Spiritual Dimensions

And just as we have borne the likeness of earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.  1 Corinthians 15:49.

Strange as it may seem to some, eternity is an actual dimension, as is time.  Both have their function and boundaries; both can be measured somewhat, though eternity is not something we have the ability to grasp as yet.  Stories in Scripture abound which make the interaction between what we call the spiritual dimension and our earthly reality seem like magic or, at best, myth.

Samson’s parents met with a man-like being whom they called an “angel” and who, after their sacrifice began to burn, went up in the smoke.  Abraham, many years earlier, met with three men who took on human appearance but seemed somewhat different.  Something about them showed through to the people who spoke to them, as far as the record tells us.  Nebuchadnezzar saw a fourth being in the furnace who resembled a son of the gods.

When we read these things, we might actually wonder if anything resembling reality exists in the stories.  I find it strange that we can now postulate continuously multiple dimensions yet take these stories as impossible.  Though, in point of  fact, I’m not ready to take them at face value altogether, either.  The scientific mind looks at them as something out of fairy tales rather than a possible reality.  Why?  Well, most of critics put them down as myths developed by a superstitious culture so they reject the content as drug induced or embellished story telling.

But what if a being had the ability to fold dimensions back on themselves and step into different places at different times.  From what I know of time, it is a definite dimension, so it should be able to be manipulated at least a in some way.

The spiritual dimension might be as solid to them as it is incorporeal to us.  In other words, the reason a being inhabiting another dimension seems ghost-like to us is because they are solid only in their dimension and unable to create the same tangible presence in ours except in an electric projection.  I’m not sure I believe in ghosts as such, but I do buy into the possibility of other dimensions.  So what if God is a being who inhabits all dimensions at once.  Take that a step further to say all dimensions might actually be extensions of Him personally, making Him the hub.

We use the male pronoun for our God, by the way, not because God necessarily is a certain sex or a sexual being but due to the power the male pronoun suggests to the language culture and history.  Attributing a sex to God, though, is like actually describing Him physically, which is quite impossible at this point.  Jesus’ answer to Phillip’s request to see the Father suggested God should be seen in His character not for the body He inhabits.  C. S. Lewis postulated in his book “The Great Divorce” God’s world was the actual reality our’s just the dream.  For all we know we are the ghosts in the universe, endeavoring to touch the spiritual dimension but never quite able to hold onto it with our dream-like fingers.

By eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil man entered a new dimension, one for which they were not created nor prepared.  I wonder if God didn’t push us back from the reality we inhabited before and shut the spiritual dimension’s door to us, leaving a small window through which we could look if we so desired.  Mankind chose to enter the dark reality a place we call “sin” and something of an enigma.  We’ve created all sorts of theories around this subject and printed millions of books on the meaning of it all, so I guess one more interpretation won’t hurt.

If God is the reality, then everything else that refuses to submit to Him as such becomes a product of the imagination.  Sin, by this definition, is therefore something of a state of being outside God’s dimension in a stasis or suspended place.  In the Genesis account of creation it states God created man in His own image, then never describes Him physically and instead focuses on what God did—which was create.  In Scripture sin is not so much the breaking of a law but a choice against the Creator.  It’s very easy for human to over-simplify the message of the Bible’s take on sin and reduce it to rules and rituals, which, I think misses the point entirely.  Sin is rejecting God as our Master to replace Him with ourselves, making us little gods in our estimation.

Yet God’s move to keep us from the covenant tree of life speaks loudly to this argument we can be self-determining or masters of our own destinies.  There is no real mastership of life here for we cannot enter the dimension we inhabited before “the fall” from grace.

Paul informs us of something on this subject which might shed some spiritual light on it in 1 Corinthians 15:38-41:  But God gives it a body as He has determined, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body.  All flesh is not the same:  men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.  There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.  The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

To my mind we have thrown the baby out with the bath water on this issue of spiritual dimension.  Science cannot prove myths or legends, fairy tales or folklore, so they just reject them all as superstition.  This reaction might have an element of healthy skepticism but misses the point of these legends most of the time.  C. S. Lewis postulated that the possibility of elves and other creatures in history could be a reality of history.  None of us has ever seen a live dinosaur but we know of their existence because of the bones.  Just so with the stories of leprechauns and fairies.

Our information on these subjects is rooted in superstition and fear most of the time, for sure, but this doesn’t negate the possibility of them being true.  I am not recommending buying wholesale into fairies and elves, rather speaking to our limited understanding of the universe at large.  If the reality of the universe is that it is but one facet or dimension of what exists, then all our rejection of creatures outside our personal experience might be foolish.  Taking something at face value is not the wisest course, for sure, but rejecting things wholesale just because it exists outside our experience isn’t all that wise either.

If the world as we know it is part of one dimension or several, the possibility of angels, demons and God become far more likely than many want to believe.

Tags: dimensions, multiple dimensions, reality, spiritual dimensions, spiritual reality, spirituality, string theory