Five Words
Did you ever have one class that had the potential to derail your plans for graduation? It was the one class standing between me and graduating on time. That class provided me with the opportunity to score the lowest scores on exams of my life.
“Cognitive Processes of Thinking”
The objective of the course was to provide students with a deep understanding of how cognitive processes function in everyday life, how they can be studied scientifically, and how knowledge of these processes can be applied to improve thinking and decision-making.
It was spring.
I was “in love.”
The professor did not take role.
By the end of the course, we were expected to have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms behind human thought, the factors that influence our cognitive processes, and how to apply this understanding to our contexts throughout life.
I did not meet that expectation, ha.
I should have gone to class.
Somehow I scraped by with a C-. But now, in retrospect, how I wished I’d paid attention.
I do remember one of the lectures, however.
We talked about how we learn to talk.
Babies make lots of sounds. And once those sounds SOUND remotely like something we identify with, we mirror those sounds for them, they begin associating that sound with something tangible. Words are learned.
Example: mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm daaaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaaa
We are elated, right?
“Mama”
“Dada”
And so it begins.
As we explore what we talk about when we talk about God, I’d invite us to relearn five words.
Hold these words close to you as we go through these next four to five weeks.
Open – we drag a massive amount of expectations and assumptions into the discussion with us about how the world works and what kind of universe we are living in. What does God have to do with the new challenges we’re facing and knowledge we are acquiring in our world? A lot. So let’s remain open.
Both – recognizes that our language both helps us and fails us when we talk about God. Understanding the paradoxical nature of God is beyond words.
With – God is the energy, the glue, the force, the life, the power and the source of all we know to be the depth, fullness, and vitality of life. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and all in between – God is in all, with all.
For – God is FOR every single one of us. God wants us to all flourish and thrive here and now as we become more and more everything we can possibly be. See and experience the radical, refreshing, revolutionary “for-ness” that is at the root and heart of Jesus’ words and example of God.
Ahead – God didn’t stop acting 2000 years ago. God is not “behind” us, trying to drag us back to a primitive, barbaric, regressive, prescientific age when we thought the world was flat and the Earth was the center of the universe. God is pulling us . . . calling us . . . drawing all of humanity forward into greater and greater love, justice, connection, compassion and empathy, joy, and peace.
These are five words we can hold onto when we think and talk about God.
So (the sixth word) – what do we do with all this? Let’s dive in.