Making Sense of Religion 5: Grace and the Structure of Reality

We began this series of talks by questioning the common assumption that religion exists mainly to explain things we don’t understand. If that were true, then as knowledge increases, the need for religion should decrease. But globally, today’s polls don’t support that logic.

We then looked at how religious scriptures work, and concluded that they don’t mainly provide answers, as you would expect if the purpose of scripture was to explain things. More often, they ask questions, and they tell stories to shape the way we see things and to form the discernment associated with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

We also saw how religious traditions grew up around these insights—sometimes preserving their inherent flexibility as questions and guides, but more often hardening them into rigid doctrines claiming to have the answer to everything.

David Bentley Hart is a contemporary theologian who also makes the point that the Bible is best understood not as a fixed delivery of answers but as a text that allows for revelation—something that must be engaged, interpreted, and lived in order to reveal what is real—what is truth, what is right, what is good. 

Last week, we noted that alongside global growth in religious affiliation, intelligence is also expanding. Not human intelligence, but machine intelligence and hybrid machine–human intelligence, and these intelligences are forming networks of decision-making that no single human being could ever fully understand. The problem is how multiple kinds of intelligence, interacting together, can remain stable over time. Judging by the fear mongering in the media, there is considerable worry about just that.

The result of greater intelligence and more forms of intelligence is that today we have more knowledge, more power, and more ways of control than ever before, and they are all growing exponentially. Yet neither knowledge, nor power, nor control by themselves guarantee that we will live well together and even love our neighbor, never mind love our enemy. There is no guarantee that the growth in intelligence will mean less conflict and help us avoid social and societal fragmentation and collapse. 

Why not? Why doesn’t higher intelligence guarantee that we will live happily ever after? The continued existence of ignorance and bad behavior forces us to ask how such imperfect beings as homo sapiens—who don’t know everything and don’t agree about everything—are able at all to build a civilization and live in a way that does not tear civilization apart.

If only we understood more—if we had more data, better models, sharper explanations—then surely we could make better decisions and avoid conflict. Couldn’t we? But we already know the limits of that. No individual, no group, no system can ever see the whole picture. There are always unknowns—some temporary, some permanent. New information does not necessarily resolve disagreement; it often creates new forms of it.

So maybe we cannot always agree, but surely we can at least enforce order. Build stronger systems. Create better rules. Align behavior more tightly. We can indeed do that and indeed we do do that, and it works—for a while. But control has its own limits. It depends on power, and power famously tends to concentrate and corrupt, to resist correction, and ultimately to provoke resistance. At larger scales, control becomes brittle. It breaks under pressure, or it produces outcomes no one intended.

So knowledge and control may be necessary but are not sufficient to eliminate misalignment. So again I ask: How come intelligent but limited and uncertain beings, often in disagreement, manage (for the most part) to live in a way that holds together? 

It takes overall alignment (versus misalignment) with reality, and reality includes not only the physical world—the things we can measure, weigh, and describe scientifically—but also the conditions within which we exist and relate to one another, such as the fact that we do not know everything, that for the most part we depend on one another, that our actions have consequences we cannot fully predict, that we are, in a very real sense, given to one another before we fully understand one another. We are not born outside this reality and then choose whether to enter it. We are born into it. So the question is not whether we will live within reality. The question is how do we, for the most part, manage to continue to live within it? 

Remember our talks about music? We spoke of attunement, a musical phenomenon that is not about control. It is not about forcing every instrument into rigid uniformity. It is about listening, adjusting, responding—so that different sounds can exist together without dissolving into noise. 

Something similar is true of human life. We are not simply following rules and executing plans. We are constantly adjusting—often imperfectly—to one another and to a world we don’t fully understand. And yet, somehow, much of the time, our lives—our music—does not collapse into chaos and disharmony.

Harmony is not something you can impose—it’s something you must enter into. You don’t force notes to agree; you tune them until they fit together. Attunement works the same way. It is not about getting everything right. It is about being in tune with something deeper than yourself—something that allows for difference without collapse. And that “something” is the glue that holds together what would otherwise fall apart.

