God's Systems

Author: Richard R. Tryon

God’s System for Management of the Earth
by Richard R. Tryon

I begin this adventure in writing with several admissions:

1. I do not believe that any theological writers, certainly not those connected to any religion or any church have ever been so audacious as to try to think about and then write about God’s Systems for management of the Earth; or for that matter the Universe. So, it is with a great sense of humility, if not fear that I even approach the subject.

2. I attempt to do this task, not from any great conviction that I possess the correct answers to the question. I hope, therefore, to write only to spark the thinking in the minds of others.

3. Perhaps someone will inform me that I am only tracing the steps of one or many earlier writers. If so, my profound ignorance will only be amplified!

With these admissions, why do I wish to tackle this subject?

First, I spent most of my working life inventing various systems in business. Some of them involved just people and methods; others machines, scheduling and basic work in logistics; but, some involved computers and designs that took a lot of time to invent. None of this gives me any reason to think that I can explain how God does or did anything. I do not seek such recognition.

Rather, I approach the study from the perspective of a curious thinker, trying to ask if man can even begin to put himself into a position of thinking about such questions. Some church leaders may utter words like blasphemy, but most of them are not likely to have studied the question because so little is known about it.

For example, writings of church history all recognize that the writers of Christian history did not exist until perhaps as many as sixty years had passed following the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. None of the oral history led to more than a few tidbits about the life of Christ on Earth. Mystery clouds the details of life in Nazareth, where the infant child born to a virgin named Mary, a woman betrothed to a man named Joseph.

A lot is known about the lineage of Joseph of the house of David. From the elaborate Jewish history, we can certainly come to believe that Jesus was related to the kind of connections that could serve him well in being accepted by the local society. But, this is ahead of the story.

If one wants to think in terms of systems of the universe, one can try to recognize that God chose to manage His Universe in ways that utilize his own laws of nature. In fact, of course, Roman Catholic traditions pay much homage to the concept of natural law, but have their scholars tried to test such questions as:

a. When God chose to intervene in the development of the Earth's most significant creatures, at least as far as we can tell that is man, we can ask ourselves, how would God intervene and leave us the essential 'free-will' so important to our ultimate progress in spiritual life?

The answer at the time of Abraham seems to have been documented in the Old Testament quite well. God came to the Earth and spoke to Abraham and later to Moses. Some special 'system' needs were apparently needed; or so it seems to me. If God wanted us to believe in him out of absolute fear of the consequences of not doing so, we would never have been allowed to have 'free-will'. So, how could God avoid man coming to the wrong conclusion and losing his 'free-will' as a consequence? The Bible tells us that Abraham and Moses came close to being in God's presence, but the stories are not written in such strong terms as to leave no reader the chance to wonder about just what happened and how. Considering the age of mankind on Earth, when written words were few and when mankind was not able to flood the community with communications like we do now with the internet, and the level of knowledge of the world and its place in the Universe, the age of the Old Testament did not have to have absolute proof. God did not need to stand before an assembled throng and take any action that would clearly show Him to be in command. Rather, God left Abraham a testament which Abraham kept and passed on to his children, conceived at an advanced age in the life of his wife. That miracle lived in the oral tradition too.

By the time of Christ, several thousand years later, God had a different need regarding what to communicate and a more advanced audience to deal with carefully to avoid again throwing the world into a state without 'free-will'. He realized that he could send his Son to live among us, but knew full well that it would not work to simply transport the Lord in his Heavenly state to Earth to deliver the message of love and forgiveness of the New Testament.

Further, His all knowing nature recognized that the messenger would have to experience life on Earth to be able to spread the message as one of us, an earthly being. His divinity was not fully understood until after his three year ministry was concluded with his death and resurrection.

