Divine Projections[1]
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
ABSTRACT.
KEY WORDS.
CONTENTS.
God
as the Universe-as-a-Whole
God
Exceeds the Universe-as-Parts
We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only
one true God, eternal, immense, unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, and
ineffable.
Fourth Lateran General Council,
God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in
his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
Westminster Shorter Catechism.[3]
We long to understand, to gain knowledge, to describe. The science-driven twentieth and twenty-first centuries reflect this longing: we seek an intimacy with ourselves and our universe, and we seek to use our knowledge in multiple ways, through medicine, genetic engineering, computer technologies. Similarly with God. We yearn to appreciate God and to understand God’s relationship with the universe and with ourselves as integral parts of that universe. We facilitate our understanding by using projections. In this activity, we turn toward familiar turf – human qualities and characteristics – and project them onto God, turning God into an exaggerated version of ourselves.
Projections typically produce an image of God, within the Christian tradition at least, as a personal, loving, infinitely good patriarch who desires nothing but happiness for us humans (‘His’ creation). We view God as the greatest conceivable being. Scholars mirror this predilection, ascribing awesome properties to God. God is omnipresent (constantly present throughout the entire universe), creator and sustainer of the universe, perfectly free, omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), perfectly good (thus the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong), and everlasting (God always has and always will exist). To conceive of God at all, we conceive in terms we understand – power, knowledge, creativity, goodness – and then we magnify.
Similar tactics come into play with religious accounts of love and happiness. God’s essential nature comprises love, according to Christian tradition, and God bestows that love on us openly and freely, as parents love and demand the best for their children. Christian Scripture urges us to take divine love as our inspiration, to return God’s love for us, to love our family, neighbors, and enemies as we love ourselves. Judaism thinks similarly, though with a parallel emphasis on justice and more importance placed on loving God by following God Law. We should love everyone equally, Mohists believe, as does the will of Heaven. In that way lies peace and perfect order. The figure of the bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism expresses infinite love, shouldering our suffering and leading us toward the final peace of Nirvana, oblivious to any feelings of self-interest. Depictions of the Buddha with a thousand eyes and arms, all seeking out and assuaging our suffering, confirm our tendency toward anthropomorphism of divine figures. Islam encourages its devotees to follow the prophet Muhammad, to engage in the virtue of sexual love as a means of approaching God. Recall Muhammad’s words: ‘I fast, I break the fast, I pray, I sleep, I go unto women; beware! Whosoever deviates from my sunnah is not among my followers.’ Hinduism’s Krsna represents a personal god; love for Krsna guarantees our salvation and Krsna returns our love, graciously terminating the cycle of karmic rebirth, so bringing eternal peace. Divine love resembles, yet surpasses, our own. It stands as an example to us.
What about happiness from a spiritual point of view? The emphasis falls a little differently here. Perfect, unending happiness awaits us in the life to come, but (some traditions teach) we can experience partial happiness in the here and now. Contemporary orthodox Christianity focuses on the joy and reward of heaven, and modern spiritual thinkers believe in happiness arising from a serious, committed spiritual life. Judaism encourages us to do what’s necessary to feel happy, though not to carry what we do to excess and sometimes to give it up for higher causes. Virtue alone results in true happiness, according to Confucian thought. It encourages us to cultivate moral virtues and to share our successes with the wider social group. Taoists believe we can’t find ultimate happiness on earth. Rather, we must follow the Way, detaching ourselves from worldly pursuits, living in harmony with nature. Happiness awaits us in this ‘inaction.’ Buddhists understand ultimate happiness as annihilation of the illusion of the self, leading to the eternal peace of Nirvana, while Hinduism teaches that performing virtuous actions in this life leads to happiness in the next life within the cycle of rebirth. We must, according to the Yoga system of Hindu thought, discriminate in meditation between nature and the self to end our suffering and attain happiness. Islam teaches that God tests our preference for good and evil. Those who opt for good enter eternal al-janna, experiencing the highest in sensual and spiritual joy.
