Tree of Life, Future of Faith: Where Do We Go From Here

Tree of Life, Future of Faith: Where Do We Go From Here

Tree of Life, Future of Faith: Where Do We Go From HereFrom Matthew 19 back to Genesis, from Joe Atman’s “philosophical war” to ʻAbdu’l‑Bahá’s Adam/body and Eve/soul, this series has circled one central claim: God’s original intention is oneness. We have traced how hardness of heart, conceptual golden calves, and disordered attachments have torn that oneness—in marriages, in souls, in churches, in cultures.

The question now is: What future does this vision open? Where do we go from here?

1. From the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life

In Eden, humanity reaches prematurely for “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”—for a godlike vantage point without godlike character. We chose concepts over communion, our own judgment over obedient trust. The consequence was exile from the Tree of Life, from that direct, life‑giving corescence with God.

Yet Scripture doesn’t end with a guarded garden; it ends with an open city:

“On either side of the river was there the tree of life…
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:2)

The story moves from one Tree of Life in a closed garden to a Tree of Life accessible at the heart of a renewed creation. The “nations”—our scattered, Babel‑confused, Sodom‑wounded communities—are promised healing.

In terms of this series:

• The Tree of Knowledge represents our autonomous, concept‑driven attempts to master good and evil.
• The Tree of Life represents living, relational participation in God’s will—“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

The future of faith depends on this shift: from merely handling religious concepts about oneness to actually eating from the Tree of Life—letting God’s living Word reorder how we love, marry, parent, build community, and read Scripture.

2. Faith as Evidence: Living Forward into the Unseen

In my parallel series over the past 9 Sundays on Hebrews 11, I explored how:

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith is not blind loyalty to old concepts; it is embodied trust in God’s revealed intention, even when it cuts across our culture, our instincts, and our fears. It is choosing to:

• Treat “male and female… one flesh” as substance, not sentiment.
• Let God’s creational pattern be “evidence” against both Sodom‑like autonomy and Babel‑like rigidity.
• Act today in ways that align with the unseen future God promises—a healed oneness we have not yet fully experienced.

Every time a husband and wife repent of hardness and move toward genuine mutuality; every time a divorced person seeks deep inner healing instead of cynical self‑protection; every time a church holds truth and mercy together in its teaching on family—that is faith functioning as evidence of a world still to come.

3. Interfaith Futures: One River, Many Streams

This series has consciously spoken to Christians, Bahá’ís, and seekers. I am convinced that the future of faith will be shaped by those willing to see one River of divine revelation flowing through many historical streams:

• Moses insisting on covenant fidelity, yet regulating divorce for hardness of heart.
• Jesus calling us back to “the beginning” and exposing our conceptual traps.
• Paul clarifying that the abandoned believer is “not bound,” and that worshiping the creature distorts sexuality.
• Bahá’u’lláh and ʻAbdu’l‑Bahá calling humanity to the oneness of humankind, the equality of men and women—the “two wings”—and to symbolic readings of Eden that expose our inner attachments.

A Hermeneutics of Harmony in the interfaith arena will mean:

• Letting these voices correct our golden calves—whether Christian triumphalism, secular reductionism, or Bahá’í complacency.
• Seeking applications of oneness that are socially concrete: equal education for girls and boys, family policies that protect children, community life that supports marriages instead of isolating couples.
• Building collaborative spaces where we test our concepts in the shared laboratory of service, always bringing our results back to Revelation for refinement.

4. Personal Futures: Your Next Step Toward the Beginning

Finally, the future of faith is not only global; it is intensely personal. The Tree of Life stands before each of us in very ordinary decisions:

• Will I let God’s Word, not my wounded concepts, define what covenant means for me now—single, married, divorced, or remarried?
• Will I seek healing for the “two wings” in my own home—strengthening both masculine and feminine gifts so the family bird can finally fly?
• Will I allow God to “restructure the relationship” when I’ve chosen substandard paths, instead of demanding He bless my golden calves?

From Eden to my parents’ divorce, to the WCG schism, to my own remarriage and renewed family life, I have seen this pattern: every time I have tried to build my own gate of God, confusion followed. Every time I have humbled myself before what He actually said “from the beginning,” costly as it was, a new measure of life emerged.

The Tree of Life in our time may look like very simple, very hard acts:

• Confessing hardness where you have normalized it.
• Seeking counsel and community support to realign your family life with God’s intention.
• Choosing, in your congregation or Bahá’í community, to be a voice for both truth and tenderness around marriage and gender.

The promise is not that we can reconstruct Eden by our own efforts. It is that, as we walk in faith, the life of that future City—where the leaves of the Tree heal the nations—begins to seep back into the present.

As you look ahead, in light of everything we’ve explored, what is one specific arena—your marriage, your parenting, your participation in a faith community—where you sense God inviting you to take a concrete step back toward “the beginning”?