Christians don’t have to love others–
only followers of Jesus do

 

Love one another: A requirement for being followers of Jesus.We forget that Jesus was not a Christian. He was born Jewish and the cross on which he was sadistically murdered labeled him as “King of the Jews.” Perhaps that explains why so many Christians are not followers of Jesus. Instead, they boldly and consistently trample on what is said to be his core commandment: Love ye one another, as I have loved you.

That’s why describing ourselves as Christian merely tells others what we believe, including Bible scriptures that say that:

  • God created us;
  • We were created as innately evil;
  • Unless we overcome our natural sinful nature, God will torment us forever and ever;
  • Jesus was the only human conceived without human sperm fertilizing a human egg;
  • God was Jesus’s father, but his fraternal genealogy could be traced to the house of David;
  • God wouldn’t forgive His sinful children unless Jesus was brutally tortured to death;
  • Jesus’s good news—which he was allowed to share for only three years and within a small radius, given the transportation limitations—was not that God is the unconditionally forgiving father of prodigals but that Jesus came to Earth to save us from God’s demonic and excessive punishment by agreeing to be sadistically murdered;
  • If we don’t believe that Jesus came to save us from God’s demonic and excessive punishment, God will demonically and excessively punish us anyway;
  • Jesus, who opposed organized religion, founded the Christian church—even though he was crucified more than 300 years before the church was established.

Do we choose to be Christians or followers of Jesus?

While calling ourselves Christian tells others what we believe, being Christlike—being followers of Jesus—doesn’t require a label. It is clearly demonstrated by the way they behave: In addition to loving one another, Jesus’s followers do not judge, do not condemn. They feed the hungry, care for the sick and the poor—even wash another’s feet. They accept others’ differences, whether it’s sexual orientation, mental or physical health, race or religion. Many Christians very loudly and proudly do not accept or value anyone who is different.

Make no mistake, followers of Jesus are not selfless. In fact, you might say that they’re selfish. Perhaps it’s because they believe that Jesus really did say that whatever we do for others, we also do for him. His message was that we are One. There is no difference between us: what I do for you, I do for myself.

Jesus’s values are shared by and live through his followers. Fittingly, these values can be practiced without practicing any of the world’s religions.

I was reminded of the secular nature of Jesus’s teachings today, when Facebook friend Burjkh Halinov posted this interview with renowned Canadian physician Gabor Maté. He draws a direct line between a society’s mental health and its materialism. I might add that this culture is very much in the spotlight today on the American political stage, where so many self-described Christians stand.

 

Dr. Gabor Maté explains how mental distress and pathology are largely a result of a materialist cultures that prioritize objects over people and well-being. [Interview by Crazywise]

Does being Christian solve this problem? That’s something else to think about—before believing.

We bear false witness against the most unlikely suspect: God

In a judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged world, perhaps so many of us are convinced that God will  judge us harshly because we so boldly and blithely do the same to God. Even more sassy, we actually bear false witness against God; so the expectation that something horrific will befall us is both reasonable—and reciprocal.

Imagine this: You answer your door and police announce that you’re under arrest on suspicion of mass murder.

Huh?

At the station, you’re never interrogated. There is no arraignment, no trial. You never face your accuser, who apparently made an anonymous call to the police. No one searches the crime scene. There’s no evidence that you were there and, as far as you know, there were no bodies found.

No witnesses come forth. No loved ones come to your defense. No friend or colleagues insist that you would never do something so cruel. You’re simply judged guilty as charged.

Would you call that justice? Hold that thought.

Now, think about what you did when you heard that God committed indisputably inhumane acts. Did you ask any questions? Did you demand proof, or did you simply retell the story as if it was true? Let’s consider a few stories we like to share:

Adam and Eve:  God is Unforgiving and Abusive

Does the story of God expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden insult God's goodness?
Weapon-bearing God is depicted on this cathedral window in Brussels, Belgium, banishing disobedient Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

The Adam and Eve story, which has been accepted as an accurate historical account, portrays God as a heartless parent with unrealistic expectations. First, we have no evidence that humans can be created from dirt or bone or that infancy, childhood and puberty can be bypassed and humans can be born as adults with fully functioning brains. 

Second, these two are ancestors of Neanderthals. Did they have the intellect to comprehend a directive not to eat something growing on a specific tree?

Why do we find it plausible that the all-knowing God expected obedience from these two? Why do we think that God would be outraged by their low mental acumen, judge it as disobedience and punish them so cruelly?

If we believe they were really human, that constitutes child abuse. If we believe that God banished them, and we tell others without proof of it, there’s no other way to say it: we bear false witness.

The Great Flood: God is Unforgiving and Genocidal

Does the Great Flood story bear false witness against God?
We claim that God committed genocide because man was so wicked.

In the epic story of the Great Flood, which is found in numerous ancient myths, God declared that men were innately wicked and evil [Gen 6:5-8] and judged “all flesh” for being corrupt and violent [Gen 6:11-22]. The All-Powerful, All-Knowing’s most divine solution? Destroy almost every living thing [Gen 7:23].

Then, in an apparent admission that it was not such a good idea, promised never to do it again [Gen 9:1-17] and proceeded to repopulate the earth with fleshy humans who, by all accounts, haven’t stopped sinning. But then, how could we when God allegedly saddled us from birth with the burden of a sin committed by a witless guy made from dirt who was tricked by a talking snake?

Many beliefs not only insult our intelligence; they insult God’s goodness.  We have been discouraged, even threatened, against questioning acts that seem more suited to Satan than God. We have been so intimidated by humans that we won’t give God the respect of using the brain we’ve been given. We don’t want to be outcasts, so we choose to go with the crowd, bear false witness against God rather than demand proof that God has so little regard for human life.

Job: Do We Bear False Witness when We Accuse God of Sadism?

Job and his three friends. Image: Sweet Publishing (http://sweetpublishing.com)
Does a story claiming that God was a party to the sadistic treatment of a devout servant named Job bear false witness against God? Image: Sweet Publishing (http://sweetpublishing.com)

The Book of Job is painful for a number of reasons, particularly if we read it literally. It claims that God entertained a suggestion by Satan that his good and faithful servant Job was only good and faithful because God had blessed him with prosperity and a beautiful family. In other words, God cared what Satan thought and sought to prove him wrong by allowing Satan to do indescribably sadistic things to Job: Kill all his children and servants, take all his wealth and inflict him with open sores and agonizing physical pain.

God restores his wealth and gives him more children—as if one child can merely be replaced by another. Why do we accept this as a “happy ending” to the Job story?

Is it any wonder that nearly a third of Earth’s inhabitants—2.2 billion, at last count—believe that we need to be “saved” from God’s uncontrollable wrath. They are convinced that God will pour unending, sadistic punishment upon us. Based on these stories, they’ve drawn a logical conclusion.

What’s not logical is that these same people pray to this heartless, genocidal and sadistic god when they need something or when they are suffering. They even claim to love a god who has absolutely no regard for the pain and suffering of reportedly flawless humans such as Job or Jesus. Why do they think that God would relieve them from their torment?

