There are those who say we are on the verge of a major, major economic collapse in this country and around the world. Today’s events with one-time financial giant Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy, together with last month’s government bailout of Fanny and Freddy, make it clear that the world is teetering at the edge of such a collapse.
And so once more we have to ask, as we did on Friday with regard to Hurricane Ike….Is this the will of God?
I raise the question — again — because in the past several weeks we have been talking here in our Sunday School All Week program (26 weeks of blogs on God and Life) about the idea, as advanced in the New Spirituality, that we are all creating our own reality — both collectively and individually.
God says in Conversations with God that this is true; that humans have the power to create their own reality, and are doing so every day, every moment, either consciously or unconsciously. The book Happier Than God describes in detail how the Power of Personal Creation works…and how it has created the global conditions that affect our world today. You may wish to order this book (there is an icon at the far right of this page) and give it a read to learn more about this Mechanism of Creation.
Now some folks have posted comments at this site saying that it is not true, we do not create our own reality. God is “in charge” here, and it is arrogant and blasphemous for us to assert that we have the deciding role to play in the creation of human events. Yet that raises a question — the same question I asked Friday with regard to Hurricane Ike: Is the present condition and circumstance with regard to global economics (and their possible imminent collapse) a manifestation of God’s Will? Or is all this the result of human folly? (Which is simply another way to say, our own creation?)
Where does God stand in all of us? Does God want this to happen? Did God want Lehman Brothers to go under? Is God ‘punishing’ America for her hubris? Will God bring the United States to its knees, humbling it before the world, reducing it to a third class member of the community of nations?
Can prayer change any of this? If we pray to God, begging God to spare us, and to end or avoid the suffering of millions who could soon be caught in mortgage foreclosures and other fallouts of the financial crisis, will God answer our prayers? If we pray that no more horribly destructive storms hit the Gulf Coast, will God answer our prayers? If we pray that our candidate wins the November election for president, will God answer our prayers?
Does God intervene in the day-to-day life of Man? Does God assert His Will on the day-to-day affairs of the human race? If so, how? If not, why not? Why does God allow such horrible things to happen? Or is it possible that we, ourselves, are creating these outcomes, entirely unwittingly, as a result of our own way of thinking (and therefore of behaving)?
Tomorrow, the answer. Today, I’d like to hear yours. Is God the creator of our moment-to-moment reality? Or are we? Or is it neither? Are we all — God included — simply subject to “the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune?”
What is the process by which things happen? What is the mechanism that causes things to occur? IS there such a mechanism? If that popular movie The Secret is correct about the awesome power of the Law of Attraction…are we are attracting these calamities that are now besetting us? If God is truly The Creator, is God creating all this? Or, as I asked on Friday, is it God’s way to simply create the heavens and the earth, and then sit back and watch the whole thing unfold, doing nothing?
C’mon folks. If ever there was a need for greater clarity on God’s Role in the World’s Life, this is the time. It is said that a million people a day hit on this Beliefnet site. Now is the time to have your voices heard…and to add some energy to the Process of Life Itself, however you believe that process works.