Will Charleston wake us up? When a 21-year-old who has hardly begun to shave more than twice a month says (as reported by multiple media sources) that he wanted to start a race war, and was willing to kill nine people in order to do it, is it time for us to look at ourselves—again–and ask some piercing questions—again?

Has the human race lost control of itself? Is this just another aberration, or have there now been enough “aberrations” to make us ask: Are we really this primitive, this barbaric as a species? What is the problem here? What is causing all of this?

It’s our beliefs.

In my observation, in my opinion, it’s our beliefs.

Every single thing we do is based on a belief that we embrace. All of our actions have their foundation in thoughts we hold about the outcome those actions will produce—and those thoughts are deeply rooted in the beliefs that sponsored them. A young man with a distorted mind just proved that to us.

Again.

But the distorted mind of one more perpetrator does not allow us to continue refusing to look at what is at least one source of our societal problem. Minds become distorted by ideas and beliefs that distort them. So what humanity holds, and shares, as its most sacred and important beliefs had better be accurate, had better make sense, or they will contribute to, if not outright sponsor, behaviors that none of us can make sense of—except those who perpetrate them.

What I have been saying for 20 years in thirty books and hundreds of lectures is that it is humanity’s beliefs about God that have produced humanity’s dysfunctional experience of itself. Hundreds of us…no, actually, thousands of us…wait, let’s say it like it is: millions of us…use our beliefs about God as justification for what we are doing.

Now that may or may not be the case with this 21-year-old man in South Carolina, but whether or not his actions grew out of religious fervor or faith, I am sure they emerged out of feelings of righteousness…and the idea that righteous indignation requires and justifies punitive action. And where do you suppose that idea came from? Well, I know of at least one source…

And so, I repeat: the ideas about God held in the common culture are used as justifications for what many humans are doing. I can tell you that political and paramilitary movements around the world are using those ideas right now—and proudly declaring that they are doing so. Individuals are using those ideas every day—and proudly announcing that they have bettered their chances of ending up in paradise because of it.

Even those who have no beliefs about God are widely impacted and deeply affected by those who do. It is a fact that many of the civil laws of our societies are based on restrictions and instructions found in Canon Law or Sharia Law. The result: people who may have no belief in God or Allah at all are affected by the mandates of those who do, who claim that their man-made rules and regulations have proceeded from a Divine Source and therefore carry the Highest Moral Authority.

The time has come for us to admit that huge swaths of humanity believe in a God of righteousness, judgment, condemnation, and punishment—allowing us to be righteous, judgmental, condemning and punishing with each other. After all, we reason, what’s good enough for God ought to be good enough for us.

The Bible narrative—to cite just one example—actually tells us that as a matter of recorded history over two million people have been killed at the hand or the command of God. And we are advised by many religions that God’s love can turn to wrath—and does if we displease The Almighty.

Do we think this has nothing to do with how we, ourselves, behave? Do we imagine there is no connection whatsoever between these thought systems, these beliefs, and the actions, choices, and decisions of individuals and groups across the globe?

Yes, we do. Many of us do—even as we declare with impunity that when we commit atrocities in the name of a Higher Power or a Greater Good, they are absolutely moral and correct, but that when the same things are done to us, those actions are immoral and evil, and those who perpetrate them are subject to God’s judgment and retribution (to say nothing of our own).

And, amazingly, we fail to see the contradiction.

We use anger to end anger, violence to end violence, killing to end killing, and fail to see the contradiction. We sanction the killing of people by our own government as a means of our government showing people that killing people is bad. And we fail to see the contradiction. “An eye for an eye,” we say, “and a tooth for a tooth.” And we claim that this is the word and the law of our loving God. And we fail to see the contradiction.

It is clear to me that what is required to change our lives and change the world is to change our beliefs. First, our beliefs about God—about whether such a Divine Entity even exists, and if so, what It wants and requires. Second, our beliefs about ourselves—about who we are and why we are here. Third, our beliefs about others—about our relationship to them, and to the Earth. Finally, our beliefs about life itself—about its reason, purpose, and function.

Yet what could cause or create a shift — or even a willingness to look at and evaluate, with the possibility of shifting — our most sacred and basic beliefs? What could cause us to simply take stock, to ask ourselves, frankly and honestly: Are these ideas that we hold about God and about ourselves working?

Can humanity even be honest with itself? Does our species have the capability to see the truth and to say what’s so? Or are we so blinded by what we need to be true, by what we have been told is true, by what our parents and their parents before them have sworn is true, that we cannot even consider the possibility that something may not be totally accurate here?

Is it possible, just possible, that there is something we don’t fully understand about God, about Life, about Who We Are and Why We Are Here—the understanding of which would change everything?

Let these be our questions for the day.

(Neale Donald Walsch’s latest book is God’s Message to the World: You’ve Got Me All Wrong, Rainbow Ridge Books, 2014. You’ll receive special rewards if you choose to obtain the book this week, as part of Neale’s “Oh, I Forgot!” Campaign. Check it out here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that…God was at war with the Devil, and that’s how this all began.

Virtually every major religion teaches of a personality or a creature that is not God. This creature has been calledby many names, some of them: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Devil, the Prince of Darkness, the Evil Spirit, the Fallen Angel, and the Tempter. This creature is said to be in a constant battle with God for the souls of humanity.

To use but one example, the theology of the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses teaches that this creature called the Devil existed originally as a perfect angel, but later developed feelings of pride and self-importance, then persuaded the first woman, Eve, and through her, the first man, Adam, to disobey God. It was this decision to rebel against God’s sovereignty and obey the Devil instead that made Adam and Eve sinners, causing them to transmit a sinful nature to all of their future offspring.

God could have simply destroyed the Devil then and there, and killed the disobedient couple as well. (He did, after all, kill two million people at His hand or His command, if we are to believe the Bible.) But, according to the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses, God decided to allow time to test the loyalty of the rest of humankind, and to prove to the rest of the universe that man cannot be independent of God successfully, that man is lost without God’s laws and standards and can never bring peace to the earth, and that Satan was a deceiver, murderer, and liar.

Why God would need to test anything, much less the loyalty of a just-born species (which would be akin to humans having to test the “loyalty” of a three-day-old baby), is not explained. Nor are we told why God would need to “prove” anything to the rest of the universe—although this aspect of the theology does present us with the interesting assertion that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Otherwise, why bother?

This science-fictionesque story of God kicking God’s own lovingly produced creations out of paradise is not limited to a single denomination’s theology, but is widely taught in similar form in the Origination Story of many religions and cultures.

In some Korean homes, to offer a separate example, the story of Mago’s Garden is told. This tale speaks of a Deity who created a paradise and then placed in it human creations of different colors, like flowers in a beautiful garden. Because of their differences, however, these creatures fought amongst themselves, and so, in Her disappointment and anger, Mago banished Her creations from paradise, separating them and sending them to different places upon the earth, telling them that they may return to the Garden only when they learn to exist together harmoniously. According to the continuation of this story, the people of a different color upon the earth have been trying to find a way to do so ever since.

Each of our Origination Stories tells of a God who created something that, in the end, turned out to be not so good. Improbable as this sounds, the insistence on this story continues. In some accounts of this tale, what turned bad was an angel named Lucifer; in others it was God’s own children; and in still others, it was both. In some stories, God was at war with the Devil, and, being victorious, threw him into hell forever, and it is from this horrible place that he now competes for men’s souls.

In any case, humanity’s fundamental Origination Story is, as I said, the story of a good plan gone bad—of something that is not divine, but emerged from The Divine, that has failed to demonstrate or reflect qualities of The Divine, and that now seeks to tempt all of us to do the same.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if there is no such thing as Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, or any “evil spirit”—and what if that which is not divine simply does not exist?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. Without the existence of a wicked entity or a force for evil that is said to exist in Ultimate Reality, the entire mythology of God’s battle with The Darkness would disintegrate, and with it the whole idea of the eternal struggle of good vs. evil.

A news story in August 2014 from the Internet website, The Spectrum.com, illustrates how deeply this idea has become ingrained in the human culture—and offers us an impeccable example of a point made in the very first chapter of this book.

There, I said that it’s not a small thing to be wrong about God, because a striking number of the decisions made by billions of people across the globe are made within the context of what they believe about God, and about what God wants. If you think I may have overstated the case, I offer this: “Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy told members of the Independent American Party gathered to hear him Saturday that the April confrontation between his family, federal agencies and Bundy’s armed militia supporters was part of an age-old battle between good and evil,” the news article on The Spectrum said.

You may recall that Mr. Bundy was ordered by the federal government to cease grazing his cattle on government-owned land. Mr. Bundy refused, and his refusal made the national news, drawing people with loaded guns from far and wide to stand up to the government with him. Or, in Mr. Bundy’s own words: “There was people from almost every state in this United States was there. Some of them told me they’d traveled for 40 hours to get there. Why did they come? . . . Because they felt like they needed to. They was spiritually touched.”

Mr. Bundy was further quoted in the news story as asking the group he was addressing: “If our (U.S.) Constitution is an inspired document by our Lord Jesus Christ, then isn’t it scripture?”

“Yes,” a chorus of voices replied. “Isn’t it the same as the Book of Mormon and the Bible?” Bundy asked. “Absolutely,” the audience answered, according to The Spectrum website.

The armed standoff with federal enforcement officers (who, by the way, backed down) mirrors the same cultural story that starts all our wars. Human wars are based on—and, in fact, require—the characterization of people and positions as “good” and “evil” in order for humans to be sufficiently motivated to violate their own basic nature, which is to never hurt or damage anyone or anything.

A “reverence for life” exists at the core of every sentient being, and the only way to get such a being to act against this internal impulse is to convince that being that it is doing “good” by acting in a way that the entity itself would call “evil” if the same actions were taken against it.

Much of humanity’s dysfunctional behavior around violence and war has arisen out of humanity’s religions having adopted a story of a war in heaven between God and Satan in which God was victorious, resulting in the Fallen Angel being driven out of paradise.

