Oct 30, 2016

Five Fallacies About God (12)
5. God will destroy you, if
You do not meet God’s requirements.

Well, we have arrived at the logical conclusion of these five myths about God. This God we have constructed is the perfect epitome of the raging super male of 5,000 years ago (I use the term ‘male’ on purpose: the male figure who has been admired and advocated for the past 5,000 years, at least by most males, and by a discouraging number of females.) We have, deep in our hearts, been drawn into the cultural thinking that has dominated for 5000 years, and find it extremely difficult to think beyond the male figure, the old man with a long white beard, sitting on a throne far off someplace, judging all his subjects under a strict code of behavior, and demanding tribute of some type without spelling it out. Then if we do not meet one of specific code lists (one of the many that exist, but no direct input as to which list is the right one), we will be banished and condemned to eternal pain. Yeah, eternal: not just next year, or next century, or next millennia, —– but truly eternal.

Jesus came to attempt to dispel this myth. Jesus came to tell us of the God of Love: the person from the prodigal son parable, whose father ran into the street, embraced his son, who was a true twit who only returned because he was hungry; the father killed the fatted calf, and threw a feast for the lost son, because he was home.

Now note that even Jesus was stuck with the cultural process of description: always about the male, seldom about the female. Now Jesus certainly understood and lived a compassionate life with many women, but all his listeners would have been turned off if he would have used any female figures in his parables, even almost all women, for they too had bought into the concept that they were inferior. (This is a whole other topic.)

Paul made it clear: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 (NIV)) These words of divine presentation have been roundly ignored within Christianity, especially after 312 AD, where the all male church council approved of keeping slavery, not only because 80% of the Roman Empire were slaves, but even half of the remaining (all women) were considered almost at the level of a slave by the empire, and it would not do to challenge the emperor Constantine in his new-found admiration of Christianity. Constantine’s brutal suppression of ‘the wrong type’ of Christianity was characteristic of his reign and the church at that time chose to ignore that side of the man. This brutal approach of enforcing a particular brand and style of the preferred version of Christianity became the norm of Christianity, led to the approval of war, prisons, and any suppression of the rights of the ‘unapproved’ versions of Christianity.

Kind of sounds like a version of ISIS.

But they worked with the full approval of the church of the time.

I will sing of Your love and justice;
To you, Lord, I will sing praise.
                     Psalm 101:1 (NIV)

Meditation

I ask only to rest in Your Love, that sense of bliss that is always available if only I let myself believe the Good News. I reach for that Kingdom of God that lies within me, and I have tasted that wonder over and over in my life. But it always requires me to reach into that source anew each day to discover it once again. I am grateful for each day that I can touch that spot of unlimited joy. I ask only to be centered in that joy of joys for as long as I am given in this plane of existence.

If this posting proves useful to you, I would appreciate it if you would share it. 

These five themes are taken from Conversation with God series of books, but the process discussed in these postings is a compilation of many sources and my processing of those sources.