At the beginning I announce the end,
Isa 46:10
proclaim in advance things not yet done;
and I say that my plan will hold,
I will do everything I please to do.
Many people use this verse to say that God knows the end already from the beginning. The verb translated as “proclaim” does mean to foretell, but in this verb form, it means to declare.
God declares the end from the beginning. If God declares a thing and says that his counsel will stand, his plan will hold, that makes it as good as knowing then end from the beginning.
Lately, I think that I got some insight into the plan of God.
Think of the greatness of God, with him having a masterplan to reach his goal. But what exactly is that goal?
God created a universe and brought forth mankind to have communion. If God personally died for us, then we are what this is all about.
Not exactly new revelation.
God wants friends. Jesus wants friends, and that is what he calls his disciples. He wants to reign with us. He wants equals to spend eternity with.
Not servants. Not worshippers. Friends. Equals.
But as in real life, mankind started as little children. One with God, largely unconscious of self. With wonderful potential, but in need of so much care.
Mankind became self-conscious and–when they recognised that they were naked–full of shame. Shame is “I am bad”, while guilt is “I have done something bad”. Shame is so much deeper than guilt, and the fall is not about guilt and sin, but about consciousness and shame.
Self-consciousness is a necessary part of growing up into what God has planned. How can anybody love and rule righteously without self- and other-consciousness?
Next, we needed to develop social skills. We do our first steps towards others in our core and extended family–maybe a tribe. This community provides security.
Once we feel secure, we start to launch out to conquer the world. Many think that ego development is a bad thing, but it is paramount for free will. We need to make our own decisions not based on peer pressure or family rules. And we need to defend ourselves and our decisions, take action.
God next teaches us deeper social skills, actually swinging the pendulum from other-centric to self-centric and back more rapidly. He started with this social platform of the family and the tribe that we could go forward from and discover the ego, to now come back into a larger community.
This larger community is one of common interests, not based on blood. We need the decision making process we learned in the ego development to join.
United under one law, structured in one nation, with common language, race or skin color. A big advancement from only respecting people that were of direct kinship. This is where we discover guilt, sin, and punishment: not following the socially agreed upon rules has consequences.
But once social skills based on rules, order, structure and hierarchies have been engrained into our being, we launch out again. The one absolute truth that trickles down the hierarchy does not convince us any longer, since we are but told to believe it with no proof whatsoever.
We want proof. God is ready to die for a while, as we start to research our environment and explain most things without needing God, even though those things and processes had previously been attributed to him.
We discover our worth, our need for success and esteem. We do not use the crud methods of the warrior any longer, but believe that everything is possible and without consequences. Now, things are true if they can be proven. This new notion of truth still is absolute, even though we have discovered that we need to uncover it–through search and research.
But then, we make a new discovery: we are not able to discover this absolute truth as we all experience truth very subjectively and relative. We all filter information through our personality and imprint. We slowly come to the conclusion that there is only one way absolute truth can exist: in the divine.
God is resurrected. He might not look like the monotheistic God we had known before–as Jesus does not look now like he did when walking this earth, just read the chapter 4 of Revelation. And just as Mary thought that Jesus was the gardener, and the disciples did not recognise him, as they had wrong imaginations of what Jesus now was, it will take a while until we find God again in all the new found spirituality.
This will mark a major step in the history of mankind. This is a revolution taking place at the moment. God reveals his plan as it had unfolded through the ages, and we clearly see it play out in each individual as well. A plan to bring us into maturity as individuals and corporately. All steps necessary, valuable, and dangerously risky.
God was willing to risk humanity again and again, he was willing to die and be resurrected to gain what he was looking for: mature counterparts to himself, equals ruling with him.
He first revealed himself as the tribal God of our forefathers Abraham, Isaak, and Jacob. He then became the power God among other gods, see Egypt. But then he became the only God as in the first commandment. He became man and died for a while, only to be resurrected and take on a new form, better, formlessness.
God within, God holding everything together. If everything is within God and held together by him, there is nothing outside of God and therefore, he has no form.
Elohim adonai echad. God your Lord is oneness. We in him, and he in us.
We are not quite there yet. There will be more evolutionary steps of consciousness necessary until we realise what already is and grow up into what we already are.
What a confidence and trust in himself and us God must have to advice such a plan. Are we living up to it, or are we hiding in whatever place and stage is comfortable to us? Is it the security of the family or the interest group called the traditional church? Or the ego-trip of power, the self-centric life of success?
God is doing a new thing, can’t you see? He has already begun. A thing we can hardly imagine.