Various cultures name God based on their religious traditions. This Creator of the universe is called God by Christians, Yahweh by Jews, Allah by Muslims, Vishnu by Hindus, and so on. But, in reality, God’s name and more importantly, His nature, is I AM. Admittedly, it takes some time (a lot of time for most) to get the concept down.

In the Christian text (Exodus 3), Moses is being commissioned by this God and he wants to know who he can tell the people it was that has sent him. God says, “I AM that I AM. Tell them that I AM has sent you to them.” I’m sure Moses stood with his mouth wide open in disbelief. So, God added, “I AM is my name FOREVER: this is my title in EVERY generation.”

Okay now. What’s all this mean? What’s the esoteric meaning here?

We are one with I AM. We cannot separate ourselves from I AM which is our essential being and nature. In the film and book, the “Moses Code” there’s this secret (so they say) that’s in the form of a comma! I am THAT (comma), I AM. I am what? I AM whatever I AM looking at. I AM whatever I AM feeling. I AM my imagination which is more than mind, more than my conscious thoughts.

Since ALL the world is connected, I AM whatever it is I see.

Too many see poverty, lack, and fear. All of these are things that come from WITHIN so in order to change from fear to faith is by way of a SUBJECTIVE appropriation of the OBJECTIVE hope. We lvie inside out. I AM that (add a feeling and a thing here) and after casting your bread (thoughts) on the water for a season, it will come back to you.

Spirit, Consciousness, Christ, God, and I AM are ONE! Are you BEING?

What I know about God (me personally) is that my God has the last word, the final say. And if He is anything like what Jesus advocated, we’re ALL going to be redeemed. I know how that grates against the religious fundamentalists. It causes them to question my salvation. My God is not a “hanging judge”. He is a loving Father, abba Father. If you think God is anything but loving, think again.

And if you look at the Bible, that’s not a lot of help. Don’t get me wrong. I value the Bible. It’s my, and the Christian community to which I belong, sacred text. But, if you are honest, you must admit and conclude that the Bible is highly inconsistent on the nature and character of God. To insist the opposite if to make those to whom you are speaking highly distrustful of your characterizations, if not your integrity.

Jesus, God SAVES!

God is desribed as strict, forgiving, unchanging, repentant, sadistic, loving, genocidal, and angry. Wow! So tell me, which VERSE, which STORY am I to believe? Of should I just go with what Jesus said? And what Jesus said was that God’s love will influence His judgment. He will take off his black robe (of a judge) that too much of the church has depicted, and embrace us with a love that will melt our spiritual hearts and bring us to our senses.

I have no doubt that God will correct whatever needs changing before we make the complete transition. I have no doubt that the dross of this earthly life will be burned away and soothed by the brimstone (sulphur) that the book of Revelation speaks. If we can just subordinate our egoic mentality to God’s gracious offer, we’ll also gain some religious integrity as well. To insist the opposite if to make those to whom you are speaking highly distrustful of your characterizations, if not your mental integrity.

I agree with one of my favorite theologians, John A. T. Robinson who wrote, ” Judgment can never be God’s LAST WORD, because if it were, it would be the word that would speak His failure.” God’s last word will be I forgive you, I love you- welcome home!

Why are so sensitive, biased, prejudiced, judgmental, and intolerant? That’s a lot of adjectives!

One of the most well know religious historians is Huston Smith. Huston Cummings Smith was born in 1919 and is among the preeminent religious scholars in the United States. His work, The Religions of Man (later revised and retitled The World’s Religions, is a classic with over two million copies sold, and remains a common introduction to comparative religion. Not too shabby, eh?

Well, Huston is recognized as a life-long Christian!

What’s not so well known though is that he prays to Allah five times a day. Say what? How can that be? Is he skitzo, confused, or just a compromiser? How about none of those? Let’s add to the mix that he also practices yoga. So what else you might ask?

How about his Zen meditations? Zen is much easier to swallow when one really understands that Zen does not recognize or worship any God. Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism notable for its emphasis on mindful acceptance of the present moment, spontaneous action, and letting go of self-conscious, judgmental thinking. Now that’s something worth practicing.

C.S. Lewis, one of the most well-known Christians realized that much of Christian thought came out of the Axial Age and previous philosophical concepts wherein he wrote, “I can’t say for certain which bits came into Christianity from other religions. An enormous amount did.” The stench of exclusivism is a foul ordor indeed.

So, maybe Christians should ligthen up a bit and love everyone since God did create everyone and Genesis 9 indicates that God, Allah, or Creator of the universe is not too happy with how we have been treating one another (can you say Crusades and Inquisitions?). Regardless of the name or the rituals, there’s just ONE GOD!

The gnostics (and they were many different sects of course) were basically the forerunners of today’s movement to more of a spiritual approach to life than a religious one. There isn’t an exclusivity between the two, but enough differences to have made the proto-orthodox crowd do all they could to destroy any evidence of such heretical views.

What was it that caused Constantine in 325 and Athanasius in 267 to demand that all gnostic works be burned or destroyed?

We know some of the answers because of recent archaeological discoveries.

>They were wary of the institutional church, especially Rome.
>They were basically free of sexism.
>They were unburdened by guilt and sin fires that the church kept burning at each service.
>They were tolerant of diverse views

Because of these and many other views, they were banned and driven out of the mainline Christian community. They had to bury and hide their works- to be discovered two thousand years later. As more and more discoveries come to light (like the Gospel of Thomas) what impact, if any, are they having on modern-day Christian thought?

I think the answer is in the process of being determined.

Gnostic religious views, spirituality is on the increase while religion is taking some serious loses.