The double-minded disconnect

Our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors appear to wildly conflict. Either genocide is a crime or it isn’t. Either sadism is good or it isn’t. If neither is good, why do we believe God did it? And why, because we believe God did it, do we decide that genocide or sadism is good—under certain circumstances?

We justify and even worship this behavior, cloaking it in the “one of God’s mysteries” explanation or the “human mind cannot understand the ways of God” excuse. But there is no mystery here: We hold humans to a higher standard of behavior than God. We also give humans a benefit that we don’t grant God: The benefit of a doubt.

If you think it’s unjust for you to be convicted without proof, don’t you think the same holds true for God?

It’s time to stop snoozing on church violence

Woman holds a sign, asking why, after the church violence in Charleston
(AP Photo/David Goldman)

The massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston could have been our wake-up call. In fact, it should have been. But it appears that, once again, we’ve hit the snooze button.

We’d rather not gaze upon the important insights that this church violence offers us. Instead, we cry, “How did the devil get into God’s House? Why did God let this happen? Why didn’t God protect His people?”

Our questions are based on a few assumptions:

  1. The church is God’s only house;
  2. Worshipers should be safe in a church building, and
  3. God intervenes in human events.

There’s no evidence that any of these assumptions are true; so questions based on them are likely to lead to the wrong answers.

Common sense tells us that a white supremacist would open fire on Blacks who were minding their own business and posed no threat to him? Hate-filled karma-creators do these kinds of things.

We don’t expect grand things from small minds—or from souls who believe that they are the human body costumes they’re wearing. As a consequence, there are millions whose karmic bank accounts are significantly overdrawn. Repaying their debts is not an option in a what-goes-around-comes-around world.

The view from the balcony

It’s almost impossible to see the entire plot of any drama by looking at one scene. It’s definitely impossible if we’re standing on the stage. Just as distance and an aerial vantage point help us see the entire forest, a balcony view helps us to see the Big Picture: what caused the problem and what’s lurking in the wings. That informs our assumptions and helps us ask questions that will actually lead to productive answers.

As a general rule, those of us in the balcony watch the drama on stage through this lens:

Our perceptions might be our reality, but no one else’s.

Everything we believe about ourselves and others might not be true. 

No one stumbles onto Earth’s stage by accident. 

Perspective is important. The sun looks smaller than Earth from where we’re standing. From the perspective of the Bible writers, Earth obviously looked flat. But just because they wrote that it is, doesn’t make it true.

I invite you to experiment by looking at each drama you encounter from a different perspective. For example, we view the church violence drama from a different set of assumptions:

  1. Every house is God’s house;
  2. The omnipresent and immortal God is within every soul, not in outer space;
  3. God is fair, and either intervenes in every drama or none at all.

how-does-it-serveNow, based on those assumptions, what questions do we ask? Actually, we ask the same two questions of every scene we’re observing: Why did I (as soul) create this (drama)? How does it serve me (as a divine being)?

I can hear your protests: “I didn’t create the massacre at Mother Emanuel!”

Oh, but if you, as soul, wanted to learn something from it, you absolutely positively did create it. And nine souls stepped out of their human body costumes to teach you.

Every drama on Earth’s stage that meets your awareness, no matter how far it is from your physical location, is designed to teach you a lesson you desired to learn: Perhaps compassion, respect, love, forgiveness.

When we look at these human dramas as personally crafted lessons, we are more likely to learn them and less likely to recreate them. There’s evidence that dramas repeat until we learn the lessons they were designed to teach.

Building on our previous lessons

We’ve been told that animals can smell fear and we’ve been cautioned not to be fearful around them. Why? Because they might attack.

According to some studies, humans also can smell fear. In fact, one study even concludes that fear is contagious:

Its authors wrote, “Our research suggests that emotional chemo-signals can be potential contributors to emotional contagion in situations involving dense crowds.”

This is an interesting finding that causes those of us in the balcony to wonder: If the fire-and-brimstone threats of unending torment are so frightening that millions want to be “saved” from it, what happens when that fear is concentrated within the confined the space of church sanctuaries decade after decade, century after century? Why doesn’t occur to us that the crucifix on our buildings is the murder weapon that killed Jesus?

Fear Attracts Attack

It doesn't occur to us that the crucifix we adore is the murder weapon that killed Jesus.
It doesn’t occur to us that the crucifix we adore is the murder weapon that killed Jesus.

Statistics might also indicate that the human response to fear is similar to animals’, so we should not presume that church buildings are immune from attack. Emanuel A.M.E. wasn’t the first church to be struck by violence, and it wasn’t the last. At least three black churches in the South were torched within a week of Dylann Roof’s massacre in Charleston.

Records show that more than 90 black churches have been the scenes of violence in the past 59 years. A Huffington Post list  only reflects the incidents that were recorded during that period. Reportedly, records on church violence were not kept prior to 1956.

The data conflict; but all figures reveal that black churches are not the only targets and the violence is escalating. According to a USA Today report, there were 22 violent deaths at worship centers nationwide in 1999. Another report in the Christian Science Monitor claims 780 deadly attacks in U.S. places of worship between 1999 and 2014. In 2012 alone, the Monitor claims, there were more than 115 incidents; 63 ended in at least one fatality.

Church violence exceeds school violence

Church security consultant Carl Chinn compiles statistics on church violence, and his figures show that there is more violence in churches than in schools. He has found that since 1963, more than 900 violent incidents have occurred in American churches—12 of them, mass murders. A Huffington Post article cites even more: 1,420 church fires in 1980 alone. In fact, a spike in violence against churches in the 1990s led Congress to pass the Church Arson Prevention Act in 1996.

Chinn and others now conduct violence awareness seminars at churches to train ushers and other staff. Unfortunately, these tactics only address the symptoms, not the cause.

The root of the evil

If we’re really honest, we can’t deny that there is a lot of talk in churches about an angry, vitriolic, vengeful and violent God who solves problems by killing humans. Sure, there’s some talk about God’s love, grace and redemption. But it’s incongruent with their overarching message: God responds to wrongdoing with cruel and unusual punishment.

Where did we learn what God did to Adam and Eve, the witless predecessors of cavemen, who didn’t have the intellectual capacity to obey an order? No one thinks that it is humane to banish defenseless beings to the wilderness. But the church must obediently say amen to this heartless behavior.

We're told that God brutally committed genocide.
Where did we learn that God brutally committed genocide?

We gather in confined spaces on a regular basis to hear that humans are lowly and innately evil. That’s why God heinously drowned almost everyone. The church says amen to genocide.

We’re supposed to forgive 70 times 7; but God’s default is inhumane punishment. “Amen!” we shout.

God made a bet with the devil, intentionally causing horrific pain and hardship to a good, obedient man, just to prove his loyalty. “Amen!”

God had our beloved Jesus sadistically tortured to death instead of us, and we scream: “Thank you, God!”

Reaping what we’ve sown

We claim that God is Love. Would Love threaten to torture us throughout all eternity? Do we need to be “saved” Love?

