A HYPOTHESIS OF EVERYTHING pt 2: Riley’s Eden

CHAPTER 3: THE IMAGE OF GOD MATTERS

The summer of my sophomore year of high school is significantly memorable. It was the second summer after the accident that nearly killed Mom and erased three weeks of my recollection as I recovered from damage to my skull and brain. Mom was free of her body cast and in a wheelchair doing her daily therapy to walk again.

Every summer since sixth grade included a week at church camp. Each time, I returned home on a bus with different friends than those who stepped onto the bus at the beginning of that week. My friends had the same bodies as before, but we all were affected by what happened at camp. Whatever type of euphoria we experienced, we labeled it a “spiritual high,” which clearly made a difference in our actions, emotions, and expressions. As a pattern, it lasted about a week before we crashed into everyone else who wasn’t at camp with us. Divided and isolated, each of us gave in to the gravity of the familiar reality we hoped to God wouldn’t suck us in this time. But sure enough, every year, it did. What made that week most remarkable was the connection we shared with the other campers, counselors, and staff. That unity felt charged with enlightenment and spiritual commitment to the highest ideal we called “God.” To our core, we knew that what we shared together was uniquely blessed and inhabited by the Spirit of a Higher Power.

The next event that summer was a short-term mission trip to Haiti. Our team of about 15 students and chaperones planted coffee trees and distributed vitamins in a couple of remote villages in the hills of the southern peninsula of Haiti. Again, it was profoundly unifying.

The seemingly endless ride to and from the coastal city of Les Cayes from the capitol Port-au-Prince gave us much time to get acquainted. A gregarious student from Ohio named Jeff Miller joined us. He taught me two of the longest jokes I’ve ever heard in my life which might have been a curse because I tortured family and friends the following year with those jokes. But they seemed funnier when Jeff told them.

Several times in the evenings relaxing after dinner, a Haitian man visited and sang to us at the top of his voice. “I pray for juuuu. Because I loove ju berry moooch. I want ju listen me, oh jes, I pray for juuu.”

We arrived back in Port-au-Prince the afternoon before the day of flying back to Kansas. A group of singers was at the same hotel and held a concert that night in the banquet room. I was very acquainted with setting up sound equipment, so I volunteered to help with setup. The sound man in charge introduced himself. “I’m Greg.” Greg was from Dayton, Ohio. Of all of the random people I could meet in a foreign country without sharing contact information, Greg ended up being my brother-in-law marrying Teresa.

The third event of the summer resulted from a student body presidential election that I won before school let out. More than 500 student council officers across Kansas met at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, for a leadership conference. On the first day, we were divided into groups of 10-12 students to form activity cells to discuss leadership issues as assigned in the larger assembly meetings. In one of the cell sessions on the last night of the conference, the staff handed out yellow Post-it pads to each group. Each of us received one page from the pad. The instruction was to write what was most important to us on that piece of paper and fold it twice. Most of my life has been a Christian experience but more solidly so since the accident my freshman year. Who or what I understood God to be was most important in my life, and that’s what I wrote on the yellow paper. Each of us took turns sharing with the group what was most important and why. While sharing, we had to tear up the folded paper as an act of letting it go. I don’t remember what I said about God, but I remember that as I separated the torn yellow pieces, the word “God” was still intact on one of them. It seemed like a sign that God will never forget about me, and God is never something to “let it go.”

But something more peculiar happened that week. The shared experience of it felt the same as the end of camp earlier that summer. There was a euphoric connection and affinity in which only the Spirit of God could dwell. Even now, it feels a bit sacrilegious saying so, but the evidence proved it. This event had nothing to do with either church or God yet ushered in an undeniable, profoundly mystical presence that felt like love and truth.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” So you can see here that the cosmic masculine creator designed a union of the earthly masculine and feminine to symbolize His intended marriage to the divine feminine.

In this passage, genders are essential, but gender identity – or ANY identity is inconsequential in the grand narrative. The pairing of what God created in His image and likeness was the perfect embodiment of a bride suitable for the most high God.

In Genesis 1, the original word for God is “Elohim,” signifying the highest quality or degree. It is a plural noun followed by a singular verb. Gods – he said, and Gods, he created. Some scholars argue that formal language is injected here, like using “usted” rather than “tu” in Spanish or the Royal “We” supported by what follows; “…our image, in our likeness.” However, in the following sentence is a singular reference “in His own image.” Thus, there is a plurality that is also singular.

