Traditional theology looks backward to God as the cause of all things.
Emergence theology looks forward to godliness as its goal.

God, said Jesus, is Love;
the Spirit that cares for and needs Creation as a mother hen cares for and needs her chicks.
This is a Spirit that lives within us, a presence that is divine, beyond our material nature.
Such Godly indwelling could not be in control, or there could be nothing bad.
Everyone must have the freedom to do wrong, to ignore the call of the divine;
have the reality of decision, between right and wrong, between good and evil;
able to decide between the call of love and of personal survival.


Thus we do not live as puppets, driven by a pre-planned divine agenda, but as free-agents
capable always of getting it wrong, even when lured by God's voice to the better path.
The activities of God are then lost in ambiguity, for even an Eternal Being,
can never fully know what mankind will decide, until we do so;
can not predict the future, for it does not exist
until its form and nature is decided.

The set boundaries of the past have been replaced by a world of change;
a world in which boundaries are forever being exceeded, new ideas developed, new possibilities foreseen.
This is a continuing process of growth and ongoing creativity, with laws which are dynamic, probabilistic.
Over millennia, more and more complex states of affairs have arisen through this open-ended process.
With that increase in complexity, new entities emerged through the growth of molecules,
to multi-cellular beings, to conscious beings, to moral beings (humanity),
and maybe beyond to an entity beyond imagining;
Something beyond our wildest dreams.


This concept is a far cry from Calvin's God, or the bounded concepts of evangelical theology.
The process of evolution is one of openness without the certainty of any predestine outcome.
God's role in the ongoing process is to provide guidance towards ultimate goodness;
that state which Jesus called "The Kingdom of Heaven ".

Such ideas can have a profound impact on our lives and on our interface to divinity, spirituality, faith.
For we have been given this gift,life itself, and are free to make of it what we will.
Not puppets in a predestined playlet, but free to act and speak and do

Within such a concept maybe we can see our humble part.
We are not special. None of us are special.
Our likes and dislikes, accomplishements and failures
are irrelevant to the mighty march of evolution.
What we do has little real effect,
yet,
but
our ideas may spark ideas in others,
or our intransience may block another's path.
Our light can shine and expose the way ahead
even if we, you and I, can no longer travel it.
Even if our course is run in the present mire.

Far beyond our present existence may lie a place of glory
where humanity becomes what it could really be.
Sometimes we can taste its distant scent
feel its aroma, touch its absent presence.

We may never know its fullness
but its reality lies within us;
a shadow, spirit, hope,
in which we trust,
put our faith.