z-theory #19: otherness

This is installment 19 of the z-theory. If you want to read more, just type “z theory” in the search box at the top of this nakedpastor site and it will give you all the previous entries.

Again, I am only thinking out loud, exploring and trying my poor best to articulate my tentative discoveries. If you disagree or take offense, then simply ignore what I write. I do not claim this to be truth. However, I do claim that it has helped me understand what think is true, provided a more thorough and global insight into reality, and provided a peacefulness of mind hitherto unknown to me. So here goes another venture into this thought:

There is the reconciliation of all things into One. The All in all. There is a continuous flow where all manifestations emerge and submerge, moving in and out of what is called reality. We are all connected and all are one, and that we’ve all come from the one and being taken back into the one. It is all a continuous and timeless flow. This is echoed in much of eastern philosophy and religion, as well as mystical streams of thought in western religions and philosophies, including quantum physics.

However, a crucial and distinguishing feature of Christian theology is also the idea of separateness, or the Other. The creation story and the rest of scripture articulates the idea of God creating things separate from himself. Here is where separation, disintegration, and alienation play their part. Then it is where love, grace and forgiveness play their part. Then it is where restoration and reconciliation play their part. There is truly the other, not a phantom or imagining, but another separate being.

Although we come from one and are going to one in a continuous flow, at the same time we are the other, separate, but capable of love and being loved. This is not what I would call the action of the Spirit, for the action of the Spirit and the Spirit are one and the same. So where there is love, forgiveness and reconciliation and the manifest union of separates, the union of Others, this is in actuality the Spirit.