There’s a reason why they scare us with threats of horrific torment: Frightened people typically react instinctively, not thoughtfully. They’ve used fear to trap us in a nightmare.

worshiping_violenceWe worship a god who uses “His” sovereignty to act like demon. Yet, we are inexplicably stunned when evil boldly enters our churches.

We invite evil into our pews every time we agree that God is full of wrath, not love. We ushered it in every time we shouted amen to claims that God is vengeful, violent, unforgiving and solves problems by harming, killing and torturing humans.

We have created church violence. The burning buildings and lifeless bodies to teach us that. This is the lesson we, as souls, wanted to learn. But will we? I can’t repeat it enough: We cannot worship a violent, vengeful God who solves problems by killing people without worshiping violence, vengeance and murder.

Will we choose instead to spread a different contagion, fill our churches with the joyful noise that a divine, loving god dwells within everyone and everything? Will we worship an ALL-mighty god, rather than one who gave power to Satan? Will we order the god of evil out of our hearts and out of our houses of worship?

The alarms are sounding. The fires are burning. The bullets are flying. Unfortunately, we are so paralyzed with fear that we can barely reach the snooze button.

What the “double-minded” quiz revealed

self-discovery-giftSooooo, did you take my “double minded” quiz? Well, I hope you enjoyed the little gift that I tucked inside for you: a piece of sweet self discovery. Actually, whether or not you answered the questions, the gift was yours for the taking.

I structured the quiz to be a treat for everyone. There were no right or wrong answers. And even if you didn’t answer the questions online, you still got the goodies: The opportunity to think about your beliefs—and the implications of your beliefs.

It is no small thing that most of the post readers did not answer the quiz online, and most who started the quiz did not answer all ten questions. My guess is that they realized that their answers to the later questions would conflict with their previous answers, so they stopped.

The fact that the questions tripped the “double minded” alarm 99% of the time was a shock, I will admit. But what terrific insight it provided to each reader. It gave them pause. They pondered their dilemma, then realized that their beliefs contradicted each other. Hallelujah!

Believing does not make it so

As I’ve frequently said, my intent is not to change your beliefs or tell you what to believe. I simply want to encourage you to think before believing. If you can suspend your belief until you have proof that something is true, even better.

This unscientific “double minded” quiz results reveal that you did just that. That’s not only encouraging, it’s very exciting. You have renewed my hope for functioning human brains, a hope that is dashed every time I visit one of my social media accounts and see a meme that asks people to say, “Amen.”

My heart falls every time someone adds, “…if you love God” to the amen command. For these people, God is all about the guilt-trip. And millions are willing and eager to take that trip—as long as they don’t have to think first.

Moses, meet Jesus

Did Moses really say, "Jesus will never leave me or forsake me?" Of course, not.Here’s a classic: a meme I just spotted on Pinterest a minute ago. It’s positioned as a Bible verse, “Jesus will never leave me nor forsake me,” and cites Deuteronomy 31:8 as its source.

That was jaw-dropping enough. But I almost fell out of my chair when I read the first comment: #Jesus. I kid you not. This commenter said, “#Jesus.” Ha’ mercy!

Like so many other social media commenters who are eager to be publicly pious and globally accepted as one Jesus’s peeps, this woman overlooked one important fact: Deuteronomy is in the Torah; it’s the fifth book of the OLD Testament.

Moses is allegedly the voice in these books. Miracle o’ miracles, Moses seems to have narrated his own death in Deuteronomy (a topic for another conversation); but he never mentioned Jesus by his current name, or as Yeshua, his correct name. Anyone who has even casually read these Hebrew scriptures is aware of this.

Everyone who reposted this misleading (and arguably, fraudulent) meme unwittingly paraded their gullibility before the world: They leaped before they looked. They affirmed before they knew. They believed before they thought. They certainly didn’t heed Jesus’s warning: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Mt. 6:1)

Oh yeah, and they outed their ignorance of scripture. Never mind the facts. It was more important to be seen in the “Amen Choir” loft, just in case God is scrolling Pinterest or Facebook pages. (Don’t you love the posts that proclaim that God is going to give you a blessing if you make an affirmative comment or share it on your timeline?)

There is a cure for all of this, and it’s found in one of the first parables attributed to Jesus. That would be in the New Testament, by the way.

Double minded thinking. There’s an ancient app for that.

In the second chapter of Mark (2:22, to be precise), the world’s most famous rabbi is reported as saying, “Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Mark, the oldest but not first gospel recorded this admonition in the second chapter of his book. Matthew and Luke, who copied large swaths of Mark verbatim during this pre-plagiarism period, included this parable in their books (Mt 9:14-17 and Luke 5:33-39).

It also appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying #47), which could signal something significant, and certainly adds credibility. Thomas is said to have walked with Jesus. By contrast, Bible historians say that the Matthew, Mark and Luke who wrote the gospels were not his disciples. They did not know him; in fact, they weren’t even Jesus’s contemporaries. 

Matthew, Mark and Luke’s texts don’t agree on Jesus’s birth or death narratives; but they definitely agree on this parable. Why is it so important?

The basic idea here is that if new thoughts, ideas and practices are incompatible with old ones, they can’t occupy the same space in our heads. You can’t pile the new on top of the old. The new one has to replace the old; otherwise, we will make a mess. We will become double minded and confused.

Double minded treeWhat Jesus was specifically referring to in this parable was religious tradition and rituals that he felt held no value.

The same held true for the Old Testament god worshiped by the Hebrews: This was a violently angry, jealous, vengeful, excessively punitive and genocidal god who had little regard for human life. He even commanded humans to do things to each other that they would not want done to themselves. That god bore no resemblance to the god of whom Jesus spoke.

But that was the only god that the Jewish people had known for generations. To combine this new image of a powerful god that Jesus was introducing—a god who was more like the unconditionally loving and forgiving father of prodigals—with the old image of a forceful, mean-spirited god was a volatile mix. God would be diagnosed as bi-polar, and the holder of this inconsistent and contradictory image would be diagnosed as…well, double minded, as we learned in the quiz.

What we learned about ourselves

To say that the results were insightful would be an understatement. Some of us took a serious look at the beliefs in our heads for the very first time.

Without dwelling on the numbers, let’s take a look at our answers, starting with our unanimous beliefs. Note: These results were from the first ten days that the quiz was open.

Results of double-minded quiz
While we didn’t completely agree on other questions, the majority agreed that…

  • God is good/divine. (95%)
  • We should do everything the Bible tells us to do. (59%)
  • It would be unfair to blame us for someone else’s wrongdoing. (95%)
  • Jesus died on the cross because God loves us. (65%)
  • God’s behavior is not portrayed accurately in the Bible. (63%)

The only consistency in these results is the inconsistency. For example, we believe that God is fair and just—but not necessarily good or divine. Many believe that God’s behavior in the Bible is accurately portrayed, but also believe that vengeance, murder, jealousy, violent anger, threats of bodily harm and genocide are evil. Ergo, we actually believe that God’s behavior is evil. We weren’t aware of that before now.

