To Robert: Is God Not Love???

[Tony T]

YOU WROTE EARLIER: "I need to think a good bit about what Tony last said. His concept of God and how love relates, or doesn't, to romantic love is so different from my image. His concept of God is way different!"

 

Actually, I have no concept of God whatsoever. I put God in human terms only to explain the divine as it relates to worldly events.

 

I am a scientist. I have no clue or concept of any deity. Though I consider myself quite spiritual and feel the world is guided by forces that are not of human form as we know it, my belief is completely intuitive and I have no evidence of such. I can only use my reason as a fallible human being to develop a concept which I can assign for my very own self to a God who may exist for me and me alone. God is different to each and every person, just as the God I wrote of earlier was not someone you could relate to.

 

Frankly, I just don't know. I don't know about a lot of things. And the more I study, the more I read, the more I meditate, the more I observe, the more I experience, the more I hear, the more sensory and intellectual stimulation I receive, the less I truly know.

 

As I told you earlier, I think the best student is one who leaves the classroom with as many questions as answers.

 

If I could try to begin to describe God, I would have to say He is a yearning by all for Himself. Finding the true essence of any God would be as finding the true meaning of life. To achieve peace with this, my quest for God and for meaning suggests the quest itself is the meaning. Just as the earth circles the Sun and the Sun circles the Universe, none ever arrive at any particular conclusion. Our quest for God and for meaning takes the same circular path, and never arrives.

 

An old Zen saying: A great traveler has no destination, and is not intent on arriving.

 

Christians hold that the arrival of Jesus was meant to be God in human form. However, Jesus said we were all made in the likeness of God and had Godly powers. I do believe this. But I think the mission of Jesus was to show men how to live, how to believe and to appease man's thirst for the knowledge of God rather than to give them that direct knowledge. It was much easier for followers to yield to Jesus' call that no man could get to heaven except through Him. So, for Christians Christ was able to relieve men of that search for meaning and for God by giving them a shortcut.

 

There have been many Gods throughout the ages. Joseph Campbell called the divine a Hero With A Thousand Faces. I am not sure at what point in our evolution to homo sapiens that we became spiritual creatures and began the transformation from animal to a form which yearned for more to life than that which exists here, to seek a spiritual reason for existing on such a planet on such an impermanent basis.

 

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within each of us. I truly believe that for myself. But for others, heaven is being in love...or winning the lottery. For some, heaven is the yearning, the seeking and not the finding. The Budhists teach that Enlightenment is the highest form of Godly consciousness that man can achieve. And this may be as close to heaven as some people get on earth. The Budhists call is Nirvana. I just don't know, I don't have a clue. And if I did know, I wouldn't be sure I knew.

 

But I do know that for the masses to get any sort of spiritual experience in their lives, this must relate to something they understand. If that experience is going to a church on Sunday and obeying the Pope, that is fine. To others, the sun, the flowers, the rain, and their thoughts are parts of their spiritual make-up. Still others achieve peace and harmony through meditation and study. There are those who take halucinagenic drugs to bring themselves closer to the divine. I guess the path is different for each of us.

 

Now, to romantic love. If we are made in the image of God and the kingdom of heaven is within us, then to experience perfect romantic love and to share perfect romantic love, we must find a partner who shares most closely our view of spirituality and the divine. That happens so infrequently. Most are caught up in the hormones and chemicals of romantic love as well as its emotional fires and flame outs.

 

I do think the closest we get to God is when we approach Him with a significant other. Christianity has made marriage one of its highest sacraments. Jesus taught that if any two shall agree on anything, it will be done. As this may relate to the loving union of two people, it seems logical (if I can even use that word in any context here) that the relationship between male and female, when made sacred through a spiritual bonding process, may be as close to God as we can get because we become as close to the God in another person as we can get.

 

I would even go out on a limb by saying that two people so bonded spiritually are married, even if a worldly or religious ceremony has not taken place. Marriage, or this spiritual bond, takes place in the hearts and souls of two people and really has nothing to do with the outshowing of ceremony. Likewise, what is joined this way cannot be broken by any man or any force. Marriage, in this context, does not often occur I do not think of, if it does, it may be a very gradual process over years if the parties will it.

 

In the last century, we have warped the romantic process by taking it out of a spiritual domain and put it in a more worldly place. Rock music, bars, clubs, fast cars, drugs, big houses, money, sex, etc. have taken the eyes of many off the spiritual root of romantic love and that, I feel, is why so many fail to be fulfilled by their relationships.

 

In all of this, I think everything happens according to a divine plan, even if it's the plan of man. We set our course with the blessing of a God who gave us a free will. By virtue of this free will, we have divine permission to take the world in whatever direction it will go and to take our own lives likewise. There are also provisions for evil and its consequences.

 

It all seems like a very well thought out plan but it's a work in progress. Creation does not stop. Stars are born and stars die. And in less than 3 billion years, our own sun will burn out and our solar system will be gone. New ones will replace it. This all surpasses our ability to understand the reasoning and we should not waste the time.

 

Six years ago, I would have never met you or known your name or dreamed of sharing this with you or the world. Man has led us to this time and place. Most of the pain posted on these pages was not anticipated then and most of it will be disipated in the months to come. But love, in whatever form, will survive the ages and if God is love, He will survive forever is the forms he takes for each person until the end of time.

 

So the larger question then is not who was God to the monks 500 years ago, or who is God to you, or me or anyone else, but who will He be to those fortunate enough to live here a thousand years from now.

 

This is a very personal subject to each of us. A speculative thing. One of those faith things. As a scientist, I must break off a piece of myself to accept what I cannot see or prove and pray that in time science and spirituality and religion can be one and God can be the same to all of us. Jesus said Himself, all things are possible to him who believes.

 

I really want to believe there is more to this than falling in love, having our fun and our arguments, reproducing, and retiring in Sun City.

[Taressa]

Dear Tony,

 

You've sought him a lot, haven't you. You're not too far off, Tony. I believe He's given you a heart after his own, how else could you be so caring to all these broken-hearted lambs.

 

But Tony, he said he uses men's wisdom to confound them. He said we find him when we come in faith as a child. He said "Be still and know that I am God."

 

And he said his name is I AM. Can a beautiful scientific mind as yours grasp the infiniteness of that name... before time was, I AM. In the beginning I WAS already being.

 

He's beyond my understanding yet he lives in me.

 

Dear Tony, keep seeking and he promised you will find.

 

I think if we all knew him and if we loved like him, this romantic love would not break our hearts. We would love unselfishly and see others love with no jealousy. I think that would be lovely, to love with no fear.

 

Your exchange with Robert has been priceless and beautiful. Thank you for allowing me to eavesdrop. And thank you for the encouraging hand you've been to me.

 

Taressa

[Tony T]

Excellent points, Taressa. It's really hard to think about the love of God when you're up to your neck in alligators, your job is to drain the pond, and you fell in love halfway through the task.

[Taressa]

Okay, Tony, I'm intrigued... love found in the midst of alligators and pool draining? Please, Tony, continue; what's going on? And if not here, could I write you?

 

Are there grand things happening in your life?