I like to try to imagine the power of a black hole.
A black hole is a region in space that has such strong gravitational pull that NOTHING can escape. Not particles. Not electromagnetic radiation. Not light.
Around a black hole there is a place of no return. it is called the event horizon. It's just this ominous place I like to think about from time to time.
World War I killed almost 7 million civilians and 10 million military personnel. It was a meat grinder of a war.
The general consensus is that Genghis Khan killed about 40 million people... with swords and bows and arrows!
God is either everything or God is not everything.
For me, the whole purpose of thinking about God is to try to imagine a unifying force that connects everything. Black holes, Genghis Khan and Jesus. If they all don't have a connection to God then I don't know what the point of thinking about God is. There is just random chaos otherwise. God is a bit player in a much larger production.
I think that's the point of most atheists. And Christians set their own trap in this way. How can God be all good and then allow children to die painful deaths?
This is the inconvenient truth of an all powerful God. Both Darth Vader AND Luke Skywalker are of God.
I watched a video recently about the "Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis." You can see it here:
Basically the premise is that there was once "CHLCA" - chimpanzee-human last common ancestor.
We all lived in trees. The strong CHLCA pushed the weaker CHLCA out of the trees. Humans are from these weaker CHLCA.
We faced all the predators on the ground. To survive we had to learn how to communicate, and more importantly, we had to learn how to work together and to share.
This is the great human contribution to the universe. We share.
This is so beautiful.
Out of weakness and betrayal from our family we were banished from the safety of the trees and we learned that the lesson of that was love.
Isn't that amazing!?
We became the strongest force on planet earth because we had to work together and share resources.
Obviously, we often abuse that power of community and organization. Often, powerful forces can be used for both good and bad.
I think the point most religions are trying to make is that, yes, God is all things. But community, sharing and love are these special aspects of God that are so wonderful and so beautiful and are so human.
Humans are the manifestation of love. We have this amazing ability to empathize and reach towards an almost altruistic form of sharing.
We give to people, places and things that we have never seen and never will see any benefit from. That's what is special about us.
And when people say God loves us I think that's what they mean.
Imagine this: You come downstairs to your basement to check on your ant farm. You look in the glass and low and behold your ants built a stretcher to carry injured ants back to their home.
Tell me you aren't suddenly MUCH more interested in your ants. My guess is you are going to spend a lot more time watching them and studying them.
That's how I imagine a conscious God would be towards us. We're just cool.
And I'm quite sure God winces when we do stupid crap like dropping nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It doesn't mean God is going to stop watching the human tv channel. But God is most certainly going to hope we take that nuclear energy and use it for good.
I just imagine God was creating all this multiverse stuff. It was fun and all. But then humans come along and cure polio. That's just bad ass.
That's how I like to see it anyway.
Believe it or not, I have a point to all of this.
I sometimes hear people tell me that our journey helping the homeless is in God's hands. God will show us the way. God will make everything ok.
I just don't believe that.
There is no evidence that God works that way.
God made an ecosystem. It is not God's way to reach in out of the heavens and be all like: "No. No. No. You are doing it all wrong. Do it this way." That's the way of a overbearing, micromanaging dad. God would be so disappointing if God was just a middle manager sending us memos all the time telling us how disappointing we are.
It is for us to align with what God wants. Which is to do more cool stuff. To do more sharing and communicating and building things that are for good.
You become better not by being told to be better. You become better by WANTING to be better.
You can feel it.
When you are doing good you can feel the resonance.
Just like how the chords: 1 - 4 - 5 want to resolve back to 1. It feels right.
That's how you know you are resonating with this thing God is REALLY into.
Yeah. Black holes are neat. But taking care of a stranger who is broken, poor and guilty of all kinds of "sins." That's just next level stuff. That blows the mind of God.
And you feel that God mind blowing in your spirit. When you do it God is shouting: DO MORE OF THAT!!!
We cannot just sit back and say, "God will make it right."
That is defeatist and just not the way things are.
We make things right by standing up for what is right.
We take the heat that invariably comes for being on the right side of morality and justice.
While we are fortunate that we don't live in a time where they are crucifying governmental subversives, that doesn't mean they won't try to symbolically crucify you.
That's the lesson of Jesus. It is going to suck to do the right thing. But do it anyways. That's the fundamental difference between humans and the beasts that threw us out of the trees.
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