Was Jesus a fanner of the flames of fear? Did Jesus use “vitriol” and “quippy rejoinders” to make his points?

I ask this because following my last entry in this headline space — a story about how America is returning to its own Wild West, where everyone packed a six-shooter and the question was not, who is carrying a gun, but who is quickest on the draw? — a reader posting as Rian Dean entered this response in the Comment section below…

Neale, I Love You. Your work has inspired me to make changes in my Life I would never have dreamed possible 20 years ago. You have lead me to a place where fear has no hold on my Life or on the manner in which I choose to express my Divinity. Please do not choose to lend your voice to fear.

I have read and watched the message you bring to us change over the last few years and it seems, from my limited viewpoint, that some of what you write on these pages is increasingly coming from a place of fear.

The Loving, gentle urging of our Souls toward Love has been slowly replaced by ever more strident descriptions of the injustices you perceive in our World today. Less often do I see solutions based in Love. More and more often now these articles hold a sarcastic, snarky tone that definitely spurs conversation, what seems to be missing is the Love-based solution to those perceived injustices.

The Global Conversation website is a treasure. It is an opportunity to expose a fear-based Society to a message of Divine Love in a manner that is unique to our times. The number of posts that rally behind your clarion calls against injustice is impressive, but no more so than every other political site where battle lines are drawn on every issue and people whip out their most quippy rejoinders to defend or attack any given issue.

Please, please, may we use this opportunity to trot out solutions to the issues rather than engage in heated exchanges of vitriol? May we offer solutions to the fear that so grips our Country and our World rather than fanning the flames of that fear?

Remember, we will not solve all of these problems at the same level of consciousness by which we created them.

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I am grateful to Rian for posting his comment, because it brings up what I think is a very important discussion of a very important topic: Is it spiritual and loving to use sharp words — even harsh words sometimes — to make a point?

To find my answer to this question I decided to do a little research on the life of Christ. Whatever their religion, whatever their sacred beliefs, few people would deny that the man called Jesus made a huge impact on this world, and was and is considered by many to be one of the most spiritual, loving human beings who ever lived.

How is it, then, that Jesus repeatedly used the words “brood of vipers” and  “hypocrites” to describe those whose behaviors reflected views other than his own? And how is it that he used those words in statements that were very direct and very energy-charged? Utterances such as: “You brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things?”…and: “You say in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times!”…

…and elsewhere: “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?” And again, elsewhere, he actually called forth bad things upon certain of those who opposed him, saying: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.”

How could Jesus speak with such “vitriol”?

But wait. It’s worse. When he found the money changers in the Temple, he actually made a whip out of a rope in which he tied knots…and then he overturned all the tables of the traders in the Temple and drove the sellers and buyers out, waving his whip and shouting: “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”

What happened to… “we will not solve all of these problems at the same level of consciousness by which we created them”…? Was Jesus “offering solutions,” or was he just expressing his anger?

Is there a place for anger in the words of spiritual messengers?

Let that be our question for the day. Rian? Your thoughts? Others? Your thoughts?

The State of Georgia in the United States has passed one of the most permissive gun laws in that nation — legislation that its critics are calling the “Guns Everywhere Bill.”

The new law sends America back to its old Wild West Days, when cowboys packed six-shooters, and the measure of one’s personal safety was not whether you carried a gun (everybody did), but who could get it out of the holster faster.

The U.S. is now returning to the days when the personally carried gun is once again The Great Equalizer. It used to be that laws, and the enforcement of them, provided equalizing comfort and safety in public places in America, but ever since Stand Your Ground laws came back into play — allowing people to think they can shoot-to-kill other people in places like movie theatres because someone threw a bag of popcorn in their face — the people of the United States have apparently decided that a loaded revolver, carried everywhere, is the only way to go.

Effective July 1, the new law in Georgia will allow licensed gun owners to carry firearms into more public places than at any time in 100 years.

This would include — as in days of old — bars. It would also allow guns to be carried into government buildings that don’t have security checkpoints.  As well, the law authorizes school districts to appoint staffers to carry firearms. It allows churches to “opt-in” if they want to allow weapons inside their houses of worship.

The law has not been passed without opposition. It has been criticized as being “the most extreme gun bill in America” by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group co-founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has also been highly critical of the legislation.

