Dear God...

It's been 2,000 years. What now?

Dear God:

I pray you will forgive me for addressing you by your title, rather than your name. Your name has been lost in translation from the Hebrew. 

But this is a mere fraction of the problem I must bring to your attention.

It is now 2,000 years since you gave your people the terms of the covenant you wished to establish.  Your instruction on how humans were to conduct their lives was based on the only model they would understand: growing crops and increasing herds.  The theme appears to have been ‘be fruitful and multiply, to fill the Earth.’ 

We humans have done that very well, but have come upon a dilemma: on the one hand the system has been working, so we should keep on that path; on the other hand, humans have gone beyond husbandry of land and animals and we must examine the words of the covenant to find their meaning for our present situation.  The current problem has been festering for centuries and it all involves how can we use the words of the covenant to order our lives in accordance of your will.

It is clear that Moses was your messenger at Sinai and Jesus was your ‘quality control agent’ in Jerusalem.  In the time since then, we mortals have only our intellects to try and apply the unchanging, written words to conditions found in a constantly changing environment. 

In essence, how do we apply the sacred text to the secular world?  Before we can address that question, we have another: What version of the sacred text are we to use?

At the present time, there is in English, at least 60 versions of a book of lessons – that was originally written in non-English.  Each of these versions was crafted by humans, for human purposes, and we have no idea of what the original text contained.  We have copies of translations that were translations of copies of lost originals.

I can give examples of the problem, but basically what I am praying for is a revised set of covenant rules, that we can establish, that express your will in our modern world. 

We moderns have discovered the means of controlling fertility in both plants and animals – this limits the ‘fruitful and multiply’ portion of the original mandate.  Is this limiting of a rule the same as breaking it (committing a Sin)? 

We mortals can only argue endlessly, with no resolution because the times have changed and the words have been interpreted in many ways in an attempt to maintain righteousness.

Dear God, we need a renewed covenant.  The original has been corrupted by mortal minds, for secular purposes. You have allowed us to move away from total reliance on the natural world and to control the processes, to some extent.  Please give us a renewed covenant that tells us what to do with the extra forty years we have added to human lifespan.

To put this request in our modern terms:  We have fulfilled the mandate of ‘Humans 1.0’ (the Holy Bible) and are desperately in need of ‘Humans 2.0’.  The original user’s manual has been lost in translation and we need to know your divine will, now more than ever.

Devoutly, your faithful servant:

Tony

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