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On Faith
The Rev. Fritz Fritschel
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Great Insider plays a role in all life
Try calling God the Great Insider. Many names are used for divinity, whether in Judaism, Islam or Christianity. Any name is inadequate to capture the fullness of Divine Being. But let's try "Great Insider" for a moment.
A passage in the Book of Acts uses a description for God as the "one in whom we live and move and have our being." In other words, we are all a part of the inside or internal life of God. The term "Great Insider" can be used to indicate the intimate connection between God and creation. It is an ecological way of thinking.
Someone has suggested that being "inside" God might be compared to a fish being in the ocean. The fish has freedom to swim around. It can find its appropriate depth for its own welfare. It can congregate with other fish as part of a school. It has a measure of freedom and creativity.
Meanwhile, the ocean experiences the fish's behavior and incorporates it into the ecology of the ocean. We might even say that the ocean feels the fish. Indeed, the ocean feels the feelings of all the sea creatures. And as the ocean experiences all of these creaturely feelings and movements, it integrates them into a richer whole.
So the process goes on over and over again. Activity in the ocean, constantly changing, is the internal life of the ocean.
The analogy might be inadequate but it makes a point. As the fish live and move and have their being in the ocean, so we live and move and have our being in God, the Great Insider.
There is more to this ecological model. Process theologians contend that it is not only God who has an interiority. Even animals, plants, cells and protons have an internal life. Everything has an "inside." The Great Inside of God is the supreme example of what is found in the rest of the world. Having an inside means being capable of feeling events in one's surroundings.
This is true for the living and the nonliving, for the subatomic particles as well as plants, animals and humans. We have an "inside" that can internalize what occurs in our environment. We feel the excitement, the joy, pain or suffering that surrounds.
They become a part of our inner life. It is this pattern of relatedness that begins to constitute who we are. We live in an ecosystem.
The Great Insider also plays a role in the inside of every creature in this ecosystem. Process theologians argue that God is present as an "insider" luring a creature to new heights of experience. The Great Insider is a dreamer and a provider of dreams. To the fish the dream might be to search out new depths of aquatic existence, to exercise fins in a new way, to develop a capacity for breathing air, a dream held for thousands of eons.
God provides dreams or lures toward goodness, truth and beauty. The dreams are real but not yet actual. We have the freedom to work toward their actualization or not. The dream of peace is real, but peace has not yet been made concrete. The dream of justice is real but not fully actualized. So we keep trying.
An ecological model stresses that all of our neighbors -- plants, animals, protons -- also have dreams as a part of their internal life. They are all touched by the lure of the Great Insider. But being touched by the lure is not the same as being controlled or determined, for each level of being has freedom appropriate to its own level of existence.
Though we might experience the dream, we do not have to enact it. Nevertheless, the dream still tugs at us. Though we dream of a just community, we might not live it out. Though we might be lured toward the conservation of resources, we are free to practice or not. Though we might be tugged toward respect for all of the entities of the earth, we have freedom to reject that call or to respond to it with commitment.
This Great Insider is at work in this evolving world, just as the world has experienced for millions of years, providing ideal aims for the entities of the world to become what they might become.
The Rev. Fritz Fritschel is a retired Lutheran minister.