Mar 13, 2016

God is Love (5)
1 John 4:8

Love does not envy (Jealous) (1)
1 Corinthians 13

Hmmm. We may have a problem here. In Exodus 20, we read “for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,—“ (Exodus 20:4). And in Exodus 34, we read “You shall not worship any other god, for the Lord is ‘the Jealous One’.” (Exodus 34:14). So how can we say that our God meets this criteria of Love: Love is not jealous.” This is where we must go back to the time of Moses, who ‘recorded’ these words from God on the mountain top, and understand how God was understood at that time. For indeed, if God is “the Jealous One” as recorded, how could God have been patient and kind, as we have already seen?
The time of Moses, probably about 1200 BCE, much is presented that the beliefs in gods were rampant, with each group and or land having their own god in turn. Little was written at that time, and stories were verbally handed down through trained story tellers, who learned these stories not as history, but as tales to evoke a specific emotion and feeling, built around firm beliefs and figures that had centered in their stories. The earliest writings of the first books of the bible were believed to have been assembled in the time of David, about 900 BCE, but existed in many forms until about 450 BCE. According to Wikipedia, many versions existed in the early days, and these were gathered, fit together, and woven into the tales similar to those we know in the time period of 450BCE, when the Jewish nations had been scattered, and it was believed that the peoples would loose their stories unless codified in a single source that all could draw upon.
At the time that the purported ten commandments were put together, the people of Israel were in a scattered state. Their beliefs about God had been put together as a band with what we call God today as their personal standard bearer, superior to all the other gods of that time, that is the God of many gods. This is borne out by the story of the ten plagues just preceding the flight from Egypt, where the Egyptian gods were able to equal the first nine plagues, and it took the catastrophic death of all first born to show that the god of the Israelites was the ultimate God, but other gods still were thought of as being real. Thus when their leader, Moses, did not return, the frightened Israelites made figures that represented the gods of the land their were squatting upon. It was not until hundreds of years passed that the belief that the Israelite God was the only God became entrenched in the Jewish faith, and even then was not very centered until Jesus made that theme the central theme of his teaching.
Thus we see the slow growth of belief in our world of the overriding belief in a central God, only a Single Supreme Being or Force took almost 100,000 years, and is really a new-comer on the planet. Other faiths, notably the Indian ancient beliefs of Ayurveda and Pranayama, arrived at that core belief much earlier, perhaps first taught as early as 5000 BCE. Deepak Chopra is a good person to study in some of his recent writings and teachings of this history.
Ok, so how does this relate to our search for seeing how the concept that God is Love meets the criteria that Love is not Jealous? If we see that the unveiling of the true mystery of the wonder of God is a slow transition having to do with the condition of the perceptions of humanity, we can see that indeed, that Force we call God, and is known by many other names, can not be jealous of anything, for since we now understand that God is indeed the All in All, that nothing exists outside of that Wondrous Being, Force, Life, or any other name we add, jealousy has no place to form, and as we have seen, that all there is Love, only Love, that is, that all that exists is God, only God. Since nothing exists but God, jealousy is impossible.

“God restores my Soul,
God leads me in paths of Righteousness
For God’s Name sake.
                                    Psalm 23:3

Meditation

Oh my Wondrous Being, my Mystery of Life, I feel blessed to behold your Life in all that is around me. I bow in gratitude for your unveiling of Your Wonder to humanity, and know that You have only wonders to unveil to humanity, as Your reality becomes clearer to our sight. We see the unfolding of Paradise on earth, centered upon the recognition of Your Being in our midst, never having left paradise, but that only our eyesight was dimmed, and is now being unveiled for us to see Your Presence in All that Is. We see but dimly, through a veil, but the time is coming when we shall see as unveiled, in as clear a light as possible. May it come soon. I so often look with wonder as it seems to appear at the slightest whim, so often in the face of one I am looking at that moment, or a glorious sunset, or the wonder of the Universe that blazes before me. Your Face will blaze at me and stop me in my tracks, and I am humbled to be in the visible presence of Your Being, as I am at all times and in all that exists.

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