Faith's Foundation Is Essential to Becoming Human
- Livinginbetweenall-Terry
- Aug 18
- 11 min read
Updated: Aug 19
Sub-Title: Chaos and Faith, Partners in Crime
Reflections on Personal Devotions from II Peter 1: 5-11
I spend a good amount of time listening to mostly YouTube questions/answers, interviews and lectures on the universe and attendant philosophical assumptions. From the perspective of 19th and early 20th century classical and enlightenment Physics, what was once seen as separate, clearly distinct—though hardly equal—disciplines is now blurring, or; perhaps, simply coming into focus. Theoretical Physics and its nurturing in the early 20th century debates between Einstein and Neil's Bohr about "spooky" mysteries of Quantum mechanics 1 leaves us, decades later, knowing so very little about so very much and perhaps more confused than ever about the nature of 'real'. Even so, a thinning in the line between time/mass and 'meaning' has become ever so clear, a result of Quantum Physics. Intriguing, or as Spoc would say "fascinating!" Staring into the mass of layered and desperate theories, we sometimes look back and long for a simpler time when apples falling out of a tree could so easily dispense with confusion.
It is so very similar to the myriad of end times theories that are written on the minds and hearts of so many believers—myself included. Some think they have it all figured out, down
to the year and month...no more. Though twisted like a pretzel freshly baked at the circus one can hear in the immediate future the robot from "Lost in Space". "Warning! Warning! Will Robinson! The day and the hour are breached.! Heresy immanent."
What makes all these end times visions compelling is that, like in science, they tell a tightly woven narrative that in truth takes in most of the compelling facts. Especially true is the story of Jerusalem (Israel) and its incredible re-birth as a cup trembling, "an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves" (Zechariah 12:3b).
Israel's re-birth in Zion happened in 1948, within 5 years of my own birth. From within the fiery furnaces of death camps like Auschwitz, Poland a 20th century exodus from every corner of the earth began. As the prophet claims, “Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children" (Isaiah 66:8 NIV).
Like many of the science narratives, these end times narratives fit neatly into Cosmic and Terra Forma paradigms, but also reflects a tale told of a Good God who seems to have lost control of both the naturalist and apocalyptic narratives in the process. The certainty of fixed physical law was challenged by the myriad of possible outcomes influenced by perception, ever bending toward the observer. At center is the problem of "entanglement" which inter-impresses on two particles however distinct in time or place, the instantaneous reflection of the other. Without a universal, inter-personal or at least inter-active observer creating meaning, the very idea of locality and perception bending space-time appears impossible. In like manner the optimism of the Kingdom of God being born within the human community by revelation was a firm enlightened hope; as simple and certain as an apple falling from a tree witnessed by Isaac Newton, as natural law.
Reality has a way of crushing our faith, whether of Spirit or an atheists confidence in natural outcomes. For we who were born in mid-20th century have witnessed Eisenhower's assurances, concrete freeways, the birth of Camelot and its death as JFK, MLK and RFK ran straight into Vietnams sweltering rice paddies. Then Watergate and the revelation of Nixon's cursing tongue; hero's fallen.
Quantum Physics is so attuned to see rhythms in space and time that are woven into each partical wave as to make natural Newtonian science almost naive by comparison. From within the universe's majesty there arises the newly secular-sacred who see design written like programming code into the fabric of every particle or waves of particles. These are they who articulate with Neil Bohr1 the significance of the sentient observer in the actual experience or meaning of the real universe.
An example of the importance of the observer is humanity's arrival in the Cosmos at exactly the right time and place to observe both creations beginnings and the extent of the universe as a whole. For humankind the sweet spot is earth, the 3rd planet in our sun, and at a location in the galaxy, 2/3rd out from its center with neither too little or too much light and in the 10,000 to 50,000 year window of time available to witness the universe expansive edge (entropy's reach )2 and its birth simultaneously. Hawkings said of the Cosmos something like, "it is as one would expect it to be." Really? I would suggest one would expect from randomness humanity's arrival to awaken us just in time to experience the ice age, scrambling to understand climate change. And so from this and a thousand different shades of intricate complexity the idea of random selection as the means of developmental evolution is increasingly questioned as primary causation.
