{"id":17647,"date":"2019-01-01T09:59:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T14:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17647"},"modified":"2019-01-01T10:18:22","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T15:18:22","slug":"everything-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17647","title":{"rendered":"Everything Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C2U7ffUM5Ec\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Everything Changes<\/strong><br \/>\nTuesday, January 1, 2019<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re calling this year\u2019s theme \u201cOld and New: An Evolving Faith.\u201d The term \u201cevolution\u201d may be challenging for some Christians who believe that science and the Bible contradict each other. We\u2019ll look more closely at the Bible (and how Jesus interpreted it) next week, and later this year we\u2019ll focus on Creation and science. For now, let\u2019s simply consider how the inner process of change and growth is fundamental to everything, even our bodies. Having undergone several surgeries, cancer, and a heart attack, I\u2019ve been consoled by the way my body takes care of itself over time. The miracle of healing comes from the inside\u2014but with help from doctors and nurses!<\/p>\n<p>In religion, however, many prefer magical, external, one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of growth and healing\u2014which is always through loss and renewal. This is the way that life perpetuates itself in ever-new forms: through various changes that can feel like death. The pattern disappoints and scares most of us, even many clergy who think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about the lone Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>There is not a single discipline today that does not recognize change, development, growth, and some kind of evolving phenomenon: psychology, cultural anthropology, history, physical sciences, philosophy, social studies, drama, music, on and on. But in theology\u2019s search for the Real Absolute, it imagined a static \u201cunmoved mover,\u201d as Aristotelian philosophy called it, a solid substance sitting above somewhere. Theology has struggled to imagine that once God includes us in the narrative then God is for sure changing! Is that not what the Bible\u2014at its core\u2014is saying? We matter to God and God thus allows us to change the narrative of history . . . and the narrative of God.<\/p>\n<p>Religion tends to prefer and protect the status quo or the supposedly wonderful past, yet what we now see is that religion often simply preserves its own power and privilege. God does not need our protecting. We often worship old things as substitutes for eternal things. Jesus strongly rejects this love of the past and one\u2019s private perfection, and he cleverly quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: \u201cIn vain do they worship me, teaching merely human precepts as if they were doctrines\u201d (Matthew 15:9). Many of us seem to think that God really is \u201cback there,\u201d in the good ol\u2019 days of old-time religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. This leaves the present moment empty and hopeless\u2014not to speak of the future.<\/p>\n<p>God keeps creating things from the inside out, so they are forever yearning, developing, growing, and changing for the good. This is the generative force implanted in all living things, which grow both from within\u2014because they are programmed for it\u2014and from without\u2014by taking in sun, food, and water. Picture YHWH breathing into the soil that became Adam (Genesis 2:7). That is the eternal pattern. God is still breathing into soil every moment!<\/p>\n<p>Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking because it leaves the full field of the future in God\u2019s hands and agrees to humbly hold the present with what it only tentatively knows for sure. Evolutionary thinking must agree to both knowing and not knowing, at the same time. This is hard for the egoically bound self. It wants to fully know\u2014now\u2014which is never true anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everything Changes Tuesday, January 1, 2019 We\u2019re calling this year\u2019s theme \u201cOld and New: An Evolving Faith.\u201d The term \u201cevolution\u201d may be challenging for some Christians who believe that science and the Bible contradict each other. We\u2019ll look more closely at the Bible (and how Jesus interpreted it) next week, and later this year we\u2019ll [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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\/17647"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17649,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions\/17649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}