The wonders of consciousness are well established. Scientists’ relative inability to explain it does not in any sense diminish that wonder. We know our conscious experience operates at a number of levels: consciousness of self, the world around, other people, beauty, truth and even consciousness of God. In the latter case, if true, that is an even more amazing phenomenon: the idea that human minds can somehow interact with the transcendent. It is a reasonable assumption, is it not, that the mechanism of consciousness which exists in all of us plays an important part of how we make the connection.
In writing his letter to the Colossian church, Paul sets out a very elevated concept of God in full expectation that our conscious minds can grasp it. In chapter 1:9 he prays for “God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding”. This is so much more than a vague sense of the transcendent. It is an uncompromising prayer and ambition. Paul goes on to pray that his readers will be “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience”.
Chapter 1:11. So not only can one have a sense of God but the impact on our own consciousness is such that our lives are significantly affected. We should not fail to understand the drama of this: our conscious experience is being expanded by an actual experience of the transcendent God.
But reading further in the text clearly implies that there is more than human consciousness involved. Paul reminds his readers that God has brought them/us “into the kingdom of the son he loves in whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins”. Chapter 1:13 & 14. Redemption surely communicates the purification of the whole person: the very core of our being; what we might refer to as ‘self’. It is the very essence of who we are that is purified by the redemptive blood of Christ. This does not result entirely from our own conscious willingness to be redeemed though that surely is part of the transaction. We may refer to it as our ‘act of faith’. But essentially it comes from an external gracious and loving act of God who makes us what otherwise we could not be. We may reasonably speculate that this is an essentially spiritual occurrence in which the activity of neurons and synapse connections might be involved but they are surely not the whole story. We might argue that the nature of being human involves a spiritual dimension which neuroscience may never capture or help us explain. It is very important nevertheless to be clear that the reality of spiritual experience is not at all dependent on whether neuroscience can explain it or not. The wonder is that it can be true, not that there is no possible explanation of the mechanics of how it takes place revealed by scientific understanding. However, that scientific understanding appears to be a very long way from a reality.
From chapter 15 onwards Paul unambiguously states that Jesus “Is the image of the invisible God”. Conscious human minds have the opportunity to perceive the infinite in a form adapted to be accessible to finite human minds. “For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form”. Truly amazing.
So it is clear is that human beings can have a conscious experience of God. Somehow the finite is able to grasp something of the infinite, according to Paul. Peter Bowes has suggested elsewhere that one reasonable explanation is that we all exist within the consciousness of God. In other words we are part of His consciousness. That is a mind bending idea which elevates human beings to the most extraordinary position within ultimate reality.
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So far we have observed that (a) we can receive spiritual wisdom of God, (b) that it can impact our lives and (c) that we have the conscious ability to perceive the essence of God Himself manifested in Jesus Christ. “For God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him (Jesus).” Chapter 1:19. But there is more. Paul tells us in chapter 1:27 of the phenomenon which allows our lives to be changed by the power of God: “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Not only is there the prospect of us dwelling in God and in God’s consciousness but Christ dwells in ours.
We may reasonably conclude that for those who have this spiritual connection and relationship with God there are mysterious, but nevertheless real, interactions taking place between the Spirit of God and our own spirits – however that may be understood and defined.
Neuroscience is scraping the surface of our understanding of how the marvellously and complex activity within our heads allows us to live complex and sophisticated lives. Somewhere in that complex mix is the impact of a spiritual relationship with our Creator, effected through Jesus Christ. We may never understand the intricacies of the connections in the process but any failure to explain and understand does not make our relationship with God less real or less effective.
We may reasonably conclude that, without the wonders and mechanisms of consciousness, whatever they are, we could never comprehend in any sense at all the God of the letter to the Colossians. Consciousness, doubtless as provided within the Creator’s overall purpose, is crucial to the process. Our consciousness, in some mysterious and phenomenal way, interacts with the eternal consciousness of God Himself. We are not only conscious human beings, we are spiritually conscious children of God. Ed.
