The Merriam Webster dictionary defines a miracle as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs“. It further defines supernatural as “departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature“. In this post I will explore miracles as well as the supernatural. Given these definitions I find a place for each of them in my beliefs but they come with caveats. Let me explain.
I believe the laws of nature are the laws of The Greatest Love. They bring order to the Universe and are fundamental to it. They are the framework upon which our existence is constructed and the more we understand nature, and its laws, the more we understand Their Grand Design. I believe They would no more forsake such laws than they would forsake Their love for us. As such they are the rock upon which our foundations of science can be built.
Miracles however can create cracks in those foundations if in accepting them as examples of divine intervention requires us to also believe that the laws of nature have been broken. Instead I believe in a middle ground. I believe the Divine can intervene in the natural world without breaking Their laws. Miracles remain possible without impacting the foundations of our science. And I believe this is the path The Greatest Love has chosen to take. Miracles must always be viewed by humankind as mysteries to be unraveled and understood. Even the Divine would not break the laws of nature and as such Their interventions in nature can always be explained given sufficient knowledge of the Universe. And once explained by science miracles need not lessen our belief in the Divine. Instead they should heighten our wonder of a finely tuned Universe the existence of which continues to point us towards Them.
Consider the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs. What if the size and trajectory of that asteroid was realized billions of years earlier in a hot dense soup that was brought together from within the void before the Big Bang? The Creator could design the eventual dynamics of our single solar system by manipulating that soup, and then see our prehistoric world dominated by the apex dinosaurs of their time. With this foreknowledge could They then plant the seeds for an asteroid to intersect with the orbit of our planet after the early mammals began to appear? In this understanding the Divine could intentionally intervene before time to effect an extraordinary event in the distant future. And despite none of the eventual laws of nature being broken the event would still represent a divine intervention. A miracle.
Are all divine interventions constructed in this manner: initiated before time began by manipulating the earliest matter and energies available from within the hot dense soup? Before the Big Bang and the laws of nature were even in place? Through a series of such interventions The Greatest Love established the Universe’s initial state and the laws that would subsequently govern how it would progress. Is this the extent of Their intervention or is there a place today for such actions after time began, within our Universe, that continues to this day while keeping the laws of nature intact?
I do not know the answer to this question but I do believe that since the beginning of Creation The Greatest Love no longer intervenes by manipulating the inanimate elements of nature through the circumvention of Their own laws. For this reason, as stated in an earlier post, some of the miracles attributed to Christ I cannot believe in. I cannot imagine any way in which they could be true without breaking one or more laws of nature. Other events attributed to Christ, in particular some of his healing examples, I believe are possible in the natural world. The mind and the beliefs it holds can be a powerful force over the body. Powerful enough to illicit extraordinary healing events. But are they miracles? Do they represent divine intervention or merely the mind’s incredible, but poorly understood power to heal the body?
I believe The Greatest Love’s influence today can be found within each of us. Within our minds. It is here where our love originates. It is here where They can call out to us to provide solace and guidance. The messages and visions I experienced were extreme and were accompanied by delusions, illness, and sometimes even trauma. Perhaps this is simply the nature of revelation. But softer, gentler forms of guidance may be available to all. Of course this is all conjecture and I cannot know with certainty. All I can retell is what I experienced. Powerfully vivid messages and visions that often brought me to my knees. The feeling of a powerful love enveloped me for all but the first vision. Even when there was anger during the eighth message it was always controlled. It never became a rage, and the compassion and mercy was never lost within it. It was only during that first vision that The Greatest Love briefly removed Their love in order to teach me a greater good.
All of these experiences came from within me. They were never accompanied by any inexplicable and/or unnatural changes to my physical world. They all occurred within the confines of my consciousness and for many the question that inevitably arises is how can a supernatural god interact in the natural World to produce such experiences without circumventing Their own natural laws? Were the seeds of such interactions planted from within the hot dense soup at the beginning or is there a mechanism for the Divine to interact spontaneously with us today? I do not know. Some believe there is such a window for the Divine to interact within the purview of quantum mechanics or chaos theory. But it is far too early in the development of such theories for any conclusions to be drawn. There is even debate as to whether humankind possesses the cognitive abilities necessary to ever understand the layers of complexity that the human mind consists of in order to properly answer such a question. Whether it is akin to trying to teach a chimpanzee advanced calculus, and will require evolutionary timescales to even begin to comprehend its operation.
Despite the tremendous gaps in our knowledge I do believe that the human mind is greater than the sum of its physical components. Yes the brain is an enormously complex organ of electrified grey matter consisting of billions of neurons and trillions of synapses. But an even greater wonder emerges from within it. From this great complexity comes wondrous properties that cannot be presently derived even from a most thorough understanding of its underlying constituent parts. Properties like consciousness, intention, emotion and character. How these come to exist, from their physical roots, remains deeply mysterious. It is within this emergent mind, that I believe the Divine can intervene in our World in two ways: ensoulment which I will discuss in a later post, and by speaking to us.
