They, Them, Their

Then God said, “And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have the responsibility to care for the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small.”

—Genesis 1:26

Passerby,
The anthropomorphizing (projecting human traits where they don’t belong) of the Spirit who conceived and birthed all things has done more to alienate—even though the intent was to help with understanding—the human-kind from Her more than any other delusion birthed in the hearts and minds of men.

When They said, “They will be like us and resemble us,” They were not implying parity, only some helpful shared similarity. I think history bears me out here. It is the silliest of theological notions to say that because They created humans to look like themselves, then She must be like a human. This is a tragic failed example of reverse theological engineering.

As C.S. Lewis points out in his Footnote to All Prayer, all attempts on our part to label Them miss the mark, as if I may describe a fleeting thought once had but now forgotten. They are not elusive, just Real. Surely, the most poignant self-revelation on Her part is, in response to Moses’ question, “Tell them I Am that I Am sent you.” Takes my breath away. That’s not a name or explanation at all, but a grasp of….no, a statement of Reality that humans have no, at least modern, context for and defies explanation. Moses must have just stood there barefoot with his mouth open, no thoughts forming a response ….speechless.

So….who, or perhaps more precisely, how (definitely not what!) is this us? Fundamentalists assume the Us is the ‘Holy Trinity’ because dogma is their necessity. Since Jesus didn’t teach it, and since the idea wasn’t thought up until three hundred years after the murder of Rabbi Jesus, I have no such necessity and understand the Trinity as a sometimes helpful metaphor (Fr Richard does this very effectively) when grasping the centrality of relationships, but not the architecture of Reality….then what?

Pass,
I imagine that in the same way that She shrugs off time and space, as a no longer helpful wrap is discarded once the warmth of Spring has arrived, She dismisses the human notion of person in favor of oneness, or ‘Us.’ She was never an I or a me.

Because She is good, we are one with Her and always have been; all of us. I suggest that ‘Us’ is very much more about the unity all creation, both past and future, enjoys in Her and the work of encouraging the universe, including ourselves, in our self-discovery than it is about assuring a very insecure humanity by providing them with a god that looks like them.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were imagined, somewhere along the way, as persons like you and I are persons. But personhood is our context, not theirs (This is the problem with anthropomorphic presumptions.) While They can and do share and enjoy every square inch of our reality and context, we cannot and do not share every square inch of Theirs. We are, every one of us, finite glorious creatures; They are infinitely Creator. We were not created with the faculty to fully comprehend Reality, and She rightly feels no need to explain Themselves. They simply Am.