The Divine Universe

Some of us have doubts about angels from the start. I confess that I am sceptical about good-looking, androgenous, extra-terrestrial humanoids with big wings, musical instruments and shiny halos. But the word angel simply means messenger. In the epic narratives of the Bible, individuals received messages of great significance from time to time in a variety of ways. Sometimes they seem to be from ordinary human beings, sometimes they are characters in a dream or vision and sometimes their exact nature is not defined, but they are all referred to as angels – messengers from God. We speak of “entertaining angels unawares”, we call the friend bringing us a cup of coffee when we’re tired an “angel of mercy”. In the Book of Revelation the bishops of the major cities of Asia Minor are called angels. The word angel has many connotations, some down to earth, others mysterious or mythical.

In the beautiful narrative by Luke that is the basis of much of our Christmas tradition, Gabriel is a mysterious figure, but he doesn’t have to be an extra-terrestrial from outer space. Luke may have sourced him from Jewish mythology; he may have been part of a vivid dream, or it is just possible he may have been a human being on this occasion. Gabriel was the messenger who told Mary of her pregnancy and that the child would be Messiah, Son of God. He may also have been the one who reassured Joseph that, although Mary was mysteriously pregnant, he should still marry her: it was of God’s doing. In passing it is well to note that Mary’s visitor was not Santa Claus under another name, bringing her a very special Christmas present. The popular “Coca Cola” Santa Claus has no connection with the Christmas events at all. The real Santa, Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra, lived some 250 years after the death of Jesus.

Some think that Gabriel may also have been around at the time of Jesus’ birth. Although he is not named, he may have been the angel who warned the three wise men of Herod’s murderous intentions. He could also have been associated with the angel choir that sang to the shepherds, giving them details of Jesus’ whereabouts.

The story of Gabriel and Mary was very helpful for early Christians because it seems to have been widely known that Joseph was not Jesus’ father. In a dispute with Jesus in Jerusalem, shortly before his death, some priests and lawyers taunted him with being illegitimate: “We were not born of fornication,” they said. Matthew on the other hand suggests that some people at least did think Joseph was Jesus’ father, and both Matthew and Luke make use of this belief. They both provide genealogies for Joseph and, although they differ greatly, they both trace his ancestry through David. One cannot help noticing however that, if Joseph was not Jesus’ father, there is a problem in saying Jesus was descended from David. But descent from David was a significant factor in the claim that Jesus was Messiah, and it could be argued that Jesus was a descendant of David by adoption.

Gabriel’s visit to Mary was not his first to Earth. He visited Daniel at the beginning of the 6th century to explain Nebuchadnezzar’s troubling vision of a horned ram. He also told Daniel that the Messiah would come after “seventy weeks” of years. And it was Gabriel who announced to Elizabeth - elderly, well past child bearing age and thought to be infertile - that she was to give birth to John the “Forerunner”. So Gabriel is especially associated with the coming of Messiah.

In Luke’s story, Gabriel shares the stage with Greek heroes. Luke was a Macedonian gentile and draws for his story on Greek as well as Jewish tradition. The birth to a human woman of a child sired by a male god occurs several times in the heroic legends of ancient Greece but, in spite of the mysterious “Nephilim” in Genesis 6, such a notion was and still is entirely alien to Jewish culture.

While Christians associate Gabriel with the Good News, Jews tend to see him as the messenger of judgment. Though he is not named, he is thought to be the angel responsible for the destruction of Sodom. But there is no contradiction here. The coming of Messiah was a judgmental as well as a saving event. Faith and virtue were revealed in Mary and others, and the moral bankruptcy of others was also revealed in all its horror. The dishonesty, the cynical abuse of power and the obscene cruelty that led to Jesus’ execution witness to endemic human traits that shame us all.

Salvation and judgement are not separate events; they occur simultaneously and are parallel threads throughout human history. Judgment is usually associated with the assignment of blame, but it also reveals virtue. In the judgments of history God is revealed. In Mary and Joseph we see the virtues of fortitude, gentleness, love and humility. The conception and birth of Jesus reveal, above all, the humility of God. It is a mystery why God chose to be conceived in an unmarried teenager, inviting scandal and scorn. (It is likely that, under our law, Mary would have been underage, in which case we would view her as a victim rather than a sinner.) The humiliating and inconvenient birth in a stable was, to some extent, accidental, but it wouldn’t have happened to a wealthy couple. It seems God deliberately chose simple, powerless and vulnerable people to be parents of the Messiah. In spite of Joseph’s royal lineage and his status as a tradesman they travelled exposed to the privations of poverty and returned home to the idle gossip and possibly the censure and contempt of the village.

But I digress. So to end with a final note about our subject, I should tell you that Gabriel still enters our living rooms at Christmas. Not everyone knows it, but he is the fairy on the top of our Christmas trees.

Jesus told a story about a rich man, sometimes called Dives, and a poor man named Lazarus, and, when they died, Lazarus went to heaven and the rich man went to hell.

There is anger in this story; the eternal fiery punishment of the rich man is horrible. Apart from being rich, we might wonder what he had done that was so wicked. Not everyone knows that, under Jewish law, every individual is required to care for the poor. The rich man’s conduct was not only thoughtless and selfish; it was a criminal offence.

Of course, as in virtually every society, if you are rich enough you can get away with murder. Between the rich and the poor there is a huge and extensive maze, guarded by clever and expensive legal thugs. So, since the rich man couldn’t be brought to book in this world, he was punished in the next. Significantly, in the story there is an impassable divide between heaven and hell too.

Obviously, we have not yet got the message. The gap between haves and have-nots is even greater today than it was then. The very rich don’t only buy expensive clothes and food; they buy capital assets and even whole companies worth millions of dollars: things that make them grow exponentially richer still. I have been told that 4% of the wealth of the richest 225 people in the world would feed, clothe, house and provide essential amenities to everyone in the world. If you are a multi-billionaire, what difference would the loss of 4% of your assets make to you? The situation makes no sense.

But it isn’t that simple. 4% of Bill Gates’ $49bn (about $2bn) would be the assets of a biggish company. Liquidating those assets to provide aid to starving Africans and others would traumatically affect a great many employees. The magic words, “job losses”, come to mind. So we are stumped. To get the world on an even keel, to establish some sort of international political stability and social justice, requires a complete rethink of our economic system. It means going back to the drawing board to design a system that actually works in this post-industrial age. As the rich get richer and ordinary people find themselves getting poorer, dry rot and white ants are appearing in the foundations of our capitalist system. But we have no alternative to offer.

