Friday, June 13, 2014

Becoming Like God: God is Not Mundane; Rather, We May Be Made Glorious

“We see through a glass, darkly.”  

I see the difference (the ontological gap - the difference in natures) between myself and God very clearly – or, stated differently, I don’t see an obvious connection between God’s full goodness and the natural man I study throughout history. When I really study people ontologically, I see smart animals. I see a gap that seems unbridgeable.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

I don’t want that gap to be eternal. I want to be a child of God in an evolutionary sense – something created with a self-perpetuating purpose in mind. I don’t hope just to return to God; I hope to progress to godhood. I can catch glimpses of that possibility, but the evidence is of a nature I can’t see fully. It’s in the things I feel and envision as possible – the things for which I hope.

“Having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

To me, the good news of the Gospel is that what Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have taught actually can happen – somehow, even though I can’t grasp or fathom how it is possible. It’s accepting that what actually IS an ontological gap can be overcome somehow – that the gap can be closed and we truly can be “at-one” with God, our Father.

That, to me, is the “power of godliness” – that God really can to the unimaginable (the seemingly impossible), including closing a very real ontological gap and creating a way for me to be and become what otherwise is impossible.

I don’t see our theology as making God mundane like us; I see it as believing God can make us glorious like Him – partly by accepting that He could condescend to experience our mundane-ness for a time (whether that be literally, figuratively or representatively). That’s a very different orientation, and it’s important to me.

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