Micah Redding: Adventurer

People throughout the scriptures receive a call – a mission that infuses their life with purpose, and compels them through danger, sacrifice, and doubt to reach the ends to which they have been driven. Standing at the edge of a new world, Jesus issued just such a call to his disciples: to go into the entire world, proclaiming his message to all creation.

We’ve labeled this the “Great Commission”, and applied it as a blanket prescription for all Christians for all time. But in doing so, we’ve made it so general, so toothless, that it means almost nothing. In the modern world, it serves mainly as a tool for raising money.

The people who received this commission didn’t take it generally. They dropped what they had, sacrificed their possessions and their lives, and went into the entire known world, fiercely spreading the message they had seen with their own eyes.

Now, people often take “go into all the world” to mean “be where you are in a specific part of the world”. But that’s not how the first disciples took it; they actually went.

By making this into a general command to be achieved by the community as a whole, we’ve not only robbed this passage of its meaning, we’ve robbed ourselves of the ability to receive our own commissions – calls that are far more specific and engaging and dangerous, calls that involve us in bigger and better stories, and calls that make meaning out of who we are as individuals.

I’m a big believer in the multiverse. I can’t quite explain why, but from the first time I heard the concept, I knew it was true. It just made deep, intuitive sense.

Sometimes I have trouble understanding why most people find it counter-intuitive and troubling, when it fills me with wonder and amazement. But I suppose that is to be expected. New discoveries are always problematic to the world in which they were born. The theory of relativity, the concepts of quantum mechanics, and the idea of the big bang all met with extreme mental resistance when they were introduced. But a generation or so later, most people understand and accept all of these ideas rather intuitively.

Most of us are a little behind on quantum physics, and very few of us have really been introduced to the concept of multiple universes co-existing. But in another generation, not only will these ideas be taken as intuitive, but these ideas will change the way people look at the world.

I can see a new mentality coming; one that rests in its understanding of the vastness of the multiverse, and in that light, lives differently. What I want to do, is to sketch out what that mentality will look like.

The vastness of reality

If Copernicus changed our viewpoint on the arrangement of the universe, the 20th century changed our understanding of the vastness of the universe. No longer is the earth or the solar system large in the scheme of things. Instead, we float on the outskirts of a vast galaxy, in a sea of galaxies just as unfathomable, in a universe that is nearly 20 billion light-years across.

Just ONE light-year is more than 5,878 billion miles in empty space, more than 65,000 times the distance from the earth to the Sun. So the width of our universe is the distance from the earth to the Sun times 65,000, times 20 billion. Sorry that those numbers don’t help much. We inevitably shrink our conception of reality due to our own lack of experience with things that big.

But, if you can, try to grasp the vastness of the universe for just a moment. Then turn your mind around and conceive of a beginning point from which everything sprang – not only our universe, not only every variation of our universe, but every variation of the very idea of universe itself. Every being that could ever exist, every world conceivable by human mind, every point throughout infinite space and time, not only exists, but exists in vastness so unfathomable as to stun the very sense of existence.

All that exists stretches so high above us; and when it reaches the top of our perception – it stretches for an infinity of worlds beyond.

The nature of existence

Throughout human history, the quiet debate has raged, asking:

Is the world caring, or heartless? Is it cruel, or gentle?

If the suffering in the world has encouraged many to label it violent and evil, the realization that we are small in the order of things has only intensified that perception. What has gone so largely unnoticed is that existence itself bends towards creation, proliferation, diversity.

A beautiful theology in the middle ages was called The Great Chain of Being. The idea was that God was loving, and a loving being all by himself is compelled to create something which it can love. But God, being all-loving, couldn’t just create one thing; instead, he created everything which can be loved, from the single-celled organisms which can fathom nothing, to humans who can contemplate their own existence, to beings of ever greater capability and complexity…the chain stretching all the way from nothingness up to very God himself. The concept was that if God was, then he was infinitely loving, and infinitely creative.

Unfortunately, the idea fell out of favor when it was realized there were gaps in the animal kingdom. The chain was apparently missing a few links, and so dropped out of the limelight.

But we now know that the chain does exist, and does stretch all the way from nothingness up to infinity, including in it every being which could ever be loved, in this universe or in any other. The nature of existence is creation, is giving life; and the primary thing which existence exists to do, is to give life to every being possible!

Things are sometimes hard, and suffering is real. But beneath it all is the great river of existence, giving life to everything which can be named, from here to infinity.

Living beyond choice and fate

For centuries, people have argued over free will and determinism. The most reasonable proponents of free will have admitted that the world is probably a mixture of the two, while most determinists have argued that the very concept of free will makes no sense. After all, everything in this world has a cause, and if we could know the cause fully enough, we could know with absolute certainty what would happen.

