36/50: Does God Evolve? Or do we?
One of my favorite musicals of all time and a song that always picks me up and moves me along.
“But we have only begun
to love the earth.
We have only begun
to imagine the fullness of life.”
The first big expansion in how I thought about God came in my sophomore year of college at an evangelical college in a class called Psychology and Christian Thought. We explored the divide in evangelicalism between “biblical counseling” and psychology. Many churches said that psychology, influenced by “secular” thinkers such as Freud, Jung and Rogers was not biblical, and therefore, invalid. Our professor introduced us to the concept, generally attributed to Augustine, that “All truth is God’s truth.” If there was a conflict between truth claims, the problem was not in the data itself, but in the interpretation of the data, whether scientific observation or the biblical text. Truth cannot contradict itself. Truth can be found anywhere.
I never looked back. One friend said I arrived at college her most conservative friend and left her most liberal. If by liberal, she meant free to explore, she was right. I wasn’t afraid to learn and listen. If there was no sacred and secular, then God’s truth could be found anywhere.That exploration has led me back time and again to trust the life of Christ as a reliable compass to navigate the variety of experiences in this world. It is by following Jesus that I have found myself more willing to ask questions and more open to unexpected answers.
The exploration has been beyond cognitive. Fearless questioning has led to see my life story in a different way and find emotional healing. Fearless questioning has introduced me to experiences of God as the Abyss like Catherine of Siena describes. Fearless questioning has forced me to change habits that harm the earth and be more conscious of how I can use my power for the good of others. Fearless questioning helps me be in hospital rooms and by death beds without having to contain or codify life’s darkest and most mysterious experiences. Fearless questioning means I don’t have to have answers. They will come in time, but for today I can rest in beautiful questions that take me deeper into mystery.
It is for this reason that I take a more evolutionary view of faith. I believe we continue to grow into deeper knowledge of who God is as time goes on. We see this in Scripture. Yahweh is first understood as a tribal deity going to battle on behalf of “His” people. By the time we move late into the prophets, we see a God who is concerned for everyone – Jews and Gentiles alike. God calls people to bless foreigners in their midst. And then, Jesus, standing apart from the religious leaders, lives a life that is the enfleshment of God. He says in the Gospel of John, “the one who believes in me will do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” Greater than Jesus? It seems even Jesus believed there was more to experience and discover beyond all the revelation that came through him. There is more ahead.