Shaping Our World

Who or what is God? If you were asked to come up with a definition of God, could you?
Our perception of God has altered radically over the eons. That perception will more than likely continue to evolve, just as we humans do.

In the independent film, What the Bleep do we Know?, Dr. William Tiller, a physicist at Stanford, offers the following 21st century definition of God: “God is the superposition of all the spirit from all things.”

Superposition is a theory from quantum physics that states that there are infinite possibilities playing out in reality when we are not observing it. When we do observe it, all those positions snap into one reality--the one we experience. Dr. Tiller’s definition of God is striking and evolutionary. God is beyond Being as God resides in every possibility that awaits our observation, our decision.

In the month of May, we Christians celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This feast is our recognition of God’s Spirit being poured out upon the Church and empowering it. One mythological episode has tongues of fire lighting upon the heads of all the disciples with the sound of rushing wind. Another alternative story has Jesus breathing on the disciples and encouraging them to “receive the Holy Spirit.” Each of these stories bristles with possibility and power. Once Spirit comes, mere human beings become world-shaping visionaries.

So do you think the world has been shaped to God’s liking? Here’s a good opportunity to become deeply pessimistic and rant about war, crime, poverty, illiteracy, violence, and all the evil pestilences that wreak havoc with our world.

But along with the bad we cannot forget or minimize the good. The Church has worked hard to combat the horror of war, to provide education to as many people as possible, to root out violence, and to overcome poverty which gives rise to crime. We are children of Spirit. Like those early Christians, we too are called to be visionaries and world-shapers.

What kind of world do you shape in your daily life? Some Christians would find Dr. Tiller’s definition troubling because it places responsibility for the kind of world in which we live at your feet and mine. Some would much rather lay the blame on our depravity, on Satan, or even on God. Yet we cannot escape the fact that what you and I do in this world does shape it. A smile or a scowl, a kiss or a shove, an embrace or a freezing-out, all have different outcomes, and only you or I can choose what that outcome will be.

“God is the superposition of all the spirit from all things.” “He breathed upon them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Tongues of fire lighting upon heads and the sound of wind whipping through an upper room. All these images point to the amazing possibilities that God has given you and me. The kind of world that we shape depends upon the choices you and I make right now, in the next moment, and in the one after that.

Joel t