It’s been said that you can’t know where you are, let alone know where you’re going until you know here you’ve been. So, how can we be attempting to go “Beyond Theism“, if we don’t really know what theism IS or WAS: or how we got here in the first place? Well, let me try and give a brief overview from where I sit. Caution! You are about to enter a “no spin zone“.
Taking the non religious approach to when mankind really starting “walking” this earth, I’ll begin somewhere around the 50-100,000 years ago time frame, which is when homo erectus lived. That is a historical-social phrase and not a sexual gender application. Smile! 
“Homo Sapiens R Us!”
As such, they embraced an animalistic consciousness. Can you say golden retrievers? They lived, they died! They did not have any awareness of the fact that they would one day die- death was not a concept to them. They just WERE! But at some point (enter the story of Genesis) God breathed (Gen. 2:7) an “I AM” into them and gave them spirit life. Translation: they now were aware that they had limits, especially after feasting at the tree of knowledge. Whereas the animals were conscious, only this new spirit man was conscious of his consciousness.
And then all hell broke lose! We’re gonna die! 
How can this be? Is there any way out? Could we give back that “apple“? How about if Adam slaps Eve and tells her no no, you must be a good girl.
I’ve got it. Looking around and seeing the universe as it is, how incredibly it has been put together, surely there is a higher power than us. Hey, the Twelve Step people know that’s true. Why not we people? Okay, so there is a God. He has more power than we do. He probably gave us life and created all. He’s hiding out there behind one of those planets. Remember, this is thousands of years ago and up to 500 years ago: pre-Copernicus.
So over the thousands of years (pick a number), mankind developed His God- his idea of God. If you lived in the West, He became a Christian god. If you lived in the Middle East He was a Muslim god. If you lived in the East He was a Buddhist, Hindu, Tao, Zorastarian, you name it god. Of course the Jews developed the most sophisticated monotheistic God who loved you if you did this. Or, he’d kill you if you did that. Somehow this was better than that. Must be like the Eastern yin-yang things.
John Shelby Spong says it this way, “Theism is a definiton of God which has journeyed with self-conscious human beings from primitive animism to complex modern monotheism.”
Nonetheless, He’s OUT THERE! Someone IS because we ARE!
Theism has served mankind for thousands of years now. Personally I think there is more. I no longer think He is out there, but in here! And therein is why I’ve adopted this particular web site: that I might write about my journey in becoming intimate with HIM, that is ME. A journey you can take with me as long as you keep reading.
A journey beyond theism!
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