This is just a side note, not part of the current series on sexual identity.
Recall that the term “quantum” refers to the smallest possible increment of something. In science and technology it refers to working on things at the level of the smallest measurable particles, and takes advantage of the lowest level of measurable charges on those particles. By extension, the term means the lowest level of something, getting down to the fundamental meaning of things. Thus, in philosophical terms, “quantum” means the root nature of the thing itself so that we can re-evaluate the implications on a higher level. Too often we rip through our conversations with little or no connection to the basic concepts, and it’s seldom worse than conversations about faith and religion.
The root nature of empathy is having some sense of what the other person is feeling, and by implication, something of what they are thinking. Our Father revealed His character as fundamentally compassionate — “God is love.” His Son always seemed fully aware of the throngs and their general bewilderment at what they were taught by their national leaders versus what their hearts told them. Connected with the deep perversion of Jewish religion was the loss of Covenant blessings. Where were the promises of Jehovah? Didn’t the Books of Moses and other writings indicate life should have been different from what they lived? The dissonance was downright painful and Jesus knew His Father didn’t intend to fix things wholesale on the human level. He knew that the only path of redemption was entirely individual, one-on-one with the Creator.
The transition from national identity on earth to a divine identity in Heaven, and the recognition that they were most certainly not the same thing, was more than most Judeans would be able to handle. Israel never quite grasped the necessity of taking their truth to the whole world, but turned inward and jealously guarded it. The barrier was supposed to be the Flaming Sword of ultimate truth, not the simple outward rituals of entering the Covenant. It wasn’t just Jewish religion that rejected that truth, but something in human nature itself rejects it.
While that one-on-one with God was in the Law of Moses, it was buried under centuries of false teaching. It takes a small shelf of books to explain how the rabbinical schools had gotten so disastrously off course that they expected the Messiah to conquer all political entities on the earth and make Israel a global empire. The entire human race would serve Judeans as slaves and all the wealth and comfort imaginable would miraculously be theirs. That was a pretty wild perversion of the shalom God promised under the Law. Returning to the opulence of Eden was meant to be a symbol of better things in a higher realm of existence, not some kind of perverted personal hedonism of “heaven on earth.”
So when Christ came to correct all this, He and His teaching were rejected. The Jews demanded fulfillment of their fleshly appetites, not an escape from the prison of human lust. And it would take another small shelf of books to explain how that perversion was slipped into Christian teaching over a couple of centuries after the Ascension. But it is now a dominant influence on Western Christian thinking, because it merely puts a different paint job on the same materialism fundamental to the whole of Western Civilization.
Recovering just a tiny measure of that divine empathy Christ taught shatters the earth under our feet, because it demands a radical change in our basic thought processes. It makes us utterly alien to those around us. It should also make us fully conscious of how difficult it is for those around us to deal with what we could tell them, if only they could hear. We make no pretense of fixing organized religion. We damned sure don’t plan to change human politics. We count ourselves blessed if the Lord allows us to see a change in understanding in just a few, one or two here and there, as we follow Him through this world.
Quantum empathy includes giving people time and space to wallow in their chains of self-deception until the Lord awakens some recognition in them that they can be free just as we are free.
