they know it or not. It would be easy to get so caught up with all the sins of humans that you miss our overall goodness: most people want to love and be good. On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the goodness of humans, as the human potential movement often does, that you could naively miss our sins and need of God.

    Similarly, the writing of scripture is a divine/human process. God co-created the scriptures with the human authors without violating their freedom. On the one hand, you could get so caught up with all the scientific and historical errors in scripture that it would be easy to conclude it is all a human fabrication, as John Spong and Marcus Borg have done.         

    On the other hand, you could get so caught up with the divine inspiration of scripture that you make it infallible in all things and fail to see that, while it may be inerrant on matters of faith and morals, it is not a science or history textbook, it is a faith document. Believing in the absolute infallibility of scripture closes people off from science, makes them fundamentalists, and contributes to the rise of scientific atheism in our culture.

    Similarly, Jesus was and is a divine/human person. The Spirit never violated the essential human and divine nature of Jesus but co-created his life, death, and resurrection with him. It would be easy to get so caught up searching for the historical Jesus that you miss his overall divinity. On the other hand, it would be easy to get so caught up in his divinity that you miss his humanity and his message of social justice, as Christians have largely done until the last hundred years or so.

    Churches are also divine/human co-creations. No church, synagogue, or mosque is a society of the perfect. Even Christian saints, such as Peter and Paul, and Jewish heroes, such as Abraham and Moses, were as full of human foibles as present-day imams. You could get so caught up in church scandals that it would be easy to miss the overall goodness of churches and conclude they are just an all-too-human enterprise. Most of the time, churches quietly go about doing good, but this rarely gets in the news. 

    On the other hand, you could focus so fully on the divine side of churches that you become triumphalist and believe the church has all the answers and doesn’t need to learn from science, psychology, history, and other religions. God works with churches, letting them make mistakes, but also guiding churches, other religions, and people who are “spiritual but not religious” towards the reign of Spirit. 

    At this crucial time in human history, in spite of all the doomsday predictions about the climate and economy there also seems to be a massive outpouring of Spirit going on in peoples’ hearts and souls. So, we need to avoid the pitfall of despair, as if God was not involved with and through the whole process. Again, God does not violate our freedom to make mistakes and wise decisions. God draws and invites us rather than forcing and driving us. 

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Exploring the God Debate: Proofs for and Against Existence

THE GOD DELUSION: FACT OR FICTION?

    In 2003, a new book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, was climbing the bestseller charts and giving atheists everywhere powerful fuel for attacking religion. On November 9 eighty people attended a debate sponsored by the Humanist Association of London and Area on “Is There A Loving Creator God?” Here are the key points by the debaters Dr. Goldwin Emerson and Dr. Bruce Tallman.

    EMERSON: NO. THERE IS NO LOVING CREATOR GOD

    The Christian God is reputed to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent, supreme being who created the universe, answers prayer and influences events on Earth. He is also believed to have sent his son to Earth for the purpose of atoning for the sins of humankind. This description causes skeptics to ask the following:

  1. If the deity is all-knowing, he would know when disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes are about to happen, and if he is all-powerful, why does he not stop these catastrophes and prevent the death of innocent people? 

2. If this deity is powerful and benevolent, why does he allow humans to be born with defects and incurable diseases? 

3. Millions of believers pray to their deity, asking that he intervene in events on Earth. Why are so many prayers not answered? 

4. Why do Christians claim that Jesus is divine, requiring worship, when no other monotheistic religions make this claim for their prophets? 

 5. As scientific knowledge advances, we learn that many of the world’s problems of pollution, war, global warming, hunger, and disease are human-made problems which, if they are to be solved at all, will need to be solved by human-made solutions. Why is it that Christians claim that God is necessary for ethical behaviour?  Effective ethical codes were established in various early civilizations prior to the existence of Christianity. 

    When asked why their omnipotent, loving God allows so much misery in the world, believers say God moves in mysterious ways, or the universe is unfolding as it should.  These answers are hardly satisfying to skeptics, and one is tempted to side with Sigmund Freud (1870-1937), who said: “A personal god is nothing more than a father figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of a sense of helplessness.  Religion belongs to the infancy of the human race; it has been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity.  It has promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity has come of age, however, it should be left behind.”                                                                  For non-theists, the conclusion is that there is no God. On the other hand, there are alternative ways of viewing what has been called God. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza proposed that the belief in God’s activity in the world was merely a way of describing the world’s mathematical and causal principles. For Spinoza there was no need for the concept of divine law: the best guidance is the eternal laws of nature. The famous physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and many more recent scientists and philosophers have expressed a similar view.

     Others may think of God as a quality within themselves, the Ultimate Reality or the Ground of All Being, instead of believing in the traditional Christian concept of God.

