Rogue God Steps Back from Control

A God who stepped back from Power and Control would definitely be Going Rogue.

Most people define God as the One with ALL the Power, ALL the Control.  For them, no control/no power=no God.

What if God has no interest in controlling the world or the unverse, whether we think it needs controlling or not?

What if God has the power and yet steps back from it for love of us?

What if God, like a parent who has complete power over a growing child, continuously steps back from control so that we can mature, each into our own individual personhood?

What if God has no desire to be Over and Above us–any more than mature parents desire to be over and above their children?

What do you think?

Think you KNOW God?

Like it when people THINK they know you?  Does it irritate you when people keep your image fixed forever, no change allowed?

Well, what makes us think that God likes being boxed in for millenium unending?

If God were an idol, that wouldn’t be problem.  But to a Living God, that’s a big problem.

Guess that’s why so much scripture is devoted to ending idolatry.  Idolatry is the “art” of boxing God into things, or words, or ideas.

Being idolized isn’t all it’s cracked up to be–whether people think good or ill of you.   Problem is the boxes prevent relationship.  You never get to be who you are to the person who boxes you.  They never get to experience the real and ever-changing you!

Me, I just want to keep letting go of those neat, safe,  little boxes so I can keep making space for what is Real…the Real other, the Real me, the Real Moment.   I ask your prayer because it isn’t an easy thing to keep on doing, is it?

How about you?

 

GOD on a SKATEBOARD

A Very Different Image of God, NOT the God on a Throne.

GOD on a Throne is Almighty King, Lord and Master, Giver of laws, miracles, tests, graces and chastisements.  This is the God Who is over and above and beyond us.

GOD on a Skateboard is an Interactive God, Alive, always moving, constantly responsive to the present moment.  God on a Skateboard is about challenge, caring interplay, letting go, creating, re-creating and healing–making one.  God on a Skateboard is free to move everywhere, tagging the universe with messages–”I am here and here and here.”  This is the God Who is WITH us…not OVER us.

This God has no hierarchy to be in charge of, no universe to run, no servants to oversee, no legal or judicial system to manage .  This is a God who interacts with every one, every thing, and every moment without exception…both Separate from and One with us.  A God for fast-paced changing times, you think? 

  See Who God is Not if you like this post.

Only One God, not always the One we want

There is only ONE God.   God on a Throne is NOT God on a Skateboard, nor visa versa.

Yet we want both gods– the King responsible for and in control of everything and the One on the Skateboard who is WITH us through it all.

We can’t have it both ways.  We can’t have the God we want, only the One Who is.

I don’t believe God was ever on a throne.  …See http://wp.me/pLIvJ-4 for more God on a Skateboard.

What do you believe?

What kind of Love is God?

Not an all-consuming need or desire,
Not an all-absorbing cultic oneness,
God is not a unity built on conformity, but a union based on dynamic interactive intercourse–giving and receiving, receiving and giving, letting go and creating.

This new paradigm for God’ love is based on the paradigm shift which human love has taken in the past 40 years.

At one time love was a hierarchy of one Over the other, one using the other, one hovering over/protecting the other.  Alternatively, Love was viewed as an abandonment of self , the sacrifice of ego for the sake of the other.  Now we know that ego is as important as human spirit.  It is our uniqueness, our separateness while spirit is our oneness with all.

Love does not require the sacrifice of ego, only the discipline of ego so that it does not rule our lives and prevent us from experiencing the intercourse of giving and receiving, the intercourse of interactive oneness with another.

God is the kind of Love that holds back on its egoistic desire, makes room for other, gives no reason for attack and defense, finds strength in separateness and in union.  Above all, God is the Love that believes totally in our goodness and hopes fervently that we realize the goodness we are in every moment.

What kind of love are you?

Praying to God?

If God is God, it is highly unlikely that “He” needs prayers of praise or petition or thanks.
We, on the other hand, do need prayer as an ego discipline because it is Soooooo EASY to start thinking we are a tiny bit better or less than X, Y, or Z.

Prayer is letting go judgments which keep us apart.
Prayer is letting go assumptions which seem to tie us together, while actually locking us into little enclaves of acceptibility.
Prayer is being present with each other, lifting our minds and hearts together in union with all that is Good.
Prayer is the experience and practice of our oneness with each other, the universe and God.

Praying isn’t about God.  It’s about us and our relationships!  It’s about getting Real with ourselves and All Other.  That’s all any Real God could want.  Ya think?

Christmas story means WHAT?

The Jesus birth story is the story and celebration of EVERY one of us!  It is an ancient story that holds the truth of human being in hidden corners so that the light of truth cannot be denied or suppressed in darkness.  Here we look anew at that sacred ancient story.

Some say we choose our lives before being born.  The ancient Christmas story has Jesus doing just that, choosing to be born into poverty, yet receiving the acclaims of royalty by kings and divinity by angels.  Not a contradiction in Jesus’ life or ours!  No matter how rich the family we are born into, all of us are born vulnerable and in need of help–poor.  Yet we are also born with inestimable (human-divine) worth and potential.  The kings, shepherds, and relatives who recognize this come bearing gifts to honor our birth.

