Tuesday 7 October 2003

Pic of the day: Weird illustration picture, but bear with me. Days before I thought of this entry, I renamed the Incarnation of Life in this game to "Mr Hauge", in honor of Hans Nielse Hauge, a Christian mystic in Norway at the beginning of the 19th century. He preached personal piety and was thrown in jail at the request at the state-owned church, which practiced a "you pay, we pray" policy. But his followers did not just become good Christians; they also became successful entrepreneurs and spearheads in the transformation of Norway from a poor colony to a rich modern country. The next couple generations also saw a cultural explosion of creativity unlike any in the country's history. Coincidence, or ...?

Divine in(ter)vention?

Some days ago, I looked around on the Baha'i homepage. Not like I'm about to ditch my somewhat heretic version of Christianity in favor of this, but I like to keep updated on at least the world religions. And Baha'i is certainly meant to be a world religion, even though it still lacks a bit in numbers. I won't analyze it in any detail here, just briefly touch points that are relevant to today's little entry.

Baha'i religion believes that there is a separate class of divine messengers, few in number but great in spiritual stature. They have appeared from before the dawn of recorded history, shining lights in their time, and changed the course of history by bringing a new level of spiritual enlightenment. They count Moses, Jesus and Muhammad among these, along with a few others. And of course Baha'u'llah, who picked up where the others left. And like the rest of them, this is the final revelation. Well, well. We shall see about that, shall we not? But one of the "proofs" is certainly interesting.

According to them, the coming of the last Messenger was followed by a sudden increase in human invention. This was about midway through the 19th century. Jehovah's Witnesses see the sudden explosion of technology after 1914 as proof that Jesus returned to Earth at that time. And it is true that we cannot document the Flynn Effect further back than to World War I; but a slew of revolutionary inventions took place shortly before the turn of the century, including the bike, the car, and the plans for airplanes. (Planes were not actually built until shortly after the turn of the century though). All of this, from the bike to the plane, took place within a single generation. I think this is proof that something happened well before the date which JW consider Jesus' return to the Watchtower.

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It would be nice if the technological revolution was caused by divine intervention; then at least we would know that we are on the right track. Certainly much good has come of our recent inventiveness, despite the horrors of mass destruction and mass pollution. (Actually pollution harks back to the Industrial Revolution, an earlier episode that seems to have no associated Messenger. Modern technology actually pollutes less than more primitive industry.)

Spiritual changes have gone hand in hand with changes in society and technology before. But it is hard to say which comes first sometimes. Martin Luther and the case for personal Bible study was followed by Gutenberg and his mass produced Bible, a wave of public education, and the whole renaissance thing as well as Europe overrunning the world. (Until then, during the entire Middle Ages, Europe had actually been inferior to China technologically.) Were all these things caused by Luther? Was Luther caused by the new age already working behind the scenes, struggling to be free? Did a Greater Spirit descend to Earth and stir up changes in many different ways? Or did Earth pass through a dense stream of telepathic waves which truly advanced civilizations use instead of radio waves to communicate between them? Will we ever know?

Christianity eventually became the state religion of the Roman Empire, despite (or because of?) the many waves of persecution against Christians by the very same empire. The height of the empire just happened to be within the lifespan of Jesus, although he personally did not meddle in its politics. Was the Roman Empire prepared as an engine to rapidly distribute the Gospel of Christ and preserve it for posterity? We Christians tend to think so, and certainly that is what happened. Opponents of the faith may claim that the cultural upheavals brought by Rome caused the messianic frenzy that brought forth not just Jesus but several now forgotten competitors (I guess they didn't rise from the grave, a rather important distinction) and finally the Star-Son who led the Jewish uprising against Rome and caused the destruction of the temple and the almost 1900 years of diaspora.

Akhenaton (your spellage may vary) introduced monotheism with the worship of one, rather abstract, sun god. As far as we know, this was the first occurrence of this idea, which later came to such great prominence (although without the "sun" part, except in poetry). After his death, polytheism rushed back, to the point where people with tools went around and carved away his name from buildings. But during his reign, an unusual creativity bloomed in the land of Egypt, producing perhaps the most original, realistic, even over-realistic art ever seen there. It was as if a whole country's spirit was set free for the brief tenure of this spiritual revolutionary. But did he cause it? Or did he just allow it – just as the times allowed him, for a brief time, before that window was closed again?

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Despite my generally scientific leanings, I believe in the existence of spirit. Not just the generic human spirit, but individual spirits. I also believe that some such spirits may be sent to Earth to "inhabit" more than one soul throughout the ages, as Jesus indicates it happened with Elijah and John the Baptist. Unlike the Baha'i, I believe there is a continuum of spirits, although I must needs make an exception for Jesus himself; I am after all a Christian. But I think there are many lesser "incarnations", and probably some among us today. Dalai Lama seems to think he is one, and I wouldn't be surprised. But many are probably unknown. Not all will be shining brightly through the ages. Some may be like stars compared to the sun, but still have a role to play. And as the times change, spirits are dispensed by God, not only for the benefit of the one person in which they reside, but for the benefit of the world.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. Or perhaps only metaphorically right. It sure is hard to see Bill Gates as a divine intervention, even though it is pretty obvious that he changed the course of history. Then again, some may say, so did Hitler. But that is a story for another time, if ever.