I am, for better or worse, what might be labeled a logical-skepticist. At the core of many skeptics’ struggle with the idea of an higher power is the intrinsic, unquestioned belief that the pattern of human intelligence sets the stage for a higher form of thought. In other words, God would think like us, only more better. Even those who believe and who quote, His thoughts are above our thoughts, still assume that they would understand his choices were they given enough information.
Logic, though, is based on boundaries, and skepticism on limits (which is why they make such a cute, redundantical couple). If God is limitless, as we were discussing in the last posting, then it is quite probable that his nature lies outside what we perceive as making sense and that logic and skepticism, being formed of limits, are incapable of determining spiritual realities.
Though I generally avoid personal anecdotal evidences, I had an experience that fits well here. I had a dream in which I was standing holding a book. A voice asked me, “What do you see?” A human figure pulled off their face and underneath I saw what I knew was the face of God. I went flying backward, and the book went flying from my hands.
Neither the physical (the body) nor the intellectual (the book) can stand when they encounter naked spirit. But what was surprising was God’s face. The best way for me to describe it is chaos. And based on what we think we know, that is a description that is easy to wrestle with or outright discard.
Having defined God as order, we are then quick to see chaos as evil; however, let us examine chaos in the light of the infinite. I believe that chaos can best be understood as a lack of a benchmark. Measurement circumscribes a border, it defines form, and form is necessary for comprehension. What one cannot comprehend because there is nothing to measure by, we label as chaotic.
Think back to the fish analogy many posts back:
Here, precreation was compared to the lack of a benchmark, the lack of any place to hang a string and get a sense of where you are or where you are going. To the human mind, this is chaos. And that is the problem with the infinite – there is no way to measure. Even if something seemed familiar, how would you know it is the same thing you encountered before?
As has been mentioned in The Glory of Kings, we lack the spiritual language to describe and grasp spirit, and so the whole discussion immediately becomes metaphysical, based in the mind, and therefore totally misses the point. But these are the tools we have, so we will do the best we can.
Next post, I will take on the impossible task of examining the nature of God.