In the end, people power is needed: some kind of people’s revolution. But it need not, it must not be a bloody revolution. Violent revolutions generally lead only to the substitution of one oligarchy by another. People who think they can solve the world’s problems by violence are terrorists, whether they are Al Queda or the American military coalition – fundamentalist Moslems and fundamentalist Christians differ mainly in their resources for destruction. There is a lot of money to be made in the war industry, so, once again, the rich get richer but the poor lose everything, often even their lives. In another startling statistic, it has been estimated that two weeks’ current worldwide military spending would provide comfortable living for everybody in the world for a year.

There has to be a better way. There has to be a worldwide change of heart, and then we need some very smart lateral thinking. I don’t know where we’ll find the smart thinkers, but the change in heart has to begin with you and me. We tend to think that money is the cure-all. Public opinion also tends to support violent solutions to violent problems. Our public law and order systems tend to be violent.

But our individual opinions are part of public opinion, and they can change. A year ago there was a sudden awakening of the public to climate change - a shift of attitude from blind indifference to realistic concern. Even our reluctant governments have had to make token gestures of response. Perhaps we will one day realise that being rich is not the answer to an individual’s problems, and violence is ineffective in solving the world’s problems. Maybe it may also dawn on us that the horrendous gap between the rich and the poor actually lowers the quality of our own lives in subtle but significant ways such as global health, economic and political stability and even personal safety.

One day, we must discover a genuinely better way to live. One day, cleverer people than us, people with the ability to be very rich if they wanted to, must work out and initiate ways that everyone can live better lives, even Africans. That’s positive thinking, and it can be positive praying too. Don’t underestimate the power of thinking and the even greater power of praying. The difference between thinking about something and praying about it is like the difference between a table lamp and a laser beam. One is useful and illuminating, but the other is powerful.

In Jesus’ religious language, his story implies that what we do in this life has an enduring effect on what happens in the afterlife. His image of a hell of burning fire comes from folk tradition. Jesus didn’t really believe in a cruel and merciless God; he was angry and frustrated. But we need to take his parable seriously. Even in this world, many business moguls and gamblers on the stock market are inflamed with greed and tormented by anxiety and fear. Their stomach ulcers and migraine headaches give them hell. There is a psychological dimension to all this, and Jesus’ parable suggests that there is a spiritual condition that physical death will not cure. These driven people may be so conditioned that they can’t even see, let alone accept God’s free forgiveness.

Don’t underestimate the difficulties. I don’t think we, the affluent, are going to give up our comforts willingly. We need to be reassured. We need to know that there is enough for everyone to live comfortably. It has been shown many times that the world’s resources are sufficient, if we use them right. Scientists confirm this, even in the face of global warming. What gets in the way is not only greed and lust for power; it is inertia. We are afraid of change. We fear that if the financial infrastructure and our energy industry have to be replaced the sky will fall in.

It will be difficult but it will not be the end of the world as we know it. And what a dream! Think of a world without weapons of war. Trillions of dollars freed for living rather than killing. Think of a world where we make money to live rather than live to make money. It is not impossible. As every child knows: where there’s a will there’s a way.

You know what an underdog is. Let’s think about the Christian God who offered himself as the Undergod. In every group, in every family, in every business and organisation there is a hierarchy or pecking order. Some individuals are more important than others; they carry more weight and have more influence and control. At home, parents have more status than their children; in clubs, committee members and office-holders have more status than ordinary members; in industry people in suits have a higher status than those in T-shirts; in the Church clergy have more status than laypeople. (Actually, the word hierarchy comes from the Greek word for priests: hieratikos.)

Are hierarchies a good thing or a bad thing? The historian, Arnold Toynbee, has argued that, in the absence of a clearly established structure of authority, the most neurotic individual takes control. Society needs structures. A nation needs a government, and even in the home there needs to be discipline.

There is a global hierarchy of nations; some are more powerful than others, but no acknowledged leader or viable structure has emerged. The United Nations has never established any real authority. The United States tries to rule the world through overwhelming military superiority, but its foreign policy is quite neurotic. What we see of world leadership today confirms Toynbee’s theory, and I’m not only thinking of America.

Most nations today have some sort of democratic system, however corrupt, but very neurotic people often get to the top. We live in a competitive society and the most ambitious and ruthless tend to do well. Among those kinds of people, paranoia, anxiety, phobias and obsessions are common.

During a dinner party at a senior Pharisee’s place everyone was jostling to get the best seats. Jesus noticed this and said it was wiser and safer to seek the lowest place, but in real life no one wants to do that. At the bottom of the pecking order you become the butt of everyone’s bad humour; you get put down all the time, or you are ignored; if you’re an employee you get exploited; if you’re different you get persecuted.

Jesus knew all about that. Conceived out of wedlock and dying in disgrace, he couldn’t have sunk lower. With his gift for leadership, his creative intellect and imagination and his aristocratic lineage he could have been a king. Many would have supported him, even by armed force. His claim to be Messiah was well founded and is argued from his genealogy by Matthew and Luke. Surely he would have created the ideal world government? But Jesus knew better what was possible and chose otherwise.

The gospels say a great deal about Jesus’ humiliations, hardships and sufferings but they don’t seem to say much about his enjoyment of life, the indications are there however. The beatitudes, with their repeated reference to blessedness (which means happiness), clearly reflect his joy of living. He enjoyed parties too. He was even accused of being a drunkard and of mixing in unsavoury company. His joy was not only spiritual; he enjoyed life in very ordinary ways too. Jesus was a happy person.

Even the involuntarily poor, those at the bottom of the world’s social heap, are not always miserable. I recall news pictures of black people in South Africa during Apartheid. All of them, especially the children, showed amazing resilience and fortitude; they seemed inexplicably happy. Pictures of children in Iraq and Palestine look the same, waving and clowning for the camera. Jesus certainly challenges us, but he doesn’t ask us to be miserable.

Nor does he specifically say that taking the lowest place will make us happy. He is not directly promising happiness as most people would think of it, but referring to a higher set of values: the opposite of those of ordinary society. It is difficult for us to see beyond our conventional values. Even religious people tend to share them. Money, success and fame still impress us, even if we pretend they don’t.

