Hate Takes a Holiday

Thank you, New York lawmakers. Thank you for overturning the ancient Mosaic Law that is at the root of our hate.Marriage for all

Slowly but surely, Americans are shedding their blind belief in ancient misconceptions about human sexuality. The weary “Bible makes it very clear” defense for homophobic belief and behavior is losing its hateful grip on otherwise reasonable people, folks who believe that the Bible is “the Word of God”—with the exceptions of the parts they don’t believe are true.

It is no small irony that people who consider homosexuality a choice made by naturally heterosexual humans selectively choose what is true in the 20th chapter of Leviticus: They consider it diabolical for a parent to murder a child for being disrespectful, and totally wacko for us to kill everyone we know who cheats on a spouse. But the Bible makes it very clear that we should do both. We’ve chosen not to believe it, just as we’ve chosen not to believe God said that menstruation is “a sickness,” as the Bible claims.

We also don’t banish a man from society if he lies with a menstruating woman—and send her packing, too. That says a lot about human nature and and adherence to the Bible when the only verse in the 20th chapter of Leviticus that we choose to embrace is verse 13. We flaunt it with great piety to belittle, bully, discriminate and even legislate against gays and lesbians.

Why don’t we go on a killing spree, as God mandated in the rest of the chapter? Because we choose to be smarter and more evolved than to do what the Bible tells us to do. Continue reading “Hate Takes a Holiday”

Can’t you see that you’re an angel?

If you knew who you really are, you probably would never experience another hurt or disappointment in life. This revelation came to me after watching “The Present Moment,” a video that a physician friend posted on Facebook earlier this week. The more I think about that little video, the more I’m convinced that it has the potential to be liberating, even life-altering for those who have the slightest bit of imagination.

Of course, imagination is a double-edged sword; it very well might be the reason so many of us are unhappy. Most of us imagine, for example, that our fate lies in the hands of an angry, judgmental and vengeful God who doesn’t think we’re worthy to be in His presence and will only allow a few of us to return home. How does that impact the way we perceive ourselves and treat others? How do worthless people behave? How likely are they to behave lovingly? If your All-Knowing Creator doesn’t find you lovable, how can you trust that you’re lovable to mere mortals? Conversely, if you knew that God was in love with you, would it matter whether anyone on planet Earth was?

Michelangelo's "God"
God: Angry? Judgmental? Sociopathic?

How different would our life experience be if we dared to imagine that God:

  • Did not put us on a planet over which He had given control to His evil nemesis?
  • Did not hold us accountable for the original or subsequent sins of others?
  • Did not challenge us to valiantly resist the potent magnet of The Enemy’s incessant diabolical plots—or face His wrath?
  • Did not create us as humans—weaker than the stalwart Enemy and capable of error—ultimately to judge us as guilty of making human errors and sentence us to a torture chamber throughout all eternity?
  • Did not design life to be complicated or painful?
  • Did not give some—but not all—of us prescribed rules, regulations, rituals, restrictions and readings that must be religiously followed if we are to be saved from sadistic torture?
  • Did not leave any holy books with directives that conflict each other?
  • Did not create anything or anyone that is an abomination?
  • Did not destroy every living thing, in a fit of rage?
  • Did not unfairly torture the only innocent child to death so that His guilty children could be absolved of their wrongdoing?
  • Didn’t threaten to cast you into a fiery pit, where you’d suffer forever, if you didn’t believe that He did something so inhumane (arguably satanic) to His only good child?
  • Did not intend for us to be confused, controlled, frightened, miserable or unloved?

I know that this is unimaginable for many of us to respond affirmatively to those questions. For centuries, people in authority have told us that God has done all of these things. And we have fervently believed it. In fact, we’re afraid to disbelieve it or call it sadistic. But if a human did any of these things, we’d be more clear and instantaneous about defining this behavior as inhumane.

Is this God frightening and intimidating? Is Love frightening and intimidating? Do we really believe that God is Love if we accept claims that God is frightening and intimidating?

Is there a correlation between what we believe and what we experience in our everyday lives? How does the amount of time we spend worrying about the future, fretting about or regretting the past affect us now and in the future? What is the real reason so many of us suffer from unhappiness and disappointment?

