Overlaps

Once, I dreamed I had killed a man, and was worried that the police would find out. Another time (the night after I had swung my cat in a grocery bag) I dreamed of being hurled around by a T-Rex. I dreamed of being violent to someone I loved.

Each time, I felt that I was being guided by a higher power, a being who forced me to look at my own capacity for evil. By a being whose ethical standards, to which I aspired, were higher than my own.

This touching of my personal experience with that of a separate being or force is what I call "overlap" -- where my life is touched by that of a loftier dimension.

Many of us look to these experiences for validation of the existence of divinity. These God moments give us the sense, if not the assurance, that God is present in our lives. A dream becomes more than a series of images, but a message from beyond. Dream of a dead person, and you are inhabiting a middle world between the world of our senses and that of ... whatever.

I got to thinking that people rely on overlaps to ground their faith. Some look to experiences, like dreams or voices, to supply the overlap between dimensions. Others rely on the devotions, or the Eucharist or a church building or the Bible to give them that sense of a place where human and divine experience dwell together. No wonder some are reluctant to consider any change that might disturb the relationship! Suggest that the Bible is not a history book, and some people feel that their relationship with God is being taken away.

But is overlap real?

What if we find out someday that dreams are not messages from beyond ourselves, but simply the brain trying to make sense of experience -- even to broaden knowledge without having to endure an experience? What if communities with dreamers are more adaptable because some of its members have brain-generated terrifying experiences that aren't real, but impart real lessons?

I would love it if overlaps were real. If the Bible was real history, real science and real morality. If dreams foretold the future or (better yet) gave actual insights into the present. If near death experiences weren't just neurons shutting down, but a glimpse into life beyond death. If the expensive feeling that comes with intoxication was more than the selective enervation of the brain's pleasure center.

But I am prepared to accept that there are no such easy overlaps between me and God. That my brain is a jellied machine capable of generating its own set of weird impulses. That evolution has crafted a human social structure that rewards ethical behavior and has developed a brain capable of imposing a measure of self-governance.

But while a God that is aloof from human concerns is theoretically possible, it is the insight of thousands of years of human history that suggests he is not aloof. Say what you will about Bible stories, but none of them show a God who is indifferent to his people. The overlap between God and humanity may be far more subtle than dreams, or the literal truth of a particular book. In fact, reliance on these might be a form of idolatry, in which a material object or an experience is worshipped instead of what it represents.

Better to prepare for a time when dreams and books are not manifestations of God, than to lose one's faith when they are shown to be something less than God.