A growing number of Christians, myself included, rather than adhering to established religious doctrine are in the process of building their own individual theologies (i.e., a theology of one). For most folks pursuing such a task it's an ongoing lifetime process that will never be completely finalized. But it is a worthwhile endeavor. The following essay outlines the process that I am using to build my own theology. Hopefully my journey will help others who may wish to take on such a task.
As a career scientist, my personal theology has been aimed at integrating science and religion in a coherent manner that is not too difficult to either understand or practice. Admittedly a tall order, the point being to start with who you are as a person, which may or may not be your profession, and go from there.
Sources of inspiration and information from religious writings that I've thus far used consist of the Holy Bible, several early Christian documents, documents from other religions and writings from modern day religious scholars. These sources have been coupled with my own insights, logic and understanding gained through the study of science as to the nature of creation as well as how nature itself operates.
Sources of scientific information that I have found helpful have so far included, Amir D. Aczel "Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider"; Steven Hawking's books "A Brief History of Time" and "Brief Answers to the Big Questions"; Lawrence M. Krauss "A Universe From Nothing"; Bruce Lipton "The Biology of Belief"; Lynne McTaggart "The Field"; Neil DeGrasse Tyson "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry"; and David Wilcock "The Source Field Investigations".
Of the various religious sources mentioned above I have found the Old Testament of the Holy Bible to be an interesting and comprehensive historical document which provides insights into man's (gender neutral) early struggle to understand and live by God. However, given that in those days almost nothing was known about the universe we live in, certain portions of the Old Testament, most notably the story of creation in Genesis, are for the most part fictional.
Along with being an interesting historical work, the Old Testament provides helpful guidelines for living. For example, the Moses led journey to the "promised land" tells us that the struggle for freedom no matter how difficult is worth the effort in the long run. Nonetheless, we must keep in mind that the Old Testament was written thousands of years ago for a society whose customs and norms are quite different from today. On this note, A.J. Jacobs novel "A Year of Living Biblically" clearly points out how impossible it is to live today in accordance to practices described in the Old Testament.
On the other hand, the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament extrapolate much better to modern living than do those of the Old Testament. However, some of what I consider the best advice of Jesus doesn't appear in the New Testament but rather in early Christian gospels that, for whatever reason, didn't make the cut. Foremost among these, in my opinion, is the Gospel of Thomas. In it Jesus tells us that: "The kingdom is inside you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known and you will understand that you are the children of the living father." Thomas is a Gnostic gospel, and this particular saying of Jesus exemplifies the central theme of Gnosticism, which means knowledge. This is that to know God you must first, and foremost, know yourself, in particular that inner light within each of us that is a part of God and hence makes all of us a part of the Divine. More about being part of the Divine will come later in this essay.
The inner light within us, mentioned above, may not simply be metaphoric for some sort of sub-conscious guidance, but rather actual light itself. Bioscience studies dating back to the 1970s have shown that all living organisms, from plants to people, emanate light in what are now known as biophotons (a photon is a single unit of light energy). In this context, the living light mentioned in several passages of the Bible may essentially be biophotons in action.
Further consideration of a biblical biophoton connection is that biophotons exist primarily in the violet and ultraviolet range. This is the range of the light spectra that many folks have observed as auras (halos) coming from other folks most prominently gurus, shamans and the like but also from ordinary Joes and Janes who don't make a habit of sitting in uncomfortable cross-legged positions mumbling meaningless mantras. Finally, given that the brain is where most of the biophotons given off from our bodies come from, these are most likely the source of the halos above the heads of angles depicted in many Biblical paintings.
Could biophotons do more than just make auras? One of the guiding principles of the Unitarian Universalist Church, a multi-theological organization, is: "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part". The notion here is that the universe is made up of an invisible web of some sort that binds all existence together (more about this later). If such a web exists in reality, and not just spiritually, then biophotons may be the mediator by which living matter interacts with it.
On this point, investigations in the field of particle physics, a branch of physics that studies the origin and interactions of sub-atomic particles, have produced ample evidence that a universal web that ties all things together indeed does exist in reality. To describe this, and what it has to do with building a theology, we need to start at the beginning of everything, the Big Bang from which the universe was created some 13.7 billion years ago, give or take a few million years.
