The Progression of Love

I believe that slowly over time and in aggregate across all of humanity, our love will continue to grow. That is not to say there will not be steps backwards, sometimes large. Or there will not be hesitancy when the path towards righteousness becomes clear but painful. Or there will not be tribalism when ones own people suffer for a common good. All of these and other pressures will continue to operate in our World limiting the rate of change. But in general the trendline I believe is clear. I say that humanity is progressing their love to describe this process.

This progression of love, I believe, is of fundamental importance to The Greatest Love. For it is in progressing to these higher forms of love that we begin to more closely mirror Their character.

Will love continue to progress in the Universe? Yes I believe so. My faith in The Greatest Love informs my belief in this.

Will humanity be a part of progressing that love? Yes I believe so. My faith in humanity informs my belief in this.

In the past have we seen the Hand of The Greatest Love working to clear the way for love’s progression? I think so. But we must be careful about reading too much into events of the past when looking for The Greatest Love less we fall victim to cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Still there is one event that I do find compelling. Is it objective proof of The Greatest Love’s existence in our Universe? No. Absolutely not. We are talking about thoughts and beliefs here. Not objective proofs. The example I am about to cite details not only what happened but why I think The Greatest Love allowed it to occur. Needless to say attempting to understand why The Greatest Love allows any event to occur is treading on dangerous ground. It is an attempt to understand the mind of The Greatest Love which is impossible given the limits of our own. I do so only hesitantly in the interest of illuminating what I think The Greatest Love is capable of doing in the name of love.

The event occurred long ago. Long, long, ago.

Let us step back some 160 million years ago to when the first mammals were introduced and with them breastfeeding, which is a highly intimate and emotional experience. Then fast forward nearly 100 million years later and imagine how that elapsed time could have impacted those same mammals. Millions of years of physical evolution but also millions of years of emotional evolution as well. Intimacy and bonding between mothers and offspring unlike anything experienced by the apex predators of the time: the dinosaurs.

It is here where scientists believe love first evolved on Earth and it emerged from within the mammals. Nearly 100 million years of bearing children and protecting them from predators as fearsome as the dinosaurs. Would the mammals love have become deeper than anything experienced by the other animals alive during that time?

I think it would.

However there was a problem. The physically dominant dinosaurs of the period ensured that the mammals did not grow to be anything more than small insect-eating creatures. Their physical evolution was obstructed and with it their cognitive reasoning, and emotional centers of the brain where the feelings of love form.

Under these conditions the most progressed form of love on the planet, that borne by the mammals, had limited potential. But love needs to move forward; it’s potential maximized. I believe ensuring that love achieves it’s potential is at the core of The Greatest Love’s Divine Plan.

And so something had to give. It was then that, I think, The Greatest Love intervened. Before I talk of that intervention it is important to note that I do not believe every weather forecast, natural disaster, or cosmic event is intentionally invoked by the Hand of The Greatest Love. There is not some divine master control room with The Greatest Love pushing buttons. Instead They have put in place our World and Universe as a complex system of interdependent processes and bodies that behave according to the laws of nature. This is what I believe.

But I also believe that sometimes they specifically intervene. Such interventions must not defy the laws of nature. A proposition for how such interventions can be realized is a topic for another post. For now let us assume that The Greatest Love can intervene in our natural world without compromising Their laws. And so it was that 66 million years ago that I think The Greatest Love intervened in the form of an asteroid, at least 10km wide, which streaked across the Western sky and slammed into what is today the Yucatan peninsula. It is known by the town sitting near the center of the 200km wide by 1km deep crater that resulted: the Chicxulub impact event. In the climate-altering aftermath of the asteroid impact 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct. The impact location was particularly disastrous to all non-avian dinosaurs, which were wiped out by the event and its aftermath.

The mammals however survived.

As such it is seen today as the single event that marked the end of the age of the reptiles and the beginning of the age of the mammals.

I think The Greatest Love intentionally destroyed three-quarters of the living creatures on Earth, not as a test or an act of vengeance against the reptiles or any other creatures, but as an act of love for the mammals and more specifically to ensure that their form of love continued to grow and progress as They had intended. The Chicxulub impact crater stands today as a testament to Their power of love.

In the aftermath the number and diversity of mammals exploded as they were able to physically and emotionally evolve thus helping to reach their true potential. Fast forward 66 million more years and today we see the emergence of human love. A love which, within individuals, can progress to a point where it is blessed by The Greatest Love, thus becoming sacred. It is individuals baring such love and coming together for a common cause that can impact our societies and cultures in powerful and positive ways. More recent examples include:

• A group of Allied nations end a World War and along with it the Holocaust. I believe the Earth will never again see the industrialization of such death and destruction on such a massive scale
• A King delivers a sermon of love on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and his Dream becomes one for the ages
• A wall comes down and ushers in the end of a Cold War. With it the term mutually assured destruction leaves the zeitgeist
• The compassion of the masses allowing that no citizen of a nation should be denied healthcare coverage due to their pre-existing medical condition(s), social status, or financial resources
• The acknowledgement that all human love is the same and that any marriage between consenting adults regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity should be recognized by the state
• The emergence of a global environmental movement recognizing the World itself as a body requiring our love and protection

And many more.