Jesus is not talking particularly about success or failure, about being rich or poor, about being a VIP or a nobody; he challenges our whole attitude to life and to other people, rich and poor. Do we show special interest in VIPs rather than ordinary people? The media think we do. Do we only socialise with people of our own social class or better? Do we cultivate friendships, exercise hospitality or do favours on the basis of the advantage it may be to us? And what is our attitude to people at the bottom of the socio-economic scale (we used to call them ‘the poor’)? During the month of Ramadan, Moslems go without food all day and then feed those in need in the evening.

Playing games of one-upmanship, name-dropping or having the right labels on our clothes, wearing the right brand of watch or driving the right car doesn’t define our real value. The ‘best’ people in Jesus’ society posses a very uncommon gift that doesn’t cost a cent: humility.

Humility is a difficult thing to define: it has so many layers. It is not a feeling of inferiority. It cannot be won by being deliberately modest, still less by cultivating a low opinion of yourself. If you feel you are humble, you have missed the point. True humility is unconscious, and it is very elusive, and very rare, but I believe it must be a state of extreme happiness and serenity if only we could find it.

Humility is not so much an attitude to ourselves but rather an attitude to others. God is in love with the world; Jesus was in love with the world. His intense love made him humble. I believe we will find true humility if we can share something of the mysterious love of the God who takes the lowest place, the Undergod.

Jesus revealed the humility of God, so the poor were powerfully attracted to him, but the clergy and rulers, the middle and upper classes, were offended. He was insulted and contradicted; vicious rumours were circulated about him, and he was eventually killed because he was seen as a deluded religious extremist, a terrorist suspect and a threat to national security. But, though totally humiliated, he never stopped loving.

Humility is not something we can achieve by a deliberate effort. It does not exist in itself; it is part of love. Loving automatically makes us humble. And love is a gift from the Undergod who is humble towards us and submits to us with perfect integrity and infinite wisdom because he loves us.

We humans are immensely impressed with ourselves. We think we are the last word in biological advance; many people believe we are God’s final masterpiece. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there could be another, even more advanced species of primate yet to come, and another after that. Genesis says that God took a day off after making mankind, but it doesn’t say he stopped work altogether. The rest of the Bible continues the story and points to the future.

If you believe that mainstream science is on the right track, you accept that Homo sapiens emerged from a succession of earlier primates and hominids, each with larger brains and more complex behaviour than the previous one. The most significant difference between modern humans and Neanderthals is the quality of our consciousness. Human consciousness is of a higher order. We have a capacity for reflection and rational thought, an aesthetic sensitivity and a moral sense that seems to originate with humans. At some point a new dimension of consciousness emerged.

Are there signs of this process continuing? Can we say that, during the last few thousand years, we can see an increase in the number of gifted thinkers and artists? Even in high schools, accomplishments in music and artwork are markedly superior to those of my generation, and philosophy is becoming popular. But that is a tiny dot on the map of evolution.

Recent psychological development coincides with increasing educational opportunities, but which is the cause and which the effect is not clear. Higher education is not obviously linked to higher consciousness. The bulk of the increase in tertiary education is directed to technical training rather than liberal education, to expertise rather than sensitivity of feeling, subtlety of mind and breadth of interest. The faculties of law, dentistry, information technology and financial and business management are blooming while those of the humanities: art, literature, philosophy, pure science and theology, are withering. Most of the development in tertiary education is motivated by the desire to make money. Economic growth and individual wealth creation has been the driving force of the highly competitive tertiary education industry. Technical courses in lucrative skills fill the university prospectuses.

In the midst of this rapid and complex sociological development one could be confused about what real progress means. Some people express a rosy optimism while others are sceptical. But historical time, a few thousand years, is minute in relation to evolutionary change. My own feeling, intuitive rather than based on hard data, is that, over millennia, humankind has become more intensely self-conscious, aesthetically sensitive and intellectually active. I am less certain if we are morally more virtuous.

Throughout recorded history, there have been men and women of genius. We might compare the groundbreaking originality of Aristotle, Saint Paul, Michelangelo and Beethoven with Einstein, Hume, Picasso and Britten. But though the originality of the discoveries and theories of the ancient cultural pioneers is as impressive as that of today’s great intellectual pioneers, I think the subtlety and complexity of the debate is greater in this ‘post-modern’ age. Mysticism is also an important element in assessing psychological evolution. In the West, and where Classical tradition has dominated, mystics have been regarded as harmless but somewhat irrelevant eccentrics, but today they are beginning to make a significant contribution, not only to metaphysics and theology, but in the realm of art and pure science as well.

How influential is world population? Homo sapiens is a flourishing species. It has been increasing exponentially since the days of Socrates. In a world of nearly seven billion humans, what one might call the ‘layer of thought’ is denser. Teilhard de Chardin called it the “noosphere”. Alao, advances in transport and communication technology have facilitated the mingling of the more spiritual Eastern cultures with the materialistic and rationalistic West, creating a new intellectual landscape where interest in science is blossoming in the East while empirical spirituality flourishes in the West.

Another interesting perspective comes from anthropologists and palaeontologists. Biological evolution occurs only partly through environmental change. It used to be thought that drought and deforestation in equatorial Africa caused the tree-dwelling hominids to come down to the ground and adopt the upright posture. Recent research, however, shows that this change of behaviour occurred in other parts of the world simultaneously where no such conditions ocurred. Furthermore, a French palaeontologist has recently found evidence of spontaneous changes in cranial structure, unassociated with environmental changes, accommodating our swelling brains.

These discoveries suggest that there is something else driving evolution. Evolution is not simply the “survival of the fittest”, or rather the success of the best adapted. It seems as though there is a hidden cosmic energy that drives the universe in the direction of increasing complexity and sensitivity.

We have, in historical time, seen individuals with outstanding gifts of mind, including mystics such as Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. Perhaps these are early forerunners of the next hominid species, emerging in our midst. One thinks of Einstein, Yehudi Menuhin and the Dalai Lama, but they are not isolated phenomena. We have a continuous range of intelligence from the intellectually handicapped to Nobel laureates and a range of spiritual awareness from blind materialists to inspired mystics. We seem these days to be growing more conscious of being conscious! We are highly introspective, and “self-realisation” is the flavour of the month.

