...we are once again in troubling times. Religious nationalism has taken on new forms, and the tech billionaire Peter Thiel has been using the biblical image of the Antichrist to sanctify techno-feudalism and justify his support for authoritarian regimes.

As part of the systematic theology of love I’m writing, I address providence. And part of a chapter on providence explores God’s relation with creation. Below is an excerpt of that chapter, and it explains panentheism and theoenpanism.

I recalled that brief passage from the canonical gospel of about a wandering 1st-century Galilean peasant sage named Jesus. When one sojourner proclaims he’ll follow him wherever he goes, Jesus replies, “Foxes have dens, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of Adam has nowhere to rest his head.” I would humbly suggest the simple point being made in the sage’s reply was not simply an appeal to help the homeless who hungered for only one passing meal. But rather to envision another, greater worldly feast and place of our own making that everyone might call “home.”

Much of what’s best in religion is stuff that wells up from the people, rather than coming from the top down, declared by pastors and priests and popes.  (The Christian gospels were not composed by religious professionals!)  We have Thanksgiving because we need it, not because the Bible told us we should.  It bubbles up from the collective transpersonal unconscious realm of humanity.  It is good religion – largely because it doesn’t belong to any one religion!

Waging war, in order to “secure what is ours,” might aptly describe the cyclical story that comprises human history. Empires rise and fall, come and go. The repetitive cycle of human history we’re still experiencing on a daily basis perpetuates the same plotline, consisting of “turf wars” and “land grabbing,” resulting in tragic conflicts of retaliatory violence.

Now, I’m not the most religious guy in the world... I believe the true message of the Bible is still highly relevant and calls on each of us to deeply examine how we live, how we respond to others, and to rise to a higher level of goodness.