Love and happiness coincide in some of these traditions. God loves us and, as a result of that love, desires our happiness above all else. The Buddha (the supreme bodhisattva) expresses infinite love by shouldering our woes and guiding us toward Nirvana (ultimate peace and happiness), by visiting the Buddhist hells, and by pointing the way toward salvation. Hinduism’s Krsna expresses love by freeing devotees from the cycle of karmic rebirth and so ensuring eternal happiness. The Christian God loves without end, sacrificing his son, Jesus Christ, so we might dwell, eternally happy, in paradise. Such descriptions assume a parallel between God and human minds. They assume God loves as we do, that God feels compassion and protectiveness toward the beloved, as we do. They also assume that, like a responsible and anxious parent, God possesses the power and volition to make life better for us (the children).
Spiritual happiness reflects morality, with several traditions emphasizing the spiritual value of virtue. Though virtue may take different forms (intellectual speculation, prayer and inner contemplation, generosity, hard work, detachment from worldly pursuits and desires, universal friendliness), the message remains the same: living virtuously in the here and now cashes out in terms of our future happiness. These thoughts again reflect the idea of a divinity sharing in the human moral perspective. We humans reward virtue and achievement. Academic excellence may merit prizes and research grants, extreme bravery may secure a medal from the President or the Queen, hard slog and commitment may earn a promotion at work. So it is with (our projected image of) God. Virtues attract divine reward; vices don’t.
We not only believe God rewards us with happiness, but also that God (like us) experiences happiness. Happiness comprises a property of God. Wishing something on behalf of other people suggests the ability to empathize with them, to feel and experience as they do. God wishes for our happiness so, we reason, God must understand our situation, must share in our experience of happiness and sadness. The reality of an existence beyond our current lives, embraced by so many traditions (the Christian paradise, Islam’s al-janna, the Buddhist Nirvana), reinforces this idea of divine nature. Peace, happiness, and joy become integral to spiritual descriptions of the life to come and, because God permeates all reality, these properties must pertain to God.
Why do we persistently picture a divinity who experiences and feels as we do, who shares our purposes, desires, and motivations? What function does our depiction perform? Such imaging helps insulate us from the knocks life can deal. As children, we receive protection and nurture from our parents, older siblings, and extended family but, once grown, we must take over the role of carer for ourselves, our partners, and offspring. Sometimes we feel the need for outside support and guidance, and the image of a personal, loving, empathetic God can help answer this need. We feel that someone is on our side, looking out for us, easing us through the difficult times. We feel God exercises control where we lack power, that God imparts meaning to apparently random, valueless events – the sudden death of a loved one, for example, or the devastating loss of life caused by famine, earthquake, or flood. Perhaps most importantly, we believe our struggle and strife will ultimately receive recognition. Reward awaits us in the life to come.
Such projections may comfort us, but we should exercise
caution when approaching questions about their reality. Our projected images of
God belong to a juncture well before our own. They come from a time before the
rise and explanatory successes of science, to a period in history when
supernatural explanations presented the best way to understand a seemingly
unpredictable and often cruel world. Science has now taken over and apparently
sweeps away the need for divine direction. Physics can explain the emergence of
our universe in terms of the big bang; evolution and natural selection describe
the variety and continued development of species, from amoeba to humankind;
evolutionary psychology explains the motivation behind morality and altruism;
behavioral genetics and neurochemistry describe the biological processes
underlying love and happiness. We can, given the speed at which scientific
research progress, anticipate clarification of similar ‘mysteries’ previously
glossed over in supernatural or divine terms. Psychologists Steven Reiss and
Susan Havercamp of
Do we want to lose sight of God altogether? Does the success of science mean that we must abandon God like a plaything we once loved but have now outgrown? No. A sense of the spiritual has, in all its myriad forms and traditions, accompanied us since time immemorial. It still accompanies us. Many of us moderns shun the traditions of organized religion, or we live the majority of our lives in an areligious way. Yet still we retain a sense of wonder and purpose. We might marvel at the beauty of a summer sunset, or perceive meaning in a worthwhile and fulfilling job, or envisage a duty to respect and protect the environment and its resources. Our goals and visions emanate beyond ourselves. They reach out to the universe as a whole. Our spirituality finds expression in an appreciation of the larger things in life. Neither does science invalidate spiritual interpretations. Accepting scientific research needn’t involve drawing wholly deterministic conclusions. Science doesn’t provide a complete story; room remains for subjective, environmental, and experiential influences. The challenge becomes one of unifying both sides of the story.
How, then, might we reconstruct our image of God? How might we do justice to both scientific discovery and spiritual legacy? We need to adopt new imagery that accepts, rather than challenges or ignores, scientific evidence concerning the emergence and continued development of the universe, concerning the origin and driving forces of human actions and characteristics.