But the story of evolution includes many setbacks. Humankind could become extinct through inability to adapt to the environment and the limitations of the resources it can provide. Mother Earth may prove incapable of meeting our demands, and we may not be capable of modifying them quickly enough. There is tremendous inertia in our massive industrial-military-commercial machine and it is accelerating terrifyingly at the present time.

Finally, Jesus did not say that God would make us perfect; he said, “Be perfect, like your heavenly Father is perfect.” We have a tiny influence on evolutionary development; our behaviour matters, but the journey towards perfection is more than a human endeavour. It is a cosmic project, a divine work: not outside intervention by a “deus ex machina”, but God living, glorying, suffering and dying in the universe. The universe is growing up in Christ. Influenced by Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews perhaps, we might see the process as part of the education and vocation of the cosmic Christ: God’s offspring, growing up, loved, nurtured and guided and even disciplined by the Father. Humankind is not growing up in isolation; we are part of God’s embodiment, becoming what it truly is – absolutely good.

People have some funny ideas about forgiveness, and some of the oddest centre around God’s forgiveness of our sins. There is the idea that suffering is God’s punishment for sins. The Jews assumed this (although there is a strong challenge in the story of Job), and we also encounter the idea in Hindu beliefs about ‘karma’ and reincarnation. Then there is the idea that we can be reconciled with God by a suitable payment. Ritual sacrifices are still not unknown in some religions. And there is the idea that we need a mediator between us and God in order to find reconciliation. Some religions appoint special officers – priests, witch doctors and so forth – to negotiate with God or the gods. Most of these notions appear in the Old Testament. The New Testament offers fresh ideas and considerable diversity, but Jesus seems to have rejected all these notions.

An important feature of this subject is the debate about the relationship between sin and suffering. Common sense tells us that we bring much of life’s misery upon ourselves by making bad choices, but a lot of our suffering and hardship seems to bear no relationship to past behaviour. Are earthquakes and malaria a consequence of sin? I think not. In fact I think that the relationship between sin and suffering is mostly accidental and entirely natural. Pain is not a rod God has made in order to beat us into submission.

Christians believe that even God suffers; he suffers in and with us, but I’m not convinced that this is entirely due to human sin. Suffering occurs in sensate creatures due to imperfections and maladjustments in nature. Nature is in the process of becoming perfect. The process of adjustment and development causes pain. Though it may end in joy, change causes discomfort, and we are constantly in a state of change.

The whole universe is in a state of change, of growth and formation. The universe and we humans are moving, in God, towards perfection. We are becoming what we truly are. Saint Paul likened God’s creative action to birth: difficult and painful, especially for the mother. And in this case the mother is God. The universe is growing up and learning to live more richly, and the process is painful. However, as with childbirth, joy succeeds pain.

We can speak in this somewhat anthropomorphic way of the universe because, in humankind, the universe possesses the qualities of human nature. Humankind is not an added extra; our feelings are cosmic feelings. And we are not the only feeling things on Earth, and Earth may not be the only sensate planet.

Almost everyone believes that, in some measure, we can make choices: that we have a degree of free will. Because of our complexity and intricate involvement with the wider environment, our choices are limited. But we are not mere cogs in a machine. Sometimes our choices bring pain and sometimes pleasure, and sometimes both: pain first and then pleasure or pleasure first and then pain. And by our choices we are engines of change; to some extent we govern the course of events.

So what is sin? If we deliberately do something that gives us advantage but will hurt someone or something else, it causes a disruption, a maladjustment in the working of nature. The process of becoming perfect is set back. Relationships get strained and dysfunctional. All that generates unnecessary pain, as we’ve learned through thousands of years of experience. But sin is never accidental; it is, by definition, a deliberate choice. That is what we mean by sin.

Benign change, however temporarily painful and disruptive, is irreversible; sin is not. Even though damage may have been done, things can be put back into shape; relationships can be restored. If there is forgiveness, including self-forgiveness, there will be healing and reconciliation.

God shares in this process. He will not interfere with our ultimate freedom to make bad choices or good ones, but our pain and pleasure is a tiny manifestation of something intense within the divine nature himself. God suffers everyone’s pain because God has feeling in us. “Whatever you do to the least, you do it to me.”

God is not the author of pain but he is the author of forgiveness, and his forgiveness does not wait; it precedes the offence. We wait to repent and be reconciled, but God’s forgiveness is already there, independent of anything we do. Forgiveness is an innate divine quality, eternal, unchanging, but we can embrace it or not as we choose.

I said that it is not only humankind; it is the whole universe that is in the process of becoming what it truly is. God eternally accepts and forgives cosmic imperfection, its unfinishedness. He is patient while the universe, with its quantum uncertainty (we could call it ‘cosmic free-will’ perhaps), finds its way towards perfection, inspired by God’s loving desire and creative energy.

We can also tentatively speak of God anthropomorphically because, in humankind, nature manifests dimly and imperfectly qualities of the divine nature. Human forgiveness dimly manifests God’s forgiveness. The liberation and joy that forgiveness brings dimly and imperfectly reflect God’s absolute freedom and perfect joy.

Reconciliation with God may be something we have to strive to embrace; we may have to suffer pain before we are moved even to seek it, but it is not something we have to beg for or need a mediator for or have to pay a price for. Jesus explained this very vividly in the parable of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32) It is all there in that beautiful story which is, by ordinary standards of justice, quite outrageous. The ending of the story even includes some of the weird ideas people have about sin and forgiveness.

Mediators may help in reconciling people, and there are stories in the Bible where holy people like Moses and Abraham intercede with God for others. Even Jesus said, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34) But these stories are for our information. They tell us something about God; they don’t refer to a necessary requirement (if you don’t have an advocate you won’t be pardoned). In human reconciliation there may be a need for restitution or there may be some other price to pay. Our bad choices may cause us to suffer; they may cost us dearly, but that is not God’s wish; it is the contingent workings of nature. And there is no need to beg. God’s longing for reconciliation is far greater than ours. “See, I stand at the door and knock.” (Rev. 3:20)

Much in religion, philosophy and science is based on dualisms; God and creation is the prime religious example. Philosophers talk of psyche and soma – mind and body. Plato taught of universal ‘substances’ and ephemeral ‘accidents’ - mere projections from the real world on the canvas of our day-to-day world of sense. Conservative scientists think of reality as matter and energy in space. They regard space as emptiness, having no real existence of its own. Time is another kind of emptiness, filled with happenings as we go along. More advanced scientific thinking, however, since the acceptance of relativity and quantum theory, conceives of four-dimensional ‘space-time’ as an active partner of matter-energy forming one dynamic reality.