Several results were particularly insightful: We think it’s unfair for us to suffer for someone else’s wrongdoing. But how many of us believe a fair and just God holds us accountable for “original sin”? Mind you, this is a transgression committed by the ancient ancestor of all cave men, none of whom left any evidence of keen intellect and reasoning ability.

In that same vein, we do not believe that an innocent person should be killed for something we did. Oh, but there’s one notable exception: Jesus. A whopping 65% of us believes that God had Jesus sadistically tortured because He loves us so much. Have we asked ourselves: Is that a fair, just or even sane way to demonstrate love? Double mindedness causes us to believe that a behavior that is considered undesirable or bad when a human does it is good when God does it.

Double mindedness

The quiz pulled back the curtain to reveal a very common mental conflict. We saw that while we associate God with love and forgiveness, we also believe that God would not forgive us unless Jesus was brutally murdered. An innocent man whom we claim to love was heinously tortured to death, and we discovered that we’re OK with that. In fact, we’re even grateful. We weren’t able to see the conflict because of the previously mentioned combo of old and new wine making a mess in our heads.

Eyes wide shut

I hope this has been an adventure of self discovery for you, an opportunity to be consciously aware of your beliefs, and what they really mean. Our beliefs influence our behaviors; so it’s important to have an intimate understanding of what compels us to act. It’s important to know whether our beliefs align with our values.

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.Again, I’m not suggesting that you change your beliefs. I’m suggesting that you shake their hand and get to know them. Connect some dots.

For example, if we believe that God is fair, and we don’t think it’s fair for us to pay the price for someone else’s crimes—or for an innocent person to suffer for ours—are our values consistent with our embrace of Jesus’s brutal murder? By expressing gratitude for this act and “washing” ourselves in his blood, have we exempted Jesus from fair treatment.

And have we implicated God in an act of unfairness? By embracing this version of the story, aren’t we worshiping someone who treats others unfairly and solves problems by sadistically killing people? Aren’t we holding humans to a higher standard of behavior than the god we worship? Is it possible that the Bible scribes are describing their god and not ours?

Something to think about, as we also gain a better understanding of why James would proclaim that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Much love to you!

Can you pass this double-minded quiz?

You’ve probably heard the Biblical term,”a double minded man,” right? But do you fully understand what it means?

If you’re not sure, how do you know that you’re not afflicted with the condition? If it can cause you to be unstable in all areas of your life, isn’t it a good idea to understand precisely what it is, what its symptoms are, and determine whether you have it and how you can avoid it?

It's her, not me!There seems to be no agreement about what double mindedness is. Some describe it as hypocrisy; others say it means that someone follows two masters. In fact, the only consensus I’ve found is that it is undesirable. Oh, and one other thing: No one thinks that he or she has the condition. It’s always someone else who’s exhibiting the symptoms.

Does it mean that you’re bad?

Being double minded does not mean that you’re a bad person. I also don’t believe that it indicates your faith is weak, as some have claimed. In fact, I have seen lots of individuals who have unwavering faith and their minds couldn’t be more split.

If you enjoy self-discovery, and you want to know if you’re operating with a single or dual mind, I invite you to take the simple and painless diagnostic test at the end of this post. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Diagnosing double mindedness 

I’ve carefully observed this phenomenon for decades. During that time, I’ve detected some common traits (or symptoms) that aren’t mentioned in any of the articles I’ve read on this topic.

Symptoms of double mindedness

 

My first observation: The values, beliefs and behaviors of double minded individuals strongly conflict with each other. In particular, their values and beliefs are so diametrically opposed that they believe that opposites are the same: For example, demonic behavior is divine or the Divine wants them to do something demonic. You can see how that would make them “unstable in all their ways” and how it could negatively impact their lives and that of those around them. Large groups and entire nations can be double minded.

Second: Those afflicted with this condition typically have no idea that their beliefs and values contradict each other. I have surmised that it’s because they didn’t develop their beliefs independently, consciously or by examining empirical evidence. They were told that doing so reflected a lack of faith.

a double minded giftAt an early age, someone who loved them dearly gave them a precious gift: a set of beliefs. They were told to accept this present, no questions asked, and they obeyed.

The purpose of this gift was benevolent. It was to keep them safe from harm. In fact, attached to it was a tag that warned that if they rejected or altered these beliefs in any way, they would be ostracized now and would suffer excruciating and never-ending pain throughout all eternity. That’s incentive enough to do as told.

Bred, not born

Double-mindedness has been nurtured and lovingly transferred from one generation to the next for centuries. For the most part, each generation meant well; but they were acting on little information and the information they did have was misconstrued.

In fact, confusion is the third trait I’ve observed in every double minded person I’ve ever encountered. They sometimes seem disoriented when asked the simplest question, as if they’ve awakened in another universe. Most often, they deny that they are confused, become frustrated or even angry, and cling more tightly to these contradictions.

They were given these beliefs by someone they loved and trusted. Their loved one would not tell them something that was not true. But what if the loved one didn’t know that it was untrue? What if they also blindly accepted this heirloom belief?

Believing without thinking is the primary cause of double mindedness. Eddie Murphy satirized the phenomenon in his movie, “Vampire in Brooklyn” (1995). It’s insipid, but insightful.

 

All jokes aside, adopting someone’s beliefs as our own, without questioning their veracity or carefully considering their implications, can result in double mindedness and knock us off-center as persons of faith. The good news is that there is a cure: It’s called self-awareness.

I’ve developed a quick poll (ten simple, multiple choice questions) to help you pull back the curtain on a phenomenon that may be destabilizing your life. I hope you take advantage of and enjoy this opportunity to discover something new about the person who’s with you 100% of the time. It starts by asking yourself…

Am I double minded?

There are no right or wrong answers. This simply should sharpen your awareness of your beliefs and the implications of those beliefs. That awareness has the power to help you move stronger and more single-mindedly as a person of faith.

There’s space for comments, if you like. If you have questions, I will happily answer them as immediately as possible.

Online polling is now closed; but I encourage you to scroll through and ask yourself these questions. After all, the answers are critical to you, not anyone else. Want to know how others responded? I discuss the early results in the next post, here.

Much love to you—and thanks for playing!

Pat

Selma: A bridge too far?

Signs designate the route marchers walked from Selma to Montgomery.
Signs designate the route marchers walked from Selma to Montgomery.

Fifty years ago on this date, thousands who believe in liberty and justice for all reached a milestone: Their five-day march from Selma to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery was over. However, their peaceful struggle for voting rights for all American citizens, granted by the U.S. Constitution, was not. In fact, since 1965, the struggle for equality and human decency has been bequeathed to each generation because of unChristlike individuals in the South—and in northern states such as Wisconsin and Ohio—who are perversely pleasured by treating others in ways that they would not want to be treated.

