Love, Save Us. We Need It.

     No man or woman alone can save our country. No group of people can, in themselves. The devices of men, as well-intentioned as they may be, cannot turn this nation or this world around. It is the physical law of Entropy - all systems naturally progress from order to disorder when not acted on by something outside the system. Man is part of the system, and however he may try, without some external influence, he is simply contributing to the decay. Only some force outside the system can order it and save it. In the founding of this country, some men looked to God as they understood him to inspire them to develop the inalienable rights and principles that would underlie our democracy. But anyone can turn to God and still inflict harm on the world. Extremism, case and point. Because for man's rational mind, God is what we make of him in our intellect.  Don't we all assign our own characteristics to God, projecting our flawed and perverse human desires on him? God for one man is a doormat for another. There are as many unique conceptions of God as there are people on this Earth. The only hope is informed transcendent experience in the light of a relationship with a divine being who embodies true love. Not love, as man knows it. That is but a shadow of what love truly is.  We as fallen creatures are incapable of perfect love. Sometimes I just get pissed off at people for no other reason than something is going on with me. And I treat people in ways that are so far short of real love. Because I am a man. Fallen. Imperfect. Limited. I am part of the system.

       But there is a force in the universe (and beyond it) that is pure existence. He or she just is. He was before and will be after. And He would be without anything else existing. And I believe that He is pure, true, unadulterated love. Not male or female, but above them. He has qualities of both because he made us to be a reflection of him. Perfect in Himself in continuous loving relationship with His self and with creation. And we can tap into this. The more we do, the more it flows out of us to the people and world around us.  So how do I know that this is true?  In any system of reasoning, the reasoner has to start out with one assumption that he accepts as the first truth on which to build the rest of his assumptions.  I made the assumption that there is an infinite divine being.  I built up a world view, a system of reasoning upon this through reading scripture and history, from interacting with what I believed was a divine being, and from talking to other people who I had relationships with about their experiences.  (It is a wold view available in 2000 year old scripture, packed with wisdom, and in all the extra-biblical writings since.)  And then my experiences I had personally in life corroborated what I believed in my world view.  People act certain ways.  Relationships behave in certain ways. Love has certain characteristics.  Life as I have experienced it is consistent with scripture. Certain truths are valid in my experiences. My experiences confirmed the world view I had taken on from scripture.  And the core of this world view is that there exists an infinite divine being who is relational and loving.  Therefore, the world view is valid and the assumption, for me, is proved.  And it is proved day in and day out in my encounters with Him during my soaking and meditation times, alone in my prayer room with music and a good book.  It is proved by chance encounters in my life that changed the course of my life for the better.  It has become truth for me.

       Why do I believe this? What makes me think He is pure love? Some people quote scripture and that is fine. But more important than that is that he has a track record with me personally of acting upon me with pure love. It can only be understood experientially. The corporate history of scripture points to it, but to really believe it in one's heart, one has to experience it from one's self. I think that that is the only way man ever comes to believe in anything - through experience. But one has to begin with something.  Why not begin with scripture -  a book of peoples' recorded personal experiences with a divine being? Facts and figures and statistics can be interpreted to make a case for either opposing side of any argument. But an experience cannot be denied by the person who has experienced it. Love comes by experience. Everything else is just thumping a dusty bible over someone else's head.

       So why do we pay any attention to scripture or sermons? Because, I believe, one needs a framework so one can have an experience.  Without a framework, we would miss the experience. Because the experiences are going on all the time. We can fall into the presence of pure love at any time we are open to it. This is the "informed" part of the informed transcendent experience. Meaning it is informed by what we have learned and therefore we can recognize it when it happens. But if we have no concept of a divine being, or true selfless love, we will simply not notice when an experience comes our way. It is the blind man metaphor in scripture. Jesus healed a lot of blind men and made a point that this is what he was doing. He was opening spiritual eyes just like he was restoring physical sight. All so we could "see" who is infinite and have an relational experience of him.

     So what does this do for our broken system that will only get more broken as time passes?  It seems hopeless at first. But the system we have is based, underneath, on relationships.  That is its saving grace.  My relationships with others are slowly becoming reflections of my relationship with the divine being who is pure love.  It is a slow and sometimes painful process. And for most of my life, they had been so broken, but I didn't know it.  What if everybody had a source of relational overhaul outside the flawed relationships we have with other human beings?  The blossoming of relationships informed by love would start small.  It would start from each individuals inner circle: family and friends.  Then grow to our neighbors, coworkers and then on to our acquaintances.  To the people we interact with every day. From there it would extend to the "other" - the person on the other side of the issue: our own personal enemies.  We would be able to love, even those who we do not agree with. I would see the good things about the man I referenced in the beginning of this post. It would be a rebirth, one person, one relationship at a time.  And it would be something acting on the system from outside the system to order it, to renew it, to set it right. Namely God.

       If even a small handful of people have this experience of God and then act on it, it would change the world, one relationship at a time. I believe that people are the hands and feet of God, quite literally.  God will save us from ourselves yet.  It is the scandalously simple wisdom of the Gospel.