THE DIVINE EQUATION: Assumptions make us who we are as humans

To wander through the high grass of the English language is to walk through paths that are sometimes strewn with weeds among the wildflowers. The communication problem becomes one of learning to delve into the assumptions underlying the words we use. For example, to say the word “Love” might mean one thing to my wife but something else to me, both of which would be correct according to how it is interpreted.

This is, at least in part, due to how each individual human places meaning on the words that we speak. We receive meaning from languages with the sum total of our life experiences and both successes and failures we have endured. We are the sum of the choices we make and their consequences. I am not a physician and do not know the language of medicine, although medicine affects us significantly. I am a user but not a practitioner.

Five people might read the phrase, “You must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me,” and yet react in five different ways.

• The atheist thinks it means that it confirms that his thinking about Christians is true and that they are crazy.
• The Protestant minister thinks that it means that he must bear his burdens with the help of Jesus each day.
• The Jewish rabbi thinks that it means life is rough sometimes, and you have to accept failures and successes.
• The Catholic nun thinks that it means she must die to herself to move from her false self to her true self.
• Teenagers in high school think everyone is out of their mind as they place earphones on to listen to Kiss.

Whatever these people think, they think based on their assumptions about what the words mean. What the words mean depends upon the uniqueness of their lives and where they are in terms of their center (the one principle that, if you took it away, nothing makes sense).

This may lead you to believe that assumptions are not important to how we look at reality. Truth be told, they are actually the foundation and reason we think the way we do. When we recite the Creed at the Eucharist each Sunday, each individual does so using the assumptions they have formed through a lifetime of trial and error. These assumptions are how each interprets reality and form the basis of Belief. The assumptions we use when we believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, are the limits of our individual experiences, both good and evil. Like snowflakes, no two of us relate to God in the same way. That is neither good nor bad, but rather how humans process any information with our senses.

Genesis 2-3, the most eloquent of commentaries on what it means to be human and live in a morally corrupt world and yet be destined to live in incorruptibility, speaks of how human nature has the freedom to eat of the knowledge of good and evil yet is forbidden by God to do so under pain of death (the wage of sin is still death). The choices we make today about what is good or bad for us, as those who inherit the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve, we make assumptions that come either from ourselves or from a power outside of ourselves.

As a Lay Cistercian who tries to seek God each day in this land of the lost we call the world, I try to solve The Divine Equation each day. To review, The Divine Equation are those six questions each human must answer to be able to become fully human. The Divine in The Divine Equation denotes both the questions and the correct answers come from God. They are the answers to what is good and evil and from what is its origin.

ASSUMPTIONS UNDERPINNING THE DIVINE EQUATION

For some reason, always unknown to me, the notion of The Divine Equation popped up in my Lectio Divina this morning. I have been writing down what I myself have received from the Holy Spirit without totally knowing what I am writing but hoping to gradually put the pieces together. I realized that I am unique in all the world with my view of what reality looks like but that I must exercise my reason to being into the Equation not only my Faith but the Faith of the Church, the Church Universal as it has been since the time of Christ. The Church is like a bank, housing the wisdom of those who have not only written the Gospel and Epistles in the New Testament but also preserving how those in each age use their assumptions to live out what it means to die to self to rise with Christ to new life, again and again, until death.

The Divine Equation might mean something different to you and to me. What the words mean depends on how I interpret them according to the total accumulation of my knowledge, what I learned about the purpose of life, and what my purpose in life is. The differences are assumptions I make about what the words mean. Assumptions are those hidden ideas in my head that prompt me to say something in a particular way. You may not know what those hidden ideas are unless you ask. Guessing about assumptions in what another person says is called assumicide.

Back to the Divine Equation. “Divine” in the Divine Equation does not mean it is an equation that proves who God is or defines once and for all God’s nature, which is impossible with mere human languages. I assume that “Divine” means that the six questions and their authentic answers come from a power higher than ourselves and outside our human nature. The Divine Equation gives humans what it means to be fully human nature and the end result of human evolution.