Law enforcement organizations hate it. “Police officers do not want more people carrying guns on the street, particularly police officers in inner city areas.” Frank Rotondo, the executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, has been widely quoted in the media as saying.

In a new twist on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, the language of the new law prohibits police officers from even detaining momentarily any person “for the sole purpose of investigating whether such a person has a weapons carry license.” In other words, “I’ve got a gun, and you don’t get to ask me whether I have a permit to carry it. Take that, police people.”

None of the opposition from law enforcement and mayors, etc. has mattered in a country gone wild about its guns since the massacre of 20 school children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012.

Apparently wracked with fear that the escalating gun violence in America would move people in that country to advocate against easy access to guns, a backlash has formed and grown enormously in the past two years, led by the National Rifle Association and buttressed by Second Amendment Rights supporters.

Nine states have now loosened gun regulations in the U.S., and the National Rifle Association called the new law in Georgia “a historic victory for the Second Amendment.”

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to “keep and bear arms.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the past that this does not stop the government from regulating the sale and use of firearms…but Second Amendment advocates see it another way. Thus, even attempts to limit sales of guns to people without a background check, or place limits on the sale of semi-automatic combat weapons that shoot many rounds per second, have been vociferously opposed by an increasingly loud constituency in the United States.

So powerful has this constituency become that even the grandson of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Democratic state senator Jason Carter, voted for the bill in the Georgia legislature. (Jason Carter, not incidentally, is running for governor in his state.)

Speaking to critics of the new law, Georgia state Rep. Rick Jasperse, the Republican who introduced the bill, said it is simply about restoring Second Amendment rights and allowing licensed gun owners to carry their weapons in more places. He said this was “not extreme.”

So the question now before the American people in an increasing number of places will be not, “Are you packing?” (most people will be), but rather: “How fast on the draw are you?”

And the new American motto?

“Smile when you say that, brother.”

And whatever you do, don’t throw your popcorn at someone if you find yourself in an argument in a movie theatre. You’re liable to get shot and killed.

On the spot. No questions asked.

Self defense, you see…

In America, you get to Stand Your Ground.

With a six-shooter. Like in the Old West, remember?

Have Gun, Will Travel.

Is changing the world all about changing what people “want?” Or is it about changing why people would want one thing rather than another?

This is a major question facing Planet Earth’s politicians, business figures, spiritual leaders, and social scientists right now — although very few of them have “framed” it in this way…because, regrettably, very few of them have deeply understood the nature of humanity’s current problem.

It is a problem of beliefs, not of behaviors.

There is a global conversation taking place on this website that is now heating up, with nearly 100 Comments posted beneath the last entry alone in this newspaper’s headline space, and I would like to direct its attention now to the nature of the challenge presently facing our species.

This has all come to the forefront for me because of a Comment posted under the last top-of-page story here. The Comment was authored by a person posting as Kristen.

“WOW,” she wrote, “this is a crazy thread. Are we still on Earth??? I feel I have been teleported to some weird no man’s land.

“A very simple thought — has it ever occurred to anyone that most people are actually happy with who and how they are and do not want to change? It is merely others that want them to change creating the illusion.

“A classic CwG train of thought I think. Perhaps just my perception?!

“IF people wanted to stop polluting, they would. If they wanted to stop traveling and reduce their carbon footprint, they would. If they wanted to help end the suffering of others, they would. If they wanted to be nicer, they would.

“Everyone is living as they WANT to, which differs greatly from how others want them to. This is not right, possibly not even wrong, merely the cold hard truth.

“I don’t think trying to convince people they WANT to change has been very successful to date, which is why I am pro law and consequences, including person carbon footprint ‘rations’, the illegalisation of many ‘non-foods’ (as Mewabe would word it), banning all coal mining, anything that causes animal suffering, executing peodophiles and torturers, letting addicts kill themselves, etc.

“I’m almost at the point where I think we need a full dictatorship communist world!!!”

My response…

Dear Kristen, I understand perfectly and completely the frustration you clearly feel with the state of affairs on our planet right now — although I must say that I am not in agreement with some of the “solutions” you’ve mentioned. Sidestepping those for the moment, let’s look at the central point in your thesis…

You say that people do what they WANT to do, and you “don’t think trying to convince people they WANT to change has been very successful to date.” On this I agree with you — but perhaps not for the reason that you hold this view.

