God the 'Father'

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.

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We believe in one God 

Really, this seems quite straight forward. But there are so many, many assumptions. 

'One God': yes, I believe in one God. But I think that humans call 'him' many things. I see more God in my agnostic/Buddhist/whatever friends who help me move from one house to another, who offer advice and love when needed, who have more grace for my pitfalls than any of my Christian friends, who have more faith in me to do great things than I ever could. If God is Love than all expressions of that Love are the One True God. That includes all religions. Because if we/I truly believe that God is bigger than all I can think or imagine...well, I can imagine that God has been so desperately trying to connect with the world that he shows up as the Allah, Brahman, Zeus, Jesus, the source of Higher Consciousness and it's up to the humans to get that revelation a little wrong. Believing that God is all of these does not make the understanding any less potent, that is a deception of an us vs them worldview to say that if one thing is right, then the whole belief system is right and everyone else's is wrong. That's outdated modernity. God has been subjected to cultural interpretation for as long as humans have had a consciousness of a power outside themselves. He is the oneness that connects us all together, and makes us all the same at the foot of the cross. And whatever actions that are done in his name, if they result in love and peace, then they come from God. Actions that result in hate, anger, bullying, or any multitude of sins, they are not from God. 

the Father, the Almighty

There is this whole question of 'he,' or 'Father.'

God is not a 'he,' it's simply the most convenient way to refer to God especially since English does not afford a pronoun of neutrality other than 'it.' It is also the most traditional way because of the rampant misogyny of the church. I really don't like referring to God as 'it' because it's not personal enough.
And I still believe in the personhood of God.
I don't really think of God in terms of 'he' or 'she' anymore, it only comes out that way in speech, but not in my thought patterns. But in terms of being created in the 'image of God,' I honestly don't know what that means. I think the super religious Christians are overly obsessed with genitalia. The thought of ascribing God both physical features of a male and female is not weird to me, because I have become used to what the drag world looks like, it is simply the incorrect focus. God is both 'he' and 'she' without us knowing what that means physically. Just as you do not know, nor need to know if someone who is transgender still has all the sexual organs they were born with or not. You don't need to know, it's not your business. But in all honesty, God the Mother/Father is probably not physical anyway. Jesus was/is. 

maker of heaven and earth

Yes, I believe God made all of heaven and earth. But I'm not a creationist anymore. I left that behind about four years ago. God was the Big Bang. And he was there with creation as it formed. 

I'm interested in what it might mean if there are other Earth-like planets out there. Are there any human like creatures out there?  Did Jesus die for them too? And by 'out there' I mean completely beyond the reach of our telescopes. Something so far, we don't even see the light. The light is one of the things that really converted me to a Big Bang/evolution believing lady. That and string theory. Because if the light takes a million years to reach Earth, you would have to say that God defies his own laws just to prove that he could make the world in six days. That idea seems so ridiculous to me now.  

Those passages in Genesis are poetry, not science.

If God didn't want us to creatively use our minds to discover and be enraptured by his world and all its complexities, then we would still be monkeys. Even then, what are the laws of physics when they are discovering such things in the quark world that completely defy what we observe to be true about the big things?

Also, belief in evolution completely changed my understanding of God. Because if God is a God who likes to watch his world change, unfold, grow and develop into something new every day, then that is how he sees us. This mentality of 'create, perfect, done' that is spouted by creationists then puts the pressure on the human being to think of themselves that way. 'God made you perfect, why are you not behaving perfectly??' is how I have felt most of my life. It helped me feel ashamed of who I was rather than accepting that I am a growing changing person who will always be growing and changing and that God loves me that way.  

God loves this planet so much. 
 He loves this universe. It's gorgeous in the gaseous violence that occurs in the stars every second of every day (which, to be fair, I'm using a metaphor with concept of time, which is a relative thing depending on gravity and rotation and doesn't exist in the same way on other planets, stars, or in the darkness of empty space).

This is the core of the difference between the political left and right on environmentalism. If the right's worldview says 'the world was once perfect, now it's all just going to hell in a handbasket,' of COURSE they aren't going to care about trash heaps, pollution, climate change, etc. But the left says 'this world is constantly changing and evolving and we must help it change for the better,' then of COURSE they are going to care more about clean energy, recycling, all that green hippie stuff. It's one of the reasons that I switched sides politically.

of all that is,
seen and unseen.