As we have recounted here now several times (following the ongoing example of several religions), the Fallen Angel was not destroyed, however, but, according to the mythology, was allowed to continue to exist as the Prince of Darkness and the Chief of Demons, who to this day continues to struggle with God in a battle for human souls.

Fascinatingly, this is characterized as a battle that Satan can win. And when he does, the souls who succumb to his temptations are sent to join him in the everlasting fires of hell.

The Bible is replete with statements about hell—which assertions are put forth as vital doctrine (Heb. 6:1, 2), describing hell as a real, literal place of fire and torment (Jude 3, 7; Rev. 14: 1 0; 20:10-15; 21:8); telling us it is where those who knew not Christ would suffer everlasting damnation (2 Thess. 1:8, 9); and warning us that to this day this is a punishment that lasts forever for those who reject Christ (Matt. 13:41, 42; 18:8, 9; 25:41-46; Luke 16:19-31).

And so, religion has been urgently advising us for centuries that we must do all we can to avoid the snares of the Devil. The idea of intrinsic good vs. inherent evil has thus become a foundational element of the human Cultural Story, as has the notion that God is in a struggle with the Devil, which struggle justifies and allows God’s administration of horrible-beyond description punishment to those who fall prey to Satan’s temptations and do not seek forgiveness in a specifically prescribed manner. It is what gives human beings the moral grounds to administer horrible-beyond-description punishment to those whom they designate to be their enemies.

What’s good enough for God, after all, should certainly be good enough for us.

Thus, our species has found a spiritual basis for all manner of human barbarity, and offers God’s example as complete vindication of many of its cruelties.

Remove the idea of evil from the constructions and stories of Ultimate Reality and the cornerstone of cruelty crumbles, its rationale lost, its basis dissolved, its justification juxtaposed with an Ultimate Reality where nothing but Love exists, nothing but Love ever existed, and nothing but Love ever will exist.

The entire script about evil being at war with good, and about an angel who was in a struggle with God in the Kingdom of heaven, is derived from the idea that something which is not God can exist.

This idea gives rise to a corollary notion that “sin,” understood to be an offense against God, is possible—that it is possible for the Most Powerful Being in the universe (indeed, the Creator of the universe) to become upset because one being out of seven billion on one of several trillion planets did not go to Mass on Sunday, or failed to travel to Mecca during his lifetime, or fell in love with another being of the same gender.

This construction, in turn, leads to the dubious conclusion that punishment by God will and must ensue as retribution for such offenses, thereby balancing the “scales of justice” and ensuring that in God’s Kingdom, everything exists in a state of purity and perfection.

The irony is that a punishment horrible and everlasting is wildly out of proportion to many of humanity’s supposed “offenses” (such as coming to God with purity in one’s heart, but by the wrong religion). The sad paradox is that this is everything but an expression of purity and perfection.

Now, here is God’s message to the world…

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about the existence of a creature known as Satan is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

There is no such being as Satan, and hell does not exist. Those who believe that Satan does exist assert that his non-existence is exactly what Satan himself would declare, and would attempt to get us to believe. Therefore, anyone who says that Satan does not exist is seen not simply as someone who has a theological difference with the religious mainstream, but, more ominously, as “an instrument of the Devil.”

This ensures that such a difference of opinion is rarely revealed or widely discussed.

We will, nevertheless, discuss it here.

That which human beings call evil does exist in our reality, as part of the Contextual Field described earlier. Yet our definitions of “evil” are creations of our own devising, having nothing to do with any kind of inherent evil in God’s Kingdom.

Indeed, it is the absence of “evil” in the realm of the spiritual that requires us to create it in the Contextual Field within the realm of the physical, so that we may express and experience what we call “good.”

We do not have to create it on our own planet, however.

So long as something that we label “evil” exists somewhere in the Contextual Field (which is the universe) we can experience that which we call “good.” As well, we can use memory as a device with which to create a Contextual Field. Therefore, if we can remember a time when we experienced or heard about something “evil,” we can in the present moment experience that which we call “good.” Therefore, the presence and the expression or experience of “evil” on the earth today is not a requirement for the expression or experience of “good” to take place.

Because what we call “evil” is a creation of our own making does not mean that what we call “evil” is not “real” in our experience (insofar as anything within this illusion called physical life is “real”), or that labeling things, in human terms, as “good” and “evil” has no value.

Indeed, it is by what we ourselves call “evil” that our species defines itself—and those definitions change as the species itself evolves. Yet it is critically important for us to understand that those labels are our own, and have not been indelibly “stamped” on certain actions or conditions by either a Deity or a Devil.

I will now offer dramatic evidence that this is true.

On July 28, 1999, in a weekly address witnessed by more than 8,500 people, Pope John Paul II said that a physical, literal hell as a place of eternal fire and torment did not exist. Rather, the Pope said, a hell-like experience can be encountered by the soul—not only after death, but even in this life. This experience, the Pontiff said, was the experience of separation from joyful communion with God.

According to an official Vatican transcript of the Pope’s speech, John Paul II noted that the scriptural references to hell and the images portrayed by them are only figurative and symbolic of “the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God.”

He added, “Rather than a physical place, hell is the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”

The Pope went on to say that the ancient notion of a hell of fire and brimstone, and the frightening images from some scriptures and other sources and paintings, are also only “symbolic.”

Such illustrations, he said, should not be used to scare people.

To cite his exact words: “The thought of hell and even less the improper use of biblical images must not create anxiety or despair.”

The Pope also said that God does not condemn us to hell.

Eternal damnation, he explained, is “not attributed to God’s initiative, because in his merciful love he can only desire the salvation of the beings he created.”

He did not explain why God cannot bring to fruition His “only desire,” but did say that it is a human being himself who closes off to God’s love. And so, damnation is actually a human being’s own doing—the result of a free will choice to reject God and His forgiveness.

(For those who wish to look it up, the statement by Pope John Paul II was reported in the August 4, 1999 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Holy See. The Weekly Edition in English is published for the U.S. by The Cathedral Foundation, 320 Cathedral St., Baltimore, MD. His remarks were also reported in the Religion News Service, a news agency reporting on religion, ethics, spirituality, and moral issues.)

And now, for that dramatic illustration of the similarities in the messages now being received and shared by human beings that I spoke of earlier… 

The Pope’s commentary bore a striking resemblance to the words of Christian evangelist Billy Graham in an interview conducted by a major news magazine some years ago. Asked about the eternal furnace of hell, he offered this: “The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell . . . When it comes to a literal fire, I don’t preach it because I’m not sure about it.” (Time magazine, 11-15-93)

And . . . these utterances by both Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham not only resemble each other, but come remarkably close to the words found in the book Home with God in a Life That Never Ends, the final installment in the nine-text Conversations with God series.

Here is the dialogue from that source, beginning with words attributed to God: Let us be clear. Hell does not exist. There simply is no such place. Therefore, there is no such place for you to go.

Now . . . can you CREATE a personal “hell” for yourself if you choose to, or if you believe this is what you “deserve”? Yes. So you can send yourself to “hell,” and that “hell” will turn out to be exactly as you imagine or feel a need for it to be—but you will not stay there for one moment longer than you choose to.

Who would choose to stay there at all?

You’d be surprised. A lot of people live within a belief system that says they are sinners and must be punished for their “offenses,” and so they will actually stay in their illusion of “hell,” thinking that this is what they deserve, that this is what they “have coming” to them, that this is what they have to do.

It will not matter, however, because they will not suffer at all. They will simply observe themselves from a detached distance and see what is going on—something like watching an instructional video.

The dialogue then says that the moment any soul wishes to get out of this self-imposed hell, that soul finds itself, at the speed of thought, in a place of unconditional love, total knowing, absolute joy, and complete emersion and union with God.

All of these statements—from the Pope, from Rev. Billy Graham, from Home with God, and from many other sources of contemporary spiritual wisdom who could also be quoted here (but will not be in the service of time and space)—completely contradict what the Bible writers said in ancient times about the reality of a literal lake of fire that burns throughout eternity.

Previously in this text I said that, as a product of evolution, “not just one or two of us, not just a few people, but millions everywhere are now receiving God’s eternal message. It is coming through to humanity more ubiquitously and more accurately than ever.”

I also said in that earlier statement: “Not coincidentally, nearly all of these ‘new messages’ contain similar statements, offer similar observations, provide similar answers, and describe similar realities.”

So the question is, has the human race evolved sufficiently to finally move beyond the level of our earliest stories and statements about an Evil Spirit and a Place of Fire and Brimstone?

Or shall we continue to refuse to question the Prior Assumption?

The statement should be made again that setting aside the notion of a Devil does not mean abandoning our notion that some things are “good” and some things are “evil,” by humanity’s current definition.

The trick is to not meet “evil” with “evil,” but to realize that its very existence is a product of the Contextual Field which exists only in the realm of the physical, and thus to bless those who perpetrate “evil,” even as we seek to change what they have done.

What’s this?, you might say. We are to bless evil-doers?

Yes. Every spiritual master who has ever walked this planet has understood that. It is why all spiritual masters, each in their own way, have sent the same basic message to humanity:

“Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”

Buddha said: “Even if thieves carve you limb from limb with a double-handed saw, if you make your mind hostile you are not following my teaching.”

Those teachings flow to humanity to the present day. The Dalai Lama spoke this is the twenty-first century: “Hatred will not cease by hatred, but by love alone. This is the ancient law.”

Can we believe the words of our spiritual masters? If they did not want us to believe them, why would they have said these things?

Could it be that they were trying to tell us that, through the highest expression of love, we could dissolve the pain and the power of everything and anything that we do not consider to be the most magnificent expression of love?

Could it be that every spiritual master has known that during all human lives we have been and are going to be invited to have the courage to contradict what most people would consider the “right” thing to do when under attack?

Does this mean that we should not respond when under attack? No, it does not mean that. But it does mean that the way in which we respond does not have to be the traditional way of self-defense and counter-attack, and can thus nullify the effects of the attack.