Unquestionably, none of them wants to be denied any of their legal rights. They certainly would not want to be maimed or murdered for trying to exercise that right, as was the case on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. Ironically, many of these people call themselves Christians, yet actively snub these words from their favorite text: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

“Justice too long delayed is justice denied” ~MLK

Others are aligned with a different set of values, those of the Rev. Martin Luther King, who wrote from his cell in Birmingham, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” So, on the 50th anniversary of that Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, 80,000 likeminded people flocked to Selma to stand in solidarity with those who were viciously brutalized for daring to cross the bridge to demand the right to vote. My daughter and I were among them.

80,000 people marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 8, 2015
The Edmund Pettus Bridge came into view, as we turned a corner in downtown Selma.

The experience was a bit surreal. All the hotels in the area were booked. But an Internet search for groups traveling to Selma led me to a national conference of Unitarian Universalists (UU) who were commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march. They had a block of rooms at a downtown Birmingham hotel, and offered a one-day package that included the bus trip from the hotel to Selma and back, with meals. Perfect!

Maybe we were separated at birth

Frankly, I knew very little about the UU church. But oddly enough, many years ago, I took the “Belief-O-Matic” quiz on Beliefnet.com. I’d taken it before. I was a little bit of this, a little bit of that and a whole lot New Thought Christian. I figured that the outcome would be the same. But this time, after answering 20 questions about my concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, the Belief-O-Matic churned out a different response: I was 100% Unitarian Universalist. (The site says it’s for entertainment purposes, so entertain yourself and test drive your beliefs!)

Unitarian Universalists march again in 2015
“My peeps”

A decade later, after never attending a UU church service, Fate sent me to Selma, to share this voting rights adventure with “my peeps”—sisters and brothers from another mother, who see the Divine in every body.

The synchronicity became more intriguing—and meaningful—when I discovered that the UUs had been actively involved with the voting rights movement in the mid-sixties. Living their beliefs, a number of Unitarian Universalists who were fearlessly sincere about equality, put some skin in the game. Literally. They left their homes and families in various parts of the country, and worked and lived alongside the Freedom Riders. Some were beaten or murdered for their effort.

If you saw the movie “Selma,” you’ll recall the scene where two ministers were attacked for being “nigger lovers.” One was brutally beaten to death: Rev. James Reeb, a UU minister. At the end of the movie, producers noted that one woman was murdered in an ambush on March 25, as she drove black voting rights workers to the airport, hours after the final march. Viola Liuzzo was a Detroit housewife and yes, a Unitarian Universalist.

Destination: Destiny

When I boarded my plane to Birmingham, my daughter was already onboard. Her flight from New York to had one stop in Chicago. How cool was that?

I thought nothing could top those travel arrangements—until we left the hotel in Birmingham on Sunday morning with 500 of the most genuinely kind and loving individuals I have ever had the great fortune to meet. For them, boarding buses to Selma was a re-enactment of UU history. For me, wearing their bright yellow “Standing on the Side of Love” T-shirt was an honor.

Only a handful of these souls was wearing a black “human body costume” (Drama Queen Workshop-speak). But it was rare to glance through the crowd and not see someone wearing a UU “Black Lives Matter” sticker. (See, I told you they were “my peeps”.)

A few had extra ribbons on their conference name tags that said “Veteran.” They had come to Alabama or had harbored black and white voters’ rights workers in their homes in 1965 and survived.

Pat and daughter Maiysha
My daughter Maiysha and I, as we approached the bridge

Walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge that day evoked both the sadness I experienced while watching footage of the barbaric Alabama police on the evening news that Bloody Sunday in 1965. But there was also a feeling of victory and empowerment, walking the path of the subsequently victorious march across that bridge weeks later, on March 25.

Is Selma a bridge too far?

The experience was bittersweet for my daughter, Maiysha, as well: She was humbled to be part of the historic commemorative march, but dismayed by the condition of the city that brought the nation’s attention to the post-slavery brutality of the South.

“This place should be a monument to a movement!” she screamed in utter exasperation.

Actually, Selma is a monument, a monument to stagnation and to the pain and human suffering of those whom the voting rights movement left behind; the barely-getting-by life of a people with few life options. Their futures were planted and deeply rooted in the city, where it withered, rotted and died, as reflected in the homes we passed near downtown Selma.

A home in SelmaIMG_1457

Selma’s tiny downtown area was the same. In fact, it could have been a movie lot: edifices, but no commerce inside—with the exception of the large Diamond Center and Cadillac dealership.

One nightclub along the main strip took advantage of the worldwide attention, and cried out to the throngs passing by. Few even noticed.

DSC00958

Millionaire movie stars, a billionaire entertainment mogul and two U. S. presidents have seen Selma in recent weeks. Another 80,000 of us came to pay homage. We waved at the people along our path, then we boarded our buses and left Selma exactly as we found it: Forgotten and forlorn.

How does Selma cross a bridge to victory?

How we innocently support terrorism and tyranny

At some point, most of us have innocently supported terrorism and tyrannical behavior. We have literally worshipped at its feet. We simply didn’t know it.

By definition, tyranny is “the cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control”. For centuries, and with the best of intentions, we good people have taught our children to worship acts that are inhumane and tyrannical. We’ve done that by teaching them to worship a god whose behavior is inhumane and tyrannical. To top it off, we’ve told them that God has far exceeded the most extreme tyrant by threatening to torture them throughout all eternity if they don’t worship Him, and do everything He has commanded.

When did tyranny become godly behavior?

Mythological Greek god Zeus often ruled by tyranny and thunderbolt.
We worship an angry punitive god, modeled after the ancient mythological Greek god Zeus.

Before humans settled into the idea that there was only one god, they worshipped many mythological ones. Supreme among them was Zeus, king of gods and the universe. He is closely associated with the sky, lightning, thunder, law, order and justice.

According to myth, Zeus threw lightning bolts to Earth when he was angry with humans. Sound familiar? You’ve never heard a violent storm referred to as “an act of God”? You’ve never heard someone declare that God’s “going to strike you dead”?

This image of an angry, destructive God has pervaded most cultures since man began to theorize about the cause of things that were outside of his control. Even today, this belief in a tyrannical God whose punishment exceeds any crime is a belief that unifies us, no matter what we call our deity.

So is it any wonder that terrorist groups in other parts of the world, who also worship a brutal god, are heinously beheading innocent people and making threatening gestures toward the rest of us? They’ve told us that they are doing this to honor their god. As far as they are concerned, they are merely being obedient to their god.

We good people are horrified by the thought that anyone would worship a god who is violent, vengeful, and solves problems by causing physical harm to humans. We characterize them and their holy book as demonic. Guess what: Our scriptures repeatedly tell us to do grotesque, inhumane things to each other, too. Why don’t we know that?

Repeating the bad and making it bigger

God depicted as expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden
A Brussels cathedral window depicts a winged God expelling Adam and Eve.

We have magnified the message that God is cruel by spreading stories of His brutal behavior far and wide. One of those “God’s gonna getcha” stories claims that He was so furious with disobedient Adam and Eve that He banished them to an unknown land.

We don’t put children on the street when they’ve done wrong. In fact, as good people, we probably would call the authorities if we knew someone else had done that, especially to children who probably be classified today as learning disabled.

