Last week in this space I reflected on Bishop Spong’s new book on Eternal Life and a new religious consciousness beyond traditional theism. I appreciate Spong’s bold iconoclastic approach to matters of faith, and, as I said, Spong has given us fresh and mature language with which we are more able in a post-modern context to speak of the life of faith unfettered by literalism and superstition; he has given us language by which we are able to speak intelligently about Christianity with an integrity that does not cease to be passionate and spiritual. That is not to say that I agree with everything Spong says. He still struggles with his own ego-centrism and with his lifelong battle to escape his literalist roots; all the while acknowledging both.
Spong makes the bold claim early on in Eternal Life… that the purpose of the universe is not life. He hasn’t yet referred to some other, or some grander or transcendent purpose, but the implication is that perhaps in the randomness of the origins of the universe, there is no purpose whatsoever…that the universe just is….no telos (no ultimate direction)…no meaning….just random iterations and reiterations of gas and metal and carbon chains and water….of unimaginable heat and unfathomable cold…and loneliness and fear.
The fact of the matter is…there is purpose everywhere….where there is illness, the purpose is healing…where there is despair, the purpose is hope…where there is hunger, the purpose is to nurture…where there is injustice and indignity, the purpose is to set things right, to restore what we know is meant to be…What is right? What is meant to be?…Oh, don’t bother to ask, for we know don’t we…this knowledge, this genius contained in the DNA of the stars…this mysterious helix of truth and goodness and sacrifice, spiraling towards a mysterious perfection amid a randomness… a randomness that we dare trust and praise as divine.
Could it be that as the universe becomes still…. that purpose becomes still…the chief symbols of this becoming: change and adaptation and transformation and evolution…the cosmic musical refrain….Perhaps at each intersection point of this transformative process, this assaying of the universe…. new purpose is engendered, fiery birth of implicit necessity…the new vocation of the midwife bringing into life that which inevitably becomes…for example, it would have been unthinkable three hundred years ago to say that global warming threatens our existence…but now it is a pressing reality…Certainly we must be purposeful towards restoring the sustainability of our planet…a new purpose heretofore unknown…but known now…Who knows what purpose will become amid the Creation’s becoming, who knows for what purpose to which we will be called, that which will evolve three hundred years from now, and again and again. The cosmos rife with purpose…purpose engendered by change and empowered by love, yes love a rudiment as well.
The imperative for us people of faith is that as community we must pay attention, we must think critically and imaginatively; we must seek and work toward being enlightened so that we may artfully and skillfully apprehend the purpose to which we are called….purpose that comes as we speak, ever changing, ever becoming, and we dare not miss its coming…this the Creation in its very becoming, imagining in transcendent proportions the purpose at hand….The clue for me in this process, is that wherever there is sacrifice for the greater good; wherever there is the work towards restoration…there we will apprehend a purpose, truth itself, that we can’t deny to be true…and therefore we name it as divine….and celebrate.