All love will in all ways nullify all negative effects of all attack. It may not alter the outward appearance, but it will forever alter the inward experience. And this, in turn, often does alter the outward appearance.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years in South Africa, but he refused to condemn his jailors. On the contrary, he chose to openly love them. The result: the guards fought to be assigned to his area. They sought his counsel regarding their personal problems, and he sat patiently with them in his cell, offering his gentle advice. It is said that on the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, the guards wept. They had lost their best friend.

He understood at a very deep level that . . . All love will in all ways nullify all negative effects of all attack.

It is when we realize that we have the power to neutralize not just an attack, but any negative energy in any form whatsoever—from minor annoyances to the day’s major calamities—that we see that negativity itself is something we are subjectively producing, not objectively experiencing. We are creating it, not encountering it. It is in interior decision, not an exterior condition. Our inner struggle around this interior decision regarding any exterior event, condition, situation, or circumstance is what every spiritual teacher, every saint and every sage has spoken of through the ages as the biggest challenge of being human. Many Muslims refer to this inner struggle as jihad.

There is no creature or being such as Satan. God did not create an angel and watch it turn into a Devil, then allow it to bedevil humans for the entirety of their existence. But God did give humans the power to see things in any way that they wished. It may be helpful to think of SATAN, then, as simply an acronym for: Seeing Any Thing As Negative.

Like Nelson Mandela, we can adopt any perspective on any aspect of life that we choose. Our perspective will then create our perception, our perception will create our belief, our belief will create our behavior, our behavior will create our experience, and our experience will create our reality.

The decision to see something, anything, as negative is a choice made by us, and only by us. There is no “evil spirit” who has power over us.

Or, as the comic strip character Pogo, created by the late cartoonist Walt Kelly, was noted for saying: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, the statement that,,,
God is vengeful and God’s love can turn to wrath

This is an extension of an earlier belief. Much of the world believes in a God who is a male super-being, who demands obedience, who says we are imperfect because we have not been obedient, and who tells us that in order for us to be in God’s good graces (and thus, eligible for admission into heaven), we must meet certain very specific requirements— and whose love turns to wrath if those requirements are not met.

A search of many of the holy books of the human species produces countless references to “the wrath of God” in many of the world’s religious traditions.

In the Jewish tradition we are told at Nahum 1:2 that “Adonai is a jealous and vengeful God. Adonai avenges; he knows how to be angry. Adonai takes vengeance on his foes and stores up wrath for his enemies.”

In the Christian tradition we are told in John 3:35-36 that, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

In the Islamic traditions we are told at Verse 005:060 about: “. . . those whom Allah has cursed, those upon whom fell the wrath of Allah, those whom Allah turned into monkeys and pigs, and the devotees of the arrogant and the evil. Their plight is the worst; they are the farthest away from the straight path.”

In the Mormon tradition we are told in Mosiah 3:36 of those who “have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of his partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever.”

Things are considered pretty serious when scriptures that we call holy tell us of a Deity that we call merciless. Small wonder that people throughout history have been nervous about offending God. Even Moses was known to have said in a prayer to God: “. . . we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.” (Psalm 90:7)

Indeed, we are. This idea of God’s merciless anger permeates human considerations of The Divine, and has done so for centuries.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God has never displayed, and never will express or experience, wrath?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. Of course it would. It would allow us to believe in a God whose love is unconditional and is never withdrawn for any reason at all—and certainly not for our beliefs.

This, in turn, would give human beings, at last, an accurate model of the true nature of love, and a wonderful example of how to love one other. Right now many humans use their understanding of how God loves us as their model of how they should love one another.

Accepting the notion that God’s love is unconditional would mean that a display of human wrath for any reason could no longer rely for its justification on the teaching that God has brought His wrath to bear on humanity time and time again. (You will recall that the Bible indicates that over two million people were killed at the hand or the command of God.)

At the level of individual life partnerships and romantic relationships, a new way of loving each other would have a demonstrable basis if humans were not told over and over again about God’s wrath. That new basis would be God’s unconditional love. What a model we would finally have! Someone who loves us no matter what.

Fear, too, would leave the human heart forever if we thought that the experience of love—whether the love of another human being or the love of God—was forever.

If we thought that God had no wrath, little children could go to bed no longer having to worry about what will happen if they don’t live until morning. The prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take . . .” could be changed to: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I know that God my soul will keep. And if I die before I wake, I know that God my soul will take.”

If we thought that God expresses no wrath, billions of adults could go to bed no longer feeling the urge to beg Mary, the mother of Jesus, to “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Thus, Supplication Theology would be replaced by Application Theology.

Supplication Theology is a theology in which we are placed in the position of a supplicant, continually asking God, begging God, entreating with God for one thing or another.

Application Theology is a theology in which we apply in our lives what we know to be true about our relationship to God: that God lives in us, through us, as us, and that the qualities of divinity are ours to apply in our daily lives, including wisdom, clarity, knowledge, creativity, power, abundance, compassion, patience, understanding, needlessness, peace, and love.

Now here is God’s message to the world:

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God’s wrath is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and stop telling this to ourselves and to our children. The fact is that God has no reason to experience or express wrath. When you are everything, have everything, created everything, experience everything, and can express everything that you wish to express, what can there be to be filled with rage about?
 When you want nothing, need nothing, require nothing, demand nothing, and command nothing, what can there be for you to feel betrayed about?

Finally, when there is nothing else in existence except You, who is there for you to be rageful with? Whom shall you punish? Shall the right hand slap the left?

The idea of a wrathful God rests on a notion that God cares what you do or don’t do as one of billions of creatures in one of billions of moments on one of billions of planets in one of billions of sectors of a cosmos that is one billion trillion times the size of your home star. And not only that God cares, but that God cares so much as to be deeply wounded and grievously offended if your behavior does not live up to what is expected—nay, commanded—of you.

That would be akin to saying that you are concerned with one grain of sand out of all the grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world. You may love the sand and all its grains because they are part of the wonder and beauty of all the world’s beaches, but you certainly wouldn’t be filled with wrath if one of those grains was not reflecting the sunlight the way it was designed to. And you certainly wouldn’t be furious if you knew that this was but a temporary condition in any event, lasting no more than a nanosecond in the eternal span of that grain of sand’s existence.

The idea of a wrathful God not only depends upon our acceptance of the thought that God has a preference in the matter of our behaviors, but also on the notion that all of our behaviors and all of their consequences have not already taken place.

A wrathful deity can only be considered within totally artificial constructs of space and time. Yet in the universal Here/Now, God cannot become wrathful based on something that has just happened, but would have to always be wrathful based on all the things with which God is said to disagree, since everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and ever will happen is occurring simultaneously in the eternal and singular moment of Evernow.

It is true that God is always being something in Evernow, but “wrath” is not it. God is Love, eternal and unchanging.

Not wrath. Love.
Love unconditional.
The Essential Essence. The Prime Force. The Pure Energy. The Singular Element. The Only Thing There Is.


To gravitate toward this new and revolutionary holding of the Divine Reality and the Deity experience, one would have to release oneself from the notion that God is a creature of moods, whose temperament depends on what is happening at a particular time on a particular day in a particular life in a particular place on a particular planet in a particular solar system of a particular galaxy within a particular quadrant of a particular universe.
To help you move to this new and revolutionary holding, remember this always:

God is Love, eternal and unchanging. Not wrath. Love. Love unconditional.

There is a third notion we must deal with. It is the stubborn belief that there is something called “divine justice,” which can be violated, or that divine perfection can somehow be irrevocably marred, by a single event in the single life of . . . here we go again . . . a single being on a single planet in a single solar system of a single galaxy within a single quadrant of a single universe.

We are told by some religions that it is this violation or marring that God finds intolerable and unacceptable, and which must therefore be rectified and reconciled. Yet God tells us (as opposed to what religions tell us) that perfection can’t be marred, because perfection is the natural state of things and the everlasting condition and reality.

In truth, no one thing is better than another, but all things are simply what they are: reflections of a perfectly functioning universe in a perfectly demonstrating manifestation of a perfectly existing reality, one thing leading inexorably to another in a never-ending process called evolution.

How can any and every reality be perfect? Simple. If no one and nothing requires anything or something other than What Is. And this is the natural state of things.

In Ultimate Reality that which is divine requires and desires nothing other than What Is, for the very good reason that What Is is the sum total of all possibilities, all events, all circumstances, all conditions, all experiences, and all expressions of life in any and all forms, all at once.

A rainy day is no less perfect than a sunny day, for it is the rainy day that makes the glory of the sunny day joyful, and the heat of the sunny day that makes the cooling of the rainy day welcome.

It is the mistake on her multiplication tables at age nine that produces the mathematical genius teaching advanced calculus at MIT at age thirty-four.

And yes, it is even the horror of the worst of human experiences that has given birth to the best of our species’ expressions as we evolve across the decades, centuries, and millennia.

Across the span of all existence, one circumstance or event produces, eventually, an awareness that authors another circumstance or event, and the master lives life without judgment or condemnation of that process, nor of any person or occurrence that is part of it, but rather, sees the grander mosaic.

“Justice” and “perfection” are human constructions created within the context of relative values. The idea of divine justice depends upon a preceding idea that some things are “right” and some things are “wrong” in the mind of God. Yet such an idea does not exist in the realm of the spiritual, which is also a realm of the Absolute, where everything is experi- enced Here/Now, and the only energy is Absolute Love.

Every spiritual master knows this, which is why all spiritual masters have said, each in their own way: Judge not, and neither condemn. You have already heard this message before here—and you will hear it again before these proceedings are concluded—for it rests at the heart of everything the human race is invited to embrace in its new understanding of God.

The question is, does “judge not, and neither condemn” apply as well to God?

The answer that most religionists have given us is, no. Humans are not to judge, but God is expected to judge.

Yet is this how everything is really supposed to work? And if so, why? How did it get to be this way?