But these are just a few events that reflect upon a more general trend. A progression of human love that has taken place over millennia and which, I believe, will continue to move forward into the future. One of the greatest leaps in that progression came when the love proclaimed outside of the great Abrahamic faiths became just as great, and then surpassed, the love proclaimed within them. When the love preached outside the synagogues, churches, and mosques better reflected the love of the One god.

That may sound disheartening to some but it is, I believe, the way it was meant to be. Secular society incorporated the best of love from sacred scripture and added to it their own. While at the same time relegating those passages that must be considered aberrations of love today, to the distant past. And I believe our love will continue to progress and reach new heights in the millennia to come, each time coming closer to the Divine’s love and yet never quite reaching that mountaintop.

Consider one addition that secular humanity has made to the love proclaimed in the holy books, that of secular liberalism that brought about declarations and laws such as the following:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Article 18 (c. 1948)

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) Freedom of conscience and religion; (b) Freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression …

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – Section 2a,b (c. 1982)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof …

The Constitution of the United States – 1st Amendment (c. 1791)

In producing and defending such jurisprudence humanity welcomed all beliefs, allowing people to be judged based on their actions alone.

It did not stop there. The idea that all persons are deserving of equal dignity and respect regardless of age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc., can not be found in any holy text of the Abrahamic religions but similar words are found in the foundational charters of many secular nations.

Despite the fundamental truth of these ideas, ideas which I know are love, they were not revealed by gods, or delivered by prophets, or transcribed into holy books. Instead they were discovered by secular society. Secular society led the change, by enshrining rights and freedoms under the law for all people. This at a time when the voices of the great religions remained unaltered from the past. Those religious voices which helped lead us through our moral infancy were now being questioned as we reached adolescence and gained our own voice. The result was that secular humanity’s voice became just as important as those of the great religions on issues of morality and love. In our current age, holy books form only the opening chapters of this new Book of Love. The later chapters, just as important, have been written by secular society.

This does not mean that sacred scripture from the past can now be ignored. But it does mean that such canon cannot fully prescribe how to live and love in our modern world as it must be viewed within the context of the time and place that it was written.

This does not mean that loving religions should now be abandoned. But it does mean that all views from all people within a society deserve to be considered under a secular framework that promotes liberal values and a loving ethos.

This does not mean that the voices of the great religions should not be heard. But it does mean that they are but a few voices among several others now that also require our attention.

This does not mean that further messages from The Greatest Love will not be revealed in time. But it does mean humanity is growing up and learning to speak for ourselves.

And it is through this growth, this progression, that The Divine reveals Their Guiding Hand. But there will always be those that disagree with this assessment. They will question whether the trendline is guided by a Divine Hand.

Consider the compassion human beings can share with complete strangers.

For non-believers such compassion has nothing to do with a divine presence at all. Some argue that once our cognitive reasoning was sufficiently evolved and our knowledge of the World sufficiently advanced we were naturally able to rationalize helping others half way around it. These rationalizations focus on how such help increases the likelihood of others coming to our aid in the future. This is reasoning based on reciprocity and a foundation for it in evolutionary biology can certainly be found.

The believer may counter that there may be no other reason to help others than it is the morally right thing to do. Or because we empathize with a stranger’s plight. That when we take such unilateral actions despite there being no conceivable advantage to ourselves for doing so we reveal that there is more at play than just evolutionary processes.

In turn the non-believer may respond that such altruistic behavior also has evolutionary roots and a scientific basis. That such moral or empathetic actions can promote the flourishing of the species as a whole. And so our love has evolved over time to favor such actions. That love, as experienced by humans, is always just an artifact of the mindless machinations of evolutionary biology.

It is at this point that we must look outside of the science of love and how it has evolved to instead feel The Divine’s touch. Yes evolution plays an important role in shaping humanity’s compassion but so does an asteroid impact that decimates entire swathes of life on this planet. So does the ancient ministry of a great prophet teaching about the Kingdom of God that eventually shapes the beliefs of billions to love their neighbors as themselves. And so does the rise of secularism that allows one nation’s founding documents based on individual rights and freedoms to serve as an example to the other great democracies of our time.

It is not as simple as saying mindless evolution is responsible for our love as it exists today. Instead The Greatest Love uses evolution as one tool of many to progress our love. Other tools include cosmic events, great prophets, and founding fathers. In isolation each of these tools do not provide evidence of a Divine Hand at work. But in aggregate, throughout all of time and space enough such fingerprints suggest such a Hand at work. The fifth message was merely an affirmation for what I have believed in my heart: The Greatest Love is intimately involved in progressing our love.

Finally there is one love that we will never attain, either as individuals or as a species: the love of The Greatest Love. Divine love. For that love has infinite depth and breadth. I believe our sacred love will propel humanity to tremendous heights, but never quite reach that pinnacle.

For we are not gods nor will we ever be.