The dualisms we create while organising our thoughts and analysing our experience are sometimes useful but they are artificial. If they are regarded as absolute truths or fundamental facts, as they often seem to be, they hide deeper levels of truth. For non-dualist or ‘monist’ believers there is, ultimately, only one reality: God, in whom, through whom and by whom all things have their being. For scientists there is one ultimate physical reality – energy in space-time. Matter consists of dynamic formations of tiny energy concentrations. Space-time is a part of matter essential to its existence, and space-time only exists in relation to formations of energy. Bear with me, I’ll explain more further on.

The Big Bang story, quantum theory, relativity, “chaos” theory – all of cutting edge contemporary physics, in fact, confirms cosmic interconnectedness. Physicist, Brian Swimme (THE UNIVERSE STORY), thinks of the universe as a spiritual event rather than a collection of material objects. Ernest Laszlo (THE WHISPERING POND) and others see it as a living organism. We are in the midst of the cosmic event; we are part of the cosmic organism.

God is the infinite source, essence and the sum of all being. We cannot think of God plus something else because you cannot add something to infinity. Our universe has being because it is in God. God is the one total reality. A number of theologians these days talk of all of physical nature as the embodiment or ‘incarnation’ of God. This is an idea that emerges with Paul (Col:15-20) and in the Fourth Gospel (1:1-4). It is also a central concept in Hindu and other traditions. We can distinguish between God in his total being and in his incarnate ‘body’ or manifestation, but we cannot separate them.

God is more than a physical body, just as you and I are. Paul told the Corinthians that we ultimately dwell in a spiritual body, whatever that might mean. He seems to think embodiment is essential to being. And so long as there is a physical universe embodying God, God is, in that body, mortal. Incarnate God is living and also dying till the end of time. God is immanent in transient things, yet also transcendent and immortal. This is not a contradiction. Christians speak of incarnate God (Christ) as having two natures, one physical (immanent) and one divine (transcendent), but never speak of two gods.

Returning to space and time (known by scientists simply as space-time) we encounter some very weird ideas. J.B.S. Haldane remarked that nature is not only weirder than we thought, it is weirder than we can possibly imagine. Physicists today do not see space-time as emptiness but as something emerging with matter in a boundless and ubiquitous sea of seething energy called the quantum vacuum.

The quantum vacuum gives birth to and nurtures every particle of matter, each in its dimensions of space-time. Particles of matter can also be observed as waves in the energy field rather than self-contained entities. Dynamic and complex agglomerations of subatomic ‘wave-particles’, as they are called, the micro-world of molecules and they form the macro-world of stars and planets, bacteria and bees, biologists and bishops. Within this boundless sea there is creative power, partially but not completely explained by chaos theory. Everything exists, everything happens in the quantum vacuum: it contains all matter, all space, all time. There is some similarity between the physicist’s theory of the quantum vacuum and the believer’s notion of a creator God, in whom, through whom and by whom everything exists and happens.

Our known universe is not everything. It extends beyond our power to observe. And there may be many essentially similar ‘universes’. Only minute proportion may be capable of generating living organisms. Or ours may be the latest in a succession of increasingly finely tuned universes (Laszlo again). Once we free ourselves from the old mechanistic and materialistic conceptions of nature, the possibilities are endless. And God is more greatly glorified in our thinking; our theology is enriched.

A poem by the medieval Tibetan, Longchenpa, could have been written by a modern physicist. Philosophically it’s quite post-modern!

After constant deconstructing, investigating keenly,
not even the slightest real substance can be found;
and in the undivided moment of non-dual perception
we abide in the natural state of perfection.

Absent when scrutinised, absent when ignored,
not even an iota of solid matter is attested;
so all aspects of experience are always absent -
know it as nothing, but a magical illusion.

I’m not altogether happy with the expression “magical illusion” though. To the modern mind, the word illusion means unreal. I believe everything is real, even our illusions and imaginings, though they are not material. We all agree that magic is completely discredited in the modern world, yet “the supernatural” seems to have some credibility. As well as religious traditions, shows like the X Files and spooky movies make a considerable impact on people’s thinking.

Personally, I don’t believe in the supernatural if it involves another dualism – natural and supernatural. Everything is natural, even what we cannot understand (and there is a great deal of that). Nature is of God and in God. Matter, dark matter, anti-matter and all energy fields, known and unknown, are God’s self-creating embodiment. God also shares our feelings and imaginings. I think that much of what we call the supernatural is simply part of nature that we do not understand, and much of it is a product of the imagination. Most scientists would admit that what we don’t understand about nature is probably much more than what we do understand.

Finally, I like very much the phrase, “the undivided moment of non-dual perception”. I am a wholehearted monist, but I admit dualisms can be helpful. We can accept the ones we commonly use, but recognise their artificiality and limitations. Looking beyond them we view a far deeper perspective of reality and the divine mystery.

Religion is a difficult word to define; yet it is a very significant part of human experience and a powerful influence in political and cultural history. In an age in which the dominant western culture seems to be drifting towards scepticism and rejection of religion, it is still a major factor, both for good and evil, in world affairs and in individual lives.

There can be no peace without religious peace. Religiously motivated violence is one of the worst problems facing the world today. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Jews believe they serve God by killing people. It is hard to think of a single war in which God has not been conscripted by both sides.

In spite of these horrors, and acknowledging the fine and heroic work of purely humanist organisations, religious belief still inspires much if not most of the organised works of compassion, local and international, large and small. The majority of those who have most famously advanced human wellbeing, justice and peace have been men and women of religion.

One of the great works of compassion, though it is not widely recognised as such, is interfaith dialogue and fellowship, and it requires humility, sympathy and courage. Those passionately committed to finding the way of peace for all religions have become a religious identity in themselves. Several leading theologians of our time have more than one religious allegiance. New multi-faith movements attract numerous disciples and we even hear of ordained multi-faith ministers.

