To be human is to be limited. It is to be finite. If there is God, then by definition it is infinite. If we are essentially human at our core, on a voyage towards paradise, then we never get there. We would then be on an infinite journey.

Lots of ifs, but what else can we do from this human point of view but speculate? It seems a little depressing to me to contemplate a destination at which we may never arrive. But if it’s so, let’s look at the bright side of it.

Our capacity for growth would then be infinite. Unlike our brains and our bodies here, which stop developing at some point and start their inevitable decline, in a metaphysical sense, that would never happen. Love has been described as infinite expansion. If God is love, then we, too, must be contained within its infinite ‘space.’ That means we expand endlessly, too. Not a bad prospect for a human being.

The other positive is that all judgment of where we are along that continuum toward the infinite is useless. If we voyage along an endless road, then what does it matter where we are along that track? How far or how not far become meaningless comparisons, both in an ultimate sense and also in contrast to where others may be relative to ourselves. All evaluations are relative to an absolute objective that is infinite.

If we are on an infinite voyage to a destination at which we never arrive, then we participate in a process of change which never ends. This may be the true meaning of relativity in a philosophical sense; that all judgments are mere relative comparisons to everything else. This means relativity of morals, relativity of spiritual and intellectual progress. No one is ahead of anyone else on any scale which is meaningful, since the ultimate scale is immeasurable. No one is meaningfully winning any race, since the length of the racetrack isn’t something we can really quantify. All comparisons, and all judgments, fall away as relative and meaningless. Except for one: and that is the measure of ourselves today from where we were on the journey yesterday.

Judgment is beneath us, and so we are each above being judged. If we can’t judge ourselves, then certainly we can’t judge each other. Only the Ultimate which is our destiny can fairly apprise of us of where we are on the voyage. Since we are each infinitely distant from it, even God can’t judge where we are. The only thing it can apprise us of is the directions toward which we’re headed. Our headings may be the only important metric in a measureless crossing.

© 2020 by Michael C. Just