Like Jesus, we are all born to save the world by dying.  That dying starts on day 1.  There is no living that excludes dying, except in our imagination.  This dying which saves the world is as much about everyday living as it is about physical passing.  Everyday we face the death of endings in order to embrace new beginnings.  The dying or letting go that every next step calls forth from us…this is the dying that saves the world!

The Christmas story of ancient tradition is everyone’s story of life beginning.  It tells of how we need to listen to our inner voice, how we need to protect ourselves and each other from the devious intrusion of domination over our lives (Herod’s attempt to kill off the child).  This ancient yet modern warning is an important reminder that we are born to be more than slaves to greed or domination that promises us security it can never deliver.

The Christmas story is our story–the honoring of our equality with God–equality of holiness which is God’s gift to us.  No mature parent gives life witholding equal worth and dignity to its child.  Only a sickly narcissistic parent would want its offspring to be a creature of less worth than itself.  The Christmas story holds  the ancient and sacred belief that God is  NO such sickly parent!  Each development of the ancient Christmas story preserved the reality that we are “of God,” born of God like Jesus–not born of some composite of good and evil, not born of lower or less worth than our brother Jesus.

This ancient but new understanding of the Jesus birth story doesn’t claim we are God any more than Trinity doctrine claims that the Son is the Father.  Yet we are of divine word and worth made flesh..each and every one of us–NO exclusions!  When we realize this, the whole superior/inferior domination system crumbles under the light that shone on the stable in the Bethlehem story, our story.  When we remember the common divine origin of all human beings, then the “Kindom” of Peace on Earth will surely come!

Now what do you think of this Christmas story, my sisters and brothers?

Jesus, our Half-Brother?

Unless we also have “divine DNA,” then Jesus can only be our half-brother, right?  What if Jesus realized that we all have “divine DNA”? What if he didn’t just claim it for himself?

Divine DNA wouldn’t be superhero stuff. It would be the Love which binds us ALL as One–no exceptions or exclusions! That love is powerful stuff…everyone a full brother/sister–no half-way connections. God Going Rogue is about having One Holy Beloved One in all of us…not just in Jesus.

What if this “Good News” got squelched because we we like gods and heroes over and above us?

So what do you think here?  

God Breaks Out of Lockbox!

It happened one day in 2033.  God appeared in Afghanistan with all founders of all the religions in the world.  I guess they were there to give God some credibility worldwide.

God appeared as a burning bush with a gentle but persuasive voice.  Some people heard a VERY LOUD voice though.  God said:

“I am NOT the Warrior God of Good against Evil.  Nothing really wins by attack or defense.”

“I am NOT the God who is in control of everything.  Control over everything kills the spirit.”

“I am NOT the God you make me out to be–anymore than you are the person others think you to be.”

Then God disappeared with all the religious founders…God figured that was enough to think about for now.

Sister Lea, 2033

For More: Visit:  “Who God is Not” at /whomegod.wordpress.com/

Jesus died for our sins?

Something is wrong with “Jesus died for our sins” when we follow the story back to a Father God who needed the death offering of a Son to make things right between Himself and humanity. This story is an ancient explanation of why Jesus died such an ignoble death as a criminal.  The story of Father God needing sacrifice of a divine son made sense to those who were not far historically from animal if not human sacrifice as a way to appease or win favor from all-powerful gods.

What made perfect sense then doesn’t make as much sense now to many. No Loving God, no Abba, No Fathr of Jesus could have required or sent a Son to die to appease the offenses of humanity against the Divine. Abba, God of Jesus, was not One to be offended by our sins, but rather One Who cares what sin does to us–how it enslaves and dehumanizes us.

So, if to some, the Crucifixion of Jesus has no meaning as an appeasement sacrifice, no meaning as a sin-offering opening the gates of heaven, what could Jesus’ Crucifixion mean to them?

What if we look through a different lens at Crucifixion? What if Jesus’ love for us took him to Crucifixion because he was determined to love every single person, regardless of their judgments on him–yes, even the Pharisees, his Roman torturers, and his betraying friends and followers.

What if the real Crucifixion was Jesus letting go of justifiable judgments against those who hated him? What if Jesus realized how his worldview and his God-view threatened the top-down status quo of power? What if Jesus knew that domination would never die until it was replaced by love and letting go even the “justifiable” judgments of self, others, God?

What if Jesus’ Crucifixion was so very much more than a sin-offering or a dyiing for our sins to wipe away the guilt and shame of offending God? What if Jesus’ Crucifixion happened because it was just Jesus truly loving his sisters and brothers. What if truly loving our brothers and sisters ALWAYS takes us to the place where we must choose to let go judgments and assumptions about them over and over again? …and look beyond their judgments and assumptions about us?

Even one hair of a “me-better/smarter/etc-than you” assumption prevents that love. We honor Jesus’ Crucifixion by choosing to love the “enemies” who hate, revile and torture us, for “they know not what they do.” And so we “know not what we do” when we hate, revile, or think ourselves just the tiniest bit better than another.

What do you think?