Reframing Our Cosmology<\/p>\n
Tuesday, February 20, 2018<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><br \/>\nIf you wear glasses, perhaps you\u2019ve experienced receiving a new prescription and suddenly you see the world in a new way. We often get used to \u201cseeing the world\u201d with an inadequate or outdated prescription. It is only when we go in for a check up that we realize we need a lens update, and what a difference it makes!<br \/>\nCosmology\u2014our understanding of the origins of our world and how our world works\u2014is just like that. How we understand the universe comprises a \u201clens\u201d through which we tend to understand everything else in life. Many of us who grew up in the church don\u2019t realize that we\u2019ve inherited a pretty blurry cosmology: a usually male God, separate from our world, who stands back and judgmentally observes the goings on of our universe and humanity\u2019s faults and failings. This just does not work, and I do not apologize for saying it.<br \/>\nThis view has gone a long way in perpetuating the idea that we are isolated from each other and from God and that there is something inherently wrong with us and the world. Christianity\u2019s adherence to Greek philosophical ideas that matter and spirit are separate has perpetuated a split between theology (or \u201cGod-talk\u201d) and science.<br \/>\nBeatrice Bruteau (1930-2014), who brings such profound spiritual intelligence to our necessary conversation, can help us update our cosmology to a lens that is more compatible with science and the world around us. Rather than a God that is removed from us, she explains how the Trinity reveals God as actively moving in and through our world:<br \/>\nWhat we now call complexity, and recognize as doing its creative work on the very edge of chaos, is at the heart of this miraculous picture. There may not be an external Designer and a micro-managing Providence from the outside, but neither is the world devoid of divinity. The divinity is so intimately present in the world that the world can be regarded as an incarnate expression of the Trinity, as creative, as expansive, as conscious, as self-realizing and self-sharing.<br \/>\nI have called this creative act God\u2019s ecstasy. Ecstasy means standing outside oneself. It is kin to the kenosis of Philippians 2:6\u2014being God is not a thing to be clung to, so God empties Godself, taking the form of limitation in finitude, and is born as a universe. It is the defining divine act: self-giving, being-bestowing. Ecstasy has the connotations of extreme love and supreme joy. That is right for the creation of the universe.<br \/>\n. . . We need a new theology of the cosmos, one that is grounded in the best science of our day. It will be a theology in which God is very present, precisely in all the dynamisms and patterns of the created order, in which God is not rendered absent by the self-organizing activities of the natural world, but in which God is actual as the one who makes and the one who is incarnate in what is made by these very self-making activities. [1]<\/p>\n<p>_____________________________________________________<\/p>\n<div class=\"row title-row\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"utmost-devo-title col col-sm-12 col-xs-12\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">Taking the Initiative Against Daydreaming<\/h2>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\">\u00a0<strong>Arise, let us go from here. \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&search=John+14%3A31\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">John 14:31<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"row entry-meta\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<div class=\"top-sharing\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\">\u00a0Daydreaming about something in order to do it properly is right, but daydreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong. In this passage, after having said these wonderful things to His disciples, we might have expected our Lord to tell them to go away and meditate over them all. But Jesus never allowed idle daydreaming. When our purpose is to seek God and to discover His will for us, daydreaming is right and acceptable. But when our inclination is to spend time daydreaming over what we have already been told to do, it is unacceptable and God\u2019s blessing is never on it. God will take the initiative against this kind of daydreaming by prodding us to action. His instructions to us will be along the lines of this: \u201cDon\u2019t sit or stand there, just go!\u201d<\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>If we are quietly waiting before God after He has said to us, \u201cCome aside by yourselves\u2026\u201d then that is meditation before Him to seek His will (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Mark+6:31\">Mark 6:31<\/a>). Beware, however, of giving in to mere daydreaming once God has spoken. Allow Him to be the source of all your dreams, joys, and delights, and be careful to go and obey what He has said. If you are in love with someone, you don\u2019t sit and daydream about that person all the time\u2014 you go and do something for him. That is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. Daydreaming after God has spoken is an indication that we do not trust Him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reframing Our Cosmology Tuesday, February 20, 2018 If you wear glasses, perhaps you\u2019ve experienced receiving a new prescription and suddenly you see the world in a new way. We often get used to \u201cseeing the world\u201d with an inadequate or outdated prescription. It is only when we go in for a check up that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16461,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459\/revisions\/16461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}