Conservative religionists, especially those in leadership, are not at ease with this. They speak disparagingly of syncretism and relativism, of watered down theology and shallowness of faith, of infidelity and even apostasy. They will tolerate inter-faith dialogue only on the understanding that their religion has exclusive access to absolute truth; its superiority must be recognised. New on the religious landscape are deeply religious and sometimes very learned and wise individuals who believe that we are not qualified to make an absolute value judgement of any religion, and that exclusive claims to absolute authority have no validity. At the same time they stress the importance of deep understanding of and commitment to at least one religious tradition.

Is there religion in heaven? Is everyone religious in the kingdom that Jesus spoke of? Are sceptics, agnostics and atheists, excluded, however wise and good? The German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, referred enigmatically to “religionless Christianity”. Is it possible to have Christianity without religion?

The prophet Micah strips religion bare: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8) These words are addressed specifically to mortals, and they are not about the after-life. Jesus spoke of heaven as being here and now, inhabited, at least in part, by mortals. Amos positively vilifies the formal and ceremonial side of religion: “I (the LORD) hate and despise your feast days; I loathe your solemn assemblies.” (5:21) Isaiah writes in similar vein: “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies: away with them; they are iniquity, even the solemn meetings.” (1:12-14)

Religion is not only about rules of behaviour and ceremonial assemblies; there is also a rich intellectual heritage. Christian theology is probably the most complicated and detailed in any of the main world religions, embracing the riches of Classical philosophy and, sometimes, modern philosophy too. You could almost say that Christians invented theology. Judaism, has no elaborate systematic theology like Christianity, but it has a rich tradition of religious debate. This characteristically Jewish passion is clearly evident in the Gospels and continues to the present day. And there are Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist scholars and philosophers who also contribute richly to religious debate, understanding and knowledge.

But, as the Law, the prophets and Jesus’ teachings show, Judaism and Christianity are originally and essentially about social conduct rather than theology. Educated Jews, including Jesus, could sum up the law and prophets in one “Golden Rule”, a basic ethical principle to be found in ancient traditions from China to the Americas.

It is a moot question whether morality and ethical systems can exist without the rules, ceremonies and theologising of religion. Cave dwellers probably had moral conventions before they had religious ceremonies and theology (don’t violate the space or persons of others in your cave, for example). But most religionists hold the view that religion is a necessary foundation for morality. This is the subject of lively debate today.

The kingdom of heaven is certainly a moral society, living by the “law” of love. But, to quote the prophet Jeremiah: “I (the Lord) will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” (31:33) It is not something written on stone tablets or in statute books and liturgical primers. Paul makes this point over and over again. Christianity did not, in Paul’s time, have the accoutrements of a full-fledged religion; it was a new, radically reformed way of living Judaism, freed of almost all its ceremonial and legal baggage.

In the cosmic scheme of things, it may eventually emerge that religion is only a temporary phenomenon. The evolution of the cosmos towards its final perfection in Christ is not a process that began and will end with humankind; it was going on for billions of years before Jesus was born (something Paul draws attention to in Romans (8:22)) and will still be going on when the only traces of Homo sapiens are fossils. We humans have a natural tendency to exaggerate our own importance. We are not only hubristic about our religions; we are hubristic about ourselves. We need more of that humility that is so central in the teaching and example of our most venerated spiritual guides.

I think religion will continue for many centuries yet, but it will continue to change and evolve. Though originating in independent tribal cults, and suffering a history of conflicts and schisms, there has also been a less obvious process of merging. Migrations and conquests that caused interracial and cultural merging have also merged religions. But I do not see a future world super-church (a horrible thought!); I see rather the gradual development of less and less institutionalized expressions of human spirituality – “Every man will sit under his own vine and his own fig tree.”(Micah 4:4) Yet there will be fellowship and communion. However, to sum up, I would say that, in eschatological heaven, there will be nothing we would recognise as a religion.

Jesus’ disciples were fascinated by Jesus’ long periods of prayer, all night sometimes. And he seemed wrapt in joy. I can imagine they were more than curious, and felt that prayer, so much a part of Jewish tradition, must be more than they reckoned. They asked Jesus to teach them to pray like him, and he tells them to begin by calling God “Father”. That wasn’t a new idea; there are plenty of references to God as Father of Israel in the OT, but it was controversial. The Pharisees were indignant when Jesus referred to God as his father. The Sadducees, at his trial made a capital charge out of it. It was the main excuse for having him crucified. Calling God “Father” may be routine to us, but to Jesus’ disciples it would have been surprising, daring, shocking even.

Jesus begins by saying that praying in public is hypocritical. He doesn’t, of course, mean that prayer in a group is wrong but he is hard on people, often public figures, who like to be seen in church just to enhance their image. He recommends praying in a secluded place. “Close the door,” he says. It is not, strictly speaking, private prayer because prayer is an effective part of our relationship with everyone and everything. You will, however, be undistracted by company, except for God; but that’s rather the idea.

Jesus also tells the disciples not to “keep babbling like pagans”. Pagans treated prayers like magic spells. The more you said the better. Our church prayers, especially ex-tempore ones, tend to get repetitive and clichéd. Even the Lord’s Prayer can become a formality. For Jesus, it was the framework of his whole conversation with God, including, of course, listening while God had his say. It covered everything.

Let’s consider the familiar words*. “Hallowed be your name.” For Semitic peoples, all names were significant. They even believed that knowing people’s names gave you some power over them. For Jews, the name of God is sacred: never even to be spoken. And the meaning of the “name” offered to Moses from the burning bush has never been deciphered anyway. Jews use the word “Adoni”, a symbolic title that means Lord. The true and living God was Lord over all the earth, but especially over Israel. Our modern word, “Yahweh”, replacing the older “Jehovah”, has no clear meaning. The fact is that we don’t have any meaningful name for God, certainly nothing that gives us power over him. We address our prayers through Jesus, however, and, in John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to suggest that using his name has decisive influence with God. However, the phrase “in my name” means more than adding “through Jesus Christ Our Lord” to our petitions; in means more like “with Christ’s intention”. “Hallowed be your name” means that there is no name for God that can be uttered by the ignorant lips of humans. We believe God knows when we are talking to him without any formalities. The address “Father” simply expresses our relationship with God as it was understood by the prophets and Jesus.