So impressed are some scientists with the admitted level of design impregnated within every experienced moment that they're proposing we are all an elaborate computer program or perhaps a holographically engineered deep space illusion. Others are admitting to a deeper integrated meaning behind a universe that curbs to perception.
This should be a time of renewed confidence in the beauty, goodness, patience and persuasive appeal of a Creator God who created all things: "in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16-17 ).
Yet, so many of our tribe harken back a couple hundred years to a dispensational idea that works hand in glove with another dictum of the period; 'Sinners in the hand of an angry God'. The idea of the rapture fits the chaos and prophetic details in this age of chaos and leaves any thinking Christian wondering just where in the world is God? Quite literally.
It is a sadly humorous dichotomy that just when the worlds post-modern paradigms force non-theistic enlightenment thinkers to stare directly into a reality that cannot exist apart from meaning (spiritual purposes), the church too often returns to sitting with Sir Isaac in the idyllic setting of a simpler era.
Still, part of the delimma, remains. Apples still fall from trees. Newtonian Science still works as partial, incomplete explanations. So too, for this 72 year old spiritual observer, Israel is. The world and earth appears on an apocalyptic curve that mirrors the most frightening visions of the Apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation.
What is one to do?
In II Peter 1: 5-9, a period of political and social chaos, Peter admonished followers of Jesus to remain rooted in a spiritual pilgrimage whose very root is "faith".
"For this very reason, make every effort
to add to your faith goodness;
and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control;
and to self-control, perseverance;
and to perseverance, godliness;
and to godliness, mutual affection;
and to mutual affection, love.
For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure,
they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive
in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind,
forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
make every effort to confirm your calling and election.
For if you do these things, you will never stumble,
and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
Peter, here is speaking to The Church. His appeal in this text is for a spiritual and human formation that makes room for the Communal Trinity of God to live with in each of us and in our common life together.
Starting points
1. Humility
Recognize the limits or blind spots in ours and humans generally to remake The Trinity of God in our likeness. To that end and with nuance such as in Job of old look anew at the place of Rudolf Otto's Numinous.
One of the benefits of a profound spiritual fall and renewal as I have sadly taken is a renewed awareness of humanity's need—or at least my own need—to allow YHWH to be
who The Triinity of God is and not simply a God of my own making, within the psycho-social needs of a priveleged class at the beginnings of the 21st century.
To that end, there is almost a primal need within to live in a trembling awe of a Creator God whom we as creatures should not, nor can really, manipulate or even tame. I keep coming back to C.S. Lewis Narnia Chronicles and the Beaver's response to Susan's question about Aslan (Type of Christ). "Is he safe?" To which the Beaver replies. "Course he isn't safe. But he's good, I tell you. He's the King."
Entangled Compassion (Anger)
Re-assert the goodness of God as both reassuring and and troubling. The Creator's "anger" should properly find space as in the narrative of Christ.
First, we consider the legitimate expression of horrifically (to those in rebellion) compassionate anger that would cause Goodness to quite properly grieve over the ever deepening cost of humanity and Angelic introduction of fear, rebellion, dehumanizing slavery, violence—ghastly and without apparent purpose—into the cosmos environment.
We have finally caught up to our First Nations people groups who long ago understood that human sin affects everything. It was The Lord who said to Cain after killing his brother Abel, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand" (Genesis 4:10-11 NIV).
Quantum physics describes a level of entanglement within the universe that almost cries out for a spiritual explanation of what can now be tested as true. If indeed the universe is deeply inter-connected and at least in local observable context is responsive to and shaped by sentient perception then entanglement itself, it seems to me, cannot be other than a spiritual experience in meaning.
Listen from within Scripture and nature
for the larger Divine/human narrative. 3
Listening involves a healthy and real creative tension for both the creature and Creator.
For a creature, a healthy skepticism, even independence is necessary to 'faith' itself. Doubt and trust form two sides of the same coin; the coin of the realm, being human development. Job's ancient story, whether drama, history or both walks this line throughout. Job remains true to himself—doubts included, as expressed by his friends and wife—leading to the most profound faith affirmation in the Old Testament.“
I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him with my own eyes—
I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!”
