Bible

The Big Inning

In many baseball games there is a big inning. It can occur in any of the nine or even extra innings. It is especially exciting when it happens in the seventh, eighth, or ninth inning. The excitement is felt by both teams and all of their fans. On the other hand, when one team builds a large lead over its opponent, the winning team is likely to feel a surge of confidence in victory. If that occurs regularly in the early innings, the excitement of later innings would wane considerably, and many fans might leave early.

Nevertheless, let us consider that the Bible commences with a big inning. The original writers and later assemblers of the opening chapters of Genesis conceived that God’s early big inning was like science’s “Big Bang.” I could accept that this was revealed as a golden idea to those ancient people. The big inning was written in the very opening verse as, “In the beginning (in the big inning) God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis, 1:1)

In the third and fourth verses, “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light... and God separated the light from the darkness.” (RSV) The scripture indicated that this all happened on the first day. Yet the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars was not created until the fourth day (Genesis 1:14-16). This was not an error; it was evidence that God is great Intelligence because light was the first action of creation. The first forms of matter, which the Bible calls the “firmament,” were created in the sixth verse, and the rest of them in the remaining verses of the first chapter. The first act of creation, the invitation for light to be established would be like a person going into a dark room and flipping on a switch - so that he and others could see. That is the nature of Intelligence: To truly see or summon wisdom before creation takes place so that something especially meaningful will be the result. God then can be well conceived if we call Him (Her, or It) Intelligence or the Enlightened Intelligence: The Enlightened Intelligence spoke first to energy (light) and caused energy to be formed into everything we experience.

It was the big inning because everything that was to follow had certainly to be a win, but not only for one team. Everyone is a winner because the game of creation was to give all of us life, but we were given much more than that. We were made to live freely, in all ways. The heavens, earth, plants, animals, and everything were made for people, for all of us.

Freedom

In the first chapter of Genesis, the idea that people were to be free is implicit rather than explicit, for it was subtly, though definitely, woven into the words: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis, 1:27 RSV) To be made in the image of God means that we were made like God, that we are like gods, and therefore, each person was given unlimited Intelligence like God, but that we would have discover it. Most of us have not yet discovered it. Having this Intelligence does not mean that we all have extremely high IQs. Rather, it means that we all have the internal Intelligence of God. God has it continuously and we have it whenever we believe we are sharing God’s divinity. We share it whenever we turn within to a deep spiritual awareness that allows us to become channels of the Supreme Intelligence.

In the second and third chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve were not open to the idea that they could live freely and abundantly through expressing the Intelligence that was given them.

They reacted to God with fear when they could have allowed God’s blessing to fully enrich them. As the years sped by and people became more aware of the unlimited potential for privileges in life, some of them allowed God’s unlimited good to benefit them. To this day, the experiences of people are altogether a medley, with some succeeding in allowing God’s good to be their experience in life, and others experiencing a fearsomeness of God that deprives them of continuous joy, peacefulness, good health, prosperity, and harmonious relationships.

Some of those who followed Adam and Eve became increasingly conscious of who they were. This included that they began to build the idea that they were a special people, and therefore God would assist them considerably. They did not know they were free and blessed without limit, but they began to think their leaders were. Their leaders grew in consciousness until Moses grasped the possibility of his people’s having complete freedom and unlimited blessings. When the people grew enough in consciousness to grasp that they needed to live by laws, commandments were given by Moses: he told the people that God gave them to him, for them. Mosaic Law then, was given to assist people to live peaceably, happily, successfully, abundantly, and most blessed of all, freely. All of that had been given in the first inning, the big inning, or the beginning. But at first, people did not know that they were born to be free. They were standing in a grand place, but unlike the fans of a winning ball team in the grandstands, the people did not know at first that they were all winners. In Moses’ budding awareness, he was told that they were destined for freedom and prosperous living. He discovered this knowledge deep within himself as he communicated with the Supreme Intelligence.

Interestingly, Moses had acquired the consciousness to know this more than most people of our time. Nevertheless, Moses killed a man before his consciousness became fully established, and then afterward, even as he was leading his people toward as much freedom as their consciousness allowed them to experience, he functioned as a man who led others to kill many other people. This meant that even Moses did not understand that he and his people could have known that no one else would have stood in their way if they simply knew what God really wanted them to know. Yet, because Moses did know that a great freedom could descend upon his people, these killings did not keep God from blessing them to the level of their consciousness of belief.