The answer was in this video: It’s simpler than we realize, and requires little or no effort. Really. That’s why “The Present Moment,” is so profound and so powerful.

There is one caveat: You may find that the graphics in the video often compete with or obscure the empowering message in the text. I did, perhaps because I spent so many years in television production.

But just in case you also find that some of the words blend into the background, I froze each frame so that I could capture those words for you. You may download it here. I don’t want you to miss the blessing these words have for you. I hope you watch until the end so that you don’t miss this important message:

The Present Moment is the void where nothing exists and where everything is possible. The Angel can then spread its wings. That Angel, pushing with love, is YOU, alive and vibrant.

Know that I love you—no matter what! If I can do that as a human, just imagine how divinely unconditional God’s love is.

Namaste!

Coming up: Our last week on Earth…

Have you noticed that the only constant on planet Earth is change? It seems that everything–from buildings to bodies, and even the planet itself–ages and decays.

At some point, life as we know it will end. But will it happen because an angry God is coming to judge us, grant eternal life to all who believe that He had Jesus slowly tortured to death, and sadistically torture those who don’t believe He’d do something so satanic? And will it happen next Saturday, May 21, as some folks say?

Judgment Day ad bench
Who has time to SIT?

Why not next Saturday? It’s as good a guess as any. And let’s face it; there have been many guesses.

“The end” as a human obsession

The Essenes, members of a monklike Jewish sect, were preparing for Judgment Day before the birth of the man we now call Jesus. Scholars say that more than 60 years after Jesus’s death, John Mark, a companion of his disciple Peter, wrote Peter’s recollections of the time he spent with Jesus. Among those recollections, Jesus’s prediction that the end of times would come during the first century. In Chapter 9 of Mark’s gospel, he writes that Jesus told a gathering that some of them would be alive on Judgment Day.

This claim is repeated almost verbatim in Matthew 16 and Luke 9, since both scribes “borrowed” liberally from Mark’s text years later. In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians (Chapters 4 and 5), he, too, warned that the end of the world was near: It would occur during their lifetime. None of these scribes actually knew Jesus. All were incorrect.

Throughout the ages, many others have predicted the so-called End of Times. In most cases, including the latest, the predictions were based on “the inerrant word of God”–the writings of ancient people who fervently believed the Earth was flat, that God lived above the clouds, that the Earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and moon revolved around it.

What’s fascinating is that from these unscientific people, we are basing our scientific calculations.

whom do we trust?

At the heart of the Judgment Day belief is this divine question: Will Earth and every living thing that occupies it die of natural causes–or will it be destroyed by a sadistically punitive God who has no regard for the human life He created, and whose punishment exceeds all human crimes? And if we really believe that God is so diabolical, how do we differentiate Him from the so-called “Enemy?”

Does Good Friday highlight a double standard?

We Christians call this Friday “Good;” but it’s the most heartbreaking day on my calendar. It marks the day when we refresh the accusation that God loved His guilty kids so much that He had His only innocent child brutally tortured to death, effectively letting the others off the hook.

Of course, ancient scribes painted a more rosy picture: They claim that God so loved the world that He “gave” His only begotten son. If we believe this, they say, God won’t torture us throughout eternity. Fear is a great control mechanism. Always has been.

Now we know what giving is—and what it’s not. Or maybe we don’t, so let’s check the dictionary, shall we: Give means to make a present of, to place in the hands of, or to endure the loss of; sacrifice. Giving does not mean handing over your child to sadists, knowing that they are going to nail him to a cross and subject him to a very slow and excruciatingly painful death.

How many loving parents would do this? More pertinent, who among us would be glad that our brother was murdered for a crime that we committed? Is gratitude the appropriate response?

I know that this is dangerous turf on which I’m treading. I’ve been told repeatedly that I cannot call myself a Christian if I do not believe that God sent Jesus here to be slaughtered so that I might live. In other words, if I were a real Christian, I would know that torturing an innocent man to death is not sadistic, if it is an act of God.

Let me be clear: I am not questioning any act of God. I’m questioning whether this particular act is God’s. Is there the slightest bit of the Divine tucked inside live sacrifice?