MY ASSUMPTIONS AS A LAY CISTERCIAN AS I COMMENT ABOUT SPIRITUAL REALITY

Assumptions are like icebergs; what you see, hear, taste, touch, and feel and thus know about the reality around you at any moment always has something deeper involved; in this case, my assumptions that you cannot see unless I share them.

All assumptions are important because how I look at reality (and how you view the same situation) is different. Each of us looks at who God is by using our assumptions about who I am. God may be one, but each human has the potential to be an adopted son or daughter of the Father with Baptism or with God’s mercy in the case of those who do not know The Christ Principle. Assumptions are the frame of reference that shape how I think about anything. Assumptions can change by adding or detracting from what we believe or how we act. Assumptions might be good or destructive to how you view what is morally correct. If your assumption is that stealing is acceptable as long as you don’t get caught, your behavior follows. Ex fructibus cognocsetis. Watch how a person acts, and it will tell you what is in their heart.

False Prophets.^*

15“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.^k

16^l By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

17Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.

18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.

19Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

20So by their fruits you will know them.^m

The True Disciple.

21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,^* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.ⁿ

22Many will say to me on that day,^o ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’^p

23Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.^* Depart from me, you evildoers.’^q

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/7

Use this full text to ponder in your heart about what assumptions you hold about being next to the heart of Christ in contemplation. Take some time with this practice.

What follows are some cryptic statements that I hold due to having made The Christ Principle one of my assumptions.

• “I am not you; you are not me; God is not me; and I am certainly not God.”
• I have freely chosen that God is the center of my life and not my false self.
• Each day, I begin from scratch in seeking God. But each day, I have also changed in my capacity to seek God.
• My prayer life is my life of prayer for the whole day, not just during Lectio Divina, Eucharist, Reading Scripture, Rosary, and Praying the Penitential Psalms.
• Each day, I make the sign of the cross on my forehead to remind me that I am but a sinful person whom God has graced with discovering The Divine Equation using the energy of the Holy Spirit.
• All I seek is to wait in the presence of God before the Blessed Sacrament and be near the heart of Christ.
• Profound waiting in the stillness of my heart as I assimilate the love of Christ as He loved me, using the power of the Holy Spirit.

• I use the Rule of Threes with nearly every word I utter. The Rule of Threes states that there is one reality with three distinct and separate universes corresponding to the nature of God, the nature of animality to rationality, and the nature of rationality to spirituality.
• I assume that when I am accepted as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father, I inherit the kingdom of heaven on earth and become a caretaker (like Adam and Eve) of the world that I experience.
• I assume that I do not speak for anyone else but only relate what I myself receive from the Holy Spirit. What that means depends on my assumptions as one who receives from the Spirit. What that means depends on the assumptions that you make with your life about The Divine Equation. In the Divine Equation, God’s questions and answers are the ones that are authentic and make us fully human as intended by our evolution.

• What is the purpose of life?
• What is my purpose within that purpose of life?
• What does reality look like?
• How does it all fit together?
• How do I love fiercely?
• You know you are going to die. Now what?

• I have been accepted as a Lay Cistercian by the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, to follow the Rule of St. Benedict, as interpreted by Cistercian practices and charisms and confirmed through its principles and policies.
• My center is: “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5)
• Each day, because of the corruption of human nature due to Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3), I must keep vigil against the world’s temptations to substitute the words I use to become more like Christ with what the world says is meaningful. They are the same words, such as “peace,” “love,” “What it means to be human?” and “How does all this fit together?”
• I have pledged my life to the conversion of my morals to become more like Christ and less like me, a paradox that the world will never understand or accept.
• I live in a world until I die, where I have dual citizenship, that of being in the physical and mental world, but I have been accepted by God as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven on earth, which leads to my continuing after I die in heaven.
• The one rule I follow is to love others as Christ loved me.

The New Commandment.

31^* When he had left, Jesus said,^* “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

32[If God is glorified in him,] God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once.^r

33My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.^s

34I give you a new commandment:^* love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.^t

35This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/13

• Scripture is there for me to clarify humans’ assumptions about how to love each other as Christ loved us. (John 20:30-31)
• In my attempt to sanctify each moment, I realize that I must become what I pray for and that the moment has depths that I have yet to discover. You can always pray deeper.

Praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology