Wednesday, August 24, 2005
My Meta Narrative
Here's my impression of the bible and what God is trying to tell me when I read it. I don't think anybody needs to take any of this as anything more than a peek into my ongoing conversation with God. As a matter of fact, God definitely is not telling me to get y'all to believe this stuff. I think God's just trying to reach me on my level, which is a pretty weird level, if you know what I mean. By all that I mean, please don't go to my comments and yell at me.
In the beginning...
There was God. Or something. Then there was some stuff. Or there was suddenly God and some stuff at the same time. Or God and the stuff are the same thing. Probably that one. (The previous point is of minor importance to me, but what is more important is that I am 100% sure God, or whatever you want to call it, just "IS", as in "the great I AM", you know, so linear time might be completely the wrong descriptive concept.)
The stuff part of God eventually evolved from stardust to people. (See evolutionary theories way too complex to go into here) People were still just one kind of stuff, though. You know, stuff that was born and ate and bred and slept and made waste and died and became a different kind of stuff. Just part of the big ecosystem machine. Total harmony with God.
One day people became self-aware, instead of just being stuff. They started thinking about the other stuff and how they related to it. This made people different than the other stuff. They started thinking about how they related to what they were a part of, and what connected them with other people and other stuff. They told stories to explain these things. These stories were not lies, just their perceptions and theories on how and why they had become the people that they were. The stories that resonated with the most people, that held deep truth, were the ones that survived.
Then some of the people kept feeling like they were made for more than just dog-eat-dog, survival instinct level existence even though other animals seemed perfectly content to kill or be killed, battle for food and territory, mate as much as was expedient for group stability, etc. So they told stories to explain why they felt dissatisfaction with their life, why they yearned for a connection with something greater. The stories that reflected the most truth survived.
They told stories to explain how they felt connected to something bigger that I call God, and felt destined for greater things than mere survival. Their constant struggle to overcome survival instincts and the associated selfishness they were feeling made for really great stories. Some of these stories are about real things that happened to real people, but just like any story, they are more true than factual. Again, the stories that held the deepest truth survived.
Eventually the stories were told so many times, and written down, that people came to believe that every story was a fact, and forgot that the stories were an attempt to connect to something greater than themselves. They called the stories law, and said that if you strayed from the principles presented in the stories, you would suffer greatly.
In spite of this legalism, however, the greater connectedness that they felt kept pulling at them, for centuries and eons. It has always pulled at us people. I don't know why it's like that, it just is. It continues to pull on us constantly to be more than survival and selfishness. Burning bush, talking donkey, voice in the wind, it's kind of a multimedia connectedness. This is what I call God, or usually I call it the Holy Spirit.
During a particular time period (one in which the tribe that had written one particular set of stories was ruled over by a tribe with slightly different stories varying in the number of beings that embodied the connectedness and how people interacted with the connectedness over the years), the tribe in our story had become so rigidly attached to its stories, likely as a defense mechanism, that the people had mostly lost its ability to actually feel the pull of the Spirit.
So someone named Jesus who could still feel the Spirit, or was the Spirit embodied in human form, I'm not sure exactly, tried to show them the way to get around the rigidity and tune into the Spirit themselves. And they killed him for rocking the boat. After he died, some of his followers saw him, or felt his presence, or something like that. It was really hard to explain to people who weren't there at the time. But whatever happened was very real to them.
Reading the stories of Jesus and studying his words and following his example, can tune us into the Spirit of God. In this way we are saved from a life where we live by selfishness and survival instinct alone and uplifted from a life of rigid obedience to law. We can now feel the presence of the Spirit in our lives and be inspired to live in harmony with God, even as we continue to struggle with the selfishness and survival instincts that are at the core of our being.
And they all lived connectedly ever after. Just kidding, but I thought it made a good ending.
Originally posted on April 30, 2004
In the beginning...
There was God. Or something. Then there was some stuff. Or there was suddenly God and some stuff at the same time. Or God and the stuff are the same thing. Probably that one. (The previous point is of minor importance to me, but what is more important is that I am 100% sure God, or whatever you want to call it, just "IS", as in "the great I AM", you know, so linear time might be completely the wrong descriptive concept.)
The stuff part of God eventually evolved from stardust to people. (See evolutionary theories way too complex to go into here) People were still just one kind of stuff, though. You know, stuff that was born and ate and bred and slept and made waste and died and became a different kind of stuff. Just part of the big ecosystem machine. Total harmony with God.
One day people became self-aware, instead of just being stuff. They started thinking about the other stuff and how they related to it. This made people different than the other stuff. They started thinking about how they related to what they were a part of, and what connected them with other people and other stuff. They told stories to explain these things. These stories were not lies, just their perceptions and theories on how and why they had become the people that they were. The stories that resonated with the most people, that held deep truth, were the ones that survived.
Then some of the people kept feeling like they were made for more than just dog-eat-dog, survival instinct level existence even though other animals seemed perfectly content to kill or be killed, battle for food and territory, mate as much as was expedient for group stability, etc. So they told stories to explain why they felt dissatisfaction with their life, why they yearned for a connection with something greater. The stories that reflected the most truth survived.
They told stories to explain how they felt connected to something bigger that I call God, and felt destined for greater things than mere survival. Their constant struggle to overcome survival instincts and the associated selfishness they were feeling made for really great stories. Some of these stories are about real things that happened to real people, but just like any story, they are more true than factual. Again, the stories that held the deepest truth survived.
Eventually the stories were told so many times, and written down, that people came to believe that every story was a fact, and forgot that the stories were an attempt to connect to something greater than themselves. They called the stories law, and said that if you strayed from the principles presented in the stories, you would suffer greatly.
In spite of this legalism, however, the greater connectedness that they felt kept pulling at them, for centuries and eons. It has always pulled at us people. I don't know why it's like that, it just is. It continues to pull on us constantly to be more than survival and selfishness. Burning bush, talking donkey, voice in the wind, it's kind of a multimedia connectedness. This is what I call God, or usually I call it the Holy Spirit.
During a particular time period (one in which the tribe that had written one particular set of stories was ruled over by a tribe with slightly different stories varying in the number of beings that embodied the connectedness and how people interacted with the connectedness over the years), the tribe in our story had become so rigidly attached to its stories, likely as a defense mechanism, that the people had mostly lost its ability to actually feel the pull of the Spirit.
So someone named Jesus who could still feel the Spirit, or was the Spirit embodied in human form, I'm not sure exactly, tried to show them the way to get around the rigidity and tune into the Spirit themselves. And they killed him for rocking the boat. After he died, some of his followers saw him, or felt his presence, or something like that. It was really hard to explain to people who weren't there at the time. But whatever happened was very real to them.
Reading the stories of Jesus and studying his words and following his example, can tune us into the Spirit of God. In this way we are saved from a life where we live by selfishness and survival instinct alone and uplifted from a life of rigid obedience to law. We can now feel the presence of the Spirit in our lives and be inspired to live in harmony with God, even as we continue to struggle with the selfishness and survival instincts that are at the core of our being.
And they all lived connectedly ever after. Just kidding, but I thought it made a good ending.
Originally posted on April 30, 2004
