Understanding the divine paradox requires the possibility that the UCFC has consciousness. In my early teen years, probably when I was involved with the Catholic Youth Organization, I encountered a conundrum posed as a question, “If God is all powerful, could he create a stone even he could not lift?” It was interesting back then and caused some head scratching to figure out a solution. If God did create such a stone, he would no longer be all powerful. It was a conundrum that I could not let go and it somehow worked its way from the recesses of my mind to emerge at some time during my first or second year of college. I finally figured out my response to that question as, “Certainly, God could create a stone that even he could not lift, but he chooses not to do so.” Once I formulated my response (uttered to no one but myself because no one else around me was interested in such a query), I was satisfied and dropped the issue until I composed “The Divine Paradox” of this manuscript.
On the surface, the issue of creating a stone too heavy for God to lift is about God being all powerful. What was lost on me at first but was later awakened in my consciousness was the issue of free will, God’s free will. The conundrum of being all powerful is resolved through the exercising of free will and the function of self-discipline.
Understanding the qualities of absolute power, free will, and self-discipline possessed by the UCFC is far more important and critical than a resolution to a mythological rock too heavy for the UCFC to lift. These three traits (power, free will, and self-discipline) are equally significant to the intelligent life of human creatures. While individual humans are not all powerful, each has some power and the quantity of power varies from individual to individual. In general, parents wield more power than children; police wield more power than the average citizen. Some citizens wield more power than others. Governors wield more power than a househusband. A judge wields more power than the lawyers in a court trial. Supreme Court judges wield more power that any other judge in the land.
Assigning absolute power, free will, and self-discipline to the UCFC anthropomorphizes the UCFC just as my early religious textbooks depicted God the Father as an old, bearded, white man. Shiva is anthropomorphized when portrayed as a deity beating a drum and dancing the Tandava. There is no doubt in my mind that the Greek gods of Olympus are anthropomorphized as well. My final demonstration of a deity being anthropomorphized is in the person of Jesus, the Nazarene. Jesus, according to Christianity, is God in human form, the epitome of anthropomorphism. It appears that human understanding must anthropomorphize divine beings because humans only know intelligent life as occupying human form. Only recently in human history has intelligence in other than human form entered human consciousness, but that intelligence is dubbed to be Artificial Intelligence. It is as if intelligence resides in human form only.
As a very young Catholic boy I had to memorize the Roman Catholic catechism. One of the first ideas or precepts to be memorized was the fact that all of us are made in the image and likeness of God. As the above paragraph about the anthropomorphism of deities demonstrates, I have come to understand that it is more accurate to see that the gods were made more in the image and likeness of humankind than humankind was made in the image and likeness of its gods. This is an error in thinking that needs to be resolved.
In seeking to resolve this dilemma for myself, my thinking migrated toward a deeper appreciation of intangibles juxtaposed to tangibles. Of the three persons in one god, the Holy Spirit became more of the focus than Jesus, the Nazarene, or God, the Father-Creator; but, in writing Three-thirds of One-Third Three Times, I gained more understanding of the interplay of all three personages. At this point in the evolution of my personal self, I am certain that divine forces, creative forces and deities are intangible. In understanding that it is the intangibilities that move and transform the tangibles, it is certainly accurate that the UCFC and the universe before the Big Bang exploded are intangible. We know the UCFC and the universe before the Big Bang only by the effect that they caused. That effect was the chain reaction of the cause-effect evolutionary history that brought humans into being. Humankind was not the only tangible effect of creation or the UCFC igniting into the Big Bang. The UCFC initiated the explosion that produced all of Reality of which humans are only a part. Consider the following in the context of this paragraph: It is the intangible that is me (my spirit) that has moved the pen across the page when I write or moves my fingers to push the keys on my keyboard which has given form to the intangible thoughts of my intangible mind (not brain) that fills the tangible pages of this digital text that will be tangible pages of a book when published. Hence, it is the intangible that moves or transforms the tangible. Again, from a scientific point of view, energy is defined as the ability to do work and work shifts energy from one system to another. Energy is intangible known only by its effect.
Therefore, in understanding the intangibleness of me, the intangibleness of my mind that functions via my brain, I have come to understand the intangibleness of my consciousness that functions via my physical presence in this reality. This understanding of the intangibleness of my self, the spirit of me, my soul, has informed my consciousness of its relationship with the intangibleness that moves the events of the reality of which I am only a part. Abiding Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice offered in his essay, Self Reliance that “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius,” compels me to affirm that the UCFC is a consciousness in the form of pure energy. Just before the Big Bang exploded, the universe was the consciousness, the spirit and the soul of that explosion into the current reality of which we, humans, are collectively a part as reflecting, inquiring, investigating and engaging creatures of the new reality caused by the Uncaused Cause of the First Cause (UCFC).
For all of my life up to this point in my evolving history, I assumed that my soul was static. I am not sure why I believed this assumption, but, at this moment, I now know that assumption to be incorrect. My soul is dynamic because I now know that my soul is my spirit and my spirit is dynamic because my spirit is my consciousness and my consciousness is developing and expanding. It is changing and has been changing since my entrance into this reality. This is a profound revelation! Since my intangible spirit, my consciousness, is evolving, thus dynamic, I have surmised that it is my consciousness that is the part of me that is akin to the image and likeness of my Creator. This, too, is a profound revelation because the UCFC, the Creator’s, nature is also that of a dynamic reality. These are the realities that populate Air of my Three-thirds of One-third Three Times.
The fact that my spirit is of the image and likeness of my creator does not mean that I am The Creator. The defining difference between my spirit and the Holy Spirit is that my creator manifests new realities whereas I am developing and expanding my knowledge, understanding, and full appreciation of the realities so manifested. In flesh and blood human terms, I am the student and The Creator is the Teacher. I am the apprentice and The Creator is The Master.
In keeping with Saint Thomas Aquinas’s method of tracing elements of the present back to the source of their being, since my spirit via my consciousness is developing and expanding, the UCFC, which is the source of my likeness of that image, develops and expands as well with the difference being that the UCFC creates new realities that effects the development and expansion of my spirit. It is an organic relationship of creating and learning with the student focused upon the learning aspect while The Teacher focuses upon the educating.