After all, if we believe this horrific story, we have to remember that they were essentially infants in adult bodies. We also forget that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of Neanderthals. What was their mental capacity?

If someone we knew to be a good person was falsely accused of such cruelty, we’d staunchly defend them against such preposterous charges. But we don’t say a word when we read that God has done it. What’s that about?

Should we defend God or a book?

We have made it our mission to spread these sadistic stories throughout the planet so that good people everywhere can come together as a community to affirm our belief that God is angry, vengeful and tyrannical. As we have for thousands of years, we repeat these stories, despite what they imply about the nature of God.

Scriptures demanding that we do heinous things to each other—from enslavement to murder—are rarely read to us from pulpits, where the claim is made that these are the words of God. Of course, there are exceptions.

These brutal scriptures were preached to slaves to justify the cruelty that was being heaped upon them. The message: God demanded slavery, and He demanded that slaves obey their masters. Or else.

It’s the godly threats that were so much a part of these Bible lessons that prompted slaves to share these stories with great conviction. It was important that they protect their children from harm by instilling the fear of God in them.

Even today, most black people I know, even those with high levels of literacy and formal education, insist that the Bible is the word of God. As a people, we are adamant that the book is inerrant and will condescend to those who believe otherwise. We’re convinced that they won’t be “saved” from God’s eternal punishment. We don’t realize that we’re characterizing God as sadistically unforgiving and satanic.

We simply don’t think it through because thinking is discouraged where faith is involved. As a consequence, when good people hear about acts such as genocide and deadly torture in other parts of the world, we judge them to be unacceptable and inhumane.

But if it’s God is committing the acts, we embrace genocide (the Great Flood), conditional forgiveness and sadistic torture (crucifixion) as acceptable and divine. We paint a good face on bad behavior because, as god-fearing people, we are afraid to do otherwise.

If God is Love, why should we be god-fearing?

We embrace the “Good Book” to our bosom. All we can see are its “good” parts. We staunchly defend this book with great passion even though it tramples on God’s goodness, even though it says that God won’t forgive the guilty unless an innocent one is tortured to death. And we never stop to ask: If God is Love, why should I be god-fearing?

If a preacher tells us that the book is a “love story”—without mentioning that it orders us to murder each other for a variety of reasons—we parrot the words and insist that the book is a love story. If a preacher tells us to say that we are what the book says we are—without mentioning that it says that we are evil by nature (and worse)—we repeat his words without reservation.

If a preacher says that the entire book is the Word of God, we agree that every word is true. Because that’s what good people do. After all, we don’t simply want to be perceived by everyone as good people. We want to be good people.We might even post on Facebook that the Bible is the word of God, because we want others to see that we are on board with the rest of the good people.

The nature of God: Divine or demonic?

Intentionally killing humans en masse could be considered an act of tyranny.
Genocide. Is it divine or demonic?

There are rules. Good people obey them. We don’t kill everyone who works on Saturdays, as God allegedly instructed in Exodus 31:15. We know that we can’t successfully use the “God told me to do it” defense if we murder our children for being disrespectful, as commanded in Leviticus 20:9.

We don’t shut the door on those in life-threatening situations. And we good people don’t stone women to death if are not virgins when they marry. We certainly don’t murder anyone we know who cheats on a spouse.

These are acts that the Bible—a book written during ancient, less civilized and more barbaric times—commands us to commit. We place our hands on it in court, as proof that we’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before God. But that same court will not rule in our favor if we commit some of the violent acts that the same Bible demands.

Worshiping a violent god is worshiping violence itself

We good people must understand that it is impossible to worship a violent god without worshipping violence itself. For those of us from the Judeo-Christian tradition, we must ask ourselves if we are in any position to characterize scriptures in the Koran as demonic and members of the human family in the Middle East as “bad people.” What is our basis of comparison: The “Good Book”?

Hear me well: It’s not exclusively terrorists’ beliefs that have created this hell on Earth. We good people have innocently, yet actively supported tyranny for thousands of years. We have worshipped it; so we share responsibility for all the terrorism in the world, on our streets, in our homes, beds and hotel elevators.

We are being brutalized by our own beliefs. Is it too late to loose ourselves from their deadly clutch?

Awaking from the nightmare we created

Make no mistake: We are not helpless. Good people created this hell and we can create something more heavenly.

Good people everywhere can merely rethink what God is and what God does. We can stop telling everyone we care about that God solves problems by killing and torturing His children. We can spread stories that reflect God’s divine nature. Then, we can choose to model that behavior.

There couldn’t possibly be a more urgent moment in human history for us to consider the possibly that what God has really commanded us to do is to love one another. We can do that now—or after tyranny (theirs and ours) destroys the world.

Much love to you, Sweet Soul.

Can you believe in God and not believe that the Bible is the “word of God”?

You didn't do what I told you to do...A minister friend posted this graphic on my Facebook timeline a couple of days ago. It reminded me of the first time I read the Flood story in Genesis while wearing my thinking cap. I came face-to-face with the inexplicably heinous, unforgiving and inhumane behavior that scriptural storytellers have attributed to God. And they tell us this is the “Word of God“.

I understand why and how it was created. Culture, limited knowledge religious politics and the scribes’ proximity to mythical storytelling played huge roles in the disparate collection of books. What I don’t understand is why, three centuries later, after literacy went viral, 25% of Americans still believe that everything in the Bible is true.

That figure is questionable. If 25% really believed that the Bible is the “word of God,” there would be more murders and their defense would be based on scripture.

The same people who claim that the Bible is inerrant call genocide inhumane and murder immoral.  So do they really believe it? I don’t think most of them understand what they believe.

Case in point: Yesterday morning’s encounter with a Chicago bus driver. As I greeted her and paid my fare, the driver responded with a heightened sense of delight.

Next stop: Eternal Damnation

“I’m so grateful that you got on my bus!” Her face was aglow, making me quickly flip through my mental Rolodex to see if we’d previously met.

She leaned toward me. “May I ask you something?”

“Sure.” I quickly regretted my automatic response.

“Do you go to church?” Oh no, is she going to try to give me a sermon before I sit down? I wondered.

“On occasion,” I responded, looking around at the other passengers. Had she asked everyone that question? Their faces weren’t giving up that information.

She wanted to know my opinion about something. For the full five minutes that I was on the bus, she talked about her young minister, who seemed to be involved in some suspicious activities.

“He’s going straight to hell!” she said, authoritatively. “I’m saved. But if they rest of them aren’t careful, they’re going to end up there right along with him, and wonder how they got there!”

She was referring, of course, to the concept described in the graphic that Rev. Bobby had shared: According to scripture, God knew that “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood” (Gen. 8:21). Scripture also tells us that God created us. So if we were born sinners, that means God created us that way intentionally. Despite that, human sinfulness outrages Him.

According to scripture, “So God announced to Noah, ‘I’ve decided to destroy every living thing on earth, because it has become filled with violence due to them. Look! I’m about to annihilate them, along with the earth.'” (Gen. 6:13)

True to His word, the scriptural God flooded Earth and “everything on the dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died” (Gen. 7:22).