So, how could God achieve this mission? Not by snapping his fingers and putting Christ onto the Earth to land in front of the right audience, deliver his message and then return to Heaven. That approach would surely destroy the essential 'free-will'. The method devised is absolutely divinely inspired! Only God could have the knowledge to be able to transport His Son to Earth in a way that would not disturb the all important need of leaving mankind to decide on its own why it should follow and love God and to learn about the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The Christmas story is clearly the one way where God could achieve His goal. But, how was it possible for this story to work? We can sense that God's angels could deliver the genetic material from Heaven to the earthly body of the Virgin Mary and do so without anyone figuring out how. That Mary would provide the egg and nourishment would be understood for several thousand years, without anyone knowing that she did not supply either her or any man's genetic instructions. The DNA in her egg was replaced with the full set of codes needed to reproduce or reincarnate Jesus on Earth as he was in Heaven. However, he would not start out as an adult or mature being, as he must have been in Heaven.

It is likely that he could not have known of his Heavenly origin at birth, for he was required to spend thirty years growing to manhood and the time when he could do his father's work in the way that the father could not do before an unsuspecting mankind. So, how did Jesus grow up? How did he come to learn of his readiness for action? Clearly he did so in stages. His boyhood must have been that of a life like many others in Nazareth. He was the son of a carpenter and a wonderful mother, who knew that something extraordinary had happened to her. No doubt she shared all of this with Joseph, but with whom could they share their wonderment? If they spoke out, all would think them crazy or worse, dishonest.

So, could they tell Jesus? How much and when? We know that God wanted Jesus to know life on earth as an earth being- a mortal man. So, while Jesus would grow quickly to be a youngster of extraordinary capacities because of his Heavenly perfected set of genetic codes, he may not have had any significant awareness of his mission on earth until the Bible tells us of his twelve year old experience at the Temple. His knowledge of Jewish law was way ahead of his peers and elders as well. But, surely he could only be testing and refining his earthly skills so as to be ready for his ministry.

The Bible again tells us that John the Baptist, related by Mary's cousin, who was mother of John, served an important role in the transformation of Jesus the boy into Jesus the Savior. The baptismal event was, of course, the moment when God could start to reveal all to his Son. Yet, that had to be at a measured pace so that Christ could build the ministry and lead the apostles.

So, now we can see that the system required not only an array of carefully planned stages to unfold in a timely fashion, we can also see that it was important for Christ to leave the earth with the same mystery as was required when his Father left us the First Testament. In other words the need to maintain 'free-will' was imperative, if man is going to choose God and follow Jesus.

It is now 2,000 years since the New Testament came into play and we find that perhaps 5% of mankind is aware of it and why it was so important. Many have learned to be so critical or skeptical that they have decided to opt out! They have used their free-will to decide that Jesus was somehow not really the son of God! A fine prophet maybe. So, many choose to stay as Jews faithful to the Old Testament; others choose to accept many other options that deny the earthly existence of the divine Son of God.

If it is God's will that we will always have to live in a world of doubt without proof, then we can expect no Third Testament, unless we create it ourselves, perhaps! All we can do, may be to try to understand why God's system is so perfect that it can live in perpetuity here on Earth, without creating a need for blind obedience to Godly command, when God wants us to decide how to live and worship him on our own.

So, we may not reach a point of proving God or his Son, until it is not important to do so! When everyone discovers that all the rest have found the reason for faith in ways that are sufficiently uniform as to give us a way to live in Godly harmony with nature and our fellow man, then we may reach the point where all doubt is irrelevant- it doesn't exist.

Getting that message understood by children is not possible, so I tend to want to accept that God is pleased if we can find a way for more souls to be saved without trying to think that we can accomplish a unanimity that is not needed!

Does all of this lead one to reading "You Can't Escape God"? I hope so. It is found here at .

A second section of this opening has been inspired by a typical effort by the AOL service. It picked up a CBS brief about what 808 people chose in response to questions trying to sort out how people now relate to the age old argument about the origin of the species. In today's shorthand evolution vs intelligent design. AOL's poll is showing a different result as can be seen below:

God and Evolution of Man, and all plants and animals

In November of 2004, a CBS poll offered the public three alternatives: 1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process; 2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or 3. God created human beings in their present form.

