The Ideal of Oneness

Confession: The ideal of Oneness wears me out!

Your freedom is my freedom. 
Your pain, my pain. 
Your joy, our joys. 
Your sorrows, our sorrows. 

These are grand Christian ideals worthy of the beatitudes and much of the Bible’s time and energy!

Sharing our burdens and celebrating our successes as one human family—wow! Is this not what it is to live in the love and compassion of the Trinity?

I wish! So often, even when I want to feel, what I do feel is, quite honestly, numb. At other times, usually when I least expect it, emotional connection that is deep and poignant rises up when it's less than appropriate or in places I simply didn’t imagine it would. That is what feels honest and “real” to me. The Biblical admonitions are aspirational, but are they reality for me and our world? Doesn’t seem so!

While I know that Jesus came to practically demonstrate Oneness in all of life’s facets, often I am more aware of all the disconnects. Much of the human race has adopted the mantra “what I don’t know won’t hurt me” in regard to the pain of our neighbors, other people groups, and those who simply struggle and celebrate in different ways than we do. 

Confession: I get exhausted thinking about how far and long we have to go in realizing Oneness. It’s such a big concept, and what I see playing out in our world is anything but a value for our interconnectedness. 

The easy conclusion is this: we aren’t connected. In reality, we are polarized and divided in many ways and on many different levels. Oneness? Ideal. Disconnect? Reality. It’s overwhelming. 

But is it real? Is it true? 

Here’s an easy way to tell: look at the facts. Let’s take a small peek at what has actually been discovered as scientific reality in the past 100 years. 

Have you heard of “entanglement?” Entanglement is a physics conundrum. Once particles interact (think electrons like you learned about in school only remember they are not static like once taught; they are profoundly able to change form) they become “entangled,” meaning they will forever affect each other’s momentum. All things are entangled in an unseen energy force that permeates and connects them all. 

Did you hear that? Oneness may sound ideal, but it’s not. It has nothing to do with feelings, aspiration, or ascension. It simply IS. We are, scientifically, entangled with one another. 

So how does Oneness move from an ideal concept—abstract, Pollyanna, futuristic, pie-in-the-sky, “heaven only”—to becoming real to you? 

If the past 100 years of scientific discovery affirm the reality of our interconnectedness, and if Jesus gave His life to demonstrate it for us 2000 years ago, we are compelled to realistically hold our Oneness as fact, not as ideal. 

New confession: Oneness is an incredible, unfolding reality to discover—not an overwhelming ideal.