The fluctuating Great Flood

Being omniscient and all, God knew what the flood’s outcome would be. Afterward, He apparently regretted it. Yes, according to the Bible, God makes mistakes. It says that when the waters receded 150 days later (Gen. 8:3), I mean, on the 17th day of the seventh month (Gen. 8:4), no, it was ten months later (Gen. 8:5), perhaps it was after 40 days (Gen. 8:6), or for sure, the 27th day of the second month (Gen. 8:14). OK, whenever the waters receded, God did a mea culpa. Perhaps he regretted leaving all those smelly, water-soaked carcasses strewn in the path of the ark survivors. Gross! 

He promised, “Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9:11). Don’t exhale yet. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t plan to commit genocide again. Apparently, the scriptural God created a new batch of sinful kids. And He’s hopping mad about it.

But He’s holding to his promise: No more vicious flooding. This time, He plans to throw His sinful children into a fiery pit where they will writhe in pain throughout all eternity—because we won’t stop acting like we were born as sinners. It’s simply distressing. And no one was more concerned about it than my bus driver.

“They don’t know The Word’!” she declared, in a huff.

How ironic: It was Saturday. And Girlfriend was working. According to The Word, that infraction is punishable by death.

Do the faithful really believe that the Bible is the Word of God?

The Word of God? If a husband finds that his wife is not a virgin, she shall be stoned to death. Deut. 22:13-14I know what they tell the pollsters, their pastors and any potential person who needs to be saved from God’s demonic punishment. But how many Bible literalist would also insist that everyone who works on Saturday should be murdered? (Ex. 31:14) How many of them believe that women who are not virgins when they marry should be killed? (Deut. 22:13-21) Are they on board with murdering adulterers (Lev. 20:10 and Deut. 22:22) or disrespectful children (Ex. 21:17)?

Among the Blacks who believe the Bible is God’s word, how many believe that God said, “You may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers…and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever” (Lev. 25:44-46)?

While I, too, reject any depiction of God as violent, vindictive, unforgiving or anthropomorphic, as described in the Bible, I do not reject the concept of a Divine Presence, the invisible, invincible, immortal and everywhere present spirit that I call “God”. Do not mistake me: There is a lot of wisdom and truth in the Bible. But everything in the Bible does not offer wise, humane or moral solutions to human problems; so I cannot imagine that it is God’s word. I believe that God would be more consistent. God’s book wouldn’t command me not to kill AND then provide dozens of reasons for me to commit murder.

The argument generally is that God changed from the Old Testament to the New. So, God is not absolute? What changed from the Old Testament to the New was man’s concept of God—and it’s still evolving beyond rejection, and the excessive and demonic punishment that’s attributed to God and Jesus in the New Testament.

Perhaps I’m weird: Once I see something in a book that is blatantly untrue, hyperbolic or inconsistent, I conclude that it is not a non-fictional work. If a book asserts that God does things that are clearly inhumane and demonic, and that God mandates me to do horrific things such as stone someone to death, I am not convinced that it’s the Word of God. But I give loving allowance to those who believe God wants them to wear a fashionable orange jumpsuit for the rest of their lives.

I could be wrong; but I must make a choice. Worship a God who is divine and does what Love does, or worship the God in the Bible, who is frighteningly demonic. Am I off-base here?

Did nun jab the #BringBackOurGirls campaign?

Call me crazy. (I know: Who would ever do such a thing?) But if you asked me how I’d expect a nun to respond to the  heartless and heartbreaking abduction of more than 200 Nigerian school girls, the terrorist act that spawned the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, I’d probably expect her to pray without ceasing.

AP Photo: Former President Bill Clinton poses with Sr. Rosemary
AP Photo: Former President Bill Clinton poses with Uganda’s Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe

If you told me that the nun in question was a humanitarian activist who had been named a “CNN Hero” and one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” I’d definitely expect her to use her influence to rally worldwide support for the return of the girls.

If you told me that Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe of Uganda, who has worked tirelessly to end violence and sexual exploitation, appeared on American television to raise awareness of what she says is a crime that is committed throughout the world, I wouldn’t be surprised. But if you told me that she made a violent threat against the show’s host, I’d tell you to check your facts. Here they are:

No Laughing Matter

Sr. Rosemary’s interview with Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert started innocently enough. He asked her response to critics who claim that hashtag campaigns such as #BringBackOurGirls are ineffective. She defends it, but says that we must do more to keep these incidents in the spotlight.

So far, so good—until two minutes, 18 seconds into their chat. Colbert tells the renowned nun that he is saddened by the mass kidnapping. Then, presumably to prompt a response from her that would touch the hearts of millions who might feel detached from acts of inhumanity in foreign lands, Colbert asks: “How does that affect my life? Why should I be sad for something that is happening thousands of miles away when there are things at home to be sad about?”

Sr. Rosemary’s response was not what I expected:

“If you cannot be sad because it is happening in Africa, which is part of the humanity, I would feel like jabbing you.” ~Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe

Rewind the tape! Were Sister’s bold proclamation and boxing gestures a joke? This is Comedy Central, after all. Frankly, if it was a joke or a rehearsed skit, it was in poor taste, given the gravity of the cause she was promoting.

“Really? You—a nun—would punch me?” he asked, looking incredulous.

“Oh, yah. I would jab you!” she responded.

“Am I allowed to punch you back?”

“No.”

“How is that fair?” Colbert protested.

“Because I’m going to punch you—and I would win!” she boasted.

Shut my loud mouth. Apparently, she was planning a knock-out punch. Stunning.

WWJD?

There are so many disconnects here, I don’t even know where to start. OK, I lied: Let’s start with the teachings of the Prince of Peace, whom the influential Sr. Rosemary has proudly represented since 1976.

Among those teachings is this little scene: Yeshua/Jesus is instructing his disciples how to respond when Gentiles reject their “good news” message. Did he say, “Knock some sense into them until they agree!”

No, according to Matthew 10:14, he told them, “Whoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” In other words, keep it moving, Brother—and oh, by the way, this applies to you, too, Sister.

The #BringBackOurGirls Campaign Takes It on the Chin

#BringBackOurGirls advocate Sr. Rosemary threatens to punch Stephen Colbert
Credit: Huffington Post

Please tell me under what circumstances can those who call themselves followers of Jesus justify violence of any kind? It is a leap beyond irony that Sr. Rosemary threatened an act of violence while protesting an act of violence. If you don’t think the way she wants you to think, she’ll punch you. Perhaps she took a jab at the #BringBackOurGirls campaign instead.

No one has to be reminded of the Church’s long and gruesome history of winning converts to Christianity through ultimata, violence and murder. We wish we could forget.

Obviously, that diabolical history still has a faint heartbeat. But then, as now, this behavior completely violates Yeshua’s teachings. It also give Christianity a black eye, providing graphic evidence that Christians are not always Christlike. If they choose to act in ways that are not loving, patient, forgiving and compassionate, why don’t they call themselves something else?