Let me remind you. I am not anti-Catholic. It just that they have been around for 2,000 years whereas the new kids on the block who like to PROTEST anything and everything are still wet behind the ears.

Only how we are living life NOW matters. How are we living the life with the next breath that we take? Are we so self-absorbed that we can’t see or feel the pain of those we love? Can we break out of our self-destructive day dreams and lay aside the religious toys that amuse us, but provide no spiritual light or transformation? We have ancient traditions that promise us so much more than we are currently willing to settle for accept.

Our present world indicts us and bears witness to our childish thoughts and lifestyles. We’ve created an hubris and greed that does not serve anyone very well, let alone ourselves. It’s time that we remember the words of Paul, “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things”.

How old are you?

Spiritually!

We must move away from the lunacy of a wrathful and judgmental God!

Because the church has sold it’s “fear based wares” of an eternal hell and warned of dire consequences to those that don’t “toe the line” to church traditions (and there are many), too much of the world has ingrained in their human psyche the opposite of what God is really like.

We’ve swallowed the wrong pill Neo! Now what?

We have to begin by going within and discovering the real God of the universe and quit looking at the God out there that’s being sold every Sunday morning. Be nice and He (a male God?) will shower you with gifts. Attend every Sunday service, and follow church laws and She (equal time here) will heal your sickness. Believe in the creeds, dogmas, and doctrines that make little sense today, and It (the divine consciousness you know) will allow you to live a long and prosperous life.

But I prefer the intimacy of Thou (Father-Spirit).
As Gill Edwards put it, “Too many have internalized a cold, critical, repressive inner voice- the judgmental god within- which tells us how to behave, constantly criticizes us, keeps our noses to the grindstone, and squashes or denies our true feelings.”

It’s time for a jail break (from our trapped disempowerment).

It’s do-able as well since the jail door locks from the inside!

We are NOT SEPARATED eternally. We are living in a separated trance though. We “think” that we are estranged from God, but the Creator doesn’t see it that way. It’s our “perception” that needs some adjusting. I know that it is hard to fathom us being one with a Muslim terrorist or a naked Indian in the Malaysian rain forests. But it is a fact.

See if you can “get” this picture!

You’re seated at the table for dinner. On your plate is a juicy sixteen ounce filet mignon, cooked perfectly to your liking. There’s a beautiful fields of green salad, a side order of tender asparagus and potatoes au gratin. Did I mention there were mushrooms on the filet? Purified water was at your left and a glass of 1989 Mounton Rothschild red wine to your right. And of course there were 3-4 options for desert to which we’ll not mention.

Are you ready to eat?

Right across the table is another person who is looking at a a piece of stale bread, old cheese, and un-purified water.

Shall we say grace and then eat?

That’s essentially what we Americans do each and every day. Luckily for us we can’t SEE our neighbor and so we don’t have to deal with our neighbor: but, we really do because we are not really separated by anything other than the religious trance that we’ve adopted- accepted!

It’s time to WAKE UP!

The church has become too much as Norman Pittenger said, “The church has become a company of very particular people, contented with their own patterns of thought, and rejoicing in their own ways of worship, but with little relationship to the actual problems and vital needs of the men and women of our time.”

Ouch!

Too many have it too good. Living the good life can make one not only complacent about how life really is, but it can cause one to be unconcerned, callous, and apathetic to the needs of those around us. The world is full of hurting and needful people. May we be sensitive to all of humanity. Jesus IS!

Going back even further, it was Thomas Aquinas who remarked, “Orthodoxy is looking too much like ignorance.”

May we who have ears to hear let love, tolerance, and forgiveness take the lead in our life. May we esteem others above our own self, or at least our own ideas. May we not only be able to express, but hear radical ideas with modernistic thinking. And I think in so doing, our orthopraxy will give birth to a more vibrant and realistic orthodoxy.

“Jesus’s revelation that God is Father of ALL men from the Son, to the sons, definitely distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God from Pantheism and Theism”. How so?

As against Pantheism, it shows that God is greater than and distinct from the world (can you say transcendence?).

As against Theism, it shows God entering into a living fellowship with men, as taking humanity into personal union with Himself (can you say radical immanence?).

It just may be my “illumination” (from Westcott), but the fact that Jesus brings the message that God is Abba Father to ALL - not just the disciples, nor just to Christians, but to ALL (God Is Love- Hell Is Not). And since I started with a quote, let me end with one that I pray you can meditate on and take to heart.

This one is by John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805 - 1872 :an English theologian), who said, “The truth is that ALL men are in Christ: the tragedy is that men will not OWN the TRUTH.”

May you!

We were created in the image of God! Everyone (and I mean that literally) is so created which means that we ALL have sufficient of a reflection of God within us to make it possible for us to do more than stand in the doorway of salvation’s house, but to fully enter in.

Too often the church has said, like a game show host, COME ON DOWN!

Come down, repeat some form of a sinner’s admission of guilt, and then pray for God to forgive us of our sins. Maybe get baptized and definitely join the church to make it legal and binding. There you have it and ther you stand in the glow of the local assembly: proud of their accomplishment in adding a new name to the heavenly rolls (as though the church did it). And there you stand, holding this rabbit by the ears and whispering to yourself.

Now WHAT?

Hopefully someone will be there to not indoctrinate you into religion, the denomination, or even the local church rules; but into the Kingdom possibilities. Hopefully someone will be your guide to show you the ropes, and ask you to join them in going places that even they have not ventured. In this way, the Christian journey is not only exciting, it’s REAL.

No magic acts here!