The purpose of all scriptures is not to give us true knowledge of the universe, life, God, and everything. It cannot be used like an ultimate encyclopedia of truth we can consult to prove and establish ultimate universal truth. Its purpose is to give us the limited, conditional truth we each need on any given day in the specific part of the world we inhabit within the historical, social, cultural and religious context of our lives. It is the truth that is meant to re-configure our motivations, habits, and focus away from our limited self-absorbtion, self-indulgence, and self-preservation and toward mental and emotional states of self-forgetfull immersion in the divine presence pervading all that is.
Scripture is meant to be read with both the heart and the mind together. What we read, hear or recite from it one day may have different meaning to us than when we read it another day. The heart is capable of recognizing the truth our life needs at any given moment as the scriptures flow through the mind. We lose our way when we approach scriptures with the mind only and try to create dogmas and creeds out of it.
When we try to use scripture as a rule book to enforce on everyone universally, we are misusing it. We cannot ever know which phrase, which word, which passage is going to be meaningful at any given moment in the life of any other person. We can't even know for ourselves. It happens when it happens.
The truth each of us finds in our scriptures is the whisper of God in our ear -- for us, like the whisper of a lover. It is not meant to be used as a bludgeon to enforce our particular understanding and interpretation on others.
The truth of God is beyond space and time, beyond human conception and understanding, but is also the core constituent of the warp and woof of existence. The nature of the universe expresses the nature of God. God did not create the universe like an engineer creating a car or a baker making a cake. The universe emerges from God, like an infant is born from its mother. It is formed out of the qualities and characteristics inherent in it's Mother. Each particle, each leaf, each puppy and each person manifests some unique combination of qualities that are God. The infinity that is God is being continually expressed in an infinite and unending sequence of variations throughout the universe.
Each of us is manifesting, living out and living through a particular minuscule and personal aspect of the infinite truth of God. We can never know the infinity of God's truth and so can never know what aspect of God's truth others are living out in their own way. We are only meant to know our own truth. And we can only know our own truth to the limits that our current mental, emotional and spiritual capacity allow us.
There is a wonderful Christian prayer that is directed to "as much of God as I know at this moment" and for "as much of myself as I know at this moment." What we know is never what someone else can know, or what we may know when our experience or knowledge shifts. And what we learn will never be what someone else is learning.
The chances that we may both be right when we disagree is probably very probable.
truth is never black and white - see the next post
No comments:
Post a Comment