Grand Unified Vision

In the eyes of a conventional evangelical theologian, the Grand Unified Vision (GUV) may seem syncretism. Such a criticism would be the easiest escape route from confronting the truth.

However, syncretism is taking bits and pieces from here and there and building a new religion, like collecting marbles of different colours and placing them in a jar. Syncretism is therefore an aggregate concept.

On the other hand, the GUV is an organic concept rather than an aggregate concept. I am saying that the GUV pre-existed its diverse and plural manifestations. It is not an aggregate like marbles in a jar but an organic unity, which existed as a unified whole before manifesting in diversity. The GUV is therefore seeing past the diversity and laying hold of the hidden unity.

Syncretism is a human construct. The GUV is seeing things from God's standpoint.

Syncretism is looking at things from below and trying to overcome a spurious diversity by recourse to human wisdom. The GUV is looking at things from above and seeing past the diversity and holding steadfast the overall unity that was there before the beginning.

Syncretism is like diverting the several streams of a river to flow into an artificial lake. The GUV is discovering the infinite glacier from which the diverse streams take their rise.

Meditate on these things.

The Holy Spirit has been showing me that down the ages He has been revealing God's Truth, little by little, according to local conditions, cultures, and according to humanity's capacity to receive.

They are all scenes from, and windows into, one vast panorama, the whole of which is known only to God, but with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ as its centrepiece. That is the central Truth, around which we are to arrange the jigsaw into a coherent whole and from which bit by bit we may assemble on earth the Kingdom, as it is in heaven. That is our task, yours and mine, not merely theoretically, but to demonstrate as well, within the spaces given to us!

There are mountains, vast ranges, to climb, but conquer them all we must. We have been given the map and shown the paths. It is for us to climb. This means in essence, practice, practice, practice, practice, morning, noon and night, awake or asleep, regardless that results may not be commensurate with what we deem to be our deserts. That is FAITH, to press on, because we KNOW, even if for the moment we do not see.

Lord Jesus has done His work. He has drained the "world" of its sin, He has put away the sinner and has rescued all the forms (the identities) that God had intended for His creation from before the beginning of time. He had chosen these identities to be the windows through which He was to show Himself to the world. Every one of them to manifest the life of Christ, being endowed with the same powers and privileges that God imparted to His only-begotten Son.

The Holy Spirit has shown us how intractable and interwoven has been the world of sin (samsara) that Jesus drained and delivered us from. If the world seems to be still wallowing in samsara it is because it has not yet awoken to the height, the depth, the width and the extent of the redemption that Jesus wrought for us upon the cross. A fuller comprehension of redemption/salvation requires a much broader understanding of the meaning of “sin”.

It is only when one understands "sin" as the ego, and the "world" or samsara as its product, as the interlocking systems of karma, that one can catch even a glimpse of the grandeur of the redemption, and the incomprehensible majesty of what Jesus did. Until such time as people understand karma and samsara (or the equivalent meaning) they will never fully understand redemption/salvation.

That has been the problem of western Christianity. Naturally, not knowing the complexity of karma and unable to reconcile the meaningless suffering and injustices of this world with a sovereign and compassionate God, believers have left the flock in droves or have relapsed into a meaningless and dead traditionalism.

Paradoxically, it is the old ego that is preventing the world from understanding the whole truth. In the West, the western/Judaeo-Christian ego prohibits them from accepting the oriental karma doctrine, and in the East, the Buddhist/Hindu ego prohibits them from accepting anything that comes from the colonial-imperialist West, including the cross of Christ.

I see in the neutral theory of the "energy field", which is pure science, a meeting ground for these two divergent traditions. The energy field is clearly anticipated in Vedanta, Advaita, Lao-tzu and Buddhist doctrines. It is also very clearly anticipated in John's Gospel (In Him all things were made) and by the apostle Paul (Christ fills all things and is All in All).

It is now for us to present the whole Truth coherently and equally, to prove it in real life!!

However any attempt to present the vision merely as theory or as yet another theology will only incur howls of "syncretism". That is why we must practice and prove, as Jesus did, before we present the vision. That is the task to which we are called.

(The 1976 book A Course in Miracles and books by Joel S Goldsmith, who writes along similar lines, have all missed the way because they have failed to apprehend the truth of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the centrepiece of any salvation doctrine.)

Those who have a knowledge of the Death and Resurrection tend to lack a grasp of its enormity, its depth and universality as well an understanding of its relevance to the world of appearance. Hence the tendency to invent a fictitious theology of "now-and-not-yet" as an escape route.

More and more I am convinced of the Lord that He wants us to bring all these fragmented insights under one overarching grand vision, the One Big Explanation, which will encompass the Death and Resurrection as the centrepiece with karma theory, quantum theory and evolution theory as components. It will be a whole new theology such as has never been conceived but it will incur the wrath and rejection of many!

Our task will be to demonstrate the truth of this vision so that it will not be just another theology or another theory. That should be the focus of our prayer life and it is to that task that we are called.