April 29, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
To see God
___By Berry D. Simpson
___IPeople need to fill the empty spaces in their souls. They need to make contact with God, and to do so, they will look for meaning in almost anything. They'll follow any guru or embrace the best-selling books to find peace and meaning and rest for their souls.
___I once watched a TV documentary about a man who crawled on his belly across India to pay homage to his god at a Hindu temple. That's pretty harsh, I'd say. Some people pursue high-risk sports, pushing themselves in ever-more-dangerous adventures hoping the adrenaline rush will fill their souls.
___ The pull toward transcendence is hardwired into our base essence. I believe that's what the Bible means in Genesis when it says man was created in the image of God. It doesn't mean we look like God or speak or act or smell like God. It means we have space for God in our souls, and our souls are restless until we fill that space with him.
___ I recently read "Walking the Bible" by Bruce Feiler. He writes about this ancient drive to know God. Archeology and anthropology prove how humans have searched through the ages to contact God. Feiler finds the evidence to be especially convincing in the ancient Middle East. Not that the dwellers of that land sought God any more than anyone else, but because of the climate and terrain, the evidence of their search still is around for us to observe and speculate.
Berry D. Simpson
___ The biggest evidences are the pyramids. Feiler quoted a conversation he had with Professor Abd el Halim Nurel Din, professor of Egyptology and head of the department of Egypt at Cairo University in Giza.
___ Nurel Din reports there are countless theories about who build the pyramids. Everyone wants to take credit. Moammar Kaddafi believes Libyans built them. Black Americans say black Africans built them. Many used to claim the Hebrew slaves, descendents of Joseph, built them, but the pyramids probably were a thousand years old when Joseph first came to Egypt.
___ Some want to believe ancient visitors from space—or maybe highly evolved spiritual beings—built them. As evidence, they point to a series of numbers that seem to be too perfect to be coincidental. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid is 36,524 inches—divide by 100 to get the length of a solar year. The height of the Great Pyramid is 5,759 inches—purportedly the average height of all land on earth above sea level. The Great Pyramid was covered with 144,000 casing stones—a number that makes an appearance in the Bible Book of Revelation. And on and on. (My personal problem with finding significance in the dimensions is that, after 5,000 years of erosion, who knows what the pyramids looked like originally. We don't have the engineering plans or architectural blueprints.)
___ Nurel Din believes that if Libyans or Americans or Jews were smart enough to build the pyramids, why didn't they build some in their own countries? He said, "They were built by Egyptians, with Egyptian mentality, after 400 years of experimentation, to achieve their significant shape, who were trying to connect with the earth and with God by building massive monuments and tombs. That's all."
___Feiler asked, "So, why are there so many theories?"
___The professor said: "Once you are impressed with something, you can't get it out of your mind. I'm sorry to say, that's why we have Egyptmania. That's why we have Pyramidiots. For thousands of years, human beings have been trying to connect with God, and when we see something as massive and impressive as the pyramids, we believe someone more connected than us must have done the work. Maybe we can tap into what they know and connect with God ourselves."
___ Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Matthew 5:8). It is almost too easy. It isn't about chanting or crystals or meditations or ancestor worship or earthiness or angels or fairies or magic or impressive coincidental dimensions or code hidden within the text. It is about having a pure heart.
___ Maybe that isn't so easy. Maybe it's actually easier to go to Egypt and commune with the pyramids than to have a pure heart. Studying dimensions doesn't require accountability on the part of the student, but the very notion of having a pure heart is soaked in accountability. How pure does it have to be? Whose standard of purity do we use? Does my heart have to be as pure as yours?
___Who knows. Jesus said the pure in heart will see God. So, if we want to see God, we must ask him for a pure heart. Only then will we settle our own restless souls.
___ Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.
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