To repeat: knowledge, control, and even our best attempts at alignment do not fully prevent misalignment, yet, most of the time, life does not collapse. People misunderstand each other yet find ways to go on. Communities disagree yet hold together more often than not. Even when they don’t, even in the presence of failure, confusion, or conflict, something allows relationship to continue. We usually take this for granted. Or we explain it as the result of moments of patience, forgiveness, tolerance, goodwill. But those are snapshots showing what alignment looks like. They don’t provide an explanation of why alignment is possible in the first place. 

We usually think of grace as something God does from time to time—“he” makes an exception for a sinner, shows a kindness or a moment of mercy to an enemy. But what if grace is not occasional, but fundamental, ever-present? Because when you look closely at what we’ve been describing, the same pattern keeps appearing: reality does not behave the way we expect. It doesn’t run on simple cause and effect. People don’t always get what they deserve. And yet, somehow, for the most part, things continue to hold together. Why do they hold together?

It seems to me that the religious traditions have given an answer—not as a theory, but as a recognition. They have called it grace, or something like it. And if that’s true, then grace is not just something God does. It may be the clearest way we have of describing what God is.

The word grace carries a lot of baggage. It can sound like a theological idea, or a spiritual reward, or something granted under special conditions. That is not how I am using it here. I am not speaking of grace as something to be believed in. I am speaking of grace as something we are already living within and can see clearly, as when a conversation does not end in blows after someone says the wrong thing, or when a relationship continues even after misunderstanding or even infidelity or treachery, and as when a community absorbs differences among its constituents without breaking apart.

None of these are guaranteed. Things can and do fall apart, obviously. But the fact that they so often do not fail completely—that repair is possible, that continuation is possible—suggests that we are not holding everything together by our own effort alone. It suggests that there is something built into reality—a margin, a generosity, a willingness to allow continuation in the presence of imperfection. Call it what you like. The traditions have called it grace.

We usually think that relationships hold together because we get things right—because we understand, because we behave well, because we follow the right principles. But experience tells a different story. Very often, relationships hold together despite the fact that we misunderstand, misjudge, or fail. Not always. But often enough to notice. 

How come? Why does everything not fracture immediately under the weight of our limitations? If grace is part of the structure of reality, then the answer is not that we are holding everything together by getting it right. The answer is that we are living within a reality that allows things to continue even when we do not get them right. And this is where the idea of attunement comes back in. 

If grace is like the underlying capacity for harmony, then attunement is how we participate in it. We don’t create harmony with reality. We respond to harmonics already vibrating in reality. We listen, we adjust, and sometimes we fail to adjust—yet the music does not stop at the first wrong note. It continues.

That does not mean that “anything goes.” It does not mean there are no consequences. It means that reality is not so fragile that it shatters at the first sign of imperfection, that the symphony of the spheres stutters to a stop because of the occasional bum note. And that matters more than we usually realize. Because if reality were that fragile—if everything depended on getting everything right—then no complex form of life, no community, no expanding intelligence could persist for long.

In the Gospels, Jesus is often approached by people who are confused, mistaken, or struggling—sometimes morally, sometimes socially, sometimes simply because they do not understand what is happening. Think of the Samaritan woman at the well, who does not understand what he is offering; Nicodemus who cannot grasp what being “born again” means; the adulterous woman; Blind Bartimaeus crying out from the margins; the rich young ruler who cannot let go; even Peter who both follows and falters. 

And again and again, what is striking is not that he waits for them to get everything right. He does not say: “First understand correctly, then you may be restored.” He does not say: “First correct your life completely, then you may belong.” Instead, with Jesus, restoration comes first. Sight is restored. Mobility is restored. Belonging is restored. And only then—sometimes—does understanding begin to follow.

We often interpret these as lessons about kindness, or forgiveness, or moral generosity. Those are part of it. But there is something deeper going on. He is acting as if relationship is not something that must be earned before it can exist. He is acting as if it is already there—waiting to be recognized. In other words, he behaves as if grace is not something he is introducing into the world, but something that is already part of how the world works. That is a very different claim.

