Let's Get [Meta]Physical

I've been thinking abstruse thoughts this morning, and I intend to inflict them on you. Here goes. When you think of a particular spiritual belief --  not a doctrine/concept, like kenosis or dharma, but a nonphysical, i.e., spiritual, thing or place, like angels, for example -- whether you believe it or not, how do you think you should try to understand it? As factual (e.g., how is an angel like a tree)? As metaphorical (e.g., how is your image of an angel like your image of something that is as real to you as a tree)? Or as something completely different? For me, it's something completely different, but I'm interested in what you all have to say before I try to put it into words.

Comments

[Rob B.]

I think so, but at least in my case it's a intuition based on standard not of my creation. It one that was present and found me rather than me constructing it or even understanding it, because I don't always understand it now. That's the part that makes it hard to quantify. Since the standard is metaphysical and unverifiable via ontology you have a hard time explaining the experience of confirmation or denial of concepts against it in a manner that makes logical sense.

However, I entirely agree that it's a hardwired reaction. We're just wired to know some things.

[Rob B.]

Jwebb, I know what you mean and how you feel. When we finally get to that point that we are truly looking for God and we ask him to prove himself we are normally desperate. It makes it that much more frightening when he answers. And make no mistake, he does answer. Normally, in spades.

And what you said after that is the universal response that I had, and everyone else I know that was honest enough to admit it has had:

"Wait. That couldn't have been real"

Where you go from there is what matters but once you learn the truth, you can't unlearn it. I also find that the people that accept that truth are the ones that normally toss a lot of the doctrinal wisdom in "religion" aside in what they do when faced with a moral delima because doctorine is mans answer to what God is while what we do is what God is in man.

Doctorine has me quoting verses to people that lost a loved one. God just has me hug them and tell the that they are never alone. Which one of those things sound more like God to you?

It takes guts to tell that JWebb, it always does, but is not because we are brave that either of us share anything like that. It's because God is God and we chose not to hide from it.

[Rob B.]

If you were ever inclined there is a book by Herny Blackaby called Experiencing God that augments a lot of what you experienced and the reactions that you experienced in regards to the biblical context of it. It a worthy read. It draws the comparison to encountering God with the biblical story of Moses and his reactions.

I'm not sure if it interests you but it's good stuff.

[gail]

Just think Jonathan. That meteor didn't come out of nowhere -- we don't believe in magic, do we? Maybe it started as an exploding star a billion years ago, and eventually its trajectory made its way into your field of vision right when you needed it. I wonder if other people were saying the same prayer and seeing the same meteor at the same time. I even wonder if that's what all meteors do for at least someone, somewhere. The miracle is not that the meteor was there but that you asked for it.

[gail]

Something truly touched your mind that night.

[Pie Shell]

http://dragonfliesintornado.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-dragonflies.html

Here.

I "feel" them all the time... or maybe it's God... or both... but I physically feel them; I can't explain it. They are right behind me - you know how you can sense someone is too close to you in a grocery store check out line? Like that, but not annoying like that.

Makes sense at all?

[Rob B.]

It makes perfect sense, Shell.

The post makes even more sense.

[JWebb]

Hadn't considered that angle, Gail. So God, rather than performing a miracle at that specific space-time point, yet Himself being "outside of time" and knowing that I would make this request at that specific point before the beginning of time, sort of allowed celestial mechanics billions of years ago and parsecs away to send a bolide crashing into my field of view just when it was requested?
No harder to believe than a miracle, I suppose - but frighteningly transcendent and unfathomable all the same. Whoa.

[Rob B.]

The bonus to that is that if you tell someone "hey, i'll prey for your (insert difficult event here) and then you forget, you ca just go ahead and pray when you remember it because God transcends time.

It's like Prayer Tivo....

Damn, I'm going to trademark that.

[gail]

I think the meteor was coming whether you were there or not. It was grace that said "Now is the time. Look up and ask. I'm here."