My own awareness tells me that you can rarely (if ever) get people they WANT to change until you get them to change their minds about WHY they want WHAT they want.

In other words, peoples’ choices change when peoples’ reasons for making certain choices change.

Let me give you a very simple example. It has never been my choice to drink beet juice. It simply wasn’t a taste I enjoyed. Now my reasons for drinking any kind of juice have been two-fold:  to enjoy the taste (and usually, the sweetness) and to quench my thirst. So I’ve always insisted on drinking juices I liked — and beet juice was not among them.

Then one day I read that in preliminary research, beetroot juice lowered blood pressure, and thus may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease due to the high nitrate content of the beetroot. I’ve had cardiac weakness since I was born with a congenital heart defect. As I have gotten older, I’ve wanted to pay more and more attention to my heart’s health. When I saw that report, and checked it with my doctor, I immediately ran out and bought two bottles of beet juice at my local whole foods store.

These days I drink one glass of beet juice a day. What caused me to WANT to drink beet juice? The reason WHY I was drinking it!

As soon as I altered the “why” of my behavior, the “what” of my behavior changed spontaneously and automatically.

Now, let’s get back to your commentary, above. You asked: “Has it ever occurred to anyone that most people are actually happy with who and how they are, and do not want to change?”

My answer would be that of course it has. But the problem has been that most people who would like to see things change on this planet are approaching the problem at the level of behavior, rather than the level of belief. They are trying to get people to stop acting certain ways, rather than trying to stop thinking certain ways and stop believing certain ways.

In the Conversations with God cosmology it is made very clear that beliefs create behaviors. If you want to get behaviors to change, you’re going to have to get people to change the beliefs that sponsor them.

Sadly, most of those in leadership positions in our world do not want to even get close to suggesting that people’s beliefs are the problem; that our beliefs are causing the difficulties and challenges and poverty and suffering and wars and violence and environmental degradation and weather and climate extremes in the world today.

Saying such a thing would cause those leaders to lose their popularity almost at once — because our beliefs are very sacred to us, and the person who questions those questions the very basis of who we see ourselves as. The very suggestion that the basis on which we have laid the foundation of our culture might not be totally and completely accurate is far too threatening for most people, societies, cultures, political parties, and religions to even explore, much less embrace.

Now Kristen, you have said, “If people wanted to stop polluting, they would. If they wanted to stop traveling and reduce their carbon footprint, they would. If they wanted to help end the suffering of others, they would. If they wanted to be nicer, they would.”

This if true, of course. But the unaddressed question is: What could cause them to want these things? Simply telling them that they “should”? No. Obviously, no. That’s been tried.

Yet when people are willing to explore deeply the reason behind their choices, then change that reason, their choices shift immediately. To use my personal metaphor, they start drinking beet juice.

Why hasn’t this worked with more than just a fraction of the world’s population? Because the reason that people have been given to change their behaviors has not been good enough. Their behaviors appear now to be supported by their beliefs and their present beliefs generate their behaviors, so we have a circle.

As noted, most of humanity’s basic beliefs — about Life, about God, about who we are in relationship to each other, about how life works — have not been seriously challenged, or even questioned, within the global human collective.

Our opportunity, then, is to invite people to do what nobody wants to do: Question the prior assumption. And, once having done so, to entertain the possibility that many of humanity’s most sacred and fundamental beliefs may be mistaken. They may be simply inaccurate.

And that is where the screw turns, Kristen. We do not need, as you wrote, no doubt facetiously…“a full dictatorship communist world!!!” What we would benefit from the most right now would be “a full partnership community world!!!”

We need a Million Voices asking a few piercing questions:

1. How is it possible that 7 billion members of a single species could all want the same thing—survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love—and be unable to produce it, even after thousands of years of trying?

2. Is it possible that there is something we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?

3. Is it possible that there is something we don’t understand about ourselves and about who we are, the understanding of which would alter our lives forever for the better?

And after asking these questions, those million voices might begin offering some suggested answers. They might decide to start a discussion; to initiate and to instigate an evolution revolution. Not just here on the Internet, in places like this within a virtual reality, but on the ground, in homes and meeting rooms, church halls and community centers, in cities, towns, and villages around the world.

And what could cause this to happen, Kristen?

You.

You could decide to be among those who cause this to happen. We don’t need a communist dictatorship, Kristen. We need you.