Sep 28, 2016

 

Five Fallacies About God (7)

3.God has separated you from God because

You have not given God what God needs. (2)

The inner feeling that we are alone in the universe is the most challenging of all the negative emotions that all carry. No matter where we turn, ‘I’ seems to be ‘I’ and everything else is ‘not I’. Thus an irreconcilable gulf is apparently around us, each of us sitting on the top of a very high pole and unable to touch another sitting on another pole just out of reach. This sense of isolation is what feeds this myth of God, that we have been separated from God somewhere along the line. The sense of isolation permeates everything we see and do, always looking apparently outside the ‘window’ of our five senses at this wondrous universe that lies out there.

 

If we are separated from God, and all else, as it feels, then we must have done something really bad to cause that separation. This is the obvious conclusion humanity has made, perpetuating the myth of not being able to make God happy in some form or another.

 

We spend most of our lives attempting to close the gap that we just know exists. We watch countless hours of television and movies trying to merge ourselves into the imagination of others, escaping for a short time the feeling of separateness that is our constant companion, as we join in the story as a community and we feel as one with others. We become fans of this sports team or that sports team, joining with others in the same sense of togetherness, singing the joys of victory and suffering the pain of defeat as a group, momentarily losing the sense of separateness in the event.

 

Even marriage with your soul mate has the same result. The joy of joining with one another, even in the creation of another life, is overshadowed by the feeling of loneliness that continually haunts us throughout life. The failure of the ‘other’ to solve this feeling of loneliness appears to be the number one reason for divorce, hoping that the next person will fill that gap that is constantly there. The first blush of infatuation does indeed seemingly fill the gap, but that fades, and then we often move on. This overriding sense of isolation feeds our myths of being alone, apparently cast off by this God of creation, obviously a God who desires to see us in pain throughout this short life.

 

Peace and joy can be found in the recognition that no, indeed, God did not cut us off, for as Jesus said, “the kingdom of God lies within you”. If that kingdom is indeed within each of us, then it is only a scratch away from our awareness, always there, waiting for us to see that kingdom that is present at all time. We are like a fish that is thirsty in the middle of the ocean; just look what we are swimming in, and we would see the kingdom of God everywhere we look.

 

That realization is what Thomas Merton described in his autobiography, “The Seven Story Mountain”, when he described that moment in downtown Louisville KY, when he was overwhelmed by the realization that he was one with all the people he could see on the street, one with all the people in the city, and one with all the people of the earth. He was not alone, but his very being was filled by the billions of others that exist on this planet, including those who have ever lived or ever will live.

 

Our task is to arrive at that same place, removing our sense of isolation in life with the realization that we are all one being. That is what Jesus was aiming at when he said “Seek first the kingdom of God (which lies within (sic)) and all the rest will be granted you.”

For God is good, and

The love of God endures forever;

God’s faithfulness continues

Through all generations.

                             Psalm 100: 5 (NIV)

 

Meditation

Font of Wisdom, I bow before You in grateful recognition of all the Love and beauty that You shower upon us. You have given everything to us, we lack nothing to be living in a world of joy and happiness. My gratitude extends to all, for only the beauty of all the faces of God that I see every day and have seen throughout my life do I appreciate Your outpouring of Love that is present in our world. I give to You all my strengths and weaknesses, for only in the whole do I see the breathtaking give and take of Your Love that strives to continually open me to greater and greater love. Only in the negative to I see the wholeness of the positive, for without the negative I would not understand the positives in my life.

 

 

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