“Pray and I will tell you”

I started making a list of great spiritual leaders to pray about.  I thought the question would be, for example, What was God communicating to Martin Luther?  But, when I asked, I got a different answer.

Suppose you brought a guy in – say, Luther – and cut him up (dissected him, looked at the elements that make him up).  What would you find?

“Not just the single solitary individual, I suppose, but someone immersed in a tradition, institutions, and a culture.”

I act over the centuries in reference to individuals, but also movements, cultures, and the like.

“But only individuals receive communications.”

Just listen for the moment.  I interact with mankind, with the universe, in many different ways.  Do not assume that the only interaction is the same form of the interaction I have with you.  With some it is conversational, but with others it is by inspiration, by My spirit moving through them, infusing institutions and life-forms, cultures, cultural forms, art, music, dance, symbolism, ideational systems, thought forms …

So, looking at each cultural form, I should be able to figure out how it reflects You?”

The starting point is not the cultural forms and asking “What kind of God or transcendent order does that imply or suggest?” but start with Me and ask “What am I doing with that culture, individual, art, art form, or whatever.  What is it to Me?”  Pray and I will tell you.

I Have Given You Some Clues Already

I had received visions of the divine energy rushing up through all levels of reality and of the explosive expansion of time and space.  Were these intimations of Creation?  I was told,

The work I want you to begin involves reading and writing about My nature.  Start with the Creation.  I have given you some clues already.  Follow up on them.  Do not wait to read endlessly.  Begin writing down key questions and issues—for example:  transcendence v. immanence, existence, Being versus (as distinct from) beings, unity and the one, eternity and time, meanings of infinity, the question of perfection, love and eros and sexuality and creativity and procreation and life-urge and energy and expansion, the world-history (not “people” history—literally, the history of the World), personhood, presence, prayer, religious experience, the God of the philosophers (too much Nous [Reason], too much One-ness and Intellection), love for every single person, suffering—the great role and centrality of suffering in the world—healing, fulfillment.

That was certainly scope enough—in fact, far more than I could deal with.  And I did not see what point on the horizon could orient all this work.

“Lord, I need to understand where all this is going—the purpose of it all, not just of the project, but of human life, the universe, of God Himself.”

I know you do and it will all become clear, but best to start at the beginning.

“Why, Lord?”

Much about the nature of God and the universe is made clearer by understanding the origin.  That is why I push you so deeply into these matters.

 

 

“There are different pieces of the same puzzle.”

Pieces Of The Same Puzzle:

If there is one God, why are there so many religions?  Philosophers call this the Problem of the Diversity of Revelations.  But I was told,

(There is) no reason to think (the) diversity of revelations is a problem, any more than for a therapist to say different things to different clients (whose needs and situations differ).

That analogy didn’t take me very far.  The therapist, like a doctor, is giving advice depending on the needs of the client.  But God is giving different people contradictory stories about Himself, and also about how they should live.  Perhaps God’s messages had to start simple, when cultures were primitive, and became more adequate as cultures developed.

“Lord, do Your revelations progress from lower to higher?”

Yes and no.  Much of what I have to say is universal, and good for all times and places.  Some is quite specific to the individual and his or her circumstances, the actions he or she faces.  Some is developmental, on the side of the culture and also on My side.

“Why not just give everyone the whole truth?”

Your question has presuppositions—that I have given different, incompatible stories to different cultures.  This is only apparently true.  If you think them through, they are different pieces of the same puzzle.  Names shift but that is superficial.

“Even though one says ‘God’ and another (thinking of Buddhism) says ‘Nothingness’?”

No religion puts Nothingness in the place of God.  If it appears to, think again.  What is the role of each (name)?  Is one a substitute or replacement for the other?  And (think about) the meaning of each.  Are they really incompatible once you examine their properties?

“Perhaps each religion is like a single eye-witness report of some strange event such as a Martian landing.  The reports might be wildly different from one another.  The challenge would be to sort them out and put them into a single coherent account.”

Not exactly.  It’s not to blend the religions into a single synthesis or theology.  It’s to put them into one story.  (To take your analogy,) imagine a reporter who interviewed everyone who had an encounter with the Martians, starting at the first encounter, and wrote it up as a narrative.  Certain consistent themes might emerge, but this would be different from a scientist trying to adjudicate and synthesize the reports.  In your version (of the religions), there will be an additional unifying factor—Me.