“Getting Real with the Story”
Presented by Mike Burr, Pastor
Koinonia Church, Grand Junction, Colorado
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Readings:
“The most profound insight in the history of humankind is that we should seek to live in accord with reality. Indeed, living in harmony with reality may be accepted as a formal definition of wisdom. If we live at odds with reality (foolishly), then we will be doomed, but if live in proper relationship with reality (wisely), then we shall be saved. Humans everywhere, and at all times, have had at least a tacit understanding of this fundamental principle. What we are less in agreement about is how we should think about reality and what we should do to bring ourselves into harmony with it.” — Loyal Rue
“Reality is my God and integrity is my religion. By this, I mean that what is real is my ultimate commitment and being in right relationship with reality, and assisting humanity in this process, is my calling and deepest inspiration.”
--Michael Dowd
What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. God has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, God has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before God. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.
- Ecclesiastes 3; 9-15
Jake and Bill, a couple hillbillies from Arkansas, struck oil and made a small fortune so they moved to Louisiana to set up a cattle ranch. They decided they needed a bull to increase their herd but they only had $600 left after buying the ranch, so they decided that Jake, the better educated of the two, should take their money and go to Texas to buy the bull. Jake went and found this great bull that he was able to buy for just $599. Jake went to the telegraph office and says, "I’d like to send a telegram that says, 'Have found stud bull for our ranch, bring the trailer.'"
The man behind the counter tells him, "Telegrams to anywhere in the U.S. are $.75 per word.” He thinks about it for a moment and decides. "I’d like to send one word, please." "And what word would that be?" inquires the man.” “Comfortable." replies Jake.
The man asks, "I’m sorry mister, but how is your friend gonna understand this telegram?" Jake replies, "My friend is a hillbilly and reads real slow..."
Now some folks have accused me of being slow, but at least I’m not as slow as the guy in my physics class. When the teacher said that protons have mass, he raised his hand and asked, "Isn’t that unfair to the non-Catholics?"
Anyway, today I want you to know that I’m slow. How slow? Well I’ve figured out that this message today has taken approximately 14 billion years to produce! My message is like the plant in today's children's story--it's been a long time in the making! Now I know that you all are aware of evolution and the big bang theory and the development of the cosmos over years. What I want to say this morning is that it's important to hold all of that story in the mind's eye when contemplating the ultimate questions of life -- the "Who am I?"; the "Where do I come from?”; the “Where am I going?”; and the “What matters?” questions.
I’ve recently been reading the work of Michael Dowd. His "Thank God For Evolution" has been captivating. Dowd started off as an evangelical Christian, but now calls himself an evangelical evolutionist. What he's trying to do is to heal the basic fracturing of the understanding of reality that took place in the enlightenment where science and religion split. One of the things he talks about is how scientific fact needs to be understood as revelation.
If we understand that all “god talk” is talk about ultimate reality, then every newly discovered truth about reality is a discovery about God. One of the things that this means is that when we start trying to contemplate our own ultimate questions, we have to understand that who we are and where we stand is at the apex of almost 14 billion years of evolutionary development. We can no longer just think of human development as two or three million years old.
Rather, we must think of the single cell protoplasm in the primordial seas as in our family tree, the first multi-celled organisms, the first that lived on dry land--all of them are in the family tree and all are connected. As David Wilson has noted, “When we think of our isolate selves, we think of unique human attributes developed over six million years, that represent modifications of great ape qualities roughly 10 million years old, and primate attributes roughly 55 million years old, and mammalian attributes roughly 245 million years old, and vertebrate attributes roughly 600 million years old, and attributes of nucleated cells roughly 1500 million years old. Wilson says, "If you think it unnecessary to go that far back in the tree of life to understand our own attributes, consider the humbling fact that we share with nematodes the same gene that controls appetite. At most, our unique attributes are like an addition onto a vast multi-room mansion. It is sheer hubris to think we can ignore all but the newest room." (Quoted in Thank God For Evolution, p141)
See, in actuality, we're made of stardust. Four and a half billion years ago when earth was formed, it was formed from the cast off remnants of exploding stars---stars collapsing in upon themselves and exploding debris across a still chaotic universe-dust colliding and coalescing, spinning and twirling around the baby sun star, collecting more substance with each circuit-all of that is the source of who we are today-of all that we have and think.