The results were not much different between the answers to that question and those given when a specific timeline was included in the final alternative: God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

More From CBSNews.com

Still, most Americans think it is possible to believe in both God and evolution. Sixty-seven percent say this is possible, while 29 percent disagree. Most demographic groups say it is possible to believe in both God and evolution, but just over half of white evangelical Christians say it is not possible.

Opinions on this question are tied to one’s views on the origin of human beings. Those who believe in evolution, whether guided by God or not, overwhelmingly think it is possible to believe in both God and evolution – 90 percent say this. However, people who believe God created humans in their present form are more divided: 48 percent think it possible to believe in both God and evolution, but the same number disagrees.

This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points.

Commentary by
Richard R. Tryon
10-24-05

AOL picked up this story and arranged its own poll to see what excitement it could stir-up.
This interesting poll, like all others, is always a product of how the question are asked, the order,and who answers with any certainty of objectivity or honesty?

According to the analysis of the results, my views are out of step with the stereotypical images presented. While I consider myself to be a liberal-conservative or vice-versa, if you prefer, the point is that one has to be liberal to study and create new ideas and conservative to know how to test them against established facts, traditions,and cultural circumstances. College grads are thought to be in the liberal camp.

Those who may be well described as fundamentalist Christians, for example, may cling to the notion that the Bible clearly tells the story of creation as a one week job for God, who rested on the seventh day! Its simplistic story, written long before science of any kind was discovered or invented by man, is easy to accept at a very simple level of intellectual thought. It has a hard time dealing with modern science and minds that like to study and challenge in search of truth. So, it is not surprising that education and liberal thinking in political or social manners tends to cause such persons to shy away from the simple way of consideration. To these folks, God has nothing else to do but monitor every single plant and animal in every instant of their creation, gestation of reproduction of copies, and every interaction with each other and all weather or other geological factors that touch the meaningful existence of each of the myriad to consider. Why? It seems like a logical consequence. If God is He, She or It that knows all and has power over all, then it follows that it is not possible to control all without keeping constant track of each cell within each body of plants and animals, or at least to have awareness of internal regulatory signs to indicate the condition of all such at all times. Simple task say some who are quick to note that God can’t be limited by us! True, but that is not a reason to say that God determined a need to do so! After all, he has made room in Heaven for a few billion or more souls of what? Just humans since he created them? Or of all plants and animals of the sea, the sky and the land since creation, with or without time for evolution to have apparently left evidences of hundreds of thousands of species no longer found except as fossils. If all have souls to represent them as God wants, then God must be always getting busier dealing with so much that is expanding so fast!

Of course, it is dangerous to start limiting God and contending that we humans are of a special class of species, apart from all plants and all other animals. If we care to conclude that this must be so because we find no evidence of other species of plants or animals with any sign of evidence of thinking at a level sufficient to consider such questions, then we can start to wonder....

Is God way beyond our meager power to design systems and computer technology to manage enormous data bases? If so, and we seek to automate as much drudgery out of our lives as possible, does it follow that a higher form of being than us would desire to create something more efficient to manage than say hiring a St. Peter to interview souls from those bodies that have stopped running on Earth and/or any other place in the universe where similar human action may have been in process for hundreds or thousands of times longer than here on Earth.

Does it follow that God may be more concerned with watching trends and working to improve the ability of souls to make their way through life in the finite world in preparation for a hereafter? If so, the fundamentalists may examine their notions and bend a bit toward a newer attitude, if they don’t lose some other essential part of their faith in the process. If their mental capacities and experience dictate an inability to make any change, then they will always live and die with the same conviction cemented in place whenever they are old enough to put such an array of ideas into place. No amount of polls,surveys, or education can change, by definition, people in this category for better or worse. I am not to judge that they are right or wrong, but I can say that I accept their position but find it to be one that my mind can’t accept.

The evidence to support that science has been part of the ongoing revelation from God is an idea that is firmly positioned in my mind.I sense a great deal of logic to defend the idea that God wants us to learn more about God and ourselves as well as the corner of the universe in which we seem to get started, live and die. I sense that early Christians started an idea that persists about where Jesus went when he ascended from this world, and when and why he will return. We almost universally state as an article of faith that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. Yet, all evidence since the event of his earthly death by crucifixion points to the idea that those who thought he would come back to raise the dead and to judge them along with those still alive or ‘quick’ must have misunderstood the meaning of the events or sayings attributed by man to the Lord.