The advent of quantum physics shook up the balance a little, suggesting that not only are there things that seem to behave randomly, but there are things that are ultimately unknowable. Still, determinism held on strongly in both philosophy and science.

Contemplating life in the multiverse will require going beyond this dichotomy between free will and determinism. It turns out there is both choice and fate, and not in tension; in the multiverse determinism is precisely what gives rise to free will. Classical determinism supposed that there was one universe and one history, determined in a single line from beginning to end; the multiverse shows us that what is predetermined is the existence of every possibility, every history, every possible choice a person could make. And so the deterministic equations unroll, continually unleashing new possibilities and choices by the literal infinities.

A new sense of identity

Traditionally, a person’s sense of identity was held to be the one constant that remained unchanged throughout their life. But the past hundred years has challenged this significantly. From geographical mobility to the collision and diffusion of cultures, from the breakdown of racial divisions to the changing roles of people within society, from new theories of human origins to new understandings of the mind and the brain, people are faced with a more complex sense of identity than ever before.

We now understand that a person’s body is constantly changing its composition. We now understand that a mind is constantly changing too; and we’ve seen people with split brains, multiple personalities, and all kinds of conceptions of who they are.

There are two directions we can move. On the one hand, we can affirm that there is something at our core that is the true us, that is deeper than our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions. We can shrink the boundaries of self to this perfect, shiny point; nothing that extends outwards from it is truly part of it. It is pure and alone. So we are ourselves, whether we lose hands or feet or skin cells or even memories; the center-point of self remains.

On the other hand, we can affirm that our self is messy and inclusive. We can extend the boundaries of our self to include the past versions of ourself, with our former perceptions and personality traits. We can extend the boundaries of our self to include future selves, and selves that could have been. We can extend the boundaries of our self to encompass the infinite branching tree of existence that starts at our creation, and stretches all the way to the end of time.

In the end, I think either direction brings us around to the same place. Much like seeing in 3D, our perception of self in the future will have to involve maintaining a dual focus on the central moment of awareness, and the vast expanse of what we ultimately encompass.

There is a lot of confusion about what exactly Jesus teaches us to be. Many people on TV would suggest that Jesus came to teach us how to be happy. There is a lot of validity to that thought, but somehow it seems a little shallow.

Other people suggest Jesus came to teach us how to be rich. Like Job’s friends, they suggest that your riches (or lack thereof) are a measure of your spiritual success. Some people would frame Jesus as offering us an “out” from this life, with the promise of something much better after we die. Still others would say Jesus teaches us to suffer.

To me, all of these ring hollow, or come off a bit masochistic. I would like to suggest another way of framing what Jesus teaches.

History consists of kings and heroes. The kings amass power, conquer enemies, build kingdoms, and enslave their rivals. They usually die at the hands of their power-hungry family members, or manage to survive into old age by killing off those who are perceived as threats. Heroes, on the other hand, usually revel in life. They hold onto things lightly, and pass freely between the comforts of luxury and the open fields. They make tough decisions, they sacrifice, they suffer excruciating pain so that the life of their family, their people, or their world will be changed. Heroes change, and they change the world around them. Heroes usually die in rescuing others, or live to old age, surrounded by the people they sacrificed for.

Conventional thinking attributes the greatness of society and civilization to the acts of kings. But when we look a little deeper, almost every great change in history has come from lone figures, moving against the grain of their society, changing the world around them as they went. Kings rewrite history to take the credit, but they never originate change. Change is the poison of kings.

Solomon can teach you to be a king, but he can’t teach you to be a hero. And while the rest of the world might envy being Solomon, Jesus told his followers that someone even greater than Solomon was among them. Someone who could enact real change in the world, someone who reveled in life, who could make the difficult decisions and sacrifices necessary to reshape the world.

He was a hero, and he taught them to be heroes.

Ever since I was 15, I’ve identified myself primarily as a songwriter. It is what I do, and who I am.

And ever since I began performing, I’ve begun segmenting myself. There is the side of me that performs and travels, and does ridiculous things in random midwestern states. There is the side of me that is introspective, that writes about the things I see, and tries to see the world differently. And there is the side of me that is all logic and precision and theology and politics and economics all blended together.

And it’s always a difficult thing to decide how much of each one I should share with the world.

As a musician, I’m expected to do things. Play big concerts, tour around the world, meet famous people, and maybe even cause a few international incidents along the way. Since I’m also a musician who writes songs, I’m perhaps expected to see things a little differently. But I don’t really think there’s any true cultural precedent for a musician who thinks critically about things.

