The Divine Spark

  
   

The concept of a “divine spark” hit the news recently, when one national leader reportedly chastised another for calling certain vicious gang members “animals,” as they, like everyone, has a divine spark within. I was surprised to see a mystical idea expressed in that arena.

So I decided to explore the question: What is a divine spark? According to Christian author William Lane Craig, the idea of a divine spark, most common in Gnostic and mystical religions, is that every human being possesses either a connection with God or a "part" of God. The goal of life, then, is to allow the divine spark to influence us toward love, peace, and harmony. Upon death, the divine spark returns to God

Lane writes,  even though each of us possesses a soul-spirit, or divine spark, only a person redeemed by Christ can truly connect with God, so without a relationship with Jesus there can be no light or “divine spark.”

Ernest Holmes doesn’t specifically use the term “divine spark,” but teaches that we are all spirit having a human experience. We don’t have to be redeemed by Christ; the spark is there, we are expressions of God in action, and we have within us a power that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life. 

So if everyone has this divine spark within, and God is all Good, how do we reconcile this belief with the viciousness, the evil, the atrocities, the suffering and more that we see in our world? 

Holmes says that man is made out of and from Life and must partake of the Divine Nature from which he springs. We are what we are, and we use this nature for better or for worse. We have volition and choice.

Surely if God or Universal Intelligence is imbued with goodness, he says, then it could not ordain that man ultimately be other than a perfect expression life. But God could not make an automatic individuality, and this explains why man suffers and behaves in discordant ways.

So man has free will, free to discover the divinity within, or not.  Potential man is just as perfect as the inherent God. The only way God can evolve a spontaneous individual is to let him alone and allow him to awaken to himself. Man must be created with the possibility of limitless freedom and left alone to discover himself.

We must know that the Universe is for us and not against us, he continues. But you might say, “the Universe is NOT for us, look at the evil, the limitation, lack and physical pain and anguish of the human race.” ....We shall have to learn that evil is neither person, place nor thing of itself, but is an experience which we are allowed to have...because of our divine individuality...until through negative experiences we learn to use the Law affirmatively. If we are free we can choose more than one course of action as an experience.

He adds that there is no sin but a mistake, no punishment but inevitable consequence. Wrong doing must be punished by the Law of Cause and Effect.  The age-long discussion of the problem of evil will never be answered until we realize that evil is not a thing of itself. It is simply a misuse of the Law of Freedom.

Evil will disappear when we no longer indulge in it, he concludes Then, and not until then, will the problem of evil be solved for the entire race. So while a vicious gang member, or other apparent evil doer, has a spark of divinity within, he has not claimed it, is not expressing it, and his behavior is in discord with the perfect Goodness of the Divine.

Thus, if we judge that person as an “animal,” which seems a blanket insult to all animals, it is the discordant, vicious behavior we are calling out. His divine spark is hidden.

And so it is.

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp6b8WIX1Po
Treatment and talk start at 9:45