{"id":3547,"date":"2016-01-10T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3547"},"modified":"2016-01-09T12:32:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T17:32:28","slug":"smart-and-stupid-ways-to-think-about-god-20160110","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3547","title":{"rendered":"Smart and Stupid Ways to Think About God — 20160110"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Picture1\"<\/a>Before the St. Philip\u2019s Fast, I was sharing smart <\/em>and stupid <\/em>ways to think about God. I had ended on the 10th stupid way. I would present today the 10th smart way to think about God. The 10th way is to think about GOD AS ALL.<\/p>\n

If this Beginning <\/em>Who is Living, <\/em>Who is the Creator<\/em>, and the Creator of Creators<\/em>, Who has a Plan<\/em>, is both\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Personal <\/em>and Real<\/em>, Who brings Fulfillment<\/em>, and who is Forever<\/em> still sounds a bit complicated, let\u2019s simplify it. With the biggest, littlest word of all: ALL<\/em>.<\/p>\n

God is All. That\u2019s All there is. There\u2019s nothing else. God is IT. The Total. The Big Sum. Or, if you want to get fancy, the Infinite Monad, as one philosopher dubbed Him.<\/p>\n

God is All. How\u2019s that for simplification! But, wrap your head around \u201cAll,\u201d and you might want to go back to chopping God into pieces. After all, little pieces are a helluva lot easier to digest.<\/p>\n

Because All <\/em>means just that: All. It means there is nothing that could be or exist without God. It means that all time, all space, all laws of nature, all natural phenomena, all physiological activities, all societies, all politics, all psychological phenomena, all life, all non-life, all thoughts, all emotions, all relationships – they\u2019re all-included in this All. Indeed there are so many aspects to God, we seem to have complicated matters even more. We seem to have obliterated the distinction between God and Creation completely – not an uncommon problem among theologians.<\/p>\n

However, there is one other three-letter word that goes hand in hand with All<\/em>, which can keep us from spreading God so think we dissolve Him into pantheism. Turn Him into Mom Nature. That word is One. <\/em><\/p>\n

God is One. Singular. Solo. Unique<\/em>. God is the one ground for everything there is, and the one purpose. This is the understanding that the ancient Hebrews brought the world: God IS One<\/em>. And it became the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.<\/p>\n

Reality may appear diverse, even disparate. But in reality, it is all part of this one singular force, this One\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Consciousness that we call God.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s Consciousness manifests differently at different point on the evolutionary scale. Rocks appear\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 unconscious, because they are stuck on the bottom. Plants appear more conscious, because they are higher up. Animals begin to manifest the rudiments of true consciousness. AND THEN THERE ARE HUMANS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the St. Philip\u2019s Fast, I was sharing smart and stupid ways to think about God. I had ended on the 10th stupid way. I would present today the 10th smart way to think about God. The 10th way is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ways-to-think-about-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3548,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions\/3548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}