I love to gaze at the heavens on a clear winter night, knowing that I'm seeing the same stars that guided shepherds and sailors of ancient times.

Early astronomers were mystified by the movements of the stars and planets and created complicated scenarios to explain why heavenly bodies traveled the way they did around Earth.

It wasn't until the 1500s that someone challenged the idea that Earth wasn't a stationary body around which everything else revolved. Copernicus' theory provided an elegant solution that explained the cosmos and helped spur a scientific revolution!

Perhaps what was revolutionary was that people began to realize that they had had a limited perspective of the universe. Their senses didn't always tell the full story. Their feet were firmly planted on terra firma, so how could the earth be moving? They clearly saw the sun rise in the east in the morning and set in the west at the end of the day. How could it not be revolving around the earth? In time, Copernicus' theories were accepted, but only after the telescope helped support his viewpoint.

Knowing this, we can wonder what accepted beliefs we hold now that might one day be discredited.

Many traditional Christian denominations teach of a heavenly father, a supernatural God who tracks all our doings and metes out rewards and punishments. (Indeed, we've seen that some still hold to this idea and explain natural disasters this way.)

Unity teaches that God is both immanent and transcendent—everywhere around us as well as within us. Yet sometimes our language doesn't fully reflect this belief. Unity's beloved “Prayer for Protection” by James Dillet Freeman includes such lines as “the power of God protects us,” which could be construed as implying separation between God and us.

In her article “You're Not Only Human,” (page 25), Unity minister and author Linda Martella-Whitsett challenges us to resist using prayer language that implies separation. She writes: “Although Unity teaches Oneness-consciousness—One Power, God, Good, our True Nature—I believe we contradict ourselves when we talk to God as if God were a person separate from us, giving things to us.”

Martella-Whitsett would have us believe that you can pray without believing in a God; that you just have to believe in yourself. Which brings me to another weighty topic in this issue.

In his article “The New Atheism,” (page 14), Peter Bolland suggests that skepticism of traditional religious belief actually strengthens our spiritual development, leading us to evolve spiritually.

He writes: “Ironically, atheism does religion a great favor by laying bare the absurdities inherent in any attempt to conceptualize the ground of being. If the formless ground of being that we commonly personify as God is the source of all reality (including our conceptual minds), then of course any mere concept of God falls woefully short of the reality it purports to describe, leaving all such concepts susceptible to ridicule.”

So next time you gaze into the night sky and think you see evidence of the hand of God, affirm with me how far we've come and how far we've yet to go.


Your fellow traveler,

Toni Lapp, Editor
lapptm@unityonline.org