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example…

. . . the belief that God who is a male super-being who demands obedience, who says we are imperfect because we have not been obedient, and who tells us that in order for us to be in God’s good graces (and thus, eligible for admission into heaven), we must meet certain requirements.

Among those requirements are that we believe in God in a certain way, and worship God in a particular fashion.

What this comes down to is that we must belong to a specific religion—or at least, hold true to its tenets.

The thought that we even need to be in a good place with God arises out of the idea we explored above: that only absolute purity and total perfection is allowable or present in heaven, and that this probably does not describe us—so we’d better do something about it.

This thought, in turn, emerges from the other thought explored earlier: that we entered this world in a state of impurity, branded at birth with Original Sin, Inherited Imperfection, or Ancestral Guilt, and that we all have in any event offended God with our own sins during our own lives.

And this thought surfaces from a deeply-held belief that we can sin, and that God can be offended.

From these congealed notions is born a deep concern in the hearts of many people that we are not in God’s good graces now. And so we look, individually and as a collective, for ways in which we can get into God’s good graces—before it is too late.

The popularity of religions is based on this yearning, and on their promises that they can produce this result.

Religions, we are told, are our passports into heaven. All we have to do is follow their mandates, live according to their guidelines, obey their rules, and respond affirmatively to their injunctions.

Dramatically increasing the stakes in all this is the statement of some denominations that their religion offers the only way to achieve what is called “salvation.”

We are told that if we do not believe what they teach, if we do not embrace their doctrine, if we do not accept their canon, creed, and credo as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we are condemned by God to everlasting damnation.

There is no question about this among the faithful within those denominations: We must believe in God and worship God in a certain and particular way or our eternal soul is eternally doomed.

*         *        *

Now comes The Great What If . . .What if God does not need to be worshipped, and does not need to have humans believe in God in any certain way? What if God does not need human beings to believe in God at all?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes, of course it would. If we let go of the thought that one way is the only way to worship God and get to heaven, the spiritual self-righteousness that appears deeply embedded in humanity’s experience of God would virtually disappear. And absent that self-righteousness, all of the religious wars and inter-denominational struggles, the ruthless and senseless killing that has soiled the pages of human history for millennia, would likewise ultimately disappear.

If we felt that we didn’t even need to believe in God for God to welcome us back Home, we could then enter into whatever belief in God we might develop—if, indeed, we chose to embrace such a belief at all—and do so as an expression of pure joy and absolute wonderment, rather than an outgrowth of angst or a product of trepidation. A loss of fear about what will happen if we do not profess a belief in God would spell the end of all fear-based religions.

Indeed, as the love-me-or-else threat was taken out of our experience of God, our entire relationship with The Divine would shift dramatically, putting us into a genuine friendship with God in which our worried trembling would be replaced by our empowerment.

*         *         *

On another level, if we held the thought that God has no need for our worship, our species would stop seeing the whole notion of “worship” as a good thing, but would view it, accurately, as the kind of subjugating human activity that denies our own divinely bestowed magnificence—to say nothing of our own presence in that which we say we adore.

This elevating of the human self to its rightful place of awesome inclusion in the expression that is God would reshape humanity’s basic identity, altering our species’ understanding and expression of itself. And it would do this so completely as to remove and eliminate selfish, hurtful, malicious, or malevolent behavior from the human experience forever. We would suddenly know who we really are, and who everyone else is, and we would treat ourselves and everyone else much differently.

This is, in fact, what has occurred within the civilizations of all highly evolved beings in the universe. The effect that such a shift in beliefs would have on the planet would be to, at last, civilize civilization.

Now, here is GOD’S MESSAGE TO OUR WORLD…

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God demanding that we worship, believe in, and approach God in a certain and particular way is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

God does not care what religion we belong to (or whether we belong to any religion at all). Religions are the inventions and conventions of humanity.

God doesn’t care what we believe about God (or whether we believe in God at all). Beliefs are the inventions and conventions of humanity.

God doesn’t look to us to provide God with something that God needs (because God needs nothing at all). Needs are the inventions and conventions of humanity.

The need to be worshipped (to say nothing of the command to be loved) could only be the characteristic of an insecure, unfulfilled, imperious, tyrannical ruler—which cannot possibly describe the God of this universe.

The need to be approached in a single and specific way, making every other approach (no matter how sincere the motive, no matter how pure the intent, no matter how arduous the effort) not only insufficient, but a cause for judgment, condemnation , and damnation, could only be the characteristic of a totally unreasonable, utterly intolerant, preposterously hypersensitive, unbelievably small-minded, and insanely draconian despot—which cannot possibly describe the God of this universe.

*         *         *

The idea that God demands to be loved defies all reason and logic. Yet it is held by many, for it is written, in what has been labeled as The Greatest Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

So let it be said clearly and without equivocation: The God of this universe—by virtue of being God—needs or requires the adulation of no one. As well, the God of this universe—by virtue of being God—has nothing to lose by welcoming any soul who arrives at divinity by any path, and is nothing but overjoyed when any soul has found its way back Home by realizing, accepting, and assuming its true identity.

The idea that God rejects everyone except those who come to God by one singular and particular path is simply mistaken. It defies all rational thought and directly contradicts the definition of Love.

The idea that God rejects everyone except those who come to God by one singular and particular path is simply mistaken.

The good news is that our Deity is not the God of the brand name.

God’s love, God’s acceptance, and God’s joy in us is not dependent upon what words we say in prayer, what name we invoke in supplication, or what faith we embrace in hopefulness.

In the eyes of God a Jew is as good as a Christian, a Christian is as good as a Muslim, a Muslim is as good as a Buddhist, a Buddhist is as good as a Mormon, a Mormon is as good as a Bahá’í, and an atheist is as good as all of the above.

That Which Is is That Which Is, and neither its Isness, nor its joy and bliss in being the Isness, is dependent upon any particular expression in any particular way of any particular part of the Isness.

*         *         *

Let us go even further. It is not even necessary for human beings to have any belief that there is a God in order for God’s blessings to flow. The flowing of God’s blessings is God’s greatest joy, and it is a process that is uninterrupted and eternal. It has nothing whatsoever to do with our love for God, and everything to do with God’s love for us.

Again, this may be the toughest concept for human beings to accept. The largest number of us just can’t seem to embrace the notion that divine love flows freely to all, without exception, requirement, or condition of any kind.

Or, in a remarkable inversion, many declare that God’s love does flow freely to all, and that God’s condemnation and punishment of His subjects for not believing in God, or for any wrongdoing, is a demonstration of His love.

It is only through such convoluted theological architecture that the idea of a God kind and good can be constructed and preserved—although it is questionable if such preservation has been achieved at the level that those who have constructed this theology might have wished. It seems far more evidentiary that the idea of a God kind and good has been simply forfeited by religion, and that this is the chief reason for the rejection, by millions, of the idea of any sort of God at all.

This is one of the greatest sorrows to have befallen the human race, for it has robbed so many members of the species of their greatest resource, therefore crippling the species itself immeasurably.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space to explore in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this book places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

My most recent entry in this column produced an interesting post in the Comment Section below, which in turn prompted an exchange between that poster, Patrick Gannon, and myself, which I would like to highlight here by re-publishing it, inviting each of you to offer your response to its central question:

IF A ONE BELIEF SYSTEM REPLACES ANOTHER, AND THE NEW BELIEFS ARE DEMONSTRABLY MORE BENEFICIAL THAN THE OLD, SHOULD THE NEW BELIEFS NEVERTHELESS BE REJECTED OUT OF HAND BECAUSE THEY ARE ‘BELIEFS’?

I invite you to read the exchange below and offer your observations in the Comment Section.
============================================

PATRICK GANNON WRITES: Neale, can you explain these lines: “Who God Is,” “What God Wants from Us,” and “You’ve Got Me All Wrong”?

[CERTAINLY. I WILL RESPOND TO YOU RIGHT HERE!]

At times (but infrequently) you describe God as an energy, a force, a conscious intelligence, etc. [Patrick, the whole of the Conversations with God series of books offers you the description of God that you seek. Have you read those books?] …but most of the time you describe God as a person, a being, a superhuman with a number of human characteristics. [it is clear to me that you are not reading my material very closely. GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong makes just the opposite assertion, Patrick. It says, clearly and without any room for doubt, that God is NOT a ‘superhuman being’. The CWG cosmology also makes it clear that the Essential Essence which we call “God” can and does take any form which will help any of Its creations know and experience Divinity. In other words, God can appear, and be experienced in our lives, as a protective and loving Father or Mother, as a dear friend or brother or sister on the journey, as a wise counselor and guide…indeed, in any form that we wish, including the form of pure energy, placed at our disposal to be used to produce consistent and predictable results. God is all of this, and more. There is nothing that God is not, or cannot be. The very effort to define God brings the limitations of our human Mind to the process of experiencing God’s unlimited Self.]

You’ve got “me” all wrong: “me” is a term humans use to refer to themselves. Use of the word “who” implies a being, a person. What God “wants” implies that God has wants; and yet you say repeatedly that God has no needs or wants…. Hmm, maybe you say God has no needs, only wants, I don’t recall – but the question still arises – why would a God have wants?  [Now it is really clear to me that you have not absorbed the CWG messages. And that is perfectly okay. You are not ‘required’ to. But if you are going to question me about what I have written and said, you would benefit from knowing more thoroughly what that is. The book What God Wants explains in detail exactly what it is that God wants. Please read Chapter 13 carefully and fully.] As you have said yourself, a “want” is an expression of lack – of not having something. How can “God” lack anything? [Of course, God in Its aggregate “lacks” nothing — for the simple reason that God IS everything It could possible want or lack. All of this is fully explained in the CWG writings. Individuated aspects of Divinity, having forgotten who they really are, can imagine themselves to need, want, or lack something, but The Wholeness that is God cannot and does not. I am not sure what makes you think that It does.]