“Your kingdom come . . . ” We all wish for a world of perfect peace and loving harmony, yet, if we think about it deeply, it becomes increasingly difficult to say in detail what it would be like. The Jews filled five books trying to define its rules. But Jesus and Paul said that the truth is from the Holy Spirit, not from lawbooks.

“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” This does not, of course, refer to two places, one where God has his way and one where he doesn’t. “Earth” and “heaven” are states of being, not places. Heaven is the ultimate perfection of God’s creative work. Maybe there is no final end when God stops creating and embodying himself – the incarnation will never end. Even the end of our universe as predicted by scientists – thermodynamic equilibrium, absolute zero, the disappearance of all ‘things’, even subatomic particles, is not the end. The quantum vacuum remains, and it can produce another “big bang” universe, and must eventually do so by statistical theory, being unrestricted by time or subject to decay. “Earth” is the point in space-time where we are now. It is somewhere in the middle of God’s creative process. We are not finished; God’s ultimate will is not fulfilled here and now, or even known to us.

“Give us today our daily bread,” enough for each day. But even this is not fulfilled. In spite of our wishful prayers, many thousands, mostly very young children, die of starvation every day, while ten percent of people have ninety percent of all the wealth in the world. There is enough for everyone if it can be fairly distributed. We have a lot to do if our prayers are to be fulfilled. Prayer is work as well as words.

“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” It is not a simple trade-off: if I forgive her or him for something, God will forgive me the same amount. Forgiveness is a state of mind, rather than a specific act. It dwells at the deepest level of our relationship with others and with God. If we know we are a forgiven person, we will discover we are also able to be a forgiving person. If we cannot seek and accept forgiveness, or even forgive ourselves, we will not know how to forgive others. This is a subject of intimate conversation with God.

“Save us from the time of trial.” There are many renderings of this petition, and scholars admit they are baffled. We are right to ask not to suffer; Jesus did, sweating blood. But, in spite of our prayers, bad things still happen. Through prayer, however, we may discover some hidden benefit emerging from our suffering. It may meet hitherto unrecognised needs. Suffering can actually result in strengthening rather than weakening of faith, and often in a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of life. Intimate dialogue with God brings understanding, and understanding brings peace. We can learn to embrace the God who suffers in us. The creative genius knows agony as well as ecstasy.

It is hard to think of anything in life that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t cover. So it is not something to be recited as a duty; nor is it a kind of mantra, valuable as mantras are in their own way. It is the basis of thoughtful intimacy with God.

* International Commission for English Texts version.

Life is a journey; some would say an uphill journey, and everyone, including atheists, looks for guides or leaders along the way. Most people choose several mentors at different stages of their journey.

In his gospel, Luke tells us about Christian discipleship led by Jesus. Describing his final journey to Jerusalem he tells of several encounters that illustrate this theme. It was a dangerous mission, fatal as it turned out, and Christians are encouraged to see their discipleship as an adventure. There can be dangers but, in this country at least, church membership is a fairly safe adventure.

Luke’s first story is about dealing with conflict. The people of a Samaritan village were hostile because Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem for Passover. There was an ancient religious dispute between Jews and Samaritans going back to the time of Solomon.

Jesus’ disciples were more offended and angry than Jesus was himself. James and John wanted divine retribution – fire from heaven. Today we don’t call for divine intervention from on high; we rain fire and destruction from high-altitude bombers and helicopter gunships. President Bush and his band of right-wing, born-again Christians even invoke God’s support for their war in Iraq, making it a sort of Christian jihad.

We all know what extremist Moslem jihad looks like: beheading women who don’t wear headscarves, shooting little girls who dare to go to school, cutting off thieves’ hands and, of course, suicide bombers, but we are less willing to recognise extremist Christianity. Extremist Christianity or ‘power Christianity’ led to the Crusades and the Inquisition, but there are still power Christians around today, spreading fear, hatred, prejudice and violence. The total sum of innocent deaths, orphaned children and wrecked lives they have caused in Iraq may never be known.

Traditionally we refer to the Church militant. Jesus was militant. He fought against hypocrisy, bigotry and prejudice; against political and religious corruption; against all the perverted thinking and the politics of power that use religion and God’s good gifts for self-serving ends.

But Jesus was a radical pacifist. In his final confrontation with his enemies he wouldn’t allow his disciples even to use what we might see as reasonable force in his defence. He told Peter to put away his sword. On this occasion he rebuked James and John for their misguided zeal. But trying to find a non-violent way to deal with people who hate us, make impossible demands or attack us is sometimes just too difficult, so we resort to violence.

In Luke’s next episode, Jesus said to a would-be disciple, “Birds build nests and foxes dig holes, but the Son of Man (the Messiah) has nowhere to lay his head.” Humans have, in fact, built nests for themselves ever since they left the caves, and we’ve created a wealth of art and technology in the process. Jesus left home to become a vagrant. Vagrants have always been and still are an unwanted embarrassment in society. Jesus chose this, the lowest way of life possible. It was another example of his militant challenge to mainstream social values.

We might also detect a subtler message in Jesus’ words. Suppose he was using “son of man” as a general term for humankind rather than as a messianic title. In sensitive people there is always a deep, underlying feeling of homelessness: a feeling of being exiles in an alien land. It is not only that we crave a more luxurious lifestyle or greater wealth and fame. They are blind alleys anyway. Our feeling of alienation is really a yearning for the Kingdom, a longing to be at home with God.

To be honest, I don’t always find God easy to live with, and I know God cannot find me easy either, yet I also know I can’t live without him and I want to know and understand him better. Then, I believe, life will be more complete and happy. I will be more fully at home with God. But it takes patience and perseverance.

In the next encounter, Jesus invited someone to follow him, but the man wanted to stay home till his father died. Jesus was very blunt: “Let the dead bury their dead.” He was not asking this man to do anything he hadn’t done himself. I don’t know how his mother and his brothers and sisters (if he had them) felt about him leaving the home and family business. His father was dead and he was the eldest. Conservative tradition holds he was the only son. Abdicating such a responsibility was a breach of custom, of family values. But Jesus was saying that if we’re seriously looking for fullness of life, not even family must be allowed to stand in our way. We need to check for unnecessary inhibitions and things that tie us down, social, material or even domestic.

