The Bible: A New Perspective - Seeing Clearly
April 11, 2005
by Jeffrey Pierce

Having traveled the spiritual globe for the better part of the last two decades, I've come to a simple, yet profound realization - God is everywhere. No single religion has a monopoly on access to God, nor is any one path the right way. Regardless of where we are on the globe, no matter what culture we belong to, God is available to us without the structure of a church, the guidance of holy men, or the definition of what God is set forth in scripture.

The Apostle Paul eludes to this in Romans 1:20, when he writes, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (NIV) The key phrase here is "clearly seen," something that is reflected in both the NIV and the King James Versions of the passage. In other words, this isn't a concept that is thickly veiled, that only a few chosen holy men have the ability to uncover and understand. It is something that is "clearly seen," a reflection of God that any of us, no matter how simple, can find if we simply open our eyes.

This concept may be a bit difficult for some of us to grasp at first, especially if our only exposure to spirituality has been through a single path or a single church - even more so if that path promotes itself as being the only one true way to reach God.

Think about it this way. If you were to rewind reality to the moment just before creation, to that timeless expanse before the Big Bang or the moment just before God said, "Let there be light," what would you find? There would be no disc of cosmic dust from which to spin stars and planets. There would be no amino acids from which to create life. There would be no light, no form, no substance, only an infinite expanse in which neither time nor matter existed. At that moment in reality, the only thing that existed was God.

If God took the time to create a universe that follows very specific physical laws, it only makes sense that these laws mirror how reality exists in a spiritual state. This connection is reflected in numerous cultures and is hinted at when you consider the concept that Jesus spoke of in both Matthew 16:19 ("I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.") and again in Matthew 18:18 (which is essentially the same statement.) There is a parallel here stating that what happens on one level of reality (physical or spiritual) manifests on the other. That parallel could not exist if there was not an intimate relationship between the two. What we see here is a deep connection of physical reality mirroring the spiritual and vice versa. There are hints of this concept throughout the scriptures (for instance, Genesis 1:27, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.") that clearly show God establishing physical creation not as a separate concept, but as a mirror of the spirit world.

What's more, if we remember The Law of Conservation of Energy from our high school science classes, (that energy may neither be created or destroyed), then we understand that creation doesn't only mirror the spiritual world, but that our physical existence is created from spiritual energy. If we rewind reality once more to the point just before the moment of creation, the only thing that existed was God. Genesis 1:2 states that at this point, "…the earth was formless and empty." In the original Hebrew the words are "bohuw" (void) and "tohuw" (a concept of "unreality," formlessness and emptiness), a state where there are no natural laws, no matter and no raw materials from which to create matter. All that exists is God. And due to the Law of Conservation of Energy, since energy cannot be created or destroyed, the only source of raw materials for the whole of creation was God Himself.

After all, at that point, nothing but God existed.

Not only are God's eternal power and divine nature echoed in nature (as the Apostle Paul suggested), but creation itself was not only patterned after God Himself, but is created from the very substance of who God is. Physical reality is a mirror of the spirit world. A law that has validity on one level of reality is equally as valid on the other.

What we discover when we view reality from this perspective is that access to God cannot be limited to one religion or spiritual path as He is truly everywhere. God's presence is so much a part of all life that we can clearly and easily find God anywhere. To claim otherwise not only attempts to exclude a large part of God's creation from His plan, but actually attempts to limit who God is and the majestic sacredness with which He established creation.

If we step back for a moment, if we allow our individual concepts of who God is to expand to a point of true divinity, it's not difficult to imagine that people in different parts of the world could find God in the world around them. If God is truly everywhere, it only makes sense that the divine nature of God could be found everywhere that there is life, a position clearly supported by the Apostle Paul in the first chapter of Romans. Peoples from vastly different walks of life, in radically different environments, would be able to find God in the world they knew. In time, given the isolation of global populations before the establishment of an international travel network and the widespread availability of information, those people would find ways unique to their culture and way of life to draw closer to the divine and various religions and spiritual paths would be born to reflect these perspectives.

And that's exactly what happened. Christians still gather in churches, much as the culture which the historical Christ was born into gathered in synagogues and temples. We still seek God through prayer and the study of the scriptures, much as our spiritual fathers in Israel did before us. Taoists still use meditation as a tool to embrace the sacred. Indigenous shamans the world over reach for the divine through techniques handed down for untold generations. Our own spirituality is limited by our understanding of time, distance and culture. Christ brought his message of love only 2,000 years ago. By even the most conservative Christian standards, mankind lived across the globe for a mind-boggling stretch of time before Christ walked the earth. The Christian message has only existed for a short period of time, yet God's presence has been "clearly seen" since the first moment of creation. By claiming that our way is the only way to God, we are actually standing in the face of work that God has done within other cultures for thousands of years before our Savior was born.

What we need to do is to take our eyes off of the words and teachings of men and filter our perspective through the only concept that truly begins to approach who and what God is: love. John wrote, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." (1 John 4:7.) This concept is further reinforced by the words of Christ as reflected in Matthew 7:16-18, "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." (NIV) By the words of Christ Himself, a man cannot manifest something within himself that he is not.

By the very nature of God, anyone who truly loves is "born of God and knows God." The Greek word for "born" in this passage of scripture is "gennao," the same word that is used throughout the Book of John to denote conversion to Christ, as in "born again." ("In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, unless a man is born (gennao) again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'" John 3:3.)

John goes on to write, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8.) This simple definition transcends dogma and divisions established by man. God is love. Wherever there is love, we will find God there as well.

What we need to begin doing is learn to follow, not the words of men, but the heart of God. Our goal should be not to blindly follow the scriptures which, even divinely inspired, are still man's interpretation of God, but to seek the nature of God for ourselves. Our guidelines are simple. We know that God is love and that anyone who loves is born of God. We know that man cannot be what he is not and that we will know a man by his "fruit" or the qualities, actions and intents that are produced by his life and his heart. Because man was created in God's image, then we will also know God by the fruit He bears. If a particular spiritual path is controlling, hateful, spawns fear, promotes bigotry or persecutes others for any reason, then it is not a path that reflects God. The flip side of that coin is that any path that embodies love must be a path that reflects God, as God is love and it is by the fruit that a path bears that we will know its heart.

As the picture begins to come into focus, we begin to see a creation that was literally created by God from His energy and mirrors not only the spiritual world, but who God is. We find that anyone can discover God from His nature reflected in all of creation. God is clearly the very embodiment of love and anyone who truly loves not only knows God, but is "born of God."

What this does is validate any spiritual path that truly seeks the heart of God and truly manifests love in the hearts and lives of those people who follow God through that path. Rather than invalidating who we are as Christians, it simply expands our family. We are not alone in seeking and serving God but are part of a global network of men, women and children who have been "born of God" simply by learning to truly love.

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