Different faith traditions use very different language. They tell different stories. They emphasize different practices. And yet, at certain points (what science might call points of isomorphism), they seem to be pointing in a similar direction.

In the Christian tradition, the word is grace. In Daoism, the language pertaining to grace is different. There is less emphasis on forgiveness or restoration, and more on living in accordance with the Dao—the underlying way things are. But the idea is similar: there is a way to align with reality that does not depend on knowledge or force or control, and life goes better for us when we are in harmony with that Way rather than pushing against it. 

In process theology, the language shifts again. Grace is not understood as the output of some distant God, but as something like a continuous presence within reality itself. Like the “strange attractor” of chaos theory, it draws things out of chaos and toward coherence, toward relationship, toward what might be called the “good.”

The Christian, Daoist, and process theological ideas are hardly identical. They should not be forced into agreement. But they do suggest that across very different traditions, there is a recurring intuition that reality is not neutral in the way we often assume, that it is not simply a stage on which anything goes. They suggest instead that there is something about the way reality is put together that favors continuation over collapse, relationship over isolation, coherence over fragmentation. Different traditions name that “something” differently, but they seem to be pointing at the same feature.

But so what? Maybe all this is interesting, perhaps even true—but why does it matter? 

It matters now because the conditions under which intelligence operates are changing. For most of human history, the scale was limited. Communities were relatively small. Chaos was localized. The consequences of failure, while often severe, were contained. That is no longer the case. Our systems are now global, work at the speed of light, and are tightly interconnected. Decisions made in one place flash outward in ways that are difficult to predict or control. And increasingly, those decisions are not made by individuals alone, but by systems that combine human and machine intelligence.

In that setting, the limits we have been describing become more prominent. No one understands the whole system. No one controls it (though some would like to). And no one can guarantee perfect alignment across all parts of it. So the question we began with becomes more urgent: What allows such a system to remain coherent at all?

If everything depended on complete knowledge, it would fail. If everything depended on perfect control, it would fail. If everything depended on flawless alignment, it would fail. And yet, so far, in the bigger picture (and I stress “bigger picture”) of the evolution of the universe, nothing has failed. That does not mean it cannot fail, but it does suggest that something, some strange attractor, must be helping or allowing it to develop despite its imperfections and chaotic eruptions. 

I suggest that that “something” is grace; that grace is  part of the structure of reality and part of the operating environment of any sufficiently complex form of intelligence. It is not something we add, it is not merely a religious concept, but it is something we are already relying on.

We began this series of talks by asking whether religion is mainly an attempt to explain what we don’t understand. If what we have said is even partly true, then that cannot be right. Religion may not be trying, at its core, to explain the unknown. Rather, it may be trying to describe how to live within a reality that cannot be fully known or controlled. And in doing so, it points—sometimes clearly, sometimes through a glass darkly—to the deeper understanding that reality itself is not indifferent to whether things hold together or fall apart; that built into reality is a capacity for continuation in the presence of imperfection—of chaos, destruction, and sin—and that, in this sense, grace is a real structural element of the universe.

So we end where we began, but perhaps seeing things a little differently. Religion may not even be trying, at its core, to explain the unknown. It may be trying to help us live within a reality that cannot be fully known or controlled. And what keeps appearing—across traditions, across stories, across experience—is that this reality is not indifferent. It holds together not because we have understood it perfectly, or managed it successfully. It holds together because there is something within it that allows continuation in the presence of imperfection.

For that claim to hold, however, it must remain coherent. The goodness we attribute to reality—what religious language calls God—cannot mean something entirely different from what we recognize as goodness. If it did, the concept would collapse into something unintelligible. 

The language we have for that is grace. Not as a doctrine or an exception, but as something we are already living within, whether we know it or acknowledge it or not. The question then is no longer simply what we believe, but whether we are beginning to understand the nature of the reality we inhabit and what it might mean to live within it more fully.