Upon further investigation, the Bible reveals multiple natures of the most high unnameable God. For example, the second verse of Genesis 1 mentions the “Spirit of God,” which is the wind, or breath of God, similar to the breath “breathed” into Adam to bring the molded dust to life in Genesis 2:7. 

The gospel of John in the New Testament introduces Jesus, stating, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him, all things were made, and without Him, nothing was made that has been made.” The idea is that the Word was the “business end” of God’s nature.

There is a nature of God that is also a Father.

In John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” 

And again in Matthew 9:30, “Pray then in this way: Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Luke 11:13 – “So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

Although the term “trinity” is not mentioned in the Bible, it’s clear to see how believers adopted the notion of God in three persons or natures – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Being created in the “image of God,” we humans are singular yet also possess a type of trinity.

Self as the ancestral father:

There’s the immediate impression of the ancestral father as the part of us that is established and perceptively foundational. It is the highest ideal of self. Yet, it is also the most inherently undefinable, unknowable, and unnamable part of us. “Who AM I?” “Who ARE you?” “Really.”

Self as the living word:

Another aspect of who we are is the “logos” or word. It speaks, it creates, it acts. It is our integrity, or again, “the business end” of being human.

Self as spirit:

The “pneuma” is the “breath, wind, or spirit” part of us. It is the inspiration that animates us and moves us forward with hope and anticipation. It is also described as our psyche or soul and our experience of life at the moment.

I mentioned a training and development seminar company called Landmark Worldwide in the preface of the first part of this book titled BURUNDI AND THE LIFE OF RILEY.

One of Landmark’s distinctions is: who you are in the present is not given to you by your past but by the future you are living in to.

For example, imagine that you work a data entry job in a small cubicle. Your cubicle is one of many in a large room with low ceilings and outdated fluorescent lights. You know—the ones with buzzing ballasts that need to be replaced. It’s a job that you could easily hate, but you endure it for the predictable income and the yearly vacation. It’s Tuesday afternoon, about 15 minutes before closing time. Yesterday was a terrible Monday and today isn’t much different. You have three more days of the same pathetic existence before the weekend. It’s worse because it’s pouring rain outside and you forgot your umbrella.

How do you feel at that moment? What kind of person are you? Hopeless? Frustrated? Resigned? Disparate? Resentful? A little sad?

Now let’s change one thing in this scenario. Everything remains the same with your work environment – the cubicle, buzzing lights, rain, everything. But this time, you reach into your desk drawer and pull out two airplane tickets to your favorite paradise destination with your favorite person in the world. Your yearly vacation starts as soon as this workday ends, and you fly out tomorrow morning for two weeks of fun, sun, food, relaxation, and connection.

What kind of person are you in the moment this time? Excited? Relaxed? Peaceful? Happy? Thankful?

The reason for our misery today isn’t because of the past; it’s because we put the past into the predictable future in a way that we can complain about its offensiveness. Of course, most people in the world never miss an opportunity to be offended about everything anyway. Just watch any talk show or cable news channel. But the point is that we can create something different. We can create a new future and live into something positive and encouraging, separate from the past, and experience that future now.

And this is also why responsibility matters. We find meaning in the present in that which we are responsible. Responsibility is a phenomenon of the future distinct from blame which is always in the past. We live into responsibility whether we like it or not. Choose one that inspires you and gives your life meaning.

More about self as spirit:

The Bible mentions all types of sins, but there is only one that is unforgivable.

Matthew 12:31 – “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men (all humanity), but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”

Blasphemy GREEK: βλασφημία (blasphēmia): from blasphemous; vilification – making or spreading scandalous claims about someone to damage or destroy their reputation.

You can blaspheme my foundation and ancestry and your perception of me. You can curse my integrity, words, and actions. I’ll probably forgive you. But if your nihilistic worldview curses, vilifies, and crushes my passion or dreams, we both will have unforgivable hell to pay.

Blaspheming or cursing a person is common. Just look at most Twitter feeds. But cursing a person’s future opens a box of snakes at your own peril. Any terrible future that you put on someone else is a future you have, at one point, imagined could happen to you. So casting that spell can stamp a seal on your inescapable demise.

But that’s not the unforgivable part. Convincing someone to kill their own future – to extinguish their flame – to smash their hopes into tiny pieces themselves. THAT is, indeed, unforgivable. The only possible redemption you have is sacrificing or offering your life to battle that dragon you unleashed on someone else. Then, just maybe, that redemption will find you and set you free.

“THE DESIGN OF GRATITUDE IS CONNECTION.”