10.07.2005

20._ Benevolence

We have received a message, a tradition: the Christian, who affirms that God saved us; even more: He has saved us "already", of the injustice, the suffering and the death, to give us the eternal life next to Him, in his "kingdom".

Is this one other of the consoling beliefs with which the human being wants to convince himself –excessively and foolishly-- of his yearning for immortality and individual happiness? How can we interpret that message according to our conception of God: the Last Newness, the emergent end of the cosmic creative process?

Well, we have said that we think that God has (will have, had) knowledge of all and each one of the people who have existed belonging to the process. He can "see", from the peak of the cosmic evolution, like from the top of an enormous mountain, all the endless number of tiny individual existences that have lived, fought, suffered, and disappeared finally in the immensity of the process.

Also we have said that He is personal, like us, and that --although it is impossible to us to know nothing certain about Him -- we think that we can recognize him like the finished accomplishment of our ethical and aesthetic tendencies, of the best that there is in us.

How not to imagine him then compassionate and merciful, full of kindness and benevolence towards the small, unjust and failed beings, towards the tiny unfinished projects?

It is true that the reason alleges to us that trascendent God must be enough to himself. It is derisory to think that He can have necessity of us. If He is trascendent, He is the "whole". Nothing can be outside Him.

Perhaps it would be logical to think then that, for His same trascendence, He wants to summarize the old universe in Himself, so that even the temporary, the past, which no longer is, is recreated and transformed into Him? But, has not been renewed already the universe in same God? And how the temporary can be assumed in the eternal without contradiction? When the eternal has emerged, all the temporary must be annulled definitively.

Nevertheless, intimately we understand --since we are His image and similarity-- that He, from His top, wants, in His immense love and benevolence, to save us of the insignificance and the death.

Are not we --when better we are-- kind and compassionate with our children, with the weak and the ill ones, the animals, the beings of the nature who surround us and have preceded us? Are we not able to put to us in the place of other beings, even very small and insignificant, and to participate in their frustrations and sufferings? And, we do not feel the impulse to avoid those misfortunes? We do not enjoy when we can give consolation and happiness to which they need it and they depend on us? We do not recognize in these characteristics the best of us?

Then, incomparably better that we it will have to be God. In this sense, the one that teaches our ethical feeling to us, --the presence in us of the Spirit--, we can know that God will be good and benevolent towards us.
If He is all-powerful and merciful, He will be able and will want to save us from the nothing, to include us in the whole, that is He himself.

21._ Respect

But, how He can save us without annihilating us? If His will imposes to us, ours is annulled. We believe, on the contrary, that God, to save us, proposes Himself to respect our personality, to preserve our will.
We know that we express ourselves clumsily because we speak only by intuition and analogy, but we think that God does not want to impose to us overwhelmingly, but that it looks for to engage in a dialog with us, to call us, to convince us, to seduce us smoothly, from you to you, so that we accept His gift of salvation freely.
He does not want to be a dominator, a monarch who demands submission and observance, but a loving father --or mother-- that offers understanding, pardon, consolation and happiness, to us, to all we, His least and ephemeral ancestors/sons.

Of course, God is at another level. In order to look for us and to engage in a dialog with us He must "lower" to our level. He, who is in our future, must appear in our time, in our history. He, who is the emergent one by antonomasia, must appear like one of us, and not only in appearance but in authenticity, in solidarity.

It is clear that all this is so extraordinary that us could not have think of it if it did not form part of the message who we have received. However, as well as we have heard it, now we recognize it like totally coherent with ours (modest) point of view.

22._ Redeemable

A person has, then, a double condition:
On the one hand, as soon as it belongs to the creative process of the nature, is a "creature", a specimen, an instance of its species, of the Life, of the Nature; a significant but very small and transitory phenomenon, whose meaning comes from its infinitesimal participation in the cosmic evolution towards God.
Nevertheless, this first condition is incomplete and tragic, because the individual irremediably yearns for God; he aspires to the eternity, the good, the beauty, the truth complete, and is conscious that they are unattainable to him because he is least and ephemeral; he feels himself like a "failed project" and a "victim of the process".