That means for all of us that if we have broken the commandments, and done things for which we feel we deserve the worst kind of punishment, the Intelligence will never punish us.

The Enlightened Intelligence always provides complete freedom and full blessings for everyone. However, as we will examine from various Bible teachings, people who are conscious of breaking laws will have a difficult time knowing of their freedom and blessings. This is typical with all of us: we tend to punish ourselves as severely as we have hurt others or our environment. It is for this reason that the interest and practice of forgiving everyone became the great legacy of Jesus.

Remember that Jesus never asked anyone to confess their sins: That is right - Jesus never did! John the Baptist did, but not Jesus. In some Bible translations, the idea was presented that Jesus would pray more fully for the persons who saw the Christ in him. That need not be considered a threat. Rather, Jesus’ healings were accomplished through the beliefs various people had that God would bless them if they could get close enough to God. They felt that when they were with Jesus they were close to God. Healings of a spiritual nature always occur when the recipient believes he or she is in the presence of God.

Judgment

In a few texts, Jesus seems to threaten others, as in Matthew, 10:33 (RSV): “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my father who is in heaven.” Although the Gospels contain few passages of this severity, they can be found. We cannot deny their existence. We can attribute them to superstition on the part of the original writer or a later copyist who probably thought along these lines. All of the records of Jesus were written down a long time after his ideas had circulated among the people. Examples of these kinds of texts divide his followers into two general groups. One group recognizes that these writings are the exception to a very loving person, who in most instances is shown to have gone great lengths to be a friend to all people, even taking great interests in the presumed greatest sinners of that land, dining with Pharisees who often were conniving to hurt him. The second group observes Jesus’ character to have been the most loving of all people in history. Why then should we have any question about disregarding the negative verses as simply being entries that were inserted because of some writers’ and editors’ superstitious nature?

A great example is that, while hanging on the cross, Jesus forgave a thief who simply asked Jesus to remember him. (Luke, 23:42-43) Jesus did not ask the thief to admit the nature of his wrongdoings. Jesus simply forgave him without his having made anything like a deathbed confession. This shows us that Jesus was not interested in accusing anyone of anything. He simply offered the idea that God will bless anyone who will accept a blessing.

The idea that God is against anyone for anything they have done that goes against morality was not in Jesus’ thinking. However, Jesus’ idea that all people should practice high ethics is obvious.

From the beginning, the Bible repeatedly teaches us to live by the highest ethics of life that we can conceive. However, gradually through the years, a rising consciousness among many of its characters culminates in Jesus’ teachings that God is for every person. Then what are we to think about judgment? The idea that eventually a great judgment day will separate the good from the bad people is rethought by the prophets and at last by Jesus. In the book of John, it is reported that Jesus taught us that, “The Father judges no one.” (John, 5:22) Jesus replaced the earlier idea of a judgment day with the concept that we too should be careful not to judge others: “For the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew, 7:2) This is the law of life! It is the only judgment of God that exists. We set it into motion every time we think.

Then, someone asks, “What about Jesus’ words when he spoke of the day of judgment?” Whenever he spoke of it, he meant the same thing. For instance, he said: “I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew, 12: 36-37) Do we not see that it is not God that does anything to hurt us, but rather that we bring judgment upon ourselves, through what we think, do, and say? And the day of judgment is every day, because it is inbuilt into the nature of life that “It is done unto us as we believe.”

The bottom line is that Jesus' ideas about judgment are altogether the most fantastic conception of how life works that we could ever imagine.

However, most people seem satisfied to settle for an old idea that Jesus greatly evolved. The old idea was that God expects more of us than we feel able to accomplish. Inasmuch as that old idea included that God is absolutely perfect and we are not, we must be judged to determine if we are fit to live in heaven. It also includes that Jesus can help us because he loves us and the Father, and therefore, he will persuade God to forego the idea that we are not worthy if we simply build a dependency upon Jesus to mediate the judgment of God about us.

This is not in keeping with Jesus’ teachings. What his ideas means for us is that we are responsible for our own experiences. We are the cause! Neither God nor anyone else is hurting us! When we feel hurt, even when we can produce evidence that someone did it to us directly, it is because that person is responding to our mental atmosphere. That is, we earned it, and the universe brings it to us in exact measure to our thinking, feeling, and doing what has gone before. When this gets clear to us, the transformation truly consisting of new birth takes place. That, and that alone, is the last judgment.

Despite God’s big inning in the “big bang,” creation, or however one describes the universal life, for us the last judgment is our big inning: It is within it that our game of life is won!