If we believe scriptures that say that God is Love, isn’t it incumbent upon us to ask: Does Love solve problems by killing any of Its children for any reason?

We Christians clearly have a double standard of behavior—and the standard is considerably lower for God. Fascinating stuff. It reminds me of a post I saw on Facebook several months ago. A minister shared a hypothetical scenario that went something like this:

There were two brothers. The older one, who’d previously served a couple of jail terms, had just been arrested again. If convicted, he faced a minimum of 30 years in prison.

His younger brother was studious, college bound and had never been in trouble. The minister said that the young men’s parents had asked if they should ask the younger brother take the rap for his brother. Since he had a clean record, he’d probably only serve 18 months. Afterward, he could resume his studies and go on with his life, while giving his brother a chance to clean up his act.

The overwhelming consensus was that the older brother should take responsibility for his own actions. It would be unfair for the innocent brother to sacrifice 18 months of his life for a crime he didn’t commit. Some even noted that the older brother seemed to be a habitual criminal and probably would be arrested again anyway, making a mockery of the younger brother’s sacrifice.

Where have we heard that story before? I was fascinated that these  Christians—folks who do not object to Jesus taking the rap for crimes he didn’t commit—didn’t see the parallel.

His sacrifice far outweighed an 18-month prison term. And guess what? Neither his death nor resurrection ended sin on Earth. But of course, the All-Knowing God probably predicted that.

So, if sadistically slaughtering Jesus wasn’t going to change the world’s behavior, why would God snuff him out a mere three years into his good news ministry? Isn’t it more likely that the Romans mentioned in the scriptures actually committed the crime?

We all know that this isn’t the first time in history that God has been blamed for acts of inhumanity. Just a few years ago, a world leader justified violence against God’s children in Iraq by insisting that God told him to do it.

Such outrageous declarations vilify God. But we so love the words written and repeatedly mistranslated by man that we have given our only begotten brains to the trash heap so that we can blindly believe that God would be so demonic.

We have a double standard: If a blood-thirsty posse approached the home of a guilty man, and his father pushed his innocent brother onto the porch, we’d declare that this father was pure evil. Why can’t we see the parallel when we read that God has done the same thing—and why aren’t we challenging such an implausible accusation?

This really would be a Good Friday, if we took time out to ponder whether we really believe that God is Love. It is impossible to believe that if we also believe that God does things that Love simply would not do.

Is that your Love crammed into that box?

“Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something—and it is only such love that can know freedom.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

I was watching “A River Runs through It” on Netflix the other day, and smiled when I saw a wooden carving above the pulpit that said, “God Is Love.” Scriptures say that God is Love [1 John 4:8]; but most of us don’t know what that means. We can’t comprehend the vastness, the power and the unconditional nature of real Love. The same can be said for our comprehension of God.

God in a BoxWe see God through the only lens we have: Human. Our vision is myopic at best, egoic at worst, and assures distortion of the image. Our visual field is somewhat of a box—containing and confining. We’ve placed God there, where we can observe but not experience.

We’ve created and publicized God as looking human, living in the beyond. Before we could fly above the clouds, we believed that God and heaven were there. They weren’t; but at least there was sunlight, which is more than we can say for the darkness that astronomy and astronauts have found in the Deep Beyond. And oh by the way, they haven’t run into God up there, either.

Frankenstein is a rank amateur

We have bestowed upon God a crazed, conflicted, sociopathic human personality that would be natural for anyone confined to a box. In the bat of an eyelash and with the severity of whiplash, our God performs acts that are as angelic as forgiveness and as demonic as genocide.

Our God issues violent threats of eternal damnation, causes excruciating pain and suffering upon innocent devotees such as Job and Jesus, causes the sun to shine upon the wicked and the good, and welcomes prodigal children home—no matter how errant they’ve been. Did I mention that He’ll bring a pox upon your house? Not really. But He’s ordered you to kill your kids if they’re disrespectful.

According to scripture, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways [James 1:8]. What does that say about the God that we’ve created? More important, what does it say about us as creators?

Love me, or you’ll regret it!

Our God is so small and humanly insecure that He demands worship. The scriptures we’ve written say that all things work together for good for those that love God [Romans 8:28]. What does that imply about those who don’t? Have we created a quid pro quo God for whom love is a mere trade?

