What is Emerging?

Sometimes what is emerging in our lives had its beginning years before humans recognized it. That is what is happening today with our concept of God. In “Crisis and Hope,” a March 13 blog post at the Center for Christogenesis website, Ilia Delio OSF addressed the history of this emerging truth in Christianity. Many Christians do not believe in evolution and continue to hang onto the concepts of sin, death, redemption, salvation, final judgment and God. The image of the God we had in the past was the God we thought rescues us from evil. That God never did exist.

So who or what is the “real” God? First of all, Ilia reminds us that God is mystery and mystery can never be just my explanation nor a piece of doctrine. Love causes God to be God! God is Love. And this God of evolution is seeking to be born in us. Within each of us is the dwelling place of holy mystery, the place of infinite love and possibility that makes every impossibility possible. In other words, we are part of God’s own life and God’s life is dependent on our lives. Ilia’s challenge to us is that we become who we are called to be, which is the image of God, trusting that the possibility of the impossible makes every impossibility possible, if we choose to act. God cannot help us, but we can help God help us.

A note about Ilia: she is a theologian and a scientist, and anything she writes or talks about is backed up by extensive research and study. She is one of the wisest mystics of our day. In the blog post she references Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Etty Hillesum.

For more, see “The Not-Yet God, Carl Jung, Teilhard, and the Relational Whole,” by Ilia Delio, 2023.