But, on the other hand, as soon as he is object of the plan of salvation of God, he is a "redeemable one"; a being whose meaning is not exhausted already in his temporary life, but that is called to last for the eternity, that will be revived by God to live by always getting up himself to Him.
From the point of view of the "creature", God is in a remote future, at a supreme and inaccessible level. From the point of view of the "redeemable", God has come to his level, has appeared in his present, has been manifested in his past, and waits to him in his future.
The creative process happens from the beginning, from the "alpha", towards God; from the past to the future, happening through the meager "present" of the creature. The process of the salvation comes from God, from the aim, the "Omega", towards the people, their history; from the future at concrete moments of the past and the present of the creatures.

There is then a species of loop in the time: for an individual, God is in the future of the Universe, as soon as creature, but, as soon as "redeemable", He has manifested himself in the past, He communicates with his present, and He waits to him in his personal future, that no longer finishes with the death.

23._ Incarnation

We think that God sets out (or "will set out", or "seted out") to descend to the human level, to become human like each one of us, to engage in a dialog "from you to you" with us, respecting our personal freedom, and to convince us to accept His gift: the eternal life in Him.

The "emergent one" by antonomasia "submerges" in the time to support with His creatures, moved by His benevolence, His kindness, His merciful love towards them.

We think that His plan implies that He appears identified --totally and authentically identified-- with a human person --totally and authentically human. God made man. The emergent one, the trascendent one, the eternal one, the perfect one, made least and ephemeral creature, made imperfect; something certainly unimaginable and incomprehensible for us, which have been called "the mystery of the Incarnation".


But His plan is a redemption plan; it cannot finish in a death like ours; on the contrary, it implies his own resurrection to obtain ours, and a new Creation, a new process of transformation --that now includes His presence and His dialogue with us--, to incorporate to us to Himself eternally.

We think that God, to appear in history like a human person, seted out (will set out, sets out) to prepare a "hermeneutic scope", a "context of interpretation". A human person, in spite of being an individual, is also a member of a family, a town, a time, a history. God, then, prepared for himself a human personal history, a time, a town, a family.

He took part mysteriously, from the future, from another level --supreme-- of emergence. He sent a message, a revelation, a "Word", that was pronounced in the mind of certain chosen people, the "prophets" and "the anointed", to communicate His intentions and to be constructing His town --that "hermeneutic scope"-- for His incarnation.

24._ Message

Before, we observed how in the Nature there is a creative capacity whose purpose is God, and we attributed it to the "spirit of God". Now we see in the prophets, and anointed, the presence of a new creative capacity, that comes from God to carry out a new Creation, and that we recognize like a new one, and greater, manifestation of that spirit of God; a new immanence, not simply applique, and less contradictory, with the previous one, but coming together and reinforcing both in two aspects --"Eros" and "Agape"-- of a same aim: the Creation and the Redemption.

The Spirit did not act directly on the historical events. He did not act like an external efficient cause that takes part miraculously in the historical process. He acted only in the private thoughts of the prophets, and anointed, respecting even here his personal freedom, in his vision and interpretation of the "normal" historical facts.

On the one hand, the anointed and prophets received the influence --no determining, neither coercive, nor coprosecutor, but vehement, insistent and demanding-- of the Spirit; but on the other hand, they were people of their time, their world; the result had to be unavoidably a mixture in which the divine message was enveloped in human words and works, often "too" human. But, in the middle of as much "noise", it was preserved and transmitted the message, was being constructed that propitious historical atmosphere, so that in a man the complete incarnation of God was made; living in that town thus prepared, recognizing and proclaiming the message in all its purity, and fulfilling in himself and by himself the loving project of salvation.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Psalm
Bless God, my soul, from the depths of my being, his holy name;
bless God, my soul, never forget all his acts of kindness.
He forgives all your offences, cures all your diseases,
he redeems your life from the abyss, crowns you with faithful love and tenderness.
God is tenderness and pity, slow to anger and rich in faithful love
he does not treat us as our sins deserve, nor repay us as befits our offences.
As the distance of east from west, so far from us does he put our faults.
As tenderly as a father treats his children, so God treats those who fear him
(Psalm 103, extract)
previous-blog----------------------------------------------index----------------------------------------------------------next-blog