Our limited perception of what God is and what God does makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to wrap our arms around the notion that Love grants free will to Its beloved. Always and forever, as the song says. Wish it could be on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

If asked, we will tell you that we believe that God has granted us free will. Despite that, we’ll also tell you that we believe that God has gifted us with commandments. Our gaze is so transfixed on the God Box, we seem to have forgotten that commandments are the antithesis of freedom. Commandments control; they don’t liberate.

It’s amazing that it doesn’t occur to thinking people that it would be extremely sadistic for God to grant us total freedom, then brutally punish us throughout eternity for exercising that freedom. Wait a minute! We’re here for less than a century! Even if we sinned every day we’re on the planet, eternal punishment far exceeds any crime. That’s simply another dramatic illustration of how tragically we’ve demonized God—and how thoroughly we misunderstand Love.

The worst job in the Universe

Our God is so small and tyrannical that even though He is sovereign and can do anything He wants, He chooses the mind-numbingly tedious and distasteful task of keeping records of how we use our freedom, every minute of every hour in every time zone for every body. Why would God spend His precious time that way? Oh yeah: So that He can have documented justification for brutally torturing us at a later date. Please, are we talking about Satan or Love?

Beyond not being divine; that story line is disturbingly diabolical. It would be more merciful for God to simply force us to do what He wants. It would spare us the misery and spare Him the drudgery of watching bad acting on every stage on Earth for centuries—without intermission.

But oh! Forcing us to do the right thing wouldn’t grant us freedom, would it? And, boys and girls, if it ain’t freedom, it ain’t Love.

WWLD?

Let’s put our thinking caps on and consider: What would Love do? Well, real Love probably would create a what-goes-around-comes-around world. Haven’t we been admonished to judge not and condemn not? Not one but three gospel writers tell us that “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” [Matthew 7.2] In the Old Testament, it’s “an eye for an eye.” [Exodus 21:23]

Of course, the scribes were not referring to us as we know ourselves: as mortal bodies. We’ve seen many a body’s lifetime end without reaping what it sowed. But we’re not physical bodies. We acknowledge that with the belief that God will punish us forever. I’m sorry, physical bodies don’t last forever.

We are eternal souls, not the physical characters we’re portraying here on Earth’s stage. As souls, we will not escape the karmic ricochet.

Life is always fair

If God is Love, Life will always be fair. It’s the first Drama Queen Workshop Principle. In a whatever-you-do-will-return-to-you world, we have total freedom to choose our outcomes; we are punished by our sins, not for them. That frees us to choose our own karmic butt-whipping. It also frees God to have more joy-filled days. And hey, who deserves it more?

If we don’t know what Love is and what Love does, is it any wonder that so few of us truly experience it? Is it any mystery that we feel emptiness and longing? We yearn for that kind of love from others because inside us, where God really lives, Love seeks its own.

Remarkably, God’s love is so intense and the freedom it grants us is so overwhelming and unfathomable that we separate from it and from each other. Now God sits over there—in a heaven we’ve created in the Great Black Vacuous Hole beyond Earth’s atmosphere with no gravitational pull, performing menial and maniacal tasks, and woefully confined to a box.

And we lie over here, lonely and dying for unconditional Love.

Nobody leaves this planet alive, but everyone does.

 

“In death, only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, spiritual teacher and philosopher

I received an email from my cousin Burnadette, who was outraged by a TV news story from a network in Great Britain. Watch the video and tell me: Is this an infuriating news story about a two-year-old boy who is addicted to cigarettes—or do you see something more? Let’s look at the facts that were reported here:

  • Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of Jakarta, Indonesia is addicted to cigarettes.
  • His father introduced him to smoking when he was 18 months old.
  • The toddler is a chain smoker who consumes two packs a day.
  • Efforts to stop him have failed.
  • He throws a tantrum and even becomes ill if he doesn’t get his cigarettes.
  • He’s now in government-mandated rehab.

Undeniably, these are the facts, but are they the truth? I know you’re wondering: Aren’t facts the truth? Not always. When we’re standing on Earth’s stage, our vantage point is limited. Often we can’t see beyond the footlights. And rarely can we see what’s going on behind the curtain. But when we climb into the balcony of Earth’s theater, we can see beyond the actors’ peripheral vision. Our vantage point is 360°, broader and often deeper. We can see on all sides of each character and quite frequently, backstage of the entire scene.