I understand that humans ‘animate’ God – this has been done with elements of nature, the sun, the stars the constellations, etc. for eons; but once you do this, it all becomes religious, and New Age God is just the basis for another religion as best I can tell, given that She is constantly referred to as a personal being. As such, the legacy religions are going to fiercely resist any New Age Religion. It’s only when the legacy religions are discredited as the Romans eventually discredited the Pagan Gods, before the new religion can fully replace the old…. and then the question remains, will we really be any better off?  [This is a fair and legitimate question. Let me answer it this way. First of all, no one who has read CWG could fail to miss its repeated — and I mean, endlessly repeated — statements that CWG is not a ‘religion.’ Its chief point is that the Authority of God rests within you. Its main message is: “We are All One. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.” But if you are asking me a direct question — Do I think the world would be better off embracing some of the foundational notions of the explorations in CWG than it is today, my answer would be a flat ‘yes, without question.’] Was the condition of mankind improved when pagan gods were replaced by Christianity? It hardly seems so, and the ideals expressed by Jesus weren’t all that different from the ideals expressed by New Age God. [Well, Patrick, there are about 1.5 billion people who would disagree with you on that last statement. As least, the ideals that people SAY were expressed by Jesus are in many, many cases vastly different from the ideals expressed by Tomorrow’ God.]

Your new book appears to be largely about discrediting the old religions, so it’s hard not to view this as part of an ongoing process to establish a new religion to replace the old,  [It seems to me that it should not be ‘hard’ to avoid doing that at all. All you have to do is thoroughly read the CWG material, which makes it abundantly clear that establishing a NEW religion is the LAST thing that is being suggested, recommended, desired, or contemplated. Rather, what is being offered is an invitation to create a New Cultural Story — not the same thing as a ‘religion’ at all — providing humanity an opportunity to reconfigure its relationship with life, with the Earth, with what some people call ‘God,’ and with each other, such that a ‘religion’ is not even necessary.] ….and if the pattern holds true, in due course it will have its own orthodoxy, its own dogma, its own “correct” set of beliefs, and we’ll be right back where we started. Or so it seems to me. [Even if that were true…I mean, even if it rolled out that way and it DID produce, eventually, its own orthodoxy, its own dogma, its own “correct” set of beliefs, what makes you conclude that this would, ipso facto, put us right back where we started? I can’t imagine that the new beliefs — should they arise as an actual “orthodoxy” — would not be more beneficial than the old. We are talking here about a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its present and ancient beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God. Even if CWG DOES turn into a ‘dogma’ or a ‘belief,’ how could not that be an improvement over our present beliefs? Or is it your assertion that “beliefs”, in and of themselves, are somehow evil, or “no good,” and that even if it is a “belief system” that dramatically improves behaviors, it should be automatically rejected simply because it IS a “belief system”? Is that your assertion?]

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example…

One teaching about the Divine is that God sees us as imperfect because we have not been obedient — and that we cannot return home to God in this imperfect state.

There are those who go so far as to say that we were born imperfect because the first humans did not obey God.

Of the world’s three largest religions, two—Christianity and Judaism—have taught their followers across the centuries various doctrines declaring that all human souls are subject to death as a punishment for the “ancestral,” “inherited,” or “original” sin of the first humans.

Modern Judaism (as opposed to Jewish teachers in Talmudic times) rarely teaches of original sin any more, but much of modern Christianity does to this day.

As well, both Christianity and Judaism teach that human beings are now imperfect, regardless of whether they were born that way. Modern Jewish teaching stresses that this is because humans choose to sin later in life, not because they are born in sin, while much Christian teaching still holds that imperfection is the state of our soul upon entry into this world, and this inborn state is what creates an ongoing tendency in humans to sin throughout their lives.

Part of this idea is the notion, supported by some, known as traducianism, which declares that God created only one original soul—Adam (Eve was said to have been formed by God from Adam’s rib)—and that all other souls derive their basic qualities and tendencies from their parents, and the ancestors before them, through a process by which the qualities of the soul are passed down from one soul to the next, generation to generation.

How did the imperfection that some say is “inherited” originally arise? There are varying versions of the story, but, loosely, it is this:

The first humans, Adam and Eve, were given total freedom, with all of their earthly needs met, in the Garden of Eden. God asked only one thing of them: Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They did. Eve picked an apple and shared it with Adam. The rest, as they say, is history.

The two were driven out of paradise by an angry God, who is said to have cursed their children, their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children—yea, even unto the end of time. God cursed their entire progeny, it was said, with inherited imperfection and physical death—neither of which conditions were aspects of Adam and Eve’s reality in paradise.

Thus, imperfection and death became part of the very nature of being human.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God never cursed anyone? What if no one is born in sin? And what if God has never seen, and does not now see, any human being as imperfect in any way?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. Of course it would. The first thing it would do is relieve people of any anxiety they may hold about death and about what, if anything, “bad” could happen to them after they leave their body.

Actually, humans wouldn’t have any worries about this at all if they had not been told of God’s requirement that only perfection is allowed in heaven. But most religions have made it very clear that this requirement is in place, and that there is no getting around it.

The Bible, for instance, tells us directly and unequivocally that God’s standard for allowing us to join God in heaven is perfection. The Bible also tells us, at Romans 3:23, that no human being can meet that standard. It says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Yet even if we haven’t committed one sin in our entire life, there’s that bugaboo, traducianism. We’ve got our inherited imperfection to deal with.

And as we noted earlier, our beliefs tell us that God has no leeway here. The Law is the Law. The 23rd Psalm says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” but that does not, presumably, apply after death. Then, mercy apparently has no place. God has no choice but to deny every imperfect soul immediate access to heaven—and since no soul exists in a state of perfection, that means, according to some doctrines, that all souls are initially denied access.

This doesn’t mean they never get into heaven, however. Wear told there is a place called Purgatory, where souls are said to be sent prior to entering heaven in order to be purified by having the blemish of their sins eradicated through a process of suffering in payment for them.

It should be made clear here that not all of the world’s religions teach of the need for the soul to suffer in order to compen- sate for offenses. Many teach of a God who admits us into heaven at once if we sincerely repent of our sins. But if we don’t . . . .

So the overall pronouncement is this: We are imperfect beings. We should stand before the throne of God in trem- bling and in shame, with the hope that our imperfections and transgressions will be forgiven. If we do not do what is necessary to purify our souls and return them to perfection, now or in the hereafter (such as by submitting to abject suffering in payment for our sins in Purgatory), we’re not getting back Home. It’s as simple as that.

Now if the huge number of people (we are talking billions here) who believe this is true altered their belief, fear, shame, and guilt would be lifted from the hearts of both innocent children and sad adults who carry as a burden their identity as being undeserving of reuniting with God in heaven.

And if the third question in the “what if ” above were to be embraced as humanity’s reality, the lack of self-worth that now sponsors so much of our species’ dysfunctional, self-defeating, and hurtful behaviors would at last be healed. It is clear that this would cause the largest number of those behaviors to disappear.

Now here is the news: God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God seeing us as imperfect, and therefore not allowing us back into heaven unless and until we have been purified, is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

We are not born in sin, nor do we inherit sinful tendencies through a lineage of souls going back to a purported First Misbehaver. “Ancestral guilt” is a figment of our religious imagination. The story of Adam and Eve is a fiction as well.

God did not throw anyone out of paradise, and one look at the world around you will show you that human beings are still living in a paradise. They are despoiling it step-by-step, to be sure, but even with all of that, nothing compares to a sunrise or a sunset, to an eagle’s glide or a butterfly’s flutter, to the fragrance of a rose or the smell of the morning dew. There is nothing more stunning than the quiet beauty of an unexpected snowfall, or the noisy beauty of expected waves pounding upon a sandy shore. We watch both with awe, as well we should, for we are clear we are seeing something exceeding magnificence.

And that is just the beginning, just the top of a long list of treasures that this paradise called the earth will always hold, if we will but hold them as treasures, keeping them safe from disassembling and destruction.

The beauty of this world is enhanced beyond measure by the beauty of you. Nothing is imperfect about you. Nothing you have ever thought, nothing you have ever said, nothing you have ever done. It is all perfect, because it is all part of the process of your personal evolution—and, on a larger scale, of the evolution of the human species.

Even as all the “failed” experiments of all the scientists in all the laboratories across the globe are perfect, in that they are steps in the producing of an ultimately important and highly beneficial result . . . even as the mathematical miscalculations and spelling errors of all the children in all the schools of the world are perfect, in that they are steps in the producing of the highest scores . . . so, too are the “mistakes” of humanity as a whole seen as perfect in the eyes of God—steps in the evolutionary process of all life everywhere.

All that was ever thought or said or done by any and every human being—even the worst of it—has been the product of the innocence of a species so young, its members did not know any better; they did not understand how to get that for which they yearned, they did not comprehend how to escape or evade that which they wished to avoid.

This is difficult for many people to accept. The idea that fully grown humans have done these things, that some of us have acted in these ways, because of extreme immaturity, is challenging to our belief that surely, grown men and women know right from wrong, and don’t have to be told that killing others and destroying everything in their path is not the way to achieve their goals, whatever they may be.

We assert that people should know better because we like to think of humans as highly evolved. In fact, humanity has just emerged from its infancy.

In their book New World New Mind, Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich placed this in perspective in one mind-boggling paragraph:

Suppose Earth’s history were charted on a single year’s calendar, with midnight January 1 representing the origin of Earth and midnight December 31 the present. Then each day of Earth’s “year” would represent 12 million years of actual history. On that scale, the first form of life, a simple bacterium, would arise sometime in February. More complex life forms, however, come much later; the first fishes appear around November 20. The dinosaurs arrive around December 10 and disappear on Christmas Day. The first of our ancestors recognizable as human would not show up until the afternoon of December 31. Homo sapiens—our species—would emerge at around 11:45 p.m. . . . and all that has happened in recorded history would occur in the final minute of the year.

As you can see, we are an astonishingly young species, and, not surprisingly, very immature.

And so, we have used violence to produce outcomes that we were sure justified its use (even if it meant death to millions of innocent men, women, and children).

