Cells in a Living Organism?

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There’s an old joke about an assistant going to the pope and saying, “I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” asks the pope.

“God’s on the phone and he wants to talk with you.”

“Ah, that’s very good news,” says the pope. “What bad news could match it?”

“He’s calling from Salt Lake City.”

It’s just a joke, but it brings to mind a couple of truths about our relationship to God. The first is that from all we know from the Bible and tradition, God is always a surprise – at least this scenario would be a surprise for Catholics. The second is that we know God only by analogy, by anthropomorphism.

Both the Hebrew and Christian bibles are filled with scenes in which God is very much like a human being, and humans are said to have been created in God’s “image and likeness.” But the similarity is extremely limited. God doesn’t show himself/herself in normal human ways, except, of course, in Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that I have to use “himself/herself” – because God could not have a gender – is an example of that.

There are many biblical stories and characterizations that are meant to help us picture God. God as “father,” which Jesus used constantly, urges us to see God as parent. God is also portrayed in Jesus’ stories as king, judge, landowner, householder, even slave owner. All are meant to portray some quality of God, but none of them individually or together can paint an accurate picture.

So we are left to our imaginations. This is sometimes an obstacle when we pray. To whom or what are we praying? What, if anything, lies beyond? What is God’s “world” like? How do we fit in? Many philosophers and theologians have speculated about these and similar questions, but we always have to see them for what they are, speculation.

Still, searchers for God should always be open to new perspectives about God, always remembering that they’re very limited. One of my heroes from my seminary days, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, offers modern humans one of the most interesting visions of God and his/her relationship to us.

De Chardin, a French Jesuit priest, philosopher, geologist and paleontologist, died in 1955. His insights, due to training and practice as a scientist as well as a philosopher, were at one point not welcomed by the Vatican, but he seems to have been “rehabilitated.” I mentioned that I was a fan of de Chardin in the seminary, reading his books, Phenomenon of Man and Divine Milieu, but both were too complex for me and they probably would be today. However, a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter by Louis Savary, the author of several books about de Chardin, helps.



de Chardin
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According to Savary, De Chardin saw humans as cells in a living organism, a universe saturated by God. He called it the Divine Milieu. Cells are not aware they’re part of a whole, but he believed that not only is the biological world still evolving, evolution is occurring on all human levels, the personal, social, emotional, mental and spiritual. Through increasing complexity and interconnectedness, it’s all leading toward greater and greater consciousness. The cells are becoming aware that they’re part of the Milieu, part of God.

It’s close to what the apostle Paul wrote in the Acts of the Apostles, that “God is not far from each one of us, for ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’”



Many scientists and others say there is no need for a divine designer of the universe, that particles floating around in space provided the matter for the Big Bang that started the evolutionary ball rolling. But that doesn’t make the Big Bang the beginning, does it? Where did the particles come from? And for that matter, what accounts for space? De Chardin speculated that before matter, there was spirit and that this spirit, whom we call God, made the Big Bang happen.

You may think this is wishful thinking, more along the lines of science fiction than science, but de Chardin saw nothing wrong with synthesizing what he learned from science, philosophy and theology – along with years of reflection – to answer questions about the nature of the universe, of humans and of God.

I mentioned above that in trying to answer questions about God we are mostly left to our imaginations, and even with the help of science, our imaginations fail us. Going out and gazing into the night sky, as I do on most nights, you can see the splendor of the “heavens” but you can’t imagine the vastness, let alone what caused it and what underlies it.

It’s true that religion is not a method by which we answer questions about how the universe works. We have science for that, and it’s getter better at answering those questions. But science isn’t good at answering the “why” questions, to speculate about the meaning of it all, and people who search for God are looking for meaning. For that, you need religion and religious people like de Chardin, who aren’t afraid to offer theories that use what we know from science, but also from the experience of a believer. And, of course, you still need the anthropomorphisms.

“Hello, Pope. God speaking. Pardon me if I don’t call you ‘Holy Father.’ Yes, I’m calling from Salt Lake City, but I’m also right there in Rome, as well as in Tel Aviv, Cairo, Managua, Pretoria, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Beijing and What Cheer, Iowa (I love that name!) And I’m on the moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars. (Yes, it’s very hot, and very cold!) I’m also over here on Epsilon Eridani b and c, not far from your solar system, and I’m way out here in the Ultra Deep Field (though it really isn’t that deep from my perspective).

“Would you and the seven billion other humans there care to join me? Oh, right. You already have.”