Ardi Rizal-infant chain-smokerThis smoking baby drama is fascinating, even on the surface. Anyone who’s watched an infant transition into a toddler expects certain developmental milestones—but smoking? I’ve seen college students, dying (literally) to look more mature, who aren’t as proficient with a cigarette as this baby.

How in the world does an adult teach an 18-month-old to smoke? How do you teach a baby to hold a lit cigarette—let alone twirl it like a baton—without burning himself? How does a two-year-old develop the fine motor skills to light one cigarette with another? How does a toddler learn to deeply inhale and blow out rings of smoke without choking?

Did you see Ardi’s mannerisms? Was I the only one who saw an “old soul” in that young body?

Little Ardi reminded me of a case study I read several years ago. In this case, a toddler in another country stunned his parents by asking where was his wife. They hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. He insisted that he was married, told his parents his name—which wasn’t the name they had given him—his wife’s name and her address, which was in a city that they had never discussed with him. He also gave them details about the home he had shared with his wife, his secret hiding place in that home, and the items he had stashed there.

After the boy had pestered them relentlessly for weeks, the parents decided to prove to him that he had no wife or home elsewhere. After traveling to the nearby town, they were surprised to find a house at the address he’d given them. At that house was a woman the boy instantly recognized and who answered to the name he called her.

He insisted to the frightened woman that he was her husband. She insisted that her husband had died years earlier. Frustrated, the toddler went directly to his hiding place and retrieved the treasures he’d claimed to have stashed there.

What if we really leave Earth alive?

Over the years, I’ve read a number of dramatic (and often traumatic) soul testimonials such as this—including powerful eye-opening stories from those who survived near death experiences. Afterward, they no longer feared death. Most looked forward to it.

In some cultures, elders watch a new baby very carefully, looking deep into the eyes, searching for clues that might reveal which ancestor’s soul is inhabiting this new body. This information provides a different context for scenes such as the one in Jakarta. Plus there’s the accidental discovery of some of my own soul history, which I shared in my metaphysical memoir, EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens, that influences my world view.

Most of us believe that every human has a soul, and that our souls live forever. It’s at this juncture that we begin to confuse ourselves: We believe that there is something invisible and immortal inside of us. We believe that it leaves when the body is dead. Or did the body die because it left? Was it, in fact, the Life in the body?

We also believe that we’re not that immortal soul. We are the part that remains here on the planet; we are the carcass.

Since we believe that we are made in God’s image, we’ve concluded that God looks like the mortal part of us rather than the immortal soul. In our confusion, we’ve given God a body, gender and the temperament of a sadistic sociopath whose “behavior” is unpredictable: He grants favor to some of His children, has savagely murdered many, and has promised to torture most throughout all eternity.

No wonder we’re afraid of death.

Believing that we’re going to die—or that we have to do or say something to earn eternal life—doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t make death fearsome. But if it brings you peace, if it inspires a deeper trust in God, and if it makes sense to you, by all means, believe it.

Nobody has ever come onto Earth’s stage and stayed forever. Have you ever wondered why? Are we immortal souls who have infinite possibilities or mortal bodies with a finite lifespan?

If every soul is leaving his planet alive, but every body will be left behind, which are you?

Let’s exonerate Pope Benedict XVI

Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that hateful, hurtful, homophobic speech by a church that oddly enough calls itself “Christian” is protected as a First Amendment right seems to have eclipsed other really big church news: Pope Benedict XVI has exonerated Jews for Jesus’s death.

Pope Benedict's new bookAccording to the Associated Press, the revelation was unveiled in excerpts from Benedict’s upcoming book, “Jesus of Nazareth-Part II.” If this declaration had been reported by The Onion, rather than the AP, I would be able to wrap my head around it. But this was not satire; it was just…well, sad.

Reportedly, the Pope’s new book explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis for “claims that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’ death.” Wait a minute!

