Trying to build or even become God is the right thing to do...
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| Tower of Babel |
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
I submit that with a healthy balance of faith and work, Christians can actually grow to be just like Christ, stay out of the dangerous traps along the way, by never being satisfied with anything less than the one true omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God.: proceeding carefully with unwavering humility and selfless peace. Trying to build or become God in this way is an act of adoration, worship, and a moral responsibility; it’s the quickest way to unlock the abundance in this world necessary to feed and educate the growing masses. Plus, it gives meaning to life.
What God are we trying to build or become?
- God is a timeless and transcendent state of being: Revelation {1:8} “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." The beginning and the end come together in this timeless and eternal aspect of God.
- God is present and within us: In-between the alpha and omega there is the presence of the lord God in “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We are this body of Christ living and growing in time... and we become that “which is to come”: timeless, eternal, Almighty, because that is our true love.
- God is love, the process of connecting the timeless and the present. The product of love is understanding, and the creative power that goes with understanding. If love is efficient and sustained, understanding increases exponentially. Humility and selfless peace allows unwavering devotion so that love can establish a clear connection. Forgiveness is important to growth because it establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. With this truth we transcend. John (4:8) He that loves not knows not God; for God is love... Love rules, ignorance dies.
It is interesting to note that in Genesis (1:22), the
first thing God said to us was “Bless you. Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth.” This request is sometimes called the Dominion Mandate.
The Dominion Mandate gave us a goal: to explore, develop, and enhance the world. They were to construct a culture, build a
civilization, and build a holy City to the glory of God. They were to do these works by faith through
grace.
The task, would require them to become scientists,
artisans, mechanics, inventors, scholars, writers, musicians, and more. They would have to become proficient in
agriculture, animal husbandry, the culinary arts, mining, metallurgy,
shipbuilding, navigation, commerce, and storytelling. The mastery of these skills would require a
deep understanding of physics, chemistry, geology, botany and psychology.
The mastery of these sciences in turn would require an
ever-growing mastery of mathematics. In short, godly dominion would necessarily
produce an intricate and complex culture with roots in mathematics and the
sciences and fruit in literature and the arts.
Be fruitful and multiply still applies?
Science and technology have lagged behind the “be
fruitful and multiply” thing, causing much poverty and wars. I place the
responsibility of that lag squarely in the lap of grace-alone fundamentalists
of all kinds. By trying to force-fit reality to their dogma, they have slowed scientific
progress, given rise to a growing atheism, and a mostly ignorant privileged class.
Now, with a healthy balance of faith and works we can meet and exceed the basic needs of every
man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. Exponentially
growing technologies are converging on satisfying the needs of the growing
masses. Since the dawn of humanity, a
privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority.
Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it can be closed fast.
There are infinite possibilities for doing good when we tap into our own
empathy and wisdom.
- In the beginning we were told to subdue the world.
- Later Jesus Christ as the fully developed human aspect of God, said to his disciples; “I have overcome the world.”
- Then in the book of Revelations close to the end of times it is the same “overcomer” who asks us to follow him in the continuum of life...There is plenty of reason for techno-optimism!
Thank you for your beautiful thoughts! Have you read The Phenomenon of Man by Tielhard de Chardin? His thoughts and yours follow the same vein.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and I agree with many of your supporting statements–however, it’s your foundational thesis that seemingly is very Biblically flawed: probably best evidenced by your statement, “Trying to build or become God is the authentic manifestation of God in time, always evolving, improving self-sustenance, and growing in creative powers. Ultimately there is only one way, life, and truth because of the forces of convergent evolution.” This statement/concept cannot Biblically coincide with the use of the Hebrew word kalah(1) in Genesis 2:1–clearly indicating that God completed creation; perhaps not precluding certain adaptive/evolutionary processes, but Genesis 2:1, using this definitive Hebrew verb kalah, can only describe an accomplished state, which is used as reference within the entire chapter of Genesis 2 to the completed state of “all the host.”(2). Therefore, irrespective of ones position on whether God did or didn’t use some evolution process to arrive at this completion, the Biblical use of kalah closes the issue on any further divinely sanctioned development of Homo sapiens. I thoroughly agree humanity has in fact been evolving since Genesis 2, it’s just not been divinely sanctioned by its Creator.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I’m only referencing purely Biblical proofs, not extra-biblical thoughts or sentiments–which as I noted, I’d generally agree with if the foundational premise was Biblically supported.
(1)Strong, James, LL. D. The New Strong's Expanded Exhaustive concordance of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010. Word number #03615.
(2)GENESIS 2, English Standard Version
I just added this to my home screen James, for frequent future reference.
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