I prompted AI/SI below to explain how a nonreligious, unconditional God is equally present in every human life, gently and non-coercively urging us to deny the animal inheritance that is in all of us, notably the impulses to tribalism, domination, and retaliatory destruction.
Referencing Process theology, AI/SI explains how God urges us to respond to our better human impulses to (1) the full inclusion of all people as equals in the one human family, to (2) refuse domination/control of others and instead to serve one another, and to (3) engage merciful restoration of the failures of others, while holding all responsible for individual behavior.
God urges us to be truly humane in how we treat others, to be just like the supremely humane God. That was the concluding statement of Historical Jesus in Luke 6:27-36. He listed examples of how we should respond unconditionally to offenders/enemies, holding them responsible for bad behavior while also “Being unconditionally merciful just as God is unconditionally merciful”.
This it how we fulfill the authentic “Hero’s Quest” to engage the battle against the monster/enemy that is inside each of us (Solzhenitsyn) as our part in the true liberation of humanity. Engaging the real battle of life that takes place inside each of us is how we contribute to the grand story of all humanity making the exodus from our animal past and progressing toward a more humane future in liberal democracy civilization.
I prompted the AI/SI to comment on how humanity moved from the profound insights of sages like Historical Jesus, to the Enlightenment principles of human freedom and equality, and then to practical applications in the laws and institutions of contemporary liberal democracy systems of organizing human societies. This is about how each of us contributes to winning the battle for good against evil (see AI responses in the section below).
Here is a sample of comments from the AI summaries on “Open or Process theology”, again- a “nonreligious” theology.
“A constantly present deity, not an occasional visitor.
“A Presence whose first and dominant feature is love without conditions.
“Status, conquest, and institutional rank are the impermanent things; the felt quality of how persons treat one another is what is conserved.
“Each life is its own center, not a subplot in someone else’s story.
“Small acts are not cancelled by the fact they never become public.
“Every occasion in the world (i.e. every moment of every human life) is felt by God. Its achievement of value is preserved in the divine life.
“Creation is ongoing; God continuously offers possibilities and creatures continuously contribute novelty that God then takes in.
“God is an ever-present, non-coercive lure toward the best available possibility, and an all-inclusive recipient of whatever is actually lived.
“Mundane detail is not meaningless… The world’s moments are not observed from outside; they are felt and kept.
“God is affected by what creatures do and suffer.
“Every life registers equally in ultimate reality.
“Small acts retain weight because they enter a larger conservation of value.
“Equality of worth does not mean identical achievement.
“Moments of experience… called ‘actual occasions’… A human life is a stream of such moments… ordinary hours are not wasted. They become part of the concrete history that is taken up and kept.
“Agency is real and not to be overridden…The future is open and jointly shaped… (Process theology is) the picture of influence without domination and of lives that are not simply cancelled when they end.
“God is already present in the full range of human life… God is not impassable or unaffected.
“Process theology offers a picture of God that emphasizes persuasion over force… persuasive presence.
“The ‘Fellow-sufferer’ motif adds that ordinary experience is not discarded, it is included… every life registers, small acts are not meaningless.
“God feels every moment in human lives and preserves the achieved value in the divine life, so that nothing of genuine worth is simply lost.
“(Free human agents) can accept, modify, or ignore the divine persuasion in every moment of life… Freedom and risk are therefore built in… finite agents really decide.
“Divine influence works by presenting better possibilities… God is not the unilateral determiner of every outcome.
“God is already present in the full range of human life- its creativity, its suffering, its moral struggle- rather than standing outside it as a distant judge or occasional intervener.”
And much more in the section below…
(End of sample comments)