If that is true, then religion will not disappear as knowledge advances and intelligence grows. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: religious affiliation is increasing globally.

So perhaps nothing fundamental has changed. If grace is not an exception but part of the structure within which intelligence operates—human or otherwise—then the deeper question is not whether intelligence will become more powerful, but whether it will remain attuned to the conditions that allow things to hold together.

And that reframes the question of AI. Why do we fear it? Not, perhaps, because intelligence itself is dangerous, but because misalignment—at scale and at speed—has immediate and possibly existential consequences. But are we worrying too much about distant possibilities, and not enough about present realities? I mean, people are already losing livelihoods, and systems capable of harm at a distance, including AI-guided weapons, are tearing apart little girls in school today.

What we call evil may not be a separate force at all, but the result of intelligences—human or otherwise—failing to remain in coherent relationship with the reality they inhabit.

The issue, then, is not whether intelligence will continue to grow. It will. The issue is whether, in that growth, the different forms that intelligence now takes—human, machine, and hybrid—can remain capable of attunement: to one another, and to the reality they share. It is a reality that includes grace. If, as I have argued throughout these talks, grace is part of that reality, then it is not something only humans live within. It is the condition within which any intelligence must operate.

C-J: I think that alignment—that balancing pendulum—is beginning to wake up. People have been at extremes, and you see in other countries, and even in the United States government, that they’re beginning to draw a line in the sand. They’re asking: how can we change what’s happening—the force of it, the rapidity of it? It’s not just about conscience; it’s about consequence.

You don’t have to align with any belief system to see the harm that’s being caused and the chaos that’s accelerating. I’m glad to see some recognition of that. And I think that’s what nature does too. A tornado comes through, then there’s a calm, and people begin to clean up. Globally, we have a lot to clean up.

Donald: Would it be appropriate to substitute the word spirituality instead of religion where you’ve used the term religion?

David: That’s a very interesting question. It didn’t occur to me, but I think it might work. My series has been about making sense of religion, but in a way, making sense of spirituality would probably fit just as well.

After all, we don’t fully understand spirituality either. In a sense, spirituality is at the root of religion. And certainly, where there is no religion, there is still spirituality—that I firmly believe. That underlying notion of a coherent universe with grace at its core is something that even those without religion can vaguely sense or understand.

Donald: I think of religion as something that becomes organized—a human structure—whereas spirituality is not a human structure. As I listened to David’s talk, I tried mentally substituting spirituality for religion, and I thought it might work better. People often say these days, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Some dismiss that as a casual distinction, but I think it’s important. It doesn’t change your fundamental idea, but it might help how it’s received.

David: I’ve long thought of myself as spiritual but not religious, and yet here I am participating every Sabbath for many years with a religious group. So I agree with you. That “spiritual but not religious” distinction may be misleading. If you are spiritual, then you are religious in the way I’ve been defining religion in this talk.

Donald: That may be the case. I would say we meet as a spiritual group. Sometimes I’m challenged, based on my religious traditions, by the conversation—but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It depends on how we frame it. I would leave it to Don whether this is an Adventist religious group or a group discussing spirituality.

Reinhard: I like the comment. I think religion is structure—organization. It teaches the members, and as members, if we follow the doctrine of that religion or denomination, then we are religious to that extent. But spirituality depends on us—how we perceive the teaching, how we worship God, how we relate to God and to others. That is spirituality. We grow, we worship God, we accept God as Creator, and we develop a relationship with the divine.

Looking at the history of religion, especially Christianity, we have to admit it has had a major impact on the world. Through colonization and global expansion, Christianity became predominant in many regions. Other religions tend to remain more localized. Christianity teaches love, grace, and moral behavior. But we also see problems when religions try to force their doctrine or reject others. That creates conflict. Some beliefs see others as enemies, even “infidels,” and that leads to division.

Yet the Bible teaches love—love for God and neighbor. The Ten Commandments go beyond prohibitions; they point toward a way of living that spreads love. That, I believe, is what Christianity is about.