Job 19:25-27
Still, Job experiences his own numinous or trembling, dreadful Awe as the Creator finally responds to Job's questions and challenges—having listened with respect and graciously so. The Creator reminds Job of his limited, powerless position in the Cosmos. The Almighty One, Who knows the beginning from the end declares to Job that God acts as God wishes, with none who can challenge God's power or authority, especially Job.
Only after The Creators challenge to Job has in fact been received in all it's awful dread and after realizing he lives to tell the tale, does Job receive God's non-answer, answer. It is enough, such that Job confesses a place beyond faith—knowing.
““I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
"You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you shall answer me.
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.””
Job 42:2-6 NIV
Among believers are persons who—like me—retain a creature-Creator motif and the Communal Trinity of God as The Eternal Word capable of rolling our universe up like an entropy ridden carpet and/or sustaining and inter-penetrating a thousand million multi-universes toward God's loving ends. We especially need to be fully aware that what seems out of character or less than our 21st century sense of the rational, often is simply one part of a whole we may not yet see. As our Post-Modern sensitivities teach us, perspective matters.
For example: For forty years I have thought of the great deluge as pre-history, though giving both factual and salvation history 'meaning' (not always the same) important to the larger progressing story re-focused in the Jesus event. However some of the ancient and more recently emphasized Stories about the rebellion of angelic and perhaps other created and powerful entities corrupting humanity's genome pool presents a different kind of dilemma to a Creator whose loving purposes can forever be lost, unless addressed.
Does The Divine owe me a full explanation as to "why bad things happen to good—or for that matter—bad people?" As Paul, in personal anguish for his own Jewish community advises, “For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy" (Romans 9:15-16 NIV).
Still, as in Job, Paul reminds us of God's interior purposes even so: “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:32-33 NIV). This, then is the basis Paul makes for our "reasonable" human response; “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship" (Romans 12:1 NIV).
Faith is the Foundational Need in Becoming Human
Recognize with The first Bishop of Rome the foundational need of faith, in all wise spirituality. Faith is at the center of the human capacity to act, to respond, to initiate, to feel. Faith shapes the human spirit just as perception shapes the universe itself. Faith is
the very capacity to evolve.
When we are sick in spirit, broken in our emotional development it is at root a 'break' in faith; with God, the universe, other significant persons. A healthy faith or a brokeness in faith colors our very inter-active capacity to engage. The outer wits or sense of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste are most certainly a function of multiple human capacities; none more important that faith. In like manner the interior ancient wits chronicled most recently by C.S. Lewis function as the gifting around which the mind functions, as an extension of, expression of and substance of faith. The mind, significantly larger than the human brain is spiritually aware in:
Memory, as the experiential fountain of sense of trust, and;
Intuition (Estimation) as we measure probable outcomes of risk, and;
Coomon Sense as we operate within the limits and permissions of social awareness, and;
Imagination, as our heart sees possibilities as extensions of cosmic possibilities, and;
Fantasy, as a gifting of the child-like Divine capactiy to imagine what nothing in our experience prepares us to comprehend.
No wonder, Peter makes 'Faith' essential to breathing human.
Blessings ! Terry
08/19/25
Teaching Pages at:
1 For More: See Einstein's Quantum Riddle, Full Documentary on Nova, PBS
Also: Article in 'Mind that Ego' on the Relationship Between Quantum Physics & Spirituality
2 For Core Idea : See Astrophysicist Gives a Scientific Answer to "The Problem of Evil"
3 Open Theology: One such compelling model attempting to renew faith via scientific reality is a derivative of early 20th Century philosopher Alfred Whitehead, yet reflecting a faithful Wesleyan rendering, called "Open Theology".
While not where I land—as yet anyway—it takes seriously the many and different Biblical revelations of God's responsive and persuading influence. As a new discipline finding its legs, Open Theology works at the intersection of science, philosophy, theology rooted in rationalism, though driven by a post-modern embrace of relational, contextual and moral love.
What "Open Theology" illustrates well is its listening posture. I think it's far too early in both Einsteinium and Quantum Theoretical models to reach any wholesale alternative view of The nature of The Divine Community as inherently and substantively tied to the universe as co-eternal. It will be interesting to watch, hopefully from heaven's perspective in my case, as it evolves from within Biblical Theology's discipline.
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