At the point of the Big Bang the universe was ultra-hot, quite small and consisted of a massless plasma like substance of pure energy devoid of particles (Perhaps this is the void referred to in Genesis 1:2). But within a trillionth of a second the universe began to cool and sizably expand. As it did components of the massless plasma coalesced into sub-atomic particles. Some of these particles obtained mass becoming what are called fermions, while others, called bosons, remained as energy. The components of an atom - protons, neutrons and electrons - are examples of fermions, while the photon, the energy carrying component light, is the best known of the bosons.
Regarding the interdependent web, there is evidence that these sub-atomic particles, which formed immediately following the Big Bang, are somehow all tied together. Exactly how this occurs remains a hot topic in particle physics, meaning no one really knows. Nonetheless, given that the sub-atomic particles formed after the Big Bang are still around and exist within the atoms that form everything including us, then we are indeed a part of the interdependent web of existence and are able to interact with it most likely by way of biophotons.
An important consideration about the Big Bang, which has theological implications, is that according to Stephen Hawking the Big Bang was a singularity, a point before which nothing existed, not even time. As Hawking himself put it, asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is south of the South Pole. Accordingly, if time did not exist before the Big Bang, then there would have been no opportunity for a creator to have created anything. Therefore, any creative influence on the universe would have had to have occurred after the Big Bang banged.
This brings up the question: Did a Creative influence (e.g. God) shape the universe following the Big Bang? The various opinions and writings that have attempted to answer this question could fill a library. Rather than go over even the high points of these, most of which fly over my head, I'll cut to the chase and describe my take on this question, which is central to my personal theology.
According to particle physics, as the universe began to rapidly expand within the first trillionth of a second or so following the Big Bang the newly formed bosons (energy) and fermions (mass) began to coalesce and interact in a manner that appears to have been a self-directed collective intelligence. As the universe further grew over the next several billion years so did its collective intelligence which to this day remains the mechanism by which actions of the universe and everything within it, including us, are coordinated and correlated in an interactive web operating much the same way as the interactions of nerve cells enable our brains to function.
If this interactive web of existence is central to how the universe and all within it operate in a collective intelligence manner, then it can be said that this collective intelligence of the universe is what (or who) we have considered to be the Divine (i.e., God). Accordingly, it is the universe that created God, and not the other way around as we have been taught.
As an aside, the almost instantaneous (within a trillionth of a second) assembly of the particles that arose from the Big Bang into an intelligence that determined how the universe was to unfold may be "the Word" referred to at the beginning of the gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The latter part of this passage, "the Word was God" is, in my opinion, consistent with the notion that God is the collective intelligence of the universe.
Considering that the sub-atomic particles formed after the Big Bang are still around existing in all things, including life forms such as us, then all things are a part of the interdependent self-directed web of existence which is essentially what we mean by the Divine. Since all things are a part of this web, then the Divine exists in everything, including us. The notion that that we are a part of this web is consistent with the quote from Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: "The kingdom (of God) is inside you and it is outside you."
The idea that the Divine (God) exists in everything is the basis of Pantheism, literally translated as all (pan) is God (Theos), which means that the wind is not just the voice of God, the wind is God and so on. Accordingly, each of us are a part of the Divine meaning that God is not some old man with a long beard floating around in the clouds, God the Divine is in part us!
If God, the Divine, is in us and not a separate omnipotent entity, then what is it we worship in churches, synagogues and the like? Is prayer a meaningless act? To answer the first question basically what is happening in any service of any religion, without most folks even realizing it, is that the assembled congregation is celebrating the Divine spirit in all of us and feeling the collective power of gathered spirits. This relates to the second question, what about prayer?
Prayer works quite well and is not a meaningless act at all. However, there is not a single intermediary God who decides what prayers to answer and how to answer them. Instead prayer most likely works by some sort of coherent particle energies (e.g., biophotons) emanating from the person, or persons, doing the praying from where they interact with the interdependent web following which they are received by the person, or persons, being prayed for. Once received by the latter the incoming signals orchestrate changes in the healing power, strength, attitude or whatever of the recipient. In the case of healing, the signals coming from those doing the praying are often referred to as healing vibes, and there is evidence from biomedical studies that they work quite well and are the basis of hands on healing, a phenomenon that dates back to Biblical times.