And so, we have used domination—sometimes cruel, heartless domination—to generate results we were sure were desirable to experience (even if it subjected the entire population of a country or an area to ruthless suppression, persecution, and maltreatment).

And so, we have used self-interest—sometimes unmitigated, unbridled self-interest—to generate a level of sufficiency for ourselves that we were sure we deserved (even if millions of others had to go without, given the global economic model that we have empowered).

And so, we have used self-righteousness—sometimes appalling, execrable self-righteousness—to generate a sense of self-worth that we were sure we deserved (even as we told others that they were unworthy and were going to be condemned by God to hell).

These childish, almost infantile, behaviors are seen by God as the uncontrolled and irrational tantrums of an unenlightened species, a breed of sentient beings in the primitive, primeval, primordial stages of its maturational process.

Put simply, The Divine perfectly well understands the nature of what it is to be human.

Even as we understand how a three-year-old could knock over the milk reaching anxiously for the chocolate cake because it wants the cake so badly, so does God understand completely how we could act as some of us have acted, reaching for what we have wanted so badly.

Even the wanting of some things, in and of itself, could be considered “wrong” by judgmental humans, just as a child’s wanting more cake than his little sister might be considered “wrong.” In our human value system, he shouldn’t want more than everyone else. And he certainly would be considered “wrong” for trying to get it by bullying his way to it. Yet the wise parent understands the not-yet-mature desire of the older brother, and does not send him to his room for the remainder of his childhood.

God sees us just as we see our children: in the process of maturing, but nonetheless whole, complete, and perfect just as we are right now. There is nothing we have to be, nothing we have to say, and nothing we have to do to gain the love of our Creator, who adores us even as we misbehave. There are no credentials we must acquire in order to be qualified to return to heaven. Our credential is our existence. Nothing more is needed.

That message is important enough to be repeated.

There are no credentials
 we must acquire in order 
to be qualified to return to heaven. Our credential is our existence. Nothing more is needed.

Again, this is hard to believe and difficult to accept by a race of beings conditioned to imagine that perfect justice requires con- demnation and punishment—including, in some cases, death.

You must remember that human beings are of such infantile comprehension that they will claim that the killing of people by the state is the way to teach people that killing people is bad.

You must remember that human beings are of such infantile comprehension that they will claim that the use of weapons of mass destruction in a preemptive strike by one country is the way to teach another country that to have weapons of mass destruction is bad.

You must remember that human beings are of such infantile comprehension that they will claim that strict adherence to a religion that teaches intolerance of any other religion is the way to teach the world that intolerance is bad.

A God of Unconditional Love is utterly incomprehensible to a species that has still not learned to love itself enough to stop destroying itself.

We cannot believe that God would forgive us for that which we cannot forgive each other.

It is nonetheless true that even if we have done what we, or others, consider to be truly horrible things during our time on the earth . . . even then, God will welcome us back Home.

There are a number of very good reasons that this will be true, and we’ll be examining them in the chapters just ahead as we continue to explore humanity’s misunderstandings about God. For now, please read this, given to us by Jesus.

I know that you are probably very familiar with this tale, but please read it anyway.

A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.” So he divided among both of his sons their inheritance.

Not many days after, the younger son gathered all his things together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal liv- ing. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want.

Then he went and found work with a citizen of that country, and the man sent him into the fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, but no one gave him anything.

Then he came to himself, thinking: “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”

And he arose and went to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

But the father said to his servants, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fat- ted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” And they began to be merry.

Now the father’s older son was in the field, work- ing. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

And the servant said to him, “Your brother has come home, and because he was safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.”

But the second son was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So the second son answered and said to his father, “Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me even a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your liveli- hood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.”

And his father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.”

To me, this is the single most important story in the Bible. It says everything important that Jesus wanted us to know about God. But Jesus knew that people rarely understood, much less embraced, really deep truths if heard only once. So he made his same point again and again, saying things like . . .

What man among you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, “Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost!”

Does this include the worst of us? The “black sheep” of our human family?

Yes.

And so, we can rest easy. We will not be abandoned because we became lost, and we will not be rejected when we finally return Home, no matter what we may have done while we were away.

Parables and stories are one way of getting an idea across. Poetry is another. It bypasses the mind and seeps right into the heart. I have placed the following poem in other books of mine, and I am placing it in this book again, because—like the parable above—a message wondrously crafted cannot be heard too often.

I am blessed to be married to the American poet, Em Claire. This is her offering:

LONG AT SEA

I left Home so long ago now

that I would not recognize my own face.

I constructed the Boat of my Life

and I set out
into the open sea,

waving to all who knew

that the seas would give me

everything I could handle,

and everything I could not—


and yet they waved,

and I set out

into the open sea


in the Boat of My Life:


built from Soul, crafted by Heart.


And with great innocence I pushed off


into the open sea

and have been away from my Home


so long now that I would not recognize my own face—

but I know that Home,

Home


remembers me.

(From the book and CD Home Remembers Me,
available at www.EmClairePoet.com)

===========================================

(The entirety of the exceptional text of GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong brings our species theological constructions that truly challenge the world’s thinking about God. Five full chapters of this book may be sampled here: www.godsmessagetotheworld.info)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published last October by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example…

One teaching about the Divine is that God demands obedience.

We also note that the vast majority of those who believe in God believe that God is judging, condemning, and punishing when God’s demands are not met.

But now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God demands nothing, judges nothing, and punishes nothing?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. More violence, more brutality, more killing, and more outright war has been committed in the name of God than under any other banner. If the entire world believed that God demands nothing, judges nothings, and punishes nothing, the spiritual basis for much of the righteousness that underlies, justifies, and motivates humanity’s most egregious and self-damaging behaviors would evaporate.

Further, if judgment and punishment were now said to be not part of God’s Kingdom, the foundation of humanity’s entire legal system would be shaken to the core, with many of the laws in many of our countries having to be rewritten or repealed.

As well, if we embraced the notion that God demands and commands nothing, many of our cultural norms, customs, and prohibitions would be stripped of their moral authority, and would likewise eventually have to be abandoned for lack of any premise or basis.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the case of same-gender marriage. Even as restrictions against marriages outside of a person’s faith or race were one day held as being “against God’s Law”—but are now seen as perfectly acceptable expressions of love (except in some communities and cultures, where it still is not)—so, too, will gay marriage one day become widely embraced as entirely appropriate between people who deeply love each other. This will occur when the entirety of humanity abandons all notions that an expression of true love that strays from past societal norms somehow breaks God’s commandments.

If there are no commandments from God, then we can no longer kill, no longer punish, no longer judge, oppress, harm, restrict, limit, or damage others in the name of the Lord. This would wipe out an entire mountain of vindication for a huge catalogue of human cruelties and atrocities.

The question is, would it also remove from humanity’s experience a moral compass upon which our species has depended? What would our new moral compass be?

Perhaps it is time for us to acknowledge that God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about a God who is demanding and commanding is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

God demands and commands nothing. This is because God has no reason to demand or command anything. And this is because God needs nothing.

God “needs” no experience—emotional, physical, or spiritual—since God is the source of every experience God could have. How can the source of something need that thing? How can the Source of Everything need anything? And if the Source of Everything needs nothing, why would It command anything?

It is not as if some behavior of ours, such as obeying God, could cause God to have an experience that God could not have without us exhibiting that behavior. To put this another way, God is not dependent upon us for God’s nonexistent needs to be met.

There is no reason, then, to believe in a God who is so displeased in the absence of a particular behavior that we will be punished horribly and eternally.

God is Love, and this love knows neither condition nor limitation. It is not based on receiving anything back, and it is not withheld because God is angry to the point of everlasting condemnation, for the simple reason that God is never angry to the point of everlasting condemnation (or ever angry at all).

There are those who say that God demands or commands things not because God needs something, but because we need something. Specifically, we need instructions, directions, requirements, and commandments in order to stop ourselves from running amok, and to help us make our lives work.

This viewpoint holds that without commandments and directions, we wouldn’t know how to behave—or be willing or able to behave in ways that serve our continued survival—because of our very nature.

It is said by some that it is “human nature” to behave irresponsibly and uncontrollably, selfishly and even violently, and that it is only God’s requirements and restrictions—and the threat of God’s punishment if we don’t heed them—that keeps us from being totally self-centered, self-serving, and self-destructive.

Following suit, punishment has become the rationale for all civil laws and government regulations restricting and governing the behavior of people, from stoplights and speed limits that must be obeyed, to product labeling rules that must be followed, to sanitary standards that must be maintained, to workplace regulations that must be followed.

Without these and other behavioral rules being imposed, the conventional wisdom goes, everybody would do as they pleased, no one would be protected, and people everywhere would be the victim of those who are careless or unscrupulous.

Yet are humans incapable of being self-regulating?

The answer is no.

All humans have the innate ability to govern their own behaviors and to adjust them to the degree that they harm no one, while producing maximum positive results for each individual and maximum benefit for the collective. All we have to do is determine to use that innate ability. Ironically, what ignites the desire to do so is the absence of rules and regulations . . . from God or anyone else.

God understands this. That is why the ultimate gift God has given humanity is free will. Freedom is the fundamental nature of divinity. And God knows that humanity will always act in humanity’s best interests, once those best interests are made clear.

If you want a wonderful example of this, watch people as they whiz around the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris—where there are no lane markings, no traffic lights, no signs showing who goes first or where, and no police officer to direct the endless and rapid flow of vehicles.

Thousands of people make their way around that monument every day in a hectic mish-mash of interweaving iron on tires—and they do not have to be forced by any law or regulation to yield the right-of-way, stop before smashing into others, or go when others have stopped. They do so automatically.

When you know what it is you’re trying to do, the preferable and beneficial action to take becomes instantly obvious and very clear to you. That’s why there are fewer traffic accidents on that circle than there are on the Champs‑Élysées a hundred feet away, where traffic lights abound, lanes are clearly marked, and the way to proceed is guided by rules and regulations.