Now, see, I actually kind of love this. Because this gets into my obsession with string theory. At least, that's how I interpret it. We can't see the other dimensions that are proposed by string theorists and the maths and all that jazz. I know that the original writers of this probably meant the angelic/demonic realm, and I think that on some level that those things actually do live in another dimension that exists within our three dimensions.  That's the only somewhat scientific understanding I can make of it. Because it's those tiny unseen vibrating strings that have only been proven in the math of the universe. But they found the Higgs Boson this year!! And still God created it.

I apologize to anyone who is not familiar with string theory, because that all probably just sounded like a bunch of crazy talk. Suffice it to say, that scientific discovery has me more interested in the creation that is unseen rather than thinking about supernatural forces that might be at work. I really don't know if they exist or not. I have no personal experience of it, though I know people who have. But at the same time, Radiolab has nearly convinced me that that stuff might all just be a glich in the chemical processing of the brain.

Though, to be honest, I'm kind of hoping that the Doctor exists in one of those parallel worlds.

how COOL is our God?

I'm doing some internet reading (and consequently also procrastinating on packing for Ireland) on theistic evolution. I've come across some interesting stuff. It's been some time now that I've decided that I believe theistic evolution is more correct than creationism, however, my brain was trained as a child and teenager in fundamental creationism. It's very difficult to retrain myself to think in another direction. It's refreshing to gain greater insight into this topic.

Anyway, in my reading, I have discovered a truly fascinating thing about the ongoing creation of the Earth. A new island was formed in 1963 called Surtsey. It's near Iceland and was formed from volcanic activity.


HOW COOL IS THAT? I had no idea that new land forms would still be happening this far from the beginnings of the universe.

evolutions in life and science

My life has changed and varied a great deal in the past four years. There seems to be a trend though of moving from the conservative to the liberal, not just politically, but in other realms of my life too. I feel I have come to understand a broader understanding of the world, my faith and myself.

A topic I have often pondered about this past year is how evolution and God can fit together. In elementary school and junior high, I was taught both creationism and evolution with a clear emphasis that evolution was silly and wrong. Microevolution was fully supported however. In high school, I was a staunch creationist mostly because of Kent Hogan. My dad brought this video series home from work one day that laid out point by point why creationism was the only way to believe in God. Honestly, looking back on that series, I see it as a scare tactic to get people to believe in conspiracy theories.

Ironically, I've come to believe evolution is true because of my faith. In my Old Testament class I took about a year ago, we talked about the similarities and differences between the Hebrew creation account and the Babylonian creation account, most commonly known as the Enuma elish. In the Enuma elish, the Babylonian gods are at war and the consequences of the war is the birth of the world. There is a six day creation. The world is formed out of the body of the defeated god.

Many biblical scholars believe that the creation story was written while the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. If this were the case, then the creation account could be seen as a retelling of the Babylonian story with Yahweh as the center figure. The Hebrew story could be a way to prove that Yahweh is bigger and better than the multitude of Babylonian gods. It puts humanity in the center of creation as the image of God, the Imago Dei.

An evolutionary understanding of the creation of the world makes sense also because of the nature of God. The God of creationism creates and then he is done. The world is good and fully sufficient to run itself. What does this say about God's involvement in the world? In our lives? Does he create us, mold us, shape us merely at our conception and birth? Does he stand back and watch as we run ourselves into the ground? Into death and destruction? The God of evolution creates everything out of nothing, creatio ex nihilo, then continues to form it and shape it, creatio conitnuata. His role as Almighty Creator actually expands and widens into something rich, deep, and beautiful. It means that God is there with his creation poking and prodding it into something new different and varied. There is growth and change. It is a forward looking future orientated life that doesn't look to what life should've been in the Garden. Also, this does not mean that what God crated in the past is a mistake. The pieces of creation in the past are part of the plan in order to keep moving towards new things. That also doesn't necessarily mean that we are moving towards perfection since that is impossible with the Fall. It means greater advancement, but does not guarentee greater wisdom. Sometime wisdom must evolve with the evolution of the creation in order to be a part of what's new.

I want to know a God who plays an active role in my life. I want a God who willing to create and recreate when I mess up. I need to know God is here and that he is faithful.

Biologically, what would happen in the universe if an entire universe was created in six days? That's absolutely monstrous. And it's not to say that God can handle big, but he created the laws of the world we live in. If a six day creation with a full fledged earth with vegetation and everything were to happen in spite of the natural law, I don't know what would happen. That seems harder to believe in. Time doesn't matter to God, so why should it matter if it was 6 days or 60 billion years?

It was a long slow process to reprogram my brain into an evolutionary standpoint. Creationism still has a bit of a hold on me though, I will admit. It jolts me out of my chair when I have to remind myself that the earth is billions of years old rather than just 6000 years old.