Heaven and Earth

Our postmodern culture is awash with cynicism. About what? About most things, really, but especially about anything attempting to push boundaries and explore what's possible. This cynicism is fairly well grounded, in the sense that history has left so much idealism lying cold and lifeless on the floor, and that goes for Hitler's twisted utopian ideal to the 60s hippy, 'free love' movement and everything in between.

Not all ideals are equal, that's for sure. But if we let go of the importance of ideals entirely then we're left with very little to work with aside from a deep-rooted ambivalence towards making the effort to be co-creators of positive change in a world that is still quite far from being considered 'heaven on earth'.

Of course, neither I - nor most people - are all too interested in creating heaven on earth. We're either much too preoccupied with our own issues and feel quite incapable of doing much of value or we believe that it's not really possible to create such a world, that we need to wait for divine intervention for that to happen, if it could even possibly happen at all.

As much as my selfish, ambivalent, narcissistic and materialistic ego doesn't want to admit the significance or reality of this, the truth is such: no one is going to do it for us.

Is God going to 'redeem' the world? Perhaps. But God is only going to redeem the world through our conscious decision to participate in the process. Don't worry, I'm going to get more outrageous yet.

When facing the seemingly insurmountable suffering in the world, we tend to want someone else to save us, whoever or whatever that might be. It's understandable, without a doubt. But it's not going to happen, at least not without us. Even in the scriptures of the Old Testament, God did not free his people from captivity or win them wars without the participation of the people themselves, to varying degrees. Even if there is a Divine Person out there, it seems that we human beings have a mighty big obligation to lend a hand.

At one point, during my time in India, I mostly gave up making any effort at all to do much of value. I quit volunteering and sat around my hotel room for most of the day, day after day. I felt completely overwhelmed with the possibility that I was the one who had to make a difference.

"No," I thought, "that can't be true. I'm not God and this is all just too big for me. If there is any kind of God out there, He/She/It has to do the heavy lifting, not lil' ol' me."

What I really wanted was an excuse to not be responsible. And I got it. I still use that line, from time to time, but it holds much less weight these days. I don't believe that I can simply transform the world for the better through my own willpower and determination alone. This kind of inspiration is 'divine', if you will, but the thing is that this divine inspiration is only manifest in the world through us. It can't take us beyond where we are at now in affecting positive change at the leading edge of human culture without being embodied in our conscious actions.

We know that God isn't going to butter our toast or parallel park our car for us but somehow we would like to think that God is going to save the world because that's something we can't do. Well, here's a thought: we can't do it without God but God can't do it without us!

Are we simply waiting around, as I still do at times, to either die and go to some kind of glorious paradise or for God to finally put *His* foot down and straighten things up, rolling into town on a thundercloud, remarking, "It's okay, folks, I'll take it from here. Everything is going to be juuust fine," while tossing a playful wink in our direction?

My criticism of this perspective is not any sort of criticism of God. That it is most certainly NOT. It is truly not even a criticism of those who still adhere to this position. But what it is is a flaming arrow aimed at the heart of the traditional idea that God is going to take care of things for us, without us. It seems to me that one of the reasons there's so much cynicism and ambivalence even within many spiritual communities in our culture is that we remain largely unaware and/or unconvinced of how crucial our participation is in creating the kingdom of heaven on this very earth, a kingdom that only emerges through our choice to give it form. But seriously, how cool is that?!?

Of course, our ego says that it's "too much." And, of course, our ego is right. It's much too much. It's overwhelmingly and unendingly too much. With this in mind, it's no wonder why our ego is never going to agree to such audacious idealism! But we still can.

We can become the 'divine interveners' of our time and take responsibility for the part we can play, individually and collectively, in creating heaven on earth.

What could be more worthwhile?