Humanity on a global scale cannot become clear about its own best interests until humanity on a global scale is clear about what it is trying to do. And this is where we have fallen short. We have not moved to total clarity and mutual agreement on what it is we are “up to” here during our time upon the earth. Once we do, our behaviors will self-modify and self-regulate in ways that will produce maximum effectiveness.

A species that is highly evolved is one that has reached a collective understanding about what is in its highest and best interest, based on a mutually held awareness of what it is seeking to achieve and to experience.

Because we are not at that stage in the development and evolution of humanity, the pressing question today becomes: What could get us there?

The answer is: A letting go of our Ancient Cultural Story about who we are and why we are alive; about the purpose and process of life; about the nature and desire of God.

God told us in The New Revelations that in order to get to that place, we will need to have the courage to take five huge steps:

Step 1: Acknowledge that some of our old beliefs about God and about life are no longer working.

Step 2: Acknowledge that there is something we do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.

Step 3: Be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, an understanding that could produce a new way of life on this planet.

Step 4: Be courageous enough to explore and examine this new understanding, and, if it aligns with our inner truth and knowing, to enlarge our belief system to include it.

Step 5: Choose to live our lives as a demonstration of our highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.

A huge shift in humanity’s thinking—perhaps the biggest invitation ever issued by life to life—would be the accepting, embracing, and adopting of the following spiritually revolutionary statement:

Nothing can occur in all the Universe that violates the Will of God.

Everything in human theology, virtually every tenet of every religion on the face of the earth, is rooted and built on exactly the opposite thought. God’s will can be violated, our religions say. This is the foundation of every religious doctrine of judgment, condemnation, and punishment.

Yet the violation of God’s will is utterly impossible unless there is something more powerful than God in the universe—something that can override God’s will. But nothing of the sort exists, for God is the All In All, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Sum Total of Everything.

If, therefore, something is happening, it is happening because God has not stopped it from happening. And if God has not stopped something from happening, how can it be said that it is happening against God’s will?

Those who say that God allows God’s will to be thwarted, and that, therefore, it is possible for people to violate the will of God, have rendered themselves blind to a simple logic: If God allows something, then it is not against God’s will.

You could not lift your little finger if God did not want you to. Everything that happens, therefore, happens because God allows it to, or it wouldn’t and couldn’t be happening.

The theological question thus becomes not whether God allows—and therefore wills—what is happening to be happening, but why God would allow it.

The answer is that God’s greatest desire is for that fundamental aspect of divinity that we just spoke of—freedom—to be expressed in every moment by every manifestation of divinity. And since God cannot be hurt or damaged in any way by anything at all, God has no reason to place restrictions on the freedom of any of God’s creations or creatures.

God also has no reason to judge, condemn, and punish anyone who uses that freedom. Indeed, to do so would be to change the definition of freedom itself, so that it would then mean: “The ability to do as you are told, or suffer the consequences.”

Yet this is not what freedom means. That is not freedom at all.

Freedom is Love demonstrated; it is Love in action. Restriction of any kind is not Love in action, because restriction is limitation, and Love knows no such thing.

Total Love and Absolute Freedom are synonymous, and produce the theological concept known as free will.

God has given all of God’s creatures this gift so that God could give Itself the gift of totally experiencing the wonder and the glory of what It Is. Yet free will is obviously not free will if the use of it in a particular way produces indescribable and everlasting torture in the fires of hell. Such a response to the use of God’s greatest gift to humanity would make a mockery of both the gift and The Giver.

As well, free will means nothing in an environment in which there are no choices. If God is to experience Its full wonder and glory, that which is not considered fully wondrous or glorious in human terms must exist alongside of that which is, so to produce a context within which wonder and glory itself may be not simply known, but expressed and experienced. Thus, the physical universe has been created as a Contextual Field within which choices become possible.

Another way of saying this is that the Contextual Field that is our universe exists in the way that it does because in the absence of That Which Is Not, That Which Is is not.

That is, it cannot be experienced.

In the absence of Darkness, Light cannot be experienced. In the absence of Small, Big cannot be experienced. In the absence of There, Here cannot be experienced. In the absence of Slow, Fast cannot be experienced. Nothing can be experienced in the absence of a contrasting element. It can be known theoretically, but it cannot be expressed experientially.

Therefore has God created a universe in which divinity has what appear to be exact opposites, or dualities, but are not.

Using an example from our physical reality, we often label things as either “hot” or “cold.” These appear to be opposite ends of a polarity, but they are not. They are degrees of the same thing—called temperature. There is no “duality” in temperature, there is only One Thing, variously expressed.

In much the same way, all manifestations of life are expressions demonstrating degrees, or variations, of the single thing called divinity.

And thus has God invited divinity’s human individuations to judge not, and neither condemn, that which seems to oppose them, but to see it as simply another aspect of the Self, providing an opportunity to be a light unto the darkness, that they might know Who They Really Are—and that all those whose lives they touch might know who they really are as well, by the light of this example.

One’s free will choosing of any thought, word, or deed need not be, therefore, a demonstration of one’s obedience, but may be an acceptance of one’s invitation from God to step into the highest demonstration of one’s best idea about oneself. With this understanding, what may have been considered one’s burden may become one’s joy.

Life becomes an experience of exaltation when one realizes, finally and at last, that neither fear nor obedience are required by God.

(The entirety of the exceptional text of GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong brings our species theological constructions that truly challenge the world’s thinking about God. Five full chapters of this book may be sampled here: www.godsmessagetotheworld.info)

I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published just four months ago by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example…one teaching about The Divine—perhaps the one most often reflected in the doctrine of many religions—describes God as a superhuman male being, with human characteristics and proclivities (anger, love, being judgmental, etc.), but with wisdom, power, and abilities far beyond human capacity, or even human understanding.

In some ancient spiritual traditions pre-dating organized religions, The Divine was portrayed as a feminine goddess. And while this portrayal has been brought forward and is held as true even today in certain spiritual movements, the rendition of a male Deity outlined in the paragraph above has been by far the most prevalent.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if God is neither male nor female—and not even a human-like Super Being at all?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. First, it would pull the underpinning from a story prevalent across the globe—which is the story of male supremacy.

It is no coincidence that most major religions are still run by men. It is no coincidence that the world’s largest religion and one of the world’s fasted growing religions, still did not allow women in their priesthood as of 2014. It is no coincidence that—minor deviations in this regard notwithstanding—men still pretty much rule the corporate and financial world. It is no coincidence that to this day men continue to dominate the global political scene.

It is no coincidence that even in medicine, science, and academia men continue to vastly outnumber women in places of highest influence, impact, and authority. And it is no coincidence that even where women rise to the level of men in some of society’s institutions, they are even now paid less than their male counterparts far too often, although doing the same work.

If we thought that God was not a male, our whole idea of power, might, and glory would be more widely considered to be feminine, as well as masculine, traits. Our depictions of God would not be exclusively of a man with flowing white hair and a flowing white beard in a flowing white robe. Imagine an illustrated Bible with a picture of a female Goddess in it. What would that tell our children?

And what if we thought that God was not even a person? What if we relinquished the idea of God as a male or a female? What if we accepted as truth the idea that God is not a larger version of human beings at all; not a “person” in any sense of the word? Would that change things in our global expression of spirituality, in our day-to-day experience of religion?

It surely would. It would alter the Father/Child interactions of most of the human beings who believe in God. It would profoundly affect our understanding of our true relationship with divinity.

It would shift our whole notion of how to get what we want from God (if, indeed, we would then think that such a thing was even possible), and it would alter our whole idea of what, if anything, God wants or needs, demands or commands, requires or requests. And that would change, in one fell swoop, so much human behavior that our species might have a difficult time recognizing itself.

We would become, in short, a different species in terms of not only our deportment, but our objectives and goals, our measures of “success,” our ways of “praying” and interacting with God, and our ideas about where and how we fit into the overall scheme of things.

The search would then begin all over again among the largest number of people (as opposed to the tiny minority who have already begun this process) to redefine God and overhaul our entire approach to interactions with divinity.

Perhaps it is because this kind of massive overhaul of such a critical part of our human experience feels so overwhelming that most of us avoid this new search altogether and remain “stuck” in the same old place forever regarding our understanding of Deity.

Whatever the reason, it is questionable if we are doing ourselves any good hanging out with ideas about God that are thousands of years old.

Now comes GOD’S MESSAGE TO OUR WORLD

God has been telling us from the very beginning, and it is becoming more clear to us every day, that humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story about God being a superhuman male is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

God is obviously (or perhaps not so obviously, to some) not a Big Guy in the Sky who sits on a throne and oversees humanity’s countless daily doings, approving some and disapproving others; who hears countless prayers, granting some and denying others; who judges countless souls at their death, rewarding some and punishing others.

God is neither a male nor a female with the appearance, the qualities and the proclivities of humans, yet with supernatural characteristics, powers and abilities. Such an idea of God is simplistic in the extreme.

What, then, is God? Some say this is impossible to know. That is not true. God can be known, and God can be experienced. God communicates directly with us, as the founders of our religions have shown, and we can communicate directly with God—as every religion that believes in the power of prayer declares.

God can be known, and God can be experienced.

Here, then, is what God has communicated, and continues to communicate, to humanity about divinity: God is an Essential Essence that permeates everything, the Prime Source of unlimited intelligence and the Prime Force of unlimited creation.

God is at once both The Creator and The Created, a Pure Energy that impacts upon Itself. It is First Cause. It is Every Effect. It is the seat of all wisdom, the wellspring of all desire, the fountainhead of all power, and the origin of all reality.

It is, in a single word, Love.

Its wisdom is activated, Its desire is fulfilled, Its power is evinced, and Its reality is fully, grandly, and gloriously made manifest through the experience and the expression of Love.

Does this Essential Essence we call “God” have a personality?

Yes.

God’s greatness and God’s magnificence is God’s formlessness. This does not mean, however, that God is not a “personality” to whom we may pray and with whom we may interact. It means, in fact, exactly the opposite.