Their words do not coerce or force us to do Their Will and our freedom is never compromised. Instead They present an inner voice that calls out to our love and illuminates the kindness we are capable of. We may choose to ignore that voice; act in ways that are contrary to love. But still They will never abandon us. They are always willing to guide us back if we are open to being led. All of us. The Greatest Love does not play favorites.
Still our mind is capable of conjuring many abhorrent thoughts and cruel intentions. To say the Divine also walks along those same pathways is to risk confusing the two. Although such darkness was not a part of my experiences, I have travelled to many desolate recesses of my own mind, where fear and doubt was all around me and yet Their voice remained silent. No additional voices came other than mine, cruel or otherwise. It was solely my voice alone grasping for help on how to proceed. It is here where I questioned if They had abandoned me. But then I let the outside world in, and I found the love that I needed there. When the voice of your god draws silent, or worse: is drowned out by a voice of ill-intent, a voice not of love and possibly one of mental illness, one must open their hearts and ask for help. It is here where I found The Greatest Love again. In the love of others.
I believe love was a necessary prerequisite for free will. Love needed to come first. And only when it was sufficiently progressed did The Greatest Love bestow on such creatures, bearing such love, the gift of free will. We may choose not to consider love when exercising our free will but, I believe, this would be a mistake. For in the past it was our love that They felt warranted us having free will. Today it is when exercising our free will, when our actions impact and intertwines with the lives of others, that we should look to love, the love in our own hearts when deciding how to act.
Today free will prevents even The Greatest Love from knowing all the choices we will make in our lives. It limits Their ability to know our future with certainty. In a divine act of humility They freely gave up Their omniscience in order for us to be more free. And so the free will of both humanity and The Greatest Love now defines our future. Both are important. Both must be considered. Yes I believe The Greatest Love will try to guide us towards Their Divine Plan. But They cannot lead us there if we refuse to follow. Free will was Their gift to us and it released us from the yoke of predetermination.
The grip of that yoke was in place during the prehistoric era. Free will was absent in the World, even in the few primitive mammals that could experience the early signs of love. The effects of an asteroid impact could be precisely calculated by The Greatest Love. The survival of the mammals and extinction of the dinosaurs could be ascertained beforehand. But with our modern world and the progression of our love, the will of The Greatest Love to intervene into human affairs through the circumvention of Their own natural laws does not exist. In a World with free will Their ability to know with certainty the final future outcome of even a single individual has become limited. They have relinquished some of Their control over our destiny to us. As such our future can no longer be clearly seen by The Greatest Love much less predetermined by Them. Because of Their love for us They have given us a voice and forsaken Their omniscience and omnipotence.
I believe that the laws of nature today are as immutable as The Greatest Love’s love for all of us. They are the laws that The Greatest Love Themselves abide by at all times when operating within our Universe. Why do I believe this? Because the alternative would allow the laws of nature on which our science, and our civilization, is based to collapse. It would bring disorder and uncertainty to the Universe and I do not believe a merciful and loving god would ever allow that to happen. We must be humble yet steadfast when confronted with extraordinary and inexplicable events by acknowledging that all the laws of nature, the laws of The Greatest Love, have not been fully understood nor even discovered by humanity.
For me, my experiences and history, combined with the emergence of love, from within the infinitely dense beginnings that existed before time began, reveals The Greatest Love to me as an Intelligent and Loving Creator. That to come so far from such an primordial beginning points to Their Guiding Hand.
Of course the counter argument I can also understand. To not believe in a Guiding Hand. That the complexity of the Universe’s origins combined with billions of years of progression and natural evolution was bound to eventually produce extraordinary manifestations such as love on at least one planet in the cosmos. That given enough time for discovery all events in the Universe can be explained completely by the laws of nature. This eliminates the need for a Creator or any other supernatural entity.
Yet still I believe in Their Guiding Hand. Why? Because I believe I experienced The Greatest Love myself directly during the messages, visions, and feelings described earlier in this blog. The feeling of love, during the delivery of those messages was so complete and powerful that I believe something greater than myself was involved. Could I be wrong? Of course. Perhaps there was no involvement from a god. Instead a natural explanation involving the brain chemistry of mental illness combined with gaps in our scientific knowledge on how the brain is capable of conjuring such images, and emotions under such conditions explains it all. But the messages, visions, and feelings were so clear and focused, powerful and benevolent that they pointed me towards the former. The messages were revealed over a period of many months. Some initially made no sense to me. They required much prayer and reflection to comprehend. Belief in what The Greatest Love was did not come all at once for me. It took me some time and still today I do not claim knowledge of a divine existence. I can only assert my belief in Their presence. My belief in Their Guiding Hand.
