John Polkighorne's work seems to define an appropriate context, simultaneously scientific and religious, to consider a possible continuous interaction of God with the world. Between a God that ignores men free will and manipulates reality suspending the laws of nature he eventually created himself, and a passive God that acts as a mere witness of the world's suffering, Polkinghorne wonders whether there is a third way: could true randomness and non-predictability be Gods room for intervention? Accordingly, God could be placing information in the world for the possible use of those who believe and maintain a relationship with him (this is only my interpretation of one aspect of Polkinghorne's work). This sounds possible to me. If somebody is important to you, I find it natural that communication and interaction takes place with that person, human or god, in a context of affection. This might be the way to indirectly end up helping those who need it most.
But of course this is quite tricky. If you are not careful, you end up seeing God's hand everywhere. For some time now I have been trying to figure out some things about this interaction. I wonder if there is any aparent structure or rules in this interaction/events. Even if it does not work the same way for everybody, maybe some things are common.
How does one qualify one event to be an information holding event? Information might come through something odd, something unlikely, a coincidence. This is one condition, for you to perceive it as something to pay attention to. But it is not enough, because surely there are meaningless coincidences and odd events. How can we tell the diference? Maybe we can consider the following criteria, please add yours:
-Beauty
-Precision pointer to a specific one's (or other's) life issue
-Meaningfulness (comes from liason/continuity with the path one or other has gone so far)
-Makes sense from love's point of view
…
I hipothecize that usually God does not give information as a starter, information to be the very first input to anything. Information seems to come through an event that connects to, or signs, something already going on, a pointer. Information many times seems to be an invitation towards a new step about something already going on, or to avoid something taking place.
Machines are candidate producers of this kind of information – like when the coffey machine sometimes does not work and makes you wonder about some health condition you have. I say this because I read that electricity exhibits chaotic behaviour, which is a strong candidate physics phenomena to shelter god's intervention according to John Polkinghorne. But I am not sure this particular chaotic behaviour in electricity can produce meaningfull effects at the macroscopic level.
I believe that different pieces of given information do not contradict themselves or jeopardize our current responsabilities. If after considering it, we are very uncertain about the meaning of some event, it probably is not God's information. I also believe that you are not given a complete and easy answer to your problems or doubts. You might get help through a pointer to something that shows you a way, but it is up to you to follow it or not, because it is not obvious. If it were obvious you would take no active part in receiving that information – you would have almost no choice. So the logic is always that of a relationship where both parts play a role and the ties are based on faith. Without faith it does not make sense to qualify these events as meaningful and use their information.
I know this might sound crazy to many people so I ask answers preferably from those who have faith, a personal relationship with God, or at least believe in the possibility of this interaction. But answers are welcomed from anyone who read anything about this enquiry anywhere. For the most sceptical, one can tentatively replace the word "God" with "A lot more advanced extraterrestrial civilization".
Are you aware of the work of any theologians or serious spiritual people with a scientific inquiry attitude who have tried to understand, capture and describe the logic of these interactions?
I know one can say that this is a matter of the spirit, a mistery, but like John Polkinghorne, I prefer to use that argument only when nothing else works, after trying to understand by all means.
A possible structure for God's interaction with the world
From a reflection upon a mystical experience over a long period of time, in this draft text we try to elaborate on a possible structure on God’s way of interaction wih the world, considering the theologic category of Special Divine Action.
1. God respects human freedom
Men were given free will, therefore God does not intervene irrespective of them, and this might be the reason why some atrocities are not stoped. This is also why in any possible interaction God can not change the course of actions in a significant way. Instead, His intervention might assume the form of events that make information available. Men might “receive” or not this information and use it or not in their decision making. This has to do with the fact that God seeks a relationship with men, based in love, where decisions come as the product of that love, and of a dialogue seeking atitude.
2. God respects the laws of Nature
God’s causal intervention to rescue man would also suspend the laws of nature He created himself. Discarding causality, Gods room for intervention might be true randomness and non-predictability. John Polkinghorne, both a reknown physicist, a priest and a theologan, has tried to figure out at what level of physics could that happend, without suspending the laws of nature. He concluded that it would most likely be the non-predictability arising of chaotic systems. Randomness is a perfect setting to shelter God's possible messages: it is a good disguise for a “revelation” that He might want to keep private in an intimacy context, and it does not violate the laws of Physics (energy conserves for a small variation in chaotic systems initial conditions, which is enough to lead to very different system outcomes).
