“God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.” Desmond Tutu
My sister died recently. A well-meaning friend told me that if my sister knew God, then she was safe in Heaven now and completely healed. “If”. I didn’t miss the entrance requirement in her version of Heaven. And I didn’t miss her sure personal knowledge of not only the residence, but also the policy and practice of God Almighty.
Another friend, when I made a reference to my belief that we are to love all people, whatever their religion or if they have no religion, because we are all children of God, responded “but we are not all children of God. We only become children of God through putting our faith and trust in Him.” And I wondered, if we are not all children of God, then who created all those human beings who are not children of God?
I call it “God’s Country Club”. It is a strain of the Christian religion or Christian society that says God and His abode, Heaven (address unknown), has both entrance requirements and exclusionary policies, and they
know what they are. In detail. Certain human beings don’t belong and can never gain entrance; others may belong and gain entrance, but only if they believe certain things and act certain ways. As for those human beings who don’t meet the requirements? Apparently, they were created by God but were (and are) disowned and discarded, like two dozen burnt cookies at a bakery, into a divine Dempsey dumpster.
God is a mystery. No one on this earth who exists now or has ever existed has directly met God. Barbara Walters hasn’t even been able to get an interview, much less get an address.
No one truly knows God. But throughout the world, throughout time and throughout the history of humanity, there have been those who profess to know exactly what God said, what He wants, and what He would have, not just them, but others do. And the most certain of them have mostly used that “knowledge” of God to judge, control, kill and condemn others, in the name of God. Because they know they are right.
In Christian society, there are Christians that repeatedly and defiantly rap their forefinger on the Bible and declare angrily that THIS is what God said and THIS is what is true. Even when that Bible says “Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT).
Further, they have no problem with the contradiction of this divinely commanded slaughter with the words of God in Exodus 20 that says “ You shall not murder”. This, even knowing that the events in Ezekiel took place over 800 years after Moses led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; over 800 years after Moses received the Ten Commandments. Okay, maybe they believe God changed His mind. For all we know, it could happen.
Before I upset anyone, let me say that the books of the Bible were written by approximately 40 men of diverse backgrounds over the course of 1500 years. That is to say, I believe that the Bible is a compilations of texts written by men who were devoted to God and believed in their heart that they were divinely inspired. Believed. But they were all human beings writing about their beliefs, particularly the Old Testament. As for the New Testament, these were again human beings who relating what they have been taught by Jesus or taught by others many years after the death of Jesus. That which resonates with my spiritual being and makes me spiritually stronger I accept; that which doesn’t I do not.
And the books of the Bible, in its final form, were chosen by human beings on 28 August 397 AD by the Council of Carthage. This means that I believe the choices of what is included in the Bible reflects the beliefs of human beings and of the Church in 397 AD. People were still being executed for witchcraft around that time and synagogues were being attacked and burned by the Church (385 AD: Priscillian, a wealthy nobleman of Roman Hispania who became bishop of Ávila in 380 was charged with sorcery and executed by authority of the Emperor Maximus; 388 AD: Christians attack and burn down a synagogue in Callinicum at the instigation of the Bishop). I believe human beings, as well as their beliefs, have evolved spiritually since that time.
I have always seen the “Bible thumping” practice of certain sects of the Christian religion as a sign of one’s complete divorce from their spiritual self, because if one was connected to their spiritual self, their true self, they would not have to rely upon and insist upon what someone else said that God said thousands of years ago to tell them what is right or wrong, what is good or bad; how to treat others or what is the worth of our fellow human beings. While all of us, as spiritual beings, need guidance and teaching in our growth, those that can only find in an external, remote source the reason or justification for their acts or belief must have no knowledge at all of the spiritual knowledge within them.
However, it must be said that those who are completely dependent on others and external sources in their Christian faith, in their spiritual and moral development, are still seeking. They just have fallen in with those who are as spiritually divorced and desolate as themselves. They have just chosen the easy way. They have chosen the way that tells them what to believe, or confirms what they want to believe, or tells them that they don’t have to change at all. They have not found (or perhaps, have not accepted) teaching from those Christians who could or would guide them in their personal spiritual growth and development.
Religion, as well as all if its Holy writings, is a construct of human beings. Religion is humanity’s way of structuring and communicating what is ineffable, spiritual good, in order to help and guide its proponents in developing morally and spiritually. It is an interpretation or perception of what humans believe is right or true or divine, which means that it is not necessarily right or true or divine, in the ultimate sense. It is just what is believed. I see religion more as the story of the five blind men and the elephant: each has a small part of the truth but none of them knows the whole. And the more each of them expands and expounds on their one little piece of truth, the further they are carried away from truth. If only each blind man would have the courage to explore the whole elephant, or ask the each one of the other blind men what their piece told them.
But the most fundamental purpose of all religions is that they aim to teach the individual how to grow and develop morally and spiritually, in relation to God (as they see Him) or in relation to their fellow man. Religion has, in the truest sense, always been “all about you” – not other people. Religion is
not about how other people act or how they treat you. It is about how
you act and about how
you treat others.
In terms of those who believe in God (and I do ), there are core beliefs about God that most human beings choose to ignore: God is the creator of all human beings and all creatures and all things in the universe. God has existed since the beginning of time, thus he existed before any religion, and belongs to no religion. And He created human beings without a religion, but with a spiritual component to our being.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a geopaleontologist and Jesuit priest, believed that all life was part of a unified divine evolution, from cell to plants and animals to humans. And that as humans, there was the evolution of our physical bodies and our brains, and beyond. He believed that even though the evolution of the human brain ceased 150,000 years ago, it did not mean that human beings had “completed” evolution or ceased to evolve. He believed that humans continue to evolve and that this next stage of evolution was about evolving as spiritual beings. While this is not something I or anyone else knows to be true, I like to believe it. I like to believe that we are evolving spiritually. Sometimes it is hard to believe, but I guess that it is just something I choose to have faith in.
I say again: God is a mystery. And living with a mystery is hard. We always feel we have to know; really know in a concrete and empirical sense, in detail. But isn’t that what faith is in the truest sense? Isn’t it about living with the mystery but believing in what is in the mystery, while still knowing that we really don’t know? It is a choice to have faith. But it is also a choice for each of us as to what we have faith in, what we choose to believe in. We can choose to believe in and have faith in the best of ourselves and others, or the worst in ourselves and others. We can choose to believe in and have faith in that which values our common spirit or soul and brings us all closer together or we can choose to believe in and have faith in that which separates us and makes just a few of us feel superior. And, whatever the belief, we can choose to call it “divinely inspired” belief.
We are all human beings. No exceptions. And, unfortunately, it is in our choices that we show that we still are mostly human, sadly in need of spiritual evolution.
From: Metaphysical Outlaws in America