David Ellis: I think you’re absolutely right. I’m reminded of the Good Samaritan. In a way, Jesus was saying the Good Samaritan is a good Christian. So if there can be a good Samaritan, there can also be a good Hindu, a good Buddhist—anyone.

And as you said, Jesus summed everything up: love God and love your neighbor.

Donald: I think Reinhard actually reinforces my concern about the word religion. Religion can involve control and power, whereas spirituality does not. Religion is about membership—being part of a group—whereas spirituality is broader. I’m not sure you can equate spirituality directly with the gospel, because then you narrow it again to a particular framework. These distinctions matter.

Kiran: When you talk about this invisible phenomenon that allows societies to coexist, I’m reminded of Jordan Peterson and his book 12 Rules for Life. He argues that although evil seems powerful, good is ultimately stronger because evil is self-destructive. Societies naturally move toward what sustains them. In game theory terms, different models of behavior compete, and the one that survives most often is the “goodness model.”

That resonates with your idea of grace as structural. But for me, coming from Protestant Christianity, grace is relational. It’s about restoring a relationship with the Creator. It’s not about playing the “goodness game” but about transformation—being remade through that relationship.

So my question is: in your model of structural grace, how do you account for entropy? The universe seems to be moving toward disorder. Can structural grace overcome that? And how does relationship fit into your framework?

David: I have to believe that the “heat death” theory is incomplete. In a closed system, entropy may be inevitable. But if grace is built into the structure of reality, I can’t envision it allowing the universe simply to run down. How that works is beyond me—but I don’t think entropy has the final word.

C-J: The universe is dynamic, and we’re only experiencing one dimension of it. Science is getting closer to understanding other dimensions. Even if entropy is real, that doesn’t mean the end of everything. It may just mean transformation. When we die, our bodies return to the earth and continue in another form. The universe may be the same—changing, evolving, not ending.

Don: What is the opposite of grace?

David: I would say it’s what I’ve been calling misalignment—refusing or failing to accept grace. Think of the wedding guest who entered without accepting the garment. In a sense, he rejected the grace offered to him. So the opposite of grace is non-acceptance of grace.

C-J: What if it’s more like a void—something imperceptible? Like dark matter: we know it’s there, but we can’t perceive it directly. If grace is everywhere, then its absence might not be something we “see,” but something we fail to perceive. Some people seem full of grace, others empty—unable to grasp it no matter how often they’re exposed to it. It may not be a moral failure but an inability to perceive.

Donald: Could the opposite of grace simply be selfishness? If we’re really talking about sin or the devil, then where selfishness prevails, grace is absent.

C-J: Sometimes I think grace is right there even in those situations. But that may be a religious way of framing it. For me, relationship with God is essential—it’s like oxygen. Others seem unable to connect, no matter what.

Donald: Would you call that a spiritual construct rather than a religious one?

C-J: I wouldn’t call spirituality a construct at all. Religion has boundaries; spirituality doesn’t. Religion says, “Come, but within these limits.” The divine says, “Come as you are.”

Kiran: Let me ask again: in David’a framework, does structural grace eventually make this world better? Or do you see, as in traditional Christianity, a transformation into a new world altogether?

C-J: I think transformation will happen, but perhaps in another dimension. I believe there are realities we don’t perceive. I don’t think this present world, as it is, is the final state—we will transcend it.

Reinhard: I think eventually all pain will go away, as Jesus said. Regarding the opposite of grace, perhaps it’s not a direct opposite but the result of rejecting grace—betrayal or disloyalty. We see this throughout history: Satan, Adam and Eve, Judas. Betrayal creates suffering. But sometimes what looks like rebellion—like Martin Luther—can lead to positive change. Still, disloyalty and selfishness are major sources of human problems.

Don: Next week we’ll begin a series on the questions God asks—questions like “Where are you?” to Adam and Eve, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” to Abraham, and “What are you doing here?” to Elijah. These are deep, existential questions, and we’ll explore them together. Kiran will begin the series.

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