It is God’s essential formlessness that allows God to assume any shape and any form in any moment that it serves the ends of Love for God to assume.

Thus, God can take on the energy of a father’s figure, a mother’s comfort, a friend’s loyalty, a confessor’s compassion, a peacemaker’s courage, a survivor’s strength, a teacher’s patience, a compatriot’s camaraderie, a lover’s intimacy, and a beloved’s constancy.

So we see that the fact that God is not, at Its basis, a bigger-than-life human being does not mean that we no longer have anyone to pray to, or to intercede with, or to form a personal relationship with. Quite to the contrary. God can be all things to all people, and if we want a personal God we can pray to, a parent-like God we can ask advice of, or a powerful God we can intercede with, God can and will fill all of those roles for us.

God is all things to all people because God is all things in all people.

I believe God is life itself.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published just four months ago by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species—as well as some of the most helpful and uplifting ideas we can conjure in response to those damaging ones.

For example, what if what Mewabe posted here recently (“The problem is not so much whether or not one believes in a creator God, but whether a person LOVES, APPRECIATES, RESPECTS and HONORS life.”) is the key to it all?

I was especially intrigued by the entry that followed Mewabe’s post, from Hempwise. I think this person captured our circumstance in the world today perfectly.

In case you missed it in the previous discussion here, Hempwise said:

“Yes, seeing life as Prime importance, value and being responsible for it all is the obvious solution.

“Just this morning I was listening to the radio (and) a Syrian lady spoke about her three sons. Her youngest was 13 and (she described) why she had to send him to fight for Isis. She said she had no choice in the matter. It was all about Honor.

“So entrenched in her cultural story she was (that) her own thoughts were…of her religion and their beliefs. Even sending her children to war to join their cousins and (meet) probable death was of higher importance than honoring life and sustaining that. This is so very sad.

“The Middle East is on a collision with self-annihilation if the young are continually oppressed by their religious schools, and indoctrinated by the interpretation of old books.

“Religion and governments have to move aside when it comes education. (They are filled with) control freaks seeking to limit wisdom and critical thinking in favor of righteousness and robot mentality.

“The task is mammoth: to change cultural understandings that never get challenged.

“The culture from which we emerge is causing the demise of the culture.”

I agree with virtually every word that Hempwise wrote there. I have been saying for years, after being told in very direct terms in the Conversations with God dialogue, that what humanity would benefit the most from right now is the writing of a New Cultural Story. Our species would be enormously helped by writing, and them telling ourselves and our children, a new story about God, about Life, about Who We Are and Why We Are Here, about our true relationship to each other, about the purpose of Life Itself, about how life functions, about the fact that beliefs create behaviors, and about how life is experienced by the Highly Evolved Beings of the Universe.

The challenge is that we cannot, as a species, come to an agreement on what that New Story is. So we keep telling our Old Story over and over and over again — even though it is the Old Story that is killing us.

The question is: Where do we begin as we seek to craft our New Story? I think one place to start might be to at least give credence to the claim that our Old Story is simply not accurate. That is the point, that is the thrust, of GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve God Me All Wrong.

I do hope you will all read it, not because I wish you to convert you to my idea, but because I wish to propose it as a starting point for a vital new discussion about all of Humanity’s Cultural Story, and where we might all begin in co-authoring a new version of it.

We have to start somewhere. And so here, in the weeks ahead, I will continue to present for review and discussion the points made in this most recent text based on the messages in Conversations with God.

I am excited to be able to use this space on the Internet as a place in which we can join together to ignite a worldwide exploration of some of the most revolutionary theological ideas to come along in a long time.

The ideas I intend to use this space for in the immediate future are the ideas found in GOD’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD: You’ve Got Me All Wrong.  I believe this new book (published just four months ago by Rainbow Ridge Books) places before our species some of the most important “What if” questions that could be contemplated by contemporary society.

The questions are important because they invite us to ponder some of the most self-damaging ideas about God ever embraced by our species.  For example, after the idea that God is to be feared, I believe that the second most damaging notion that some humans hold about God is the thought that God might not even exist.

Why this is damaging is that it stops all atheists and many agnostics from using God’s power, even as the whole of humanity seeks to work collaboratively to create the life we all say we want for everyone on this planet.

If you see a sign on your front door from the city that the electricity is off in your house, you will not bother turning on a lamp, having concluded that there’s no point in doing so. You will then be in the dark. The power that’s flowing will be useless to you because you do not believe that it is flowing. You will not even test it, because you’ve been told by someone in authority that the power is out.

It is estimated that right now over 10 percent of the world population thinks that the power is out. That’s roughly the number of people who categorize themselves as non-religious, with 2 percent actually declaring atheism. And of the vast majority who say that they do believe in God, an enormous number nevertheless have occasional—and sometimes lifelong—doubts about whether the God in whom they believe actually exists.

Now comes The Great What If . . .

What if it is true, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God exists?

Would it make a difference? Does it matter? In the overall scheme of things, would it have any significant impact in our planetary experience?

Yes. If the entire world believed without question that a Higher Power exists, out of which life on the earth emerged, it would create a universally accepted context, a sacred or theological basis, for humanity’s collective formulation of fundamental values.

Right now the values guiding the behavior of our species are not collective or uniform. They are scattered all over the place.

One person may believe that abandoning one’s religion should be punishable by death, while another person may believe that the person who put another person to death for abandoning a religion should be put to death—to use a glaring example brought up by the news account in Chapter 2.

One person may believe that the purpose of life is to live in such a way as to please God and get to heaven, while another person may believe that the purpose of life has nothing to do with pleasing God, even as a third person may believe that there is not even a God to please.

One person may believe that all souls who do not believe in the One True Religion are going to hell, while another person may believe that all souls who seek God with a desire pure and true will avoid going to hell, even as a third person may believe that there is not even a hell to go to, much less a God to send people there.

One person may believe good and evil are defined by God, while another person may believe that God does not view the actions, choices, and decisions of human beings in these terms, even as a third person may believe that there is no Deity at all to apply such labels to human behaviors.

One person may believe that killing people as a punishment for certain crimes, or even as a means of “defending the faith,” is in accordance with God’s Law, while another person may believe that killing people for any reason is not in any way in harmony with God’s Law, even as a third person may believe that there is no such thing as God’s Law, much less a God to announce it.

Without a common belief in the existence of a Deity and a shared understanding of what is true about and for that Deity, we can’t even agree on a reason for living, the purpose of our existence, the experience—if any—that follows death, and the basis for life’s largest decisions (both as an individual and as a society).

I believe that God has been telling us from the very beginning, and I observe that it is becoming more clear to us every day, that the portions of humanity’s Ancient Cultural Story which instill doubt about whether or not there even is a Higher Power in the universe is plainly and simply inaccurate.

It is okay now to remove this ancient teaching from our current story, and to stop telling this to ourselves and to our children.

God exists.

Make no mistake about it.

God exists.

While there are those who feel that science and spirituality are the antithesis of each other, the greatest scientific mind of our time, Albert Einstein, said: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

It has been said that when he was asked by David Ben-Gurion (the primary founder and the first prime minister of Israel) whether he believed in God, Einstein—who, of course, uncovered and proposed a world-changing formula about energy and mass—agreed that there must be something behind the energy.

It might be worth, then, highlighting this: Make no mistake about it. God exists.

Albert Einstein also said, “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.”

Is this something upon which we can agree? God was not made in the image and likeness of Man.

Who or what, then, is God?

Here is an analogy that may help us answer this ancient question.

As humanity has moved more deeply into the twenty-first century, medical science has learned more and more about what it has called “stem cells.” These are described as undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells, and can divide to produce more cells of a specialized kind.

If harvested from a human body before they differentiate, they can be “coaxed” in a laboratory into adopting the specialized identity of any cell in the human body. This means that they can regenerate any portion of virtually any organ of the body—from brain cells to lung tissue to heart muscle to the follicles of hair on your head. This has led to a whole new branch of medicine emerging under the loose heading of nanobiotechnology.

The point of bringing all this up here?

If “nature” can do all of this within the vastly limited framework of a single human body, what could one drop of the Primal Force or the Essential Essence do within the unlimited framework of the cosmos?

Are human stem cells showing us something on the micro level that tells us something about life on a macro scale? Could God be, in a sense, the stem cell of the universe, able to differentiate in any one of countless ways?

Consider this: Cosmologists are now telling us that our universe may be—and probably is—just one of an infinite number of such manifestations. In other words, as unfathomably large as we have assumed our universe to be, it may be merely a spec in a universe of universes.

Or, to put it another way, we may live not in a universe, but in a multiverse.

This would make our earth an infinitesimal dot in a solar system that is an infinitesimal dot in a galaxy that is an infinitesimal dot in a quadrant of the cosmos that is an infinitesimal dot in a universe that is an infinitesimal dot in a multiverse that is infinite.

Can we continue to doubt that there is “something” behind, or undergirding, or having given birth to, this magnificent multiverse? Would it not be more logical to assume and conclude that some cause exists behind the effects of the physical realm? And would it be so totally senseless to call this First Cause: “God”?

It is interesting to note that science reports evidence of an extraordinary intelligence present in all of life at the cellular, and even the sub-molecular, level. Life seems to know what it’s doing, and to be doing it deliberately, methodically, consistently, and predictably. Even inconsistency can be predicted! (see Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.)

And then there is the relatively recent understanding of what is known in quantum physics as the observer effect. This states that “nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer.”

What this adds up to is that there are three elements in the “system” that we call “life”: intelligence, design, and power. It is difficult to look closely at any aspect of life as we observe it—either at the micro level of the sub-molecular world or the macro level of the cosmos—without conceding that the manifestations of physicality are simply too sophisticatedly complex, too tightly interlocked, intermixed, and interwoven, too marvelously and massively intricate and interactive, to have been the result of random chance.

It seems clear that the presence of life’s patterns is neither “accidental” nor “incidental” in the process of life itself, but that the intelligence and power evidenced in the patterns is the force behind that process. Indeed, the Source and the Creator of it.