To take science seriously skews beyond recognition a personal vision of God as usually enumerated. If our behavior nestles in our biology, we can no longer expect the spiritual, non-biological God to behave as we do, to follow purposes as we do, to feel emotions as we do, to accept a morality like our own. God posses no hormones, no neurotransmitters, no genes, no veins, no cells, no blood. God lacks a biology. We must rebuild our understanding of divinity from scratch.
I offer this novel image of God: God comprises the
universe-as-a-whole, the totality of all that exists.[5]
God existed way back when that point of unimaginable heat and density began to
expand – God banged right along with the universe – and accompanied it
throughout its history of development. God accompanied the creation of every
planet in every solar system in all the universe’s galaxies and has attended
the birth and gradual fading of every star. God accompanied the earth through
all the various ice ages and interglacial periods, through the splitting of the
supercontinent Pangaea around
Out goes the old idea of a God distinct from the universe yet able to influence and act within it. Out goes the separation and dualism that traditional projections project. God instead becomes one with the universe, diffusing throughout its parts, enveloping the whole. As the universe unfolds, so too does God. As the universe develops, so too does God. I identify God with the substance of the universe and with its processes as the dynamic, ever-changing universe-as-a-whole.
You might hesitate to accept this offer. Surely God comprises more than the universe-as-a-whole? Doesn’t God deserve better than being just the universe? Yes, in a sense. The universe-as-a-whole is more than the universe. Any whole exceeds the sum of its parts. Though the parts make up the whole, though the whole can’t exist in the absence of its parts, still the whole surpasses its parts. The parts acting together produce a macro entity that operates to some extent independently of its components. So it is with God. The parts comprising the universe together produce a macro entity, God as universe-as-a-whole, that operates to some extent independently of its components.
Imagine a flock of geese migrating for winter and then envisage how that flock behaves. All the birds fly in a tight, regimented formation and that formation takes a life of its own. On encountering an obstacle, the flock automatically parts, merging and reforming once the coast becomes clear. Yet the flock doesn’t have a lead bird directing the other geese, keeping an eye on their movements, calling them back into line if they lose position. How do the geese keep shape? How do they part and reform when the need arises? The flock (or whole) surpasses the individual geese (or parts), influencing them, taking control. Somehow the flock assumes an identity that depends on, but independently exceeds, the identities of the individual geese.
For ‘the flock’ read ‘God’ and for ‘the individual geese’ read ‘the universe-together-with-all-its-entities-and-processes.’ God depends on, yet somehow exceeds, everything that exists. God can, just like the flock, direct or exercise control over everything that exists. We must tread carefully here, however. Certainly the flock controls the movements of the individual geese, but those same individuals limit the power and capability of the flock. The flock can’t make the geese fly to the moon. Neither can the flock successfully direct the geese to fly without extending their wings. God also exercises limited power. God can’t, for example, direct the course of evolution with a future purpose in mind. Evolution represents a random process, a response to chance events, and so its very nature precludes divine or anyone or anything else’s direction. The parts feed into and influence the whole, just as the whole feeds into and influences its parts.
We hold the beginnings of a new understanding of God in our hands. It respects and accepts the findings of science, the medium through which we make sense of and successfully manipulate our world. It also unifies science and spiritual insight because it not only admits that these two disciplines co-exist, but also shows how their subject matters (natural entities and natural processes plus God) intermingle and intertwine, how they interact and influence one another. This allows room for our scientific and our spiritual commitments to take root.
This reconstructed image of God won’t appeal to everyone mostly because it declines the idea of a personal, superhuman figurehead. Some may feel this destroys God as comforter, healer, and guide. I agree, it does demote that image, but I aim to inform, to push our horizons forward, and not to continue superstitions and fears. Modern science doesn’t accommodate traditional conceptions of God. I don’t want to abandon spirituality, however, and remain silent in the face of adversity. Rather, I want to ascertain what modern science can accommodate, and rebuild a stronger, more coherent, more scientific spiritual thinking – an adequate spiritual understanding in tune with our modern age.
Peters, Ted. 1989. God: The World’s Future. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Patton, L.
Sharpe, Kevin. 2000. Sleuthing God: The Nexus of Science and Spirit. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
_________, with Rebecca Bryant. 2005. Has Science Displaced the Soul? Debating Love and Happiness. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.