There are, of course, many other articles of Christian faith that can withstand scrutiny by those Christians strong enough to maintain their faith after recognizing the magnitude of human error that has crept into the institutional church of virtually every persuasion. But, it is a more dangerous path to follow than the simplistic one of the fundamentalists or of those that dodge the issues by allowing that they accept that others, more learned, and perhaps more Holy, are better able to just direct the rest of us. Such strong leadership has been found from time to time and place to place within the three major global religions that claim to understand a relationship between mankind and a creative monotheistic God.So, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all in the same boat, while other major global religions deal with other life forces and forms of worship as a result.

Since none in any category have any proof positive to show that removes the need for faith to be replaced by some obvious need to obey or disappear, we can contend that all are in pursuit of knowledge about how to live in a monotheistic world? It is not hard to come to the logical conclusion that all willing to do so will be more adventurous than those of the past who have been clinging to the simple action of faith found in any fundamentalist form.

While liberals generate all new ideas and are therefore to be encouraged to think, it is not correct to conclude that all new ideas are better. So, the conservative minds need to be integrated with the liberals to challenge and protect that which new ideas may overlook that needs protection. The new idea may be able to work, if modified, so conservatives and liberals need to work together to find the truth about God’s systems that account for modification or evolution of species. We may learn that God understands nature and accepts the need to live with it. He may therefore, let us learn how to survive when the next ice age comes, if we have learned to survive the current period of global warming. It may be important for us to learn how to control man’s contribution to warming and perhaps even consider ways to reverse the process faster than nature has apparently achieved in some past periods, when ice covered different parts of the North American continent.

All of this should give the reader the idea that it is possible to believe that God is intimately concerned with the evolution of all species, but it is not clear if He uses thinking to help choose ways to deal with trends; or if he uses a power to overcome what nature does. We see no evidence to show that God has helped us find a way to stop volcanoes from erupting or earthquakes from taking thousands of lives in Pakistan or hundreds of thousands in a tsunami in Indonesia. These examples may have caused calamity mostly among the poor in Muslim nations, but that gives no more cause to contend that God is being wrathful on Muslims than to say the same about Christians, Jews and Muslims caught in U.S. hurricanes.

I would be remiss if I did not indicate that the institutional church can accept my preferences and still provide all of the wonderful social and pastoral care that is so very much needed in every community. Further, what works best with one group of people is not all necessarily the best for all or any other. Church variety is needed, conformity to one standard flavor can’t work as long as the genetic codes and experiences of humans is able to produce so many wonderful differences.

How were humans created?
By evolution alone 39%
By evolution, with God's guidance 31%
By God in our present form 30%
Is it possible to believe in both God and evolution?
Yes72% No28% Total Votes: 46,207

Well, what do you know? 72% above are likely to not find fault with my words above, and if I allow that prior to the time of Christ and maybe Mohammed, there may be an evidence or two to help us think that God has been more directly involved on Earth although the evidence is not apparent in a physical sense. We don’t have the ark of the covenant and the original tablets that Moses and Arron brought down from the mountain. So it is not clear if God carved them and was witnessed by Moses or if Moses had a mind that gave the words to Aaron to carve into stone. While Mohammed and the more modern Joseph Smith contended that God spoke to them, their is no physical evidence to show a process of direct action by the hand of God. Therefore all Scripture of any sort is indirectly written by God, as are these words, if one wants to think that to be the case. I do not! Rather I contend that God is present in all of us, but it takes our free will to let our mind set the words down. We do not know if we are making good sense to anyone, but may think such is so at least for ourselves! That may be enough!

But, the title of my father’s book “You Can’t Escape God” leads me to conclude that nobody will ever prove God while living here on Earth for the simple reason that God doesn’t want us to lose our free will while learning about Him as we prepare for the hereafter.