Independence

Tullius: You don’t really believe that do you?

Marcus: Yes. I do. The kingdom of God is among us.

Tullius: So, you mean in the here and now, not in the next life or that it’s on the way?

Marcus: In a sense, it’s on the way, because the choices we make today can nudge the kingdom of God closer or farther away from us in the future. Even so, the kingdom is among us, within us, and all around us, at this moment. How we act now serves to help it or hinder it.

Tullius: I believe God, and God alone, is in charge of the way things are – have been – and will be.

Marcus: That’s one way to look at it. You do realize that atheists use that belief to critique the existence of God, don’t you?

Tullius: How so?

Marcus: If God alone determines how things shall be, God alone becomes responsible for all human misery, suffering, and death. That belief takes human actions out of the equation. And according to this reasoning, God is the author of all pain.

Tullius: Well, I can see how humans have caused a lot of misery, suffering, and death. Maybe God allows us to cause these things – to teach us, to keep us humble…

Marcus: Pretty harsh lessons then.

Tullius: After all, God has warned us about consequences.

Marcus: No matter what we believe about God, all actions have consequences.

Tullius: Such as?

Marcus: Such as…If we don’t pay our debts, our creditors might sue us for even more money. If we don’t eat healthy foods, we might get sick or die. If we don’t exercise, we might become unable to walk. If we don’t make peace, we might end up fighting a war. If we don’t take care of the Earth, it might not be habitable in the future.

Tullius: I was with you until you got into that climate change stuff. I don’t think we can do much to hurt the Earth. It’s survived a lot worse than humans.

Marcus: True. The Earth will still be here, as will many species. It’s humans I’m worried about.

Tullius: Fair enough. I just don’t get the urgency, the panic, the hysteria…

Marcus: Hold on. Let’s do a thought experiment. Have you heard of the Fermi Paradox?

Tullius: The what?

Marcus: The Fermi Paradox lies between the possibility of intelligent life on some of the billions of planets in the galaxy and the fact that we haven’t seen any evidence of it. Some astrophysicists say there may be a “cosmic filter” in effect. Civilizations that become technologically advanced enough to find life on other planets or travel to them must also survive long enough to do so. It’s possible that other civilizations have destroyed themselves before they could become known or reach out to other worlds.

Tullius: So, you’re saying we could destroy ourselves before we find out – or before others can find out about us?

Marcus: That’s it in a nutshell. And there’s also the problem of timelines. There might be intelligent life out there, but it’s either too primitive or so far beyond us that it’s not interested in us.

Tullius: So, we’re trapped by the immensity of space.

Marcus: Yep. Here’s where my thought experiment begins, though.

Tullius: OK. I knew we would get here sooner or later.

Marcus: Imagine for a minute that God planted many planetary civilizations among the stars, and one-by-one they destroyed themselves.

Tullius: That’s not a stretch, considering what we are going through these days.

Marcus: Very well. Suppose further that the Earth and its people represent the last chance to get civilization right. That we have been granted the opportunity to realize the kingdom of God among us. That if we fail, it’s the end-of-the-line for intelligent life.

Tullius: As they said in the 60’s, man, that’s heavy.

Marcus: What if we’ve been going about this whole civilization thing the wrong way? We’ve been trying to find out who comes out on top or who proves themselves to be “right” in the end rather than humbly seek the kingdom within us. What if the object of our existence is to experience the kingdom in each other, and not wait until a later date? What if it’s not ‘pie in the sky when we die,’ but pie for everyone in the present? What if we can start living in the kingdom right away?

Tullius: It seems we keep building civilizations and then smashing them to bits in the name of some god or whatever ideology is popular at the time. Is this all there is?

Marcus: Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe we should find rational ways to work together to seek the kingdom rather than wait for salvation to come to us. Do we really expect to find the kingdom of God through conflict – by forcing others to live as we do, by spreading lies, fear, and hatred, or by dropping bombs and launching missiles?

Tullius: What can we do, then?

Marcus: Declare our independence from our old ways. Realize this could be civilization’s last chance.

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” – Carl Jung