If God the Divine is the collective intelligence of the universe, which includes the interdependent web that binds us all, then when we pray we are indeed praying to God, but God as a manifestation of an intelligent universe and not a God as a single entity. Accordingly, part of my theology is that I do believe in God, but one that is considerably different from the God depicted in the Bible. In this context, the God I believe in is not some divine entity that causes both good and bad things to happen, but rather a collective God who we are each a part of and who through prayer helps us deal with the pitfalls of life.
In that we are all part of the Divine, we are all brothers and sisters of God including Jesus Christ. So, yes Jesus is the son of God as are all of us. But Jesus was special in that he had a unique ability, either inherited or developed, to communicate with the universe (God) in a manner similar to, but seemingly stronger than, that of shamans, medicine men and women, and various other folks who have devoted their lives to things like intense prayer and deep meditation. Additionally, during his lifetime Jesus had the gift of hands-on healing. Although not unique in this regard, it was, and still is, quite rare among the human population.
As for the present day, I contend that the "living" Jesus who we pray to and otherwise interact with is a spiritual being integrated within the interdependent web and hence a part of the intelligent universe. As such, it can be held that Jesus exists in a spiritual life. But, is there such a spiritual life after death for everyone? Studies in the field of noetic science coupled with numerous near death and brought back to life after death experiences clearly indicate that an afterlife awaits every living being. If so, then what might be the nature of our afterlife? If our spirits become part of the interdependent web, as Jesus' probably is, then they would have to exist in some form capable of interacting with the web. As of now the only way we think that this can occur is by way of coherent interactions of energy waves. Accordingly, our spirits must exist in some form of energy. That this is entirely possible can be demonstrated with simple math, coupled with some basic science.
Each individual cell of the human body contains measurable electric energy of about 0.07 volts. Admittedly, not very much. But considering that a human body consists of approximately 37 trillion cells, that amounts to 2.6 trillion volts of electrical energy, or enough to light up New York City for at least a day. From the first law of thermodynamics (the science part) we know that energy is never destroyed. Accordingly, where does all that 2.6 trillion volts of energy go? I contend that it forms a framework for an afterlife which can, among other things, interact with the web, and may well be able to communicate with the living in some form or manner. So, when you pray to Jesus, Jesus listens. And, as many native Americans do, when you pray to your ancestors they probably listen as well. So, be careful what you say.
To cycle this essay back to the beginning, my own personal theology is anchored in the notion that a self-directed interdependent intelligent universe arose from interactions of sub-atomic particles formed within a trillionth of a second following a singularity known as the Big Bang. This interdependent web of interactive particles encompasses all existence and is what we refer to as the Divine. Accordingly, a central core of my theology is that God, the Divine, in essence is the universe itself operating as an intelligent being.
Since the interactive interdependent web of the universe encompasses all thigs, including us, we, and all of nature, are a part of the Divine. Accordingly, I am a Pantheist -- one who contends that God is in everything.
The idea of Pantheism relates to two nature-oriented philosophies both of which are a part of my individual theology. These are: Naturalism, the notion that there is no such thing as supernatural, rather everything that happens does so in accordance to the laws of nature. And Naturism, defined as a way of life in harmony with nature. The first is simply a statement, whereas the second requires action such as attempting to keep your carbon footprint as small as you can, using less water, recycling, protecting wildlife and so on. To be complete about it, Naturism is often equated with social nudity. In as much as the nude body is a natural state, social nudity is consistent with Naturism, but it is not the core principle of this philosophy, meaning that you don't have to be a social nudist to be a naturist, and I would guess that most naturists aren't.
To wrap this up, Jesus' saying in the Gospel of Thomas suggests that to understand how you relate to the Creator you must first and foremost know yourself. I am a career scientist who acts on evidence as opposed to beliefs. Accordingly, I built my theology on what evidence indicates about creation of the universe and the nature of present-day nature. However, in science any evidence, no matter how strong or compelling, is always subject to being replaced by new findings. This being the case my personal theology described in this essay is not carved in stone, but subject to change as new evidence about creation comes along. Accordingly, theology building is a lifelong process of which my own theology is unique to me and may not apply to anyone else. It is like what Robert Prisg mentioned when discussing spiritual pathways in his novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - "there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individuals." Accordingly, there are as many individual theologies as there are individuals, and I hope that this essay will at least be of some help in your journey toward finding yours.