When I was a Girl Scout, I learned never to do anything while wearing my uniform that would disgrace scouting, my troop or my scout leader (my mom). The same is true for those who wear any type of uniform, which made the scene of a nun throwing jabs a bit surreal, if not disrespectful.

The issue of whether a hashtag campaign such as #BringBackOurGirls is effective tactic has now taken a back seat to a more pertinent question: Does punching those who don’t get on board with the campaign bring closure to this episode for the girls and their parents? Does it align the Church with those who seek world peace or send the institution careening back to its terrorist past? In the name of all that is holy, please put down your dukes, Sister Rosemary.

The Law of Attraction and my brand new iPad: How it manifested

According to Law of Attraction dictates, if we are to attract what we desire in life, we must to think about our desired object a lot, believe deeply that we will unquestionably receive it, and feel as excited now as we will when we receive it. In other words, we must raise our vibration to the level of the desired thing and it can’t resist us; it will naturally be drawn our way.

I’m not sure at what level a penthouse condo, S-class Mercedes, complete healing from an incurable disease or a famine-free life vibrates, so how does one match it? I also haven’t a clue how much time I must think about something before it actually materializes. On last week’s post about the Law of Attraction, a frustrated commenter mentioned that she’d been following the LOA dictates for years, and had concluded that she must be doing something wrong because she wasn’t materializing her desires.

If it doesn’t work, it means that I didn’t work it

Really. She thinks she’s the problem. Are we now blaming the victim rather than the misleading interpretation and misguided application of the Law of Attraction?

It appears to be very natural for us to give credence to the written word—particularly if it’s popular in our culture. Never mind that the words often contradict each other or they tell us to expect things that are implausible. We blindly believe in the expected outcomes, even after our lives and the lives of everyone around us fail to produce the predicted outcomes.

Cashing in on spiritual law

One thing was predictable to the producers of “The Secret” movie and other copycat media: human behavior. Humans crave control, and they would be magnetically attracted to a playbook that gives them the instructions to control their outcomes.

As for the millions who received no return on their investment, the response is typically: They must not have followed the steps correctly. They didn’t really, really believe in their heart of hearts that they could actually receive their desired outcome. Consider this: Maybe their “happy” frequency wasn’t high enough to attract that new home or complete reversal of terminal illness. Or, as someone recently told me, perhaps they simply didn’t believe that they deserved it. If we don’t believe it, it’s not going to happen.

Commercialized Law of Attraction’s Achilles’ heel

And that brings us to the Achilles heel of the commercialized version of this very spiritual law: surprises and disappointments. Not one enthusiast who has earned money espousing the virtues of LOA can prove or even claim that things always happen according to their dominant thoughts, visualizations of their desired objects or situations, beliefs in a certain outcome or emotions our beliefs about that outcome. Like everyone else, the only time they experience a deep disappointment is when they did all that and things didn’t materialize the way they envisioned.

If we follow their claims to their logical conclusion, what they’re saying is that if things never cross our minds and we don’t expect them, they will never manifest. Have these enthusiasts ever been surprised—pleasantly or unpleasantly? Of course. Will they stop trying to sell us material that insists we can do things to control every outcome? Probably not because humans predictably believe—and buy—without thinking.

Laws produce the same outcome for everyone. Otherwise it’s merely a possibility. But who’s going to pay for a book or a movie about that? Tell ’em it’s an ancient “secret.”

Bless their hearts, they found a way to commercialize karma–and in doing so, created some of their own because they know that nobody anywhere ever has gotten everything he or she wanted. If it was a law, everybody would. Laws produce the same results 100% of the time–whether they are spiritual laws or physical laws.

The Law of Surprise

The Law of Attraction denies the existence of surprises and disappointmentsI know: Maybe we should call it the “Law of Surprise.” After all, the outcome is the same for everyone: Whenever it happens, it’s unexpected. Always.

Such was the case earlier this week when I attended a seminar and entered a drawing to win an iPad. Everyone in the room wanted that iPad. I know that because when they asked prior to the drawing whether anyone had not yet registered, no one raised a hand.

The iPad wasn’t the only prize. There were three lovely mugs and several vases of flowers. I literally tried to become invisible during those drawings: I already have an enviable collection of mugs. Some are collectors items. So, no more mugs, please. And, since I was going to a meeting immediately after the seminar, I didn’t want to lug a vase full of flowers with me, either.

My eyes were still avoiding the front of the room when I heard the words “iPad” and “Pat Arnold” in the same breath. I was stunned! I’m one of those people who never wins anything really cool, and I had no expectation of breaking my streak.

But I did. Now, as my daughter squealed when I surprised her with an iPad at Christmas a couple of years ago, “My Apple Universe is complete!” And it happened while I was focused on what I didn’t want. Imagine that.

The physical realm does not control the spiritual realm

Here’s the thing: The Law of Attraction is a spiritual law. It applies exclusively to the spirit realm, just as physical laws exclusively apply to the physical realm.

Spiritual and physical laws also are not interchangeable. For example, physical law restricts physical beings and objects to one place at a time, no matter how much we desire to be in several. Spiritual law has no such restriction; invisible spirit can be everywhere at once.

Let me phrase it another way for those who believe that we are spiritual beings having a temporary physical experience: LOA applies to the invisible, immortal you: the soul that is temporarily wearing a human body costume. The law does not apply to the costume.

Your costume, which is limited both in nature, power and life span, has no ability or authority to successfully trump, direct or place demands on the spiritual realm, or manipulate spiritual laws for its benefit. But many have tried.

We may be confused, but LOA isn’t

The spiritual Law of Attraction says whatever you put out, you get back; what goes around comes around. Spiritually, it is simply another word for “karma.” Many confuse karma with punishment; but karma is merely the natural reciprocal for every action, including the good we do. That’s why LOA is also called the Law of Reciprocity.

Unlike the physical world, in the world of spirit, balance is always maintained. Scripturally, it’s been expressed as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—a bit graphic, but I think they wanted us to get the point. The way I express it is: “Whatever you do will be done to you.” Some might find that a bit graphic, too, depending upon what they’ve done.

From the Balcony of Life, there’s a bigger picture and broader context than is visible to those on stage. From here, it appears that our karma is not always balanced while we are playing a certain role and wearing a particular body costume. That is why so many of us tend to think that life is unfair. But our actions don’t stick like glue to the body costume that we’ll eventually slip out of. It sticks to us—as immortal souls.

That is the Law, and we should think about that before doing something to someone that we would not want done to us. Because it will.

Who’s directing the show?

Manifesting my shiny new iPad was the perfect punctuation for last week’s post about humans’ egoic belief that we control everything, including spiritual laws. I view my unexpected gift as a hat-tip and a wink from the Universe. (Thanks so much for the encouragement to continue speaking the truth from the Balcony of Life!)

How does LOA explain my unexpected windfall? It can’t, because what happens in life is more than the physical eye can see and the physical brain can comprehend—or control. I was simply lucky that day. That’s always a possibility.