As a whole? Hmmm, is that like: Saudis, “as a whole,” were not responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks? (Fifteen of the 19 suicide terrorists were Saudis.) Or is more akin to: Iraqis, “as a whole,” were not responsible for 9/11? (Not even one terrorist was Iraqi.)  There’s a big difference.

Methinks the Pope hath forgiven too much; he has actually perpetuated the un-Christlike myth that the Jewish people killed Jesus. Anyone who’s read the New Testament or has seen a movie about the crucifixion knows that the Jews did not commit the crime, just as the Iraqis had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. By dismissing the facts, the Pope’s grandiose forgiveness of the Jews is as much an attack on an innocent people as America’s violent invasion of Iraq to “free” its people.

Centuries before Benedict put pen to paper, it was an indisputable fact that the rabbi we know as Jesus was tried in a Roman court and suffered an inhumane execution at the hands of Roman military torturers because the declaration that he was the King of the Jews was a threat to the Roman empire.

So why isn’t the Pope forgiving, oh I don’t know, the Romans who conveniently live in the city surrounding his walled compound? That loving gesture would be such a warm and fuzzy highlight to this year’s Lenten season. Forgiving the innocent, not so much.

But here’s the beauty of his declaration of forgiveness: What Benedict unwittingly has highlighted are the impossible-to-connect dots that form the foundation of our beliefs as Christians—and the gaps that simply cannot support us, except through blind unquestioning faith:Connect the Dots puzzle

Dot #1: Jesus’s life purpose. For centuries, the Church has taught that God sent Jesus to Earth to do a couple of really important things. One was to spread the good news that God is Love, and does not do things that Love would not do—i.e., is not intolerant, violent, punitive, unforgiving, condemning and judgmental. Jesus also taught that the kingdom of God is within. We don’t have to go anywhere to find God, and we are not an abomination, filthy rags or unacceptable to be in God’s presence. Wherever we are, God is—truly good news.

Dot #2: Jesus’s fulfillment of his mission. What theologians tell us is that Jesus’s Good News ministry lasted all of three years. With today’s technology and air travel, the good rabbi could have spread the word to everyone in the entire world in that time. But he didn’t get very far on foot and donkey before it was time to complete his other important task: Be brutally slaughtered for crimes that he didn’t commit.

Dot #3: Barbaric live sacrifice demonstrates God’s love. This is a critical dot. The premise here is that God loved us, His guilty children, so much that He sadistically forced our innocent brother to die a protracted and excruciatingly painful death so that we wouldn’t have to. Christians generally protest unfairness, particularly an innocent person being executed; but we’re glad as hell that it happened to Jesus because…

Dot #4: Jesus died to save us from eternal damnation. We Christians rejoice that we are “washed in the blood of Jesus,” a satanic concept, to be sure. But more damning, we believe that contrary to Jesus’s famous parable in which a faithful father excitedly rolled out the red carpet upon his sinning child’s return, God’s forgiveness has strings attached: Only sinners who believe that God inhumanely subjected Jesus to a slow and tortuous death will be spared worse treatment throughout all eternity.

Those who believe that God is Love—and believe that Love would not do something so barbaric and satanic—will regret that mistake throughout a God-awfully painful eternity. Which brings us to…

Dot #5: God’s orders should be obeyed. So many dots, so little time. Let me simply cut to the chase: If the Pope believes what Scripture tells us to believe, exonerating the Jews is utterly oxymoronic. What is he forgiving them for exactly: Following God’s orders?

And that, dear Thinkers, is the question of the day: If the Pope believes that God ordered Jesus to be brutally tortured to death, and he believes that the Jews obeyed, I’m wondering if Benedict couldn’t have exerted his authority as a spiritual leader more effectively by forgiving Christians for reviling the Jews for centuries.

In the interim, why don’t we simply exonerate the Pope?

Yoism is for Thinkers

I’d never heard the term “yoism”–and wasn’t sure what it was until I watched this hilarious performance from the Balcony of Life. See if Lewis Black’s common sense doesn’t make you ROTFL (roll on the floor laughing), too.

Caution: This is NOT for those who can’t laugh at themselves.

God and Man in Tucson

British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton once wrote: “The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” Or, as my best friend in high school, now the Rev. Vici Derrick, chuckles, “God made man in His image—then man returned the favor.”

