There once lived an environmentalist named Ernie. One day he was sitting on his country porch admiring and contemplating the beauty of nature and her ecological wisdom. Everything in nature was interconnected, interrelated and interdependent.
Then Ernie had an unusual thought. He was a believer in God and an eternally heavenly kingdom beyond this realm. Since heaven was full of spiritual beings and angels, Ernie wondered if the spiritual world was an extension of the biosphere into a non-physical domain. If it was, heaven must also be a part of a grand holistic design. In fact, God’s heaven must surely be the source of ecological principles and sustainability.
He wondered how such a kingdom of angelic beings could be interconnected, interrelated and interdependent with the rest of physical nature. How can heaven and its angelic environment be in harmony and unity with the earth’s environment?
Suddenly a beautiful angel appeared out of the woods. She seemed to be floating above the ground as she approached Ernie.
“The Lord God has sent me to teach you about the bio-connection between earth and heaven,” said the bright glowing angel.
Ernie was so interested in gaining new ecological insights that he quickly passed from being startled to being intellectually intrigued.
The angel then told Ernie that his brain and mind operated on the same level as her stomach. This bit of news was quite foreign to Ernie. “What does that mean?” questioned Ernie.
“Here, let me show you,” said the angel with a loving smile. The angel then moved closer to Ernie until she actually superimposed her miraculous spiritual body over his physical body. But the angel was elevated in such a way that Ernie’s forehead was matched up with the angel’s stomach.
“Now that my stomach and its functions are aligned to your brain, take another look at Mother Nature out there.“
As Ernie now looked at the trees, plants, flowers, birds and butterflies that were all around him, he sensed an elevation of his mind that allowed him to look at nature in a new and unexpected way. It was as though his mind could now digest the sensory inputs of the circumfluent world to higher powers. Under this new angelic influence, everything in the natural world seemed to convey a higher, spiritual message. He was amazed at how nature and its ecological processes were so conducive to such abstraction. He now understood the profound meaning behind the ancient saying “As above, so below.”
“There is a correspondence between heaven and earth—that is how they are lawfully connected,” asserted the angel.
“Wow!” exclaimed Ernie. “The perfection of unity through diversity in nature is a physical analog and mirror of God’s unifying love perfecting itself through truth’s power to create distinctiveness.”
“As you see, there can also be an organic connection between heaven and earth through us. All information and sensory impressions are food for the brain,” she replied. “However, we angels can digest this information further—in the same way your human stomach digests ordinary terrestrial foodstuffs, breaking it down to its constitutional elements and creating new vitamins, hormones and proteins.” She continued, “When your brain and mind are properly and organically connected to God’s heaven and angels it, too, can ruminate and digest information on a much deeper level. This is why the human mind has a capacity for symbolic thought.”
Maintaining their unique bio-alignment, the angel then took Ernie inside his house and pointed to a book in his bookshelf. “Now see what happens when you read that book,” she said, pointing to a book on prehistoric human art.
As Ernie flipped through the photographs of various ancient petroglyphs and cave paintings his eyes widened with surprise. “Holy cow, prehistoric humans had their minds aligned with angelic stomachs! All this artwork is symbolic, containing deeper, spiritual knowledge. Gee, these early humans were smarter than us, in spite of all our technological advances!” blurted Ernie.
“One more important lesson,” said the angel. She pointed to another, larger book on the shelf. It was the Bible.
Ernie began to read the biblical narratives, and as his mind was still assisted by the angel’s digestive system, the literal meaning of words, like food, were broken down and metabolized to reveal higher meanings. Ernie was overwhelmed by this sudden increase in content. Holy Scripture now offered him a more profound look at God’s grand holistic design. Not only did God’s Holy Word contain special details of human salvation, but also details of how the Holy Word was made flesh when the Lord was in the world and fully glorified Himself. What intrigued Ernie the most was that all this new information was arranged according to universal organic processes!
Ernie was truly stunned by how stupid the human race had become.