     Most liberal Christians accept the firm scientific evidence that the universe is billions of years old and that life on Earth evolved over millions of years; nevertheless, they may still believe that, in some mysterious way, God is a prime mover in this evolution. While religious people also credit God with the origin and existence of love, humanists believe love is a product of evolution. The emotion of love, particularly in mammals, enhances the survival potential of offspring. Considering God as a creator begs the obvious question: Who or what created God?  For humanists, the answer is simple: humans created God.

     It seems that primitive peoples looked for explanations of how the world works and created numerous spirits and gods to account for natural happenings. Over the centuries, many different gods were invented by ancient civilizations, including Egypt, Greece and Rome. One exception was the monotheistic God of the Hebrews. We now accept that the multitude of ancient pagan gods were created in the minds of humans. It is reasonable to conclude that Yahweh was also created in the minds of the Hebrews and became entrenched in the myths contained in the book of Genesis. Thus, humans created God in their own image rather than the other way around.

     Humanists are guided by the principles of rational thought, scientific inquiry, responsibility, ethics, compassion, fairness, and equality, and find it difficult to believe in the Christian concept of God. Instead, we believe that he was created in the minds of early Hebrews. Rather than worshiping the Christian God, humanists celebrate the opportunity of living on our wondrous planet and having the privilege of enjoying the many good fortunes available to us. In other words, they try to follow a philosophy of loving and revering life like believers love and revere God.

TALLMAN: YES. THERE IS A LOVING CREATOR GOD

    Nonbelievers usually do away with the idea of a Creator by ascribing God-like qualities such as infinity and eternity to the universe. However, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, the two greatest scientists who ever lived, both believed that the universe is finite, and modern astronomers all agree that the universe began with a Big Bang about fourteen billion years ago. They have also done computer projections that show that the universe will end in about one hundred billion years. Monotheistic religions believe that nothing caused God to exist, God exists infinitely and eternally by God’s own nature, and God caused the Big Bang.

    Believing scientists like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an expert on the fossil remains of evolution, have noted that evolution on our planet has proceeded from matter (rocks and water) to life (plants and animals) to thought (humans) to spirit (the great religions that continue to spread across the world) because humans are “homo religiousus,” that is, “hardwired for God”. The fact that the whole natural world has evolved in a spiritual direction, from matter to life to thought to spirit, is evidence that God is directing the whole evolutionary process.

    Many nonbelievers say they only believe in things for which there is scientific evidence. Although we cannot scientifically prove there is a God, there is evidence of the creativity of a Creator all around us: the sun, lightning, rainbows, flowers, mountains, peacocks, giraffes, children, and on and on. It’s as if the whole creation is shouting, “There is a God!” As one contemplative said, “ If you want to see God, just open your eyes and wake up!”

    Just as there is plenty of evidence that there is a creator God, the evidence of a loving God is all around us. First of all, there is far more good than evil in the world. Evil is always only a corruption of something that was originally good. For example, illness is always only a corruption of original health. 

    Doctors estimate that only about three percent of the population has a major illness at any one time; health predominates by far. If there is seven percent unemployment, it means there is ninety-three percent employment. Criminologists estimate only two percent of the population are criminals, the other ninety-eight percent are law-abiding citizens. So good is foundational, and evil is secondary. We take the good for granted because it is just so everyday and commonplace. Again, we need to open our eyes.

    The greatest proof that there is a loving God is that love is the central thing in life. This requires no argument since lovers, poets, philosophers, and mystics have been proclaiming it for centuries, and we all know in our hearts that it is true. If there is no God of love, why is good far more predominant than evil, and why is love the central thing in life? Atheists have no good explanation for this.

    Although God is loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, God is also self-limiting. Natural laws serve us well the vast majority of the time, so God chooses not to interfere with them. If God interfered with them every time they might cause suffering, the world would be chaotic. Similarly, God chooses not to take away our free will, even when we misuse it and cause suffering, because otherwise, we would be robots, and there would be no real love in the world.

    God constantly works within us, trying to motivate us to love one another, prevent suffering, and bring greater good out of evil. Indeed, life is full of the overcoming of suffering. However, sometimes, we disobey God and cause suffering on a massive scale, such as killing millions of innocent people in the twentieth century. The real question here is not “How can God allow suffering?” but “How can human beings allow it?”             

    God does allow suffering, but only so that the highest human virtues: compassion, wisdom, heroism, service to others, and self-sacrifice, can emerge in response. If God took away all suffering life would lose its profundity.

    The crucifixion of Christ is the great symbol that God suffers with us and is right in the center of our pain, trying to alleviate it. And the resurrection of Christ is the great symbol that all suffering is finally overcome by God in heaven.

    Life on Earth is evolving in a spiritual direction; religion and spirituality constantly spring up everywhere because we are hardwired for God, good is foundational, love is central, and there are answers to suffering. All these things testify that there is indeed a loving, creator God.

Concluding Remark

    The two statements represent different ways of viewing our universe. One is religious, the other non-religious. These two positions are offered so that readers may better understand both and make their own choices on these important concerns.

