The Great Highway of Life
Navigating the Bible through Metaphysics
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Life is not simple. The Bible is not simple. In trying to make sense of the Bible, there are many “easy read” versions. They are evidence that people really do want to understand its contents. I am one of those people. Using the easy-read paraphrased versions, while enjoyable, still gives me the impression that I am looking at someone else’s life experience, but not really my own. My questions are not so much about morality and how I should behave, but how was my whole being knit together from the beginning. Just as a baby’s nervous system is not complete at birth, so our psychological system is in its infancy as well. My task has not been to change the Bible text but to take a heightened approach to it, bringing to light a wider understanding of our own development as human beings. I am sure many have looked back upon their earlier experiences and asked, “Why did I do that? What was I thinking?” We were in a former stage of development, so our thinking corresponded to that stage. Research tells us that the adolescent brain is not configured the same as the adult brain. Teenagers will have different reasoning patterns at that time than they will have as their brain reconfigures into the adult. Is this in the Bible? Most assuredly. How do we find it? Allow me to show you! Beginning with the Hebrew Testament and looking at it through the eyes of a metaphysician, we can see the early stages of the psychological human as it begins its journey from infancy. If you are a parent you know the minute you forbid something to your child, that is the first thing the child will reach for. The child reaches beyond the limit to experience things for him or herself, often burning fingers or being hit when pulling objects off a table. This is not very different from the story of Adam and Eve. They were in a state of infancy and when God said “Do not eat of this fruit,” that was the first thing they reached for. We launch ourselves into the world of experience for better or worse, and try not to repeat the worse ones. Once we start on this journey of development and discovery, we can never go back. As the story goes there was a guard set at the gate to the garden so humanity could not return to the infant state for eternity. Was it a fall or a rising to the challenge of co-creatorship with God?
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About the Book
Did you awaken one day to your spiritual nature and wonder how you got there? The flower grows from a seed in the physical ground, pushes up toward the sunlight, growing a stem and leaves that reach for the light, and suddenly it blooms! It is a beautiful bloom that is nothing like the stem, leaves, seed and ground it came from. A friend asked if the flower is as surprised when it blooms as we are when we suddenly step into the light of our spirituality.
Would you like to explore your own development, mirrored to you by the deeper meaning of the Bible events and stories? The Bible gives us a clear pathway, a highway, not a confusing tangle of byways that lead nowhere. This is what Isaiah was telling us in Chapter 40:3.
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Navigating the Bible through metaphysics leads you book by book, chapter by chapter, and sometimes verse by verse on that highway of psychological development, from infancy to the gates of spirituality that open into the Gospels. There Jesus leads us forward with the example of his life and teachings showing us the kingdom of heaven. The Apostle Paul sees the Christ nature in each of us and endeavors to live it every day. Then we reach the book of Revelation. We trod the final steps to the New Jerusalem, the Christ consciousness, where we shed all earthly limitation and are totally prepared for God to return us to our true home.
About the Author
Rev. Carole M. Lunde is an ordained Unity minister. She was born in Mantua, Ohio, and attended Ashland College, Ashland, Ohio. She holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Western Michigan University. The Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, Missouri, graduated her in 1985 and she became ordained in her first church in Columbia, Missouri, in 1986. She has worked in business and the helping professions. Rev. Lunde has journeyed to the Holy Land twice as well as being well traveled through Egypt, Russia, Georgian Republic, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Belgium and Great Britain. In her thirty years of ministry, she has served the unique needs of three Unity churches in Columbia, Missouri, San Jose, California, and Lincoln, Nebraska. She currently lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and she teaches online courses for the Unity Urban Ministerial School located in Detroit, Michigan.