Mar 20, 2016

God is Love (7)
1 John 4:8

Love does not boast
1 Corinthians 13

As when we looked at the claim that God is not jealous, if we look at the Old Testament, we see God boasting about the Powers that They have, able to inflict damage to the third or fourth generation on any that displease Them. Following revealing what we call the ten commandments, the Old Testament details that God began laying down rule after rule, describing in detail how to build an altar, how not to dress, how to do almost everything in life, otherwise “You will be punished until the third or fourth generation.” I can smile when I read this, for having the sight of the Way of God some 3200 years later, we can appreciate so much more the Path of Love as revealed by Jesus and the many mystics over the centuries.
The ancients of the past, much like the churches of today, loved to pile on the rules we should live by. Jesus spent much of his time decrying the rules that had been laid upon the people of God, but the temptation is too great for anyone in power to stop, as we see by the books of rules that have been laid down by those who claim to be following the Way of the Rule-Breaker, Jesus. It appears so ironic how the followers of Jesus just love to pile up the rules, so they could piously judge others and proclaim their own holiness in contrast to “those sinners”. This tendency is one of the negative traits that seem to be inbred into humanity, coming from the isolation all humanity feels, the feeling of a loss of the unity that breeds the loneliness that is common to all most all of humanity but is a lie dreamed up by our ego. Jesus was clear about our unity with one another and with himself, but it can be oh-so-difficult to achieve in our awareness – we find it so difficult to trust another.
The Old Testament is filled with a god that has all the negative traits of humanity: a jealous god, a spiteful god, a vengeful god, a vindictive god, a powerful god; and because this god is all-powerful, a dominating god dictating every last move of this god’s people. This type of god is still the god preached by most religions today, and far too many preachers speak of the this vengeful god as their principle source of revelation.
But God has revealed Itself as a Being of Love, only Love. Jesus tried to tell us this time and again, for a Being of Love has none of the traits that the Old Testament seems to be filled with. But the Old Testament was not just 0ne book written at one time, but a series of books put together over 1300 years; some in verbal form for hundreds of years, some in various written forms that were condensed into a single source, and until around the 4-5 century BCE, were not brought into a single source for the Israelites. More books were later written and are now included in what we call the Old Testament, even into the first century CE. This history reveals the slow understanding, by humanity, of God over that time, culminating in the story of the Love Being revealed by Jesus, but preceded by many of the prophets and revealed in many of the psalms.
It is in the many of the psalms that the God of Love is revealed, even though the creations stories, two of them, reveal the essence of the Love of God for the time-space creation we call the universe. The psalms, mostly but not all written by the poet we call David, reveals a person who fell in love with his God and began to understand the essence of Love that is God. David was still a person of his time, and often reveals his vengeful side, but so many of these love poems tell that David was a mystic in the true and modern sense of the word.

“You prepare a table before me
In the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
                                     Psalm 23: 5

Meditation

I am truly grateful to live at this time of Revelation where the extent of the Being of Love that we call God is finally being recognized and our hearts can open to that love without being condemned by too many others. I thank you and am so grateful that we have reached a point that we truly no longer need rules and limits to understand that if we live in Love, that all will be well and life will blossom into the beauty of paradise that was first intended. We understand that rules arose because we did not know how to live in love, even though it was clearly explained by Jesus: “Love your God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Simple rules that if we all followed we would truly live in paradise and have a glorious life filled with joy and happiness. You have shown us the way; may we but live in this way to achieve all that humanity was created to become.
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