Early Ideas: An Evolving Mindset

For those who grow up in religious families, it may not occur to them that they can become capable of figuring out what can be true and what is clearly not. The teachings within religion are not supposed to be mutually exclusive in a way that you can only accept or reject everything. For instance, there are certain things I heard in Sunday school that I never once believed in (such as the story of Samson or Noah), but that didn’t impact my belief in God. One of the big problems is that even when man gained a greater understanding of Deity through revelation, it was restricted by contemporary knowledge of that era. None would have understood how much life exists elsewhere in the universe or how big it really is. When people use the teachings of this period in time, they are also borrowing that mindset as well.

If life only existed on this planet and everything in space was just there for us to look at, then the concept of God or gods would have to be much smaller than what is really the case. Since there has been such a great leap in our knowledge of the universe, there also has to be one in theology. But since God is the source of all matter, energy, mind, spirit and personality endowment in such a huge universe, an expanded view of Deity becomes so much more complex compared to what was understood thousands of years ago. Those who become accustomed to medieval interpretations of Deity will find difficulty in comprehending such an expanded perspective of God, and it does not matter whether they accept these interpretations or reject them. Gaining new insight in such a subject can take considerable time, and this is time many do not feel obligated to give.