We live in a world in which humans have faithfully embraced ancient authors’ portrayals of God as an angry being who vindictively and violently killed humans to solve problems and silence dissent. Thousands of years later, we vigorously defend ancient scribes’ mandates to “put to death” humans who commit sins ranging from being impudent children to murdering a member of the human family.

A human—or a committee of them—declared everything the scribes wrote was the inspired “Word of God.” If we believe that, why are we shocked and repulsed by incidents such as the executions in Tucson and Pakistan? Why do we call these murders “brutal,” “demonic” and “senseless?” Why do we label the killers zealots, sociopaths and terrorists, if we really believe what we say we believe?

Lit candle
Holding us in Light

Tolerance and forgiveness are divine, not vindictiveness and violence. It is humans who are prone to respond with vitriol and violence. It is humans who must be taught to be civil and accepting of others. It is humans who must be encouraged to love. These virtues are not innate human characteristics.

Have we forgotten the barbaric times in which humans lived? Can we imagine how difficult it must have been for the ancients when they tried to describe God, tried to make sense of their dangerous world and bring some order to it, and when they tried to explain why natural disasters occur and how the world began?

The only context they had was human context. Man at that time solved problems through violence. They may have reasoned that if their world was dangerous and violent, that must be how God is—and how God planned it to be. Or perhaps to justify their behavior, they declared it godly: They were merely mimicking the Huge Human in the sky.

And so they passed down to us a who God is angry, volatile, vindictive, judgmental, violent and mostly unforgiving. They told us—and told us to tell others—that God ordered us to be angry, volatile, vindictive, violent and mostly unforgiving.

Have you ever taken time to count the multitude of reasons that the Word of God says that members of our human family “shall be put to death”? If our ancestors obeyed the word of God, the human race would have been extinct ages ago.

So why do millions of us still believe today that God’s response to human error is brutality: torturing innocent individuals to death so that the guilty could go free or bragging that He drowned “every living thing”? Why do we believe that God would accept an impotent demon’s challenge to inhumanely test a good man’s faith by killing all of his children, drying up his crops and making him suffer untold physical and emotional pain? Why do we believe that God will satanically torture us throughout all eternity for our indisputably finite period of human error? And why do we believe that if humans did any of these horrific things, it would be appalling, unacceptable, deranged—and criminal?

We don’t believe that it’s OK to kill politicians who disagree with us, whether it’s Tucson or Pakistan! Why is it OK, defensible—it’s even worthy to be praised when God commits these inhumane acts? Are we subconsciously holding God to a lower standard than ego-driven humans?

We are accountable for own our double standard. We can’t say that it’s unacceptable for humans to solve problems by killing people, while simultaneously proselytizing that God sinks to such a low, human, and sometimes demonic standard of behavior.

The irony is not lost on us that the youngest victim of the mass murder in Tucson reportedly was born on September 11, 2001—the day when other individuals chose to solve a problem with violence. What was the human response? Claim that God told us to solve that problem with violence. Throughout that child’s lifetime, we tried to solve the problem violently. We inspired support for the violence by fanning the flames of fear.

And how’d that work for us? How many lives did we save? How many families did we destroy? How many young men and women have suffered sustained mental and physical injury?

Historically, the toll for for miscasting God in our vindictive, violent image has been high. Blindly believing in the drama written by ancient scribes has actually breathed life into the demon they created. Every time we treat someone in ways that we would not want to be treated, we feed the demon and share responsibility for its continued destruction around the globe, in homes and parking lots, on city streets and rural countrysides.

Perhaps it’s time to stop worshipping our ego-driven human selves long enough to learn what the murderers and murdered are teaching us: Violence destroys; it is ungodly. True power and true victory come from living as if we were created in God’s true image—as the spirit of Unconditional Love and Forgiveness.

Only human? What if you’re not?

Resolutions on Calendar

Imagine this: It’s 1/1/11—and you suddenly discover that you aren’t merely mortal, after all: You are an infinite spirit having a temporary physical experience.

After you recover from the epiphany and sit down to write your New Year’s resolutions, will you approach the task from the same perspective—or will you see different, deeper, more expansive opportunities?

What would your resolutions look like if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are going to outlive your physical body?