Midweek Faith Lift
Unity, Judaism & Quantum Leap Part 1
October 11, 2023
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Reflection
September 19, 2023
“Earthquake lights,” like the ones seen in the sky before the recent earthquake in Morocco, are sometimes observed shortly before a seismic event. The phenomenon goes back centuries to ancient Greece, and are outbursts of bright, dancing lights in different colors. Scientists are puzzled by the lights, but they say they’re definitely real. Most of the light occurrences preceded earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 5.0.
“Words like diagnosis, sign, and warning suggest an intuitive knowing. Our task is to observe the pattern, grasp the design, and open our perceptions to that which already exists.” – Larry Dossey, Reinventing Medicine
Affirmative Prayer: Today, I am awakening my sense awareness and intuition to attune to cosmic prophecies. I am in alignment with the mind of Spirit, and I’m paying attention to the signs, the prodding, and the invitations to mindfully navigate my life with readiness. Thank you, God, forever. Amen.
This is a wonderful image to begin our study of Unity and Judaism because it harkens back to ancient times, the time when Judaism was the prevailing monotheistic religion in the Middle East. Most people were illiterate, so signs in nature were how the people communicated with God, or understood God’s messages to them. They had an intuitive knowing of the Supernatural.
Judaism is one of the oldest world religions that continues to this today. Only Hinduism might be older. All other pagan religions of the Greeks and Romans were absorbed into some form of Christianity after Jesus was long gone. Jesus was a practicing Jew, with no plan to start a new religion. He just wanted people to become better Jews. Our roots go deeply into the culture and spirituality of Judaism. We include the Hebrew Scriptures as part of our Bible and our spiritual tradition. We are for sure spiritual cousins with Judaism. We don’t refer to the Scriptures as the Old and New Testaments; we call them the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Scripture on equal footing and both as part of our heritage.
So let’s take a quick look at the structure and content of the Hebrew Scriptures so that we have greater clarity about the impact on our understanding. The Hebrew Bible, more correctly called the Tanakh for its three parts: the Torah, or first 5 books which is the Law; the Nevi’im, the writings of the Prophets, and the Ketuvim, other historical and poetic books such as the Psalms, Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. The Hebrew Scriptures had large number and variety of authors, much of it written and edited or redacted by the Jews of the post-Babylonian exile intended to tell the story of the history of the Jewish people and their journey of faith. It was not written to be accurate history but to inspire and keep the Jewish people together as community faithful to the one God, Yahweh.
Shema Yisrael, Adoni, Elohenu! The Lord our God, is One! That is the ultimate prayer of Judaism, which is said or sung at every Jewish Shabbat service. It is not unlike our first Unity Principle, “There is only one Power and one Presence in the Universe, God the Good, Omnipotence.” It is also the overarching principle of the Jewish faith. And the stories in the Hebrew Scripture consistently describe how the Jewish people forget that and default to following multiple Gods. The story repeatedly is that we may not be faithful to God, but God is always faithful to us, his chosen people. The constant theme is one of developing a relationship with God and remaining faithful to that ONE God. It is a story of the evolution of monotheism, which is also a part of the Christian story.
The other feature of Judaism is that this all- powerful transcendent Being, Yahweh, is not to be named. So we hear the words of Moses and the burning bush when Moses asks, “Who are you?” and the response is “I Am That I Am” which also resonates deeply within Unity teachings that God is not a person but “Being-ness” itself. For the Jews, as Rev. Paul Roach describes this, (p. 30) Unity and World Religions, “God is whole and complete, imageless, utterly transcendent, an all-powerful creator God who nevertheless cares for his creation.” Whenever the people stray and there are severe consequences, for example, being cast out of the Garden of Eden, the floods of Noah and the sacrificing of a son in the story of Abraham and Isaac, the God of the Hebrew people always offers a path back home to repair the relationship.
The underlying theme is to obey God and you are blessed, disobey God and you will be cursed, or suffer the consequences. In each of the stories of the Torah, the outcome is a continuing Covenant or Commitment with God which we will examine more next week. One key to understanding this relationship of God and his chosen people is to understand how important the word Lord is in the Hebrew Scriptures. As Rev. Paul notes, every time you hear the word Lord, substitute the word law. The teachings of the Hebrew Scripture were from the Lord to teach each person the behaviors, practices and mindset of how to be a faithful Jew, a good person. The Law is to restore balance and harmony when the actions of humans have disrupted it.
The other key to understanding the Hebrew Scripture is that it was never meant to be interpreted literally; there are many, many ways to interpret each story, symbol and event. There are unlimited meanings, which is not unlike our Metaphysical take on both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Our modern Metaphysics has its roots in the careful interpretations of Jewish scholars over the millennia. Charles Fillmore was no doubt influenced by this Jewish scholarship when he compiled the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary in 1931. We in Unity have a lot in common with our Jewish forebears.
When we think of the I AM consciousness that is part of Unity and the “still, small voice” that is the energy of Spirit which we sense, feel and experience in meditation and prayer, we can trace a direct link back to the Hebrew teachings and Scripture. From the 1 Kings19:11-12 and the story of Elijah we read:
Elijah Meets God at Horeb
11 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
The message is so clear, that the energy of the Lord is not in all the phenomena of nature, not in the elements of wind and fire and earthquake, but in the silence. It doesn’t get more “Unity” than that!
The other essential belief of Judaism is that if God is one, then there is inherent dignity and worth in humankind, made in God’s image. There is no “original sin” or need for redemption in the Hebrew version of the Garden of Eden story. Humans just become self-conscious as a result of this event and aware of the human capacity of free will. God guides Adam and Eve, and teaches them how to repair the relationship with God. When Cain kills Abel, God gives them another child, Seth who’s very name means “compensation.” There is always a path back to relationship with God in the stories of the Hebrew Scripture and in Judaism, which ultimately makes Judaism a very practical religion, not unlike the practical Christianity of Unity.
Judaism is a blueprint for how to live your life in this world, not a map for how to get to the afterlife. There is no Satan in Judaism, as a separate entity, just a character that God creates and uses to test the faithfulness of his people. There is no duality, no separation from God that must be bridged by a character like Jesus. Much like in the book of Job, who is tested mightily in his faithfulness, we too are tested and finally look within to find our spiritual center, which we call the Christ, to sustain us in this life. Ultimately, Job says, “Truly the thing I fear comes upon me.” (Job 3:25) which indicates that it is Job’s own mind or consciousness that is his greatest adversary.
But Job is not defeated, for he ultimately surrenders, not in defeat, but in release of his attachments to all that is outside of him and rests in his God consciousness. In that release, he connects with Spirit in a deeper way that ever before that results in realizing his greater good in ways better than he could have ever imagined! What comes to Job comes as a result of his inner journey. Now that is a Unity story for sure!
It is not unlike what Price Pritchett talks about in his chapter “Open Your Gifts.” When we are challenged and deeply desire to make a huge, quantum leap we can sometimes feel unequal to the task and completely inadequate! Our desire is to rely on the resources that we know and recognize, both within and without. However, like Job, like the ancient peoples, we step into a new consciousness and allow gifts to come forward through us that we could hardly have imagined! Instead of narrowly defining “what we are good at,” we let go and allow Spirit to do Spirit’s perfect work in and through us.
We do what we need to do, what Spirit calls us to do, and allow the best of us to be made real. Much like the chrysalis that did not know how to become a butterfly, we allow a metamorphosis to unfold. That is the mystery of Spirit, of the Power and Presence of God, embraced by us in Unity and by the Jewish people of the Hebrew Scriptures! May it be so….
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb