It is estimated that there are between 100 and 200 billion galaxies in the part of the universe we are able to see. Not stars. Galaxies! Each one of them contains as many as 400 billion stars.
That amounts to 200 billion trillion stars just in the known universe. That number is more than the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. Stop for a minute and think about how many that is.
And we exist on a tiny speck of dust orbiting one of those stars - on the outer rim of a galaxy so big it takes light 200,000 years to cross it travelling at 186,000 miles per second. The size and numbers are beyond our ability to fathom.
And here’s the most mystifying thing about it.
It was all created by a God who needs us to worship him.
Correction…
A God who requires us to worship him. Under threat of eternal punishment in hellfire if we don’t. So claimed the Church fathers in 300 A.D. when the world was flat and God sat on his throne above the earth, just on top of the clouds. Those church fathers somehow created that story and the foolproof religion that followed must never be questioned.
Like George Carlin said, you have to stand in awe of something so well-conceived. He called it the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims. I call it The Mother of All Conspiracies. It’s everlasting acceptance thoughout the ages has certainly earned it the title.
It is worth noting that conspiracies aren’t always the result of evil doers. They can sometimes be intended for good by uninformed people who have developed stories that can be very well supported. The Church has done that.
I believed those stories myself for many years. The Catholic church I attended as a child had towering golden ceilings filled with magnificent statues and heavenly paintings of saints. The sound of the bells. The smell of incense. The much-sought-after fellowship of other believers.
And the music.
I led worship for years in an Evangelical church where people would fall to the floor in ecstatic convulsions. Even today songs like How Great Thou Art and I Surrender All can lift my spirit to the highest of emotional highs. If that isn’t enough to keep people in the pews there’s also the threat of eternal damnation for those who don’t believe.
As I said. The church fathers thought of everything.
But everything eventually reaches its expiration date. In an age of scientific discovery, the threat of a needy and avenging God is no longer tenable. In an unimaginably vast universe, the idea of an all-powerful God of love who punishes life on a tiny speck of dirt for not obeying him is finally being discarded. Because it is not the truth.
Here’s why it has been so enduring. If there was no wrathful God there would be no fear of punishment and no need for someone to save us. If there is no need for someone to save us then what do we do with Jesus? This is where many Christians cease their questioning and remain content to wait for his second coming. Meanwhile the world moves closer and closer to its own expiration.
Imagine instead a world where people have the understanding that they are born out of God’s love and are themselves extensions of God. Imagine how we would treat each other and what it would do for self-acceptance, honest relations, and world peace if we recognized the divinity of all life. The Bhagavad Gita says, “If you can see God in everyone you can never do harm to anyone”.
It wasn’t taught at the end of the Bronze Age when the “Word of God” was written. But science today has proven that everything is part of the one thing there is. Lynne McTaggart calls it The Energy Field. Jesus called it the kingdom of God. I call it God consciousness.
We have entered into a time of spiritual awakening that is happening on a global scale. Young people everywhere are rejecting the idea that they are sinners in the hand of an angry God. We are discovering the truth about who we really are.
Namaste.
