John 17.21-26 (CEB):
Jesus said, “I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. I’m in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.
“Father, I want those you gave me to be with me where I am. Then they can see my glory, which you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
“Righteous Father, even the world didn’t know you, but I’ve known you, and these believers know that you sent me. I’ve made your name known to them and will continue to make it known so that your love for me will be in them, and I myself will be in them.”
Psalm 133.1:
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
These passages are about living in the unified mind of God. Jesus is passionate about wanting us to experience God the way he does—intimately, irrevocably ours, one with our very state of being. In modern language we might say Jesus was experiencing and teaching about singularity.
Singularity is a funny word because it can describe both uniqueness and convergence. There’s only “One! Singular sensation,” but parallel lines also converge into a singularity. For the last half century or so there’s been talk of a “technological singularity:” a point in the future where an artificial intelligence learns so much so quickly that it easily surpasses human capacity. To our minds—and possibly to its own—this technological singularity would be indistinguishable from God.
Chew on that idea for a decade or two. I’ll wait.
Disregarding the question about what makes intelligence “artificial” for the time being, what if we consider, as did Jesus, that God is the singularity, the intelligence of intelligences, a truly supreme state of being, a learning consciousness devouring knowledge at an unfathomable pace? At what point does that intelligence have to continue its journey by creating and becoming physical realities—I mean everything from universes, galaxies, star factories and planets, to air, water, fire, platypuses, and you and me, and the quantum energies that form it all. God is our quantum essence.
Believe it or not, the early organizers of the Church were also confounded by the concept of singularity, although they obviously wouldn’t have used that word.
As the Romans were developing Christianity, they struggled to reconcile Jewish ideas about monotheism with their own indoctrinated belief in a pantheon. By the 4th Century, a schism was developing between those who believed Jesus was distinct from God (and not human at all) and those who thought Jesus and God were inseparable. The way the Romans dealt with this was by codifying their understanding of God as the essence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This “Doctrine of the Trinity” was an attempt to understand how and why the Bible used seemingly interchangeable names for God while still referring to one God.
I think the early Roman men who constructed Roman Catholicism, the first church to call itself Christian, had basically good intentions. I mean, they’re particular about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit because of this theological/political argument that began in the 1st Century about whether or not Jesus had always existed or was, in fact, born into a particular historical time. This then spoke to the question of whether or not Jesus was indeed exactly the same as, or distinct from, God. It’s akin to a discussion about DNA. Humans share DNA with their offspring, but our offspring are not us. Thank God! Early Roman Christians were flummoxed by the idea that Jesus, called the “son of god,” would be exactly the same as his father. Explaining God as the essence of Jesus was a step in the right direction.
I understand what Constantine and his crew were going for at his villa that summer in 315 CE, and this is one of those rare circumstances where I think the early founders of Christianity got something right. There are few fundamentals in Christianity that I believe are non-negotiables, but Jesus must be considered both fully human and fully divine for any interpretation of his existence to make sense, much less change lives to change the world.
Had the revelation of Jesus taken place in the 21st, instead of the 1st Century, CE, Constantine might have been better able to explain the idea of God as the essence of everything. You see, the Trinity is a good start in describing how God is the stuff of all material reality, but it stops with the relationship between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. As Christianity left the Roman Empire and started to blossom, others—notably St Francis—began to awaken to the knowledge that God isn’t only Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God is everything. I mean, the totality of all realities. To divest ourselves of God is impossible. To not see God everywhere and in everyone is shortsighted. And inauthentic to the teachings of Jesus.
Understanding God as part and parcel of every aspect of being human—physically, emotionally, intellectually—changes our perception of each other. Not merely believing but knowing God as the essence of all being is what converts each of us to God-beings who change our world through unconditional love. It’s that change in perception—from all about me to all about us—that Jesus is genuinely after and why he asks us to follow his way. He knows that if we concentrate first on nurturing an intimate relationship with the Supreme Consciousness, the absolute essence of our existence, then we can stand against any adversarial situation, personal or systemic.
I appreciate the idea behind the Trinity, and it continues to serve a useful theological and Christological purpose. But in the 21st Century, I think we need not be concerned with distinctions between what are ultimately merely human names for God, the unnamable. God is God, and God is everything. God is the singularity. Call God anything that conveys love and commitment. Use every name for God you can think of until the names just don’t matter anymore.
Once we are beyond needing specific names for God, it becomes easier to acknowledge God’s inescapable diversity literally everywhere we look. We see the essence of God in every dust mite and giant redwood, in every personality type, body type, sexual orientation, gender identity… God is all of it. I find that awareness so overwhelming it drops me to my knees in awe-filled thankfulness for every singular experience.
Amen.
Be part of The Current #creatingCommunity! Join us live on Sundays at 9am for a current events discussion, and 10am for a postmodern “church” service with music, meditation, communion and community discussion. Also, join us online for Intersect Live! the first Thursday of every month, and for Spiritual Dessert every other Thursday at 12pm. Join our mailing list for details!
For more information on our events, check our Facebook Events page: https://www.facebook.com/GoWithTheCurrent/events/