The Problem of Dualism

Jim Bradley is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is helping lead a multi-year project called Randomness and Divine Providence. In an interview about his work on the podcast On Being by Krista Tippet, he said:

“The belief that God is ‘out there’ is the basic dualism that is tearing us all apart. Our view of God as separate and distant has harmed our understandings of our sexuality; of our relationship to food, possessions, and money; and of our relationship to animals, nature, and our own incarnate selves. This loss is foundational as to why we live such distraught and divided lives. Jesus came precisely to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying, in effect, ‘To be human is good! The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God!’”
From Seasons of the Spirit

Where do you see God hiding? Where do you see God revealed? In a world that seeks to pigeon hole people as good or bad, right or wrong, how does understanding the world in grey tones change our encounters with one another and with God? How might we break down the “basic dualism” descrbied by Jim Bradley? Have we forgotten Jesus’ words: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23)? Or Paul’s words “In God we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)?
~ Jenni