This makes sense. We don’t turn to Bill O’Reilly to find music that stirs our souls, and we don’t turn to Fergie to learn about international politics. By and large, we want our public figures segmented into careful categories.

But I don’t think I’m really able to segment myself like that anymore. For me, thinking bold and interesting new thoughts, analyzing the political and religious and cultural messages I hear, having new insights about the world, writing music, and performing for others, all came meshed together. There is some kind of organic symbiotic relationship between all these aspects of my life. And every time I’ve tried to carefully box each segment up, they begin bleeding together, overrunning their barriers, and meeting in a confusing mess on the floor.

My main resolution this year is to do nothing I’m not passionate about. I think that means taking down some of the walls I’ve built. I think it means letting things converge.

I believe in convergence. Progress in technology is almost always about the convergence of previously unrelated things; lately, many people’s phones have become their computers. Blending styles has always been the way music has progressed; despite radio’s failures, we are the heirs of a broad and rich spectrum of musical influences, stretching back through centuries. The convergence of different ethnicities helped to make America great, and the convergence of science, art, philosophy, and religion sparked what came to be known as the Renaissance.

Convergence isn’t just a way to kick off new creative movements. It’s also the reality of humankind. We live in a rapidly converging world, where the actions of tribal people in remote parts of the earth deeply impact the lives of urban citizens in first-world countries. In the past, many would disregard the needs of strangers, expecting never to see those people again. Now, it is increasingly likely that the people who are strangers today will encounter you again and again, as neighbors, coworkers, or people you meet online. For humanity, all of our individual paths are converging.

There is something deep about reality, I think, that works to take all of its far-flung pieces, and bring them back together. Even as we diverge and diversify, our worlds collide. Even as the universe spreads outward, it becomes more interconnected.

So I am going to try to stop fighting. I’m going to try to let go of my struggle against gravity, and let all the pieces of my life turn and plummet back together. And we’ll see what happens.

Just a short list of things that have inspired me to really feel life, even if only briefly.

A New Earth
…made me look at leaves differently, made me feel alive
http://eckharttolle.com/a_new_earth

The Inescapable Love of God
…begins theologically in depth, but ended making me feel the purpose of everything I experience
http://www.thomastalbott.com/the_inescapable_love_of_god.html

A video about deciding Who You Are
A PG-rated talk about focusing on your creative work, and not getting distracted by people selling stuff
http://www.43folders.com/2009/10/22/who-you-are

The last one is by no means as deep as the other stuff. But it is a video you can watch right this moment, and it inspired me to start writing a song tonight.

-micah

The latest thought-provoking release from the band that invented Rock Philosophy.

The Physics Of Immortality

Just to let you know, I do have another blog, in which I am busy answering all the secrets of the universe. Just beware – religion is involved. Ooooh…scary.

Currently, I am addressing the problem of why evil exists in the world. I actually do have an answer, even though no one else in history has had one. Other people have pretended to have one, but as I show, they don’t really.

Do I sound presumptuous? Well, I warned you.

-micah

In our society, people often want to blame their problems on things outside themselves. Nice example.

-micah

Hmmmmmm…

-micah

(PS. Thanks to my friend Andy Ogle for pointing this out to me)

So the other day I went to court. It turns out that we had tried to buy a house a while back, and when the bank appraised the house, they came back and said, “it ain’t worth that much”. So the deal fell through, and our offer was legally broken.

Well, thanks to a nice little thing called earnest money, the story doesn’t end there. The earnest money should have come back to us; the contract was broken through no fault of our own, and the contract specifically stated that in that situation, we would get the earnest money back.

But the seller didn’t see it that way. They did some shady things, our agents dropped the ball a bit, and at the end of the day, they had a decent chance of winning their argument in court.

On the day of the hearing, we showed up, preparing to argue this ourselves. The opposing party showed up with their high-powered, slick-dealing, somewhat shady real estate agent. It was a David vs. Goliath battle. And then the court said we’d have to reschedule, and sent us out to discuss a possible date.

So we talked to these people, and they tried their very best to intimidate us, to subtly threaten to come after us with damages, blah blah blah…

And I decided to let it go.

It was a lot of money for me, but not THAT much money. Not enough to want to go through the court process again; not enough to want to spend my time thinking about it; not enough to make me want to devote my mental energy to these shady, scummy people.

So I wrote it off. I KNEW that I shouldn’t have gotten involved in the court system in the first place; I knew it wasn’t a place I wanted to be.

“Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.” – Jesus, Matthew 5:25

Jesus took a dim view of the legal system. He suggested alternative ways for resolving issues…and if those didn’t work, he told people to just let it be.

Might be something I should take into consideration.

-micah
http://www.reddingbrothers.com/