Luke’s third story is about another would-be disciple, but he too has family to think of. Jesus told him that a ploughman must keep his eye on the ground ahead, not look back. In talking with his family, the man might lose his direction. Conflicting desires and responsibilities, and family pressure especially, can be confusing. If you decide to follow Christ in a new way, let go of the past.

In these short anecdotes, Luke makes me think about the decision my parents made for me in infancy and my subsequent Christian discipleship. Luke’s stories are not primarily about specific actions; they’re primarily about what kind of person I will become if I follow Jesus. James said that faith without works is dead, but actions depend on one’s basic attitude to life, one’s beliefs and values.

The stories reveal Jesus’ personal character. He was courageous, adventurous, militant, but a radically non-violent person. We all prefer non-violent ways; we are horrified by war and terrorism, but we resort to force and even war in emergencies.

Jesus was also a totally liberated person. He broke free of convention, even family obligations, and he completely contradicted popular expectations of Messiah. He lived life completely. He was more alive than we are. We are often tied down by convention, by the expectations of others, by social or religious duties. We are still partly in the womb. Our lives are still enclosed by structures of security and the mores of respectability and convention. If we checked our beliefs and attitudes and maybe took some risks to follow Jesus more closely, we might become more alive and free. This is what Luke’s stories all seem to be saying

From the atom to the galaxy, and everything in between, there is evidence of design. From Newton till the twentieth century - the era of ‘modern’ science - scientists saw the universe as a complex machine. Since Einstein and Max Planck, however, relativity and quantum theory have led to a radical revision of scientists’ perception of nature and the universe - what might be called ‘post-modern’ science. Early last century Julian Huxley said, “Nature is not only weird, it is weirder than we can possibly imagine.” I don’t think he would revise that statement today.

Today, scientists are more and more seeing the universe as a living organism rather than a machine.
Since Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, cosmologists have realized that it is also evolving over time: becoming ever more complex. Quantum theory holds that this complexification is a process of infinitely small, random events. Physicists deal, not with simple cause and effect, but probabilities. The probability of the Universe developing as it has is incalculably small. It depends on extremely finely tuned initial ratios between the strength of energy fields and certain other physical factors.

After fourteen billion years of such random events, bringing increased order out of chaos, thinking organisms have emerged and with them what we call intelligence. But what is intelligence? Psychologists measure intelligence experimentally as an individual’s ability to make deductions from given data, but it is more than the use of formal logic. It includes memory and intuition; it overlaps with the direct perception of patterns, of beauty and ugliness, harmony and discord.

Most people associate mind and intelligence only with humans and tend to regard humankind as separate from the rest of nature, a different order of being. But there are many people who do not think this way. Australian and American aborigines and mystics like Saint Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, for example, see the whole of nature as an interrelated community. Today scientists recognise that humankind is an integral part of the universe. We are of the earth, a product of cosmic process. We are not outside observers, alien invaders or an added extra; our species is a transient phenomenon in a cosmic evolutionary process.

Many scientists recognise mind, not simply as electric currents in the brain cells and nervous system, but as something that exists in its own right. Even plants seem clever and ingenious in their tricks of survival and the promotion of their genes. There is no detectable trace of intelligence in a rock, but no one has identified a definable cut-off point. Earth, and humankind in particular, may be the cosmic centre of gravity for mind, or may not be. There may be other concentrations in other places in the universe in similar or possibly in very different life forms. It is not unreasonable to suppose mind is distributed throughout the universe, albeit very unequally, the way matter is. Some scientists have coined the term ‘psi field’, as in psychology and psyche: an energy that there is at present no means of observing experimentally or measuring quantitatively.

It seems mind is a cosmic phenomenon that we cannot locate precisely. It is everywhere. Some have suggested that a cosmic “mind” directs the process of complexification. The uncertainty and randomness observed by particle physicists does not eliminate the notion of direction and even purpose; it only indicates nature’s infinite flexibility and potential. Anything can happen, though with varying degrees of probability. The probability of thinking beings made of matter emerging through random events out of the total chaos of the primordial universe is incalculably small, and it took fourteen billion years; but it has happened.

Religious believers generally embrace the notion of transcendent intelligence, though wisdom is a more popular word. Monotheists believe in an infinitely wise God. Hindus believe in a transcendent power that is infinitely wise and just, whose judgments are experienced as karma. They believe that the individual evolves through a succession of incarnations that advance forward or decline backward according to the disposition and conduct of the individual.

This introduces the notion of something that overrules the mind. We call it the will. The will is not a rational faculty that deals with data; it is something that generates motion, action. All action is either creative or destructive. Some people speak of positive and negative energy. It seems that the energy of the universe is, on balance, positive and creative. The cosmic mind seems set upon self-creation, not destruction and, although increasing entropy is an inherent tendency in nature, the opposite, increasing order, has been the overriding phenomenon since the beginning.

According to Darwin, biological evolution results from adaptation to environmental change. Those members of a species in which random changes in genetic code fit them better for their environment thrive and reproduce more than less lucky ones. But recent research in France has revealed a new, mysterious evolutionary driver that is not related to environmental change. The formation of the bones of the skull is largely dependent on the changing shape of one particular bone near the spine. This coincides with changes in the form, posture and behaviour of the higher primates and, ultimately, Homo sapiens. The adoption of the upright position, for example, has been found to be unrelated to the environmental changes in Africa that were previously thought to be the cause. It occurred simultaneously world wide. It is also hard to prove that the development of larger brains, and with them enhanced consciousness and intelligence, bestowed any real advantage.

The process of advancing levels of consciousness and mental power cannot be attributed simply to environmental advantage. It is easier in fact to link moral sense with adaptation to the environment than pure intelligence. The ‘altruism’ and social responsibility of ants, for example, has been a major factor in their success. There is something else driving evolution.

It is as though heightening of consciousness is something the universe values and promotes for its own sake. It could be argued that mystics are the highest development of evolution. Intelligence, or thinking power, is only a stage of development towards the direct perception, deep insight and intuition of the mystic. The universe manifests its greatest sense of its own reality in humankind, but this is an ongoing process. It is not over yet. We are not Mother Earth’s last word.

Ultimate total self-awareness and wisdom belong to God, embodied in a yet-to-be-perfected universe. The universe is in the process of becoming what it truly is – the embodiment of the mind of God: the Cosmic Christ, the Logos.