Now the reason I bring all of this up, is that it has profound implications for how we think about "god," or "ultimate reality," or whatever you want to call it. I mean isn't that what folks are trying to talk about--isn't it ultimate reality?
See, one of the things we have to remember is that "god as supernatural" is a recent invention. It's a 400 year old western product of the enlightenment. When science started pushing the envelope, "god" had to be talked about as being outside of nature. it used to be that people just didn't have the data or the information to answer questions like, "How was the world made?" or "Why do tornadoes and earthquakes and other bad things happen?" Prior to the invention of science and technology there just wasn't anyway of answering those questions--just like it was impossible to understand infection before the invention of the microscope! The story of the development of knowledge has been that of putting more and more of the pieces into place. We're now at the point that without an evolutionary world view it's impossible to understand ourselves, our world, and what it will take to survive as a human species..As we've learned more about the natural world, the supernatural has lost its sparkle and has become less attractive. As Dowd points out, supernatural and unnatural are synonyms, and most people finding the unnatural somewhat less than inspiring when they really stop to consider it. As Dowd quips in a recent sermon in Michigan,
"I mean does this sound like good news to you?....an unnatural king who occasionally engages in unnatural acts, sends his unnatural son to earth in an unnatural way. He's born an unnatural birth, lives an unnatural life, performs unnatural deeds, and is killed and unnaturally rises from the dead in order to save humanity from an unnatural curse brought about by an unnaturally talking snake. After 40 days of unnatural appearances he unnaturally zooms off to heaven to return to his unnatural father, sit on an unnatural throne and unnaturally judge the living and the dead. If you profess to believe in this unnatural activity, you and your fellow believers will spend an unnaturally long time in an unnaturally boring paradise while everyone else suffers an unnatural, torturous hell forever."
This is gospel? This is the ultimate good news for humankind? Does this mean that we must throw out our thinking about God? Yes and no. Perhaps it would help if we understood that our thinking about God is a personification. God is not a "person," rather "god" is the way we talk about the ultimate and the way our minds work is that we personify things in order to talk and relate. In the movie castaway, Tom Hanks personifies the soccer ball, Wilson, and in a way it keeps him sane.
Perhaps a way of understanding this is to recognize how we personify things. It’s evident in such phrases as:
..“Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there. – proverb”
.. My computer hates me.
.. The camera loves me.
.. Art is a jealous mistress.
.. Opportunity knocked on the door.
.. The sun greeted me this morning.
In the same way we personify god. God is our name for ultimate reality. It’s the ultimate box we live within. We personify because it’s a way of understanding. It’s as though Barbara and I personified our relationship and gave it a name like Julia. We could then ask, What do I want? What do you want? And, What does Julia want?
All of this is important because it brings our notion of faith home to where we live. Faith has nothing to do with beliefs because beliefs are “an attachment of the mind to things being a certain way” (Dowd), which has to do with trusting, and when we understand our full story we understand it to be a trusting of the universe, a way of taking responsibility for what’s so, a way of loving what is—of cherishing what’s real.
Faith then becomes a stance toward life that begins with an open heart and then continues with a commitment to developing a deeper intimacy with reality—a commitment to living for the good of the whole. Such a passion for life and stance then gives our living meaning. To comprehend the awesome fullness of life within me and around me and to utter the name “God” is to give full assent to reality based living. That’s why it’s not heresy to say, as Michael Dowd does, that, “Reality is my god and integrity (living in right relationship with reality) is my religion.
Peace & blessings...
References:
Michael Dowd sermon: www.christ-community.net |