The Fifth Awakening

Awakenings occur when society’s old institutions break down:

the First Awakening (1730-1760) in North America

ended European forms of religion

and ushered in Protestant Evangelicalism

the Second Awakening (1800-1830) 

ended Calvinist dominance of theology

the Third Awakening (1890 – 1920) had two parts:

the social gospel and Pentecostalism

the Fourth Awakening (1962-1965)

was the Second Vatican Council

the Fifth Great Awakening has been happening 

since the 1970s thru the new science

which does not prove or disprove the existence of God 

nor does it contradict the basic beliefs of our faith

what the believer looks for in science is not proof

but a more accurate understanding of reality

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra showed how 

outstanding scientists shocked by 

relativity and quantum theory

turned to Eastern mysticism to understand reality

and Carl Jung’s belief that all humans 

are communally connected and interdependent 

led to his theory of the Collective Unconscious

which fit well with the quantum universe

and Jesus, like mystics everywhere, was a unitive thinker 

who talked about his unity with the poor: 

“To the extent you took care of one of these 

sisters and brothers of mine, even the least of them, 

you did it to me”

– Matthew 25: 31-46

to love Christ is to take care of the most needy –

that is why ministers of the gospel, as Henri Nouwen put it 

must be “wounded healers” 

or they cannot enter authentically into the suffering

of a dislocated world/

a rootless generation/

a dying person

unless they have experienced the awakening of suffering 

in their own heart.

LONELINESS IN A FRANTIC WORLD

All beings have a propensity to unite with other beings

without this internal propensity which some call “gravity”

from atoms to galaxies

love would not appear at higher levels –

this propensity to unite, this gravity, is “attraction”

the primordial beginning of love

 

“Love/conviction/service not theology

are the keys to the Great Awakening –

it is not ‘what’ we believe but ‘how’ we believe

what is ‘actionable’ that counts”

– Diana Butler Bass

 

if God made you with this internal propensity to love

and made you intrinsically important to God

why would God change her mind in the next life?

God’s Love is the one eternal thing that takes away

our foundational fear of death/annihilation

 

so we never need to feel alone

God is always with us

but loneliness is not the same as being alone or solitude 

loneliness is a feeling of not being a part of anything/

being cut off from others and life/

being intrinsically unworthy of love/

a feeling of guilt/a taste of death

but Love is stronger than death

 

we can be alone and be happy

if we feel we are still part of a loving family/community –

Church was originally meant to be the Beloved Community

 

but people try to fill the hole in their soul –

their loneliness – with work

but a distinction exists

between sound/healthy/meaningful/life-giving work

and frantic work

done out of loneliness/fear/greed/

our sins/society’s sins

 

Love and our recognition of that Love

are the only answers

to our frantic lives in a frantic society

in a frantic world.

 

RELIGION AND RATIONALITY

Established religion must adapt to revolution

or become irrelevant

for, authentic religion: resonates with people

consoles them in their suffering

answers their existential questions

and changes with the culture

without changing its own sacred core

this is what the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) did

 

Gaudium et Spes, a document of the Council

said that “All the faithful possess a freedom

of inquiry/thought/expression, freedom of the mind

in matters in which they have competence”

thus throwing the Vatican door wide open

to Catholic scholarly and intellectual freedom

however, scientists who

since the so-called “Enlightenment”

chose as their spirituality “scientism” –

the faith that only science has all the answers –

which is ironically not provable scientifically –

these scientists could not brook other spiritualities

and totally repressed them

zealots of any spirituality, including scientism

do not clear their heart

they try to clear the world –

to hate and get rid of anyone who is not of their tribe –

and the tribe is simply the ego writ large

on the other hand, traditionalism can give religious tradition

a bad name – many people have abandoned religion

because of traditionalists stuck in the past –

God is a God of the living and the NOW

moreover, the media only recognizes spirituality

as pre-rational and puts trans-rational religion –

religion which transcends the limits of rationality –

into the same garbage pail

as the traditionalists and pre-rationalists

religious faith is only a problem when it sees itself

as a means to an end such as heaven

since true faith is its own end

and means you are in heaven NOW.

BEING AND LOVE

Our consciousness and therefore our subjectivity

cannot be explained

by science –

it just is –

it cannot be explained

by reference to anything more simple

because it is a fundamental/primary datum

 

similarly, True Love

cannot be explained –

it just is –

it requires being in the here and now

with your Beloved

practicing mindfulness

letting go of all distractions

making “quality time”

a habit

 

similarly, the Dharma of Buddhism

requires being here now

but it does not give you security

or a ground to stand on

because it is all about impermanence/groundlessness/

hopelessness – because as long as you hope

for being a better person

in a better place

you never accept who you are

and where you are

right now

you are never in the Here and Now

never in Love

 

the Enneagram is the face of Love –

it cannot be explained –

it just is –

the face of Christ

the face of God

the face of the True Human

since Jesus the Christ

is both the True Human and God

and has all the Enneagram virtues:

righteousness/compassion/excellence/creativity

wisdom/loyalty/discipline/power/peace

to the max.