If You Build It, He Will Come

We can’t any longer have the conventional understanding of genetics which everybody peddles because it is increasingly obvious that epigenetics – actually things which influence the genome’s function – are much more important than we realized. 
-Robert Winston

Epigenetics, in my mind, are the blueprints to building the temple to speak to God. When the bible says that your body is a temple, this is something canonical throughout time based upon people who have assumed responsibility and the necessary sacrifices in order to make their dreams and visions, born of God, to come true. “If you build it, he will come.” 

Only through responsibility and sacrifice can we achieve greatness. But we cannot be so rigid and structured that we don’t retain that little bit of chaos in order to become a dancing star that Nietzsche talks about. How many secular people look to Socrates as a form of greatness of mind? He spoke about a voice that he had that helped him be his best self. It’s even why he remained in jail instead of fleeing when given the chance. Which resulted in him having notoriety even thousands of years later. Is that so different from someone saying the voice of God keeps them on the righteous path? He, at the cost of his life, stood up for his ultimate values and history rewarded him for it.

We walk around with latent code inside our DNA. The pressures of life create heat. That pressure and heat can cook you to the point of collapse or you can allow the strength of purpose and gratitude to bolster your resolve while you activate that chaos necessary to ignite your internal star. Once ignited, the pressure from the responsibility helps control your internal fusion reaction much akin to gravity to a star. It helps prevent you from flaming out in the same way. 

We are, just now, barely attaining successful experimentation where we create more energy than fuel spent in our fusion experimentation. Inside your heart and soul, however, gratitude seems to be the near limitless fuel source. The pressures created by the world trying to crush you are immense. Going out of your way to assume responsibility within this environment, sacrificing in order to reach your goals and actively seeking to be grateful, then creates happiness as a byproduct the closer and more infused your life is with meaning and purpose.

We are all so rushing around trying to be some savior of the world often by nothing more than posting all over Social Media. As if that, by itself, is somehow meaningful. We bear nothing but our teeth and hatred for the system as it is, and we expect to somehow muster up the forces necessary to take on the biggest evils of our times? If you want to change the world, you first have to learn to live within it. If the world is completely anathema to you and disgusts you because of your values, that says more about you than the world. 

If you hate everything that you see, there is no means to finding gratitude. With no gratitude, you have no fuel source that gives more energy than it burns. You will find yourself much more exhausted and tired. You may even find that in your exhaustion, you can’t do the things you wish you could and that makes you hate yourself. If you hate yourself, there is no path to love. With no love, there is no gratitude. There is no camaraderie. There is no community. There is no baptismal blessing.

Aren’t religion and politics supposed to be about community? If someone comes up to us and makes themselves vulnerable by sharing their internal doubts and we dismiss them because of our own anger issues, our own hatred for what we see as weakness born of doubts, then is there any wonder that people with doubts flee the church? If the church alienates and ostracizes you for not just repeating magical words without inspecting them, words that are so meaningless even to the person that says them then they rob them of the very human connection the vulnerable are seeking, how, then, does that not lead to obsolescence? 

Then build in an untouchable bureaucracy that supersedes any divine revelation of which you or I are capable? Proverbs 28:26 tells us: he who trusts only himself is a fool but one who walks in wisdom will be safe. If the ultimate good and moral center of who I am is of only one man’s thoughts, how is that any different than me trusting only in myself? With 7 billion people in the world, is it fair to construe even a dozen different people as representative of an individual?

Not even Jesus nor Heavenly Father are willing to take my agency but this bureaucracy will? The same man at the helm of said bureaucracy says I can’t question him? That contradicts the very tenants of Jesus Christ while supposedly espousing the tenants of Jesus Christ. Do we even know what we believe? Do we just say things that people whom we respect tell us to think? Or do we inspect the information that we receive? 

Jesus’ favorite people were doubters. Jesus’ favorite people were those who wrestled with destiny. Israel quite literally means “those who wrestle with God”. If you aren’t wrestling, you aren’t living up to your own claim. Again, do we even know the meaning to the words we speak or the logical conclusion of the dogmas and parables that control our lives?

We see, even in the times of the gospel, that James, the brother of Christ, a man of the church, a member of the bureaucracy, and yet we seem to herald Paul as the man of the hour. Why do you think that is?

“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned” – Richard Feynman