3. It probably takes work before “interaction” takes place in one’s life
Most of the times, God's gift of “information” is probably restricted to contexts where a minimum awareness of Him, his thoughts and his love have been reached. Reading the bible, attending the church, and sharing faith in communities are possible ways of achieving this. He might have a better world as a goal in mind, but not without men collaboration. God’s information comes as another step in the development of a personal on-going relationship between a person and Himself, as well as an answer to men prayer.
4. An event is usually a pointer to something already going on in one’s life
Probably God does not give information as the very first input to anything, it is often trough an event that connects to something already going on in one’s life, for two reasons:
a) If it is not related to anything previous, it is not an instance of a relationship (unless it is its start).
b) For you to recognise it, you need to realize that the information is pointing to something specific in your life, otherwise there would be no criteria to distinguish between meaningful events and non-meaningful ones, since odd events without meaning surely happen. The process many times resembles a typing technology made available to handicaped people who can’t write: the cursor keeps moving and when it is over the right character the handicaped person presses a button to select that piece of information. The same way, in the running movie of our life, God might be selecting a certain aspect of it to speak about. This might come as a suggestion to avoid something, or as a new piece of information feeding an on-going decision making process, etc.
5. Events do not contradict previous events or life’s dynamic so far
God does not contradict himself, so He does not send contradictory “information”between different ‘events’. Also, if one’s path concerning some life aspect is going well so far, God (who probably has also been committed in that from the beginning) would not suggest a different plan, since that would contradict His previous commitment. One must be careful with this point. When things get difficult, it is common to start thinking about changes.
6. Circunscribing the possible targets of God’s communication
God can only speak if there is enough room, so possibly He will only speak about those parts of one’s life that have been trusted to Him. Trusting him at this level means something like placing that piece of one’s life in His hands, for example by renouncing one’s self interests related to that, and subordinating one’s decisions concerning it to a love or truth seeking attitude.
7. Circunscribing the context
Love settles the context within which these communications eventually occur. If some event is contrary to love, it is a false communication. So we might consider the reception and interpretation of such "information” as a possible input to help make better decisions, without ever leaving the context of responsible and self-giving acts.
8. The oddness of the event is the vehicle
One obvious thing is that for a certain event to qualify as possibly conveying God’s information, there must be something strange about it, and eye-catching trace, to make it identifiable from a context of continuously occurring events. Oddness can belong to one of the folllowing categories (for example):
-above average coincidence (there are many types of coincidences, check the literature on “weird coincidence scale”)
-unexpected behaviour of machines (not working when they should, working when they should not, etc..)
-very unlikely event
-accidents
-lapses
9. Usually there is no communication without interpretation
Interpretation is the step where the possible “message” is decoded. The way to do it could vary according to particularities of the vocabulary of the person’s language with God in this context. To dismiss false positives one should take into consideration the following characteristics of this step:
a) God does not send direct messages (something like “go there and do that”). That would be something more characteristic of a military organization and not of a love relationship. God’s help does not replace men. In a relationship there are calls and seduction steps. But then one must decode the messages and give them meaning. This process is not error-proof nor automatic. A computer can not do it. Considering the elements gathered one can not avoid investing his whole person, with an engagement of one’s freedom, never knowing for sure what the outcome will be. It is all about faith.
b) The interpretation step is the one where you realize what is the mapping function between the event and your life. There should be something in common, something that the event points to, sugesting a possible course of action (how to solve a problem, what to do about something). There might be some work involved in this interpretation (typical trial and error). But not too much, otherwise the relationship would balance too much to the person’s side.
10. Interpretation can not suggest irresponsible action
The room for interpretation must held responsibility intact. One’s responsibilities are not a decision variable in the interpretation. The space of possibilities for interpretation is the one left when all responsibilities are already met.
11. You usually need a confirmation.
Like any spiritual call it is always best to wait for a confirmation of the “information” in the possible event. Particularly, whenever such events and their interpretation call for a decision that involves other people. In that case one must dialogue this decision with others and their contributions might be equaly well-informed.
12. If there is a 'process', is it always the same?
In our interpretation, we do not expect a certain "information" vehicle to be used very often above all others, because that would limit God's action to one particular process, with a logic that we could try to capture deterministically. Such fact would go against the expected nature of the possible "communications", transforming a faith challenging presence into a human balance of obvious gains, and reducing God to our own image.
13. Was it Him? Only Him knows.
Even if one verifies that all these criteria are met in some of one’s life events, that does not by any means mean that God did it. It just means that it could have been Him. All we might pretend to say is that if He does this, He might be using something similar to this. Ultimately, any interpretation is a matter of faith. One can never be sure, or ever pretend to have captured the structure of God’s special interaction with the world.
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