It was in April 2022 that I listened to this talk by Don MacGregor who is a retired Anglican Priest. He had previously been a University Chaplain and a Science Teacher. Don had been asked a number of questions and as a former Anglican, I found myself resonating with so much of what he was saying. I made some notes:
Why does Christianity need to change?
- An anthropomorphic view of God (God made in our image?) turns people off.
God is still seen by some in the public domain as the grandfather in the sky.
God as being distant is still reinforced in a lot of hymns and liturgy.
Consider the Lord’s Prayer – Our Father in heaven! Is God separate from us? - Jesus taught that He and the Father are one and we can all be one, but the Church went off on a different line – God watching over us – not in us and holding us.
- Founders of religion who were inspired, taught their followers, who taught their followers . . . and then they started writing it down – it became calcified – enclosed – but which bits were right?
- Chrysalis Christianity – caterpillars feed and shed their skins a few times – then pupate and develop a hard outer case – within the caterpillar it all starts dissolving into goo. Within the goo are imaginal cells that have always been there ready to grow.
Christianity struggling to become the butterfly – the need to leave behind a lot of the limitations that it has been encased in by doctrine and dogma. - It needs a bigger framework – where it can emerge with other religions into a more universal framework, like the Wisdom framework that has been around since the early days of humanity. A cosmology into which you could fit all religions and all human existence?
New advances in science?
We now know that everything is energy – energetic – vibrational – interconnected – entangled.
Interconnection and oneness that has been coming to the fore – convergence of science and spirituality is beginning to happen.
Also recent development of information fields – like this underlying ground of being – patterns of all existence and from those patterns everything real as we know it emerges according to the laws of physics.
The whole area is so rich for the development of new ideas of science and spirituality coming together.
The whole idea of the way in which we think about ourselves and the prayers and intentions we put out will affect our own health and the health of other people – another huge area where science and spirituality are coming together – all of the spiritual traditions teach things like, think positive thoughts, think good things, think noble thoughts.
How might we view the sacrificial death of Jesus?
- Don suggests that Jesus was a wisdom teacher, but that the Church taught that there was a transaction between Jesus and God that we can enter because Jesus died for our sins etc.
- Judaism and Paul were steeped in the sacrificial culture. After Jesus’ death how were they going to interpret this? The Church reverted to a sacrificial system?
Later Roman authorities with the cooperation of the Bishops – a useful way of controlling people across the vast Roman Empire – be good in this life and you will get a reward in the after life, otherwise it’s the eternal flames for you! But that was not what Jesus taught. - The path of transformation became hidden – sanctification – being made more holy – developing the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, patience . . . those are the elements of transformation, but the main emphasis of the church was to enter into this agreement between God and Jesus that he died so that our sins could be forgiven.
This path of transformation is what many in the Christian world are trying to bring out.
Part of this transformation is not just Christian. It’s in all of the main religions as well – the possibilities for each to reach their full human potential – full of compassionate consciousness, goodwill towards all etc. - Rupert Sheldrake‘s theory (that is not generally accepted) of Morphic Resonance fits in here – every species has a morphic field – an information field that holds not just the physical appearance of the species is going to be but holds the memory of the behaviours of the species – whenever a member of a species does a new behaviour it contributes that to the morphic field of that species, so for humanity, when Jesus lived a life of compassion, truth and surrender to God he was trailblazing – a way shower – the archetype for all humanity to follow (because he did it we are all more able to do it – the path of transformation – of being saved)?
Saved = healing and wholeness in this life – the same in all languages! That’s what we have lost in the church – salvation has become saved for future glory, but Jesus taught that it is about now – transformed in this life.
That’s what Don thinks – that the sacrificial death of Jesus was as a result of the path that he chose – what it is like to be a transformed human being – it led to a clash with the authorities and his death which did something in the whole morphic field for humanity.
Who or what is God?
- The trinity – 200’s – Tertillian – 3 persona – the idea that God sounds through three masks (actors wearing masks to represent a character – could be the same actor with different masks).
Persona = through sound.
Sounding through is what God does through the metaphor of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Mother?).
Son doesn’t have to be male or the Holy Spirit, a dove.
With this larger wisdom philosophy that Don has been talking about – God is the one life – the one source from which everything emerges (for all levels).
Mother Spirit (that we don’t mention in Christianity) – Father (Divine will – creative intelligence) gives rise to the Son aspect – loving consciousness.
Divine will – divine intelligence – and divine love.
A much better way of expressing the truth without all the gender problems that are associated with the trinity?
God as the one life that permeates and holds everything in existence, and works through created form, energising and inspiring form in myriads of ways and paths.
That’s the big picture – big enough to hold the whole universe from which everything emerges. It is sometimes expressed as Panentheism – God is in everything – imminent in all creation – still also transcendent – not meaning up there – but other than us and yet there within us, lying beyond the ordinary range of human perception. God is both with us and within all creation.
It’s like a consciousness that is there which observes everything.
That was my starting point.
Bridging the Gap between Science and Spirituality (without the religious dogmatics) 