A Voice in the Wilderness
IT IS TRUE WHAT THEY SAY
ABOUT WHAT GOD WANTS?

Editor’s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore, one-by-one, the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.

CWG Explored/Installment #13: What God wants.

The idea that there is something that God wants has permeated human religions since the first religion was created. Which means, historians and archeologists tell us, for just about as long as humans have existed. We’ve found evidence of religion in areas populated no less than 10,000 years before the Christian era (BCE). Ideas about a Higher Power (or Powers, in the plural) have been around for probably a great deal longer.

The earliest humans felt that there was something that had to be done to ameliorate the gods. They assumed there must have been gods of some sort (they could not have used the term “god,” but they certainly understood the concept of power greater than they were), because there was so much about their world (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, shooting stars, droughts, etc., etc.) over which they realized they had no control.

Yet these primitive beings often assumed that if they could amuse or “bribe” these higher powers in the same way they amused or bribed the strongest and meanest among them to get them to not BE so mean, they might be able to at least influence those powerful entities to also not be so mean.

And metaphysics being the science that it is, their belief that bribery, inducement, and subornation could produce favors from the Higher Powers (such as the end of a drought, or a good harvest) in many cases produced such results. Thus, religion (the idea that if you do something for God, God will do something for you) was born.

Primitive as this “I’ll trade you” arrangement may seem, it continues to be the principle and primary doctrine underpinning most of the world’s religions to this very day. It may be a bit of an oversimplification, but at their basis many religions teach that to “earn” an eternal reward (as opposed to condemnation followed by eternal punishment), there are certain things that God wants (read that “demands”) human beings to do.

The question is: Is this true? Do religions have it right?

It is true, for instance, that every Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, and Bahá’í is going straight to hell upon their death? Is this also true for every member of all the other faith communities in the world, except one? Is it true that God will trade your membership in this one religion for entry into Heaven, but if you don’t make the trade, you’re out — no matter how good or wonderful or caring or compassionate or generous or courageous you were in your life?

Is this what God wants?

Is it true that even if you gave up your life to save the life of another — and even if you suffered unbelievable torture in doing so (as a soldier who saved the rest of the members of his platoon by refusing to divulge to the enemy where they’re encamped) — you went straight to hell anyway after you died, so that you can suffer unending, unmitigated, and indescribable torture after death because you belonged to one of those other religions?

Is this what God wants?

Is it true that a 2-day-old baby will be denied entry into heaven and reunion with God if that baby is not baptized?

Is this what God wants?

Is it true that God says women should to be subservient to men, and that wives must obey their husbands?

Is this what God wants?

It is true that God wants people to love each other, but wants people of the same sex who love each other to never marry, or demonstrate their love for each other in a physical or sexual way, and that God will punish with everlasting damnation any person who does?

Is this what God wants?

It is true that God wants us to understand that God’s love can turn to wrath if we do not do what God wants?

Is this what God wants?

Is it possible that we could be wrong about all of this?

What do you think God wants?