About Spirit

Our faith and science discussion group has brought forth a variety of interesting views. It has brought my own background sense forward for me to see more clearly. As I see it:

To believe something is to be absolutely certain that that thing is true.

My sense has always been that I am not a human of sufficient knowledge or stature to assert absolutes about anything. In its place is a single “belief": Reality exists in an absolute fashion, independent of what anyone says or thinks about it. I am comfortable that reality takes care of itself.

The sum total of all reality is what I sense God to be. By letting the All and Everything represent itself, I am relieved of the enormous responsibility it would be to have to get it right. I try my best to understand so that when I have to make decisions they are as effective as possible.

I have heard a lot about Jesus over the last sixty years. It was likely around the beginning of that time that I first thought of Jesus as a role model. I still feel the model is excellent and that it does much for maintaining well-being in societies.

Was Jesus a real life-person? Probably. Was he the Son of God? With a sense that God is the combined consciousness of all substance, we are all sons and daughters of God. Jesus, however, propelled a huge advance to the unfolding of consciousness on Earth, qualifying him, perhaps, for capital letters as Son of God.

What I experience of Jesus is spirit. To describe spirit, I more often use the less loaded example of Santa Claus. A hoax, many say, but I have a strong feeling that the spirit of Santa Claus is real. How else might one explain the fact that hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion or more people take related actions when that spirit’s time comes around?

The spirit of Jesus is love and forgiveness—even of our enemies—tolerance, honesty and fairness—even to the point of giving more than receiving—kindness, and charitable views of others both at heart and in action.

While the evidence of Jesus’s life is fascinating, I find it far less important than the ideals which his example presents. It seems to me that the embodiment of these ideals is the spirit of Christ.

Believing that the Jesus story is “Gospel” is settling for many. It is good to feel settled. It is unfortunate that some feel that being settled is sufficient so they give less attention to the spirit. One might say that the continued existence of Christ’s spirit explains the resurrection. Might it have been reassuring to early Christians to see that the spirit, which they saw so powerfully represented by Jesus, survived the grave, that those values live whenever people act in alignment with that spirit? Might the endurance of those values be Christ arisen? Might it be that when one embodies that spirit, one has everlasting life as that spirit endures through the generations? I don’t know. I’m happy to let reality, past, present and future, exist as it did, does, and will. For my part, I aspire to assimilate that spirit as best I can.

I’m grateful for the insights emanating from our discussions and look forward to more.

 

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