I have a left eye and a right eye, and between them I can see in 3D.
I have a left ear and a right ear, and between them I can hear in stereo.
I have a left hand and a right hand, and between them I can do all sorts of things. I can juggle. I can cook. I can play the guitar.
I have a left mind and a right mind, and between them I can think in contradictions.
Or, as William Blake put it: “All of life is but a fiction, and is made of contradiction.”
When I was talking to my friend upstairs the other night I told him that I believed in God. This was because he was telling me that he didn’t.
When I was talking to him again the other day, I told him that I didn’t believe in God. This is because he presumed that I did.
“Hang on there a minute,” he said, “you’ve just contradicted yourself. You told me you did believe in God.”
“That’s because I have on my bifocals,” I told him. “It’s so I can think in 3D.”
What I like most are sentences that contain apparent contradictions and still make sense.
Like this one, for instance:
“Sometimes the most positive word you can say is no.”
And here is another one:
“The only God is no God.”
The Buddhists, of course, have no God, but only a dynamic place of being they call Nirvana, which means, the Roaring Silence.
The Taoists have no God, but only a dynamic process of being, which they call the Tao, which means, the Way.
The Confucians have no God, but only a dynamic interplay of complimentary forces, which they call the I, which means the Changes.
“The only thing that never changes,” they say, “is Change itself.”
The Hindus have so many Gods as to render the term almost meaningless.
Everyone has a God. Everyone has several Gods.
Infinite numbers of Gods to represent the infinite aspects of being.
Christians and Muslims and Jews, however, have only one God, who lays down the law for us to obey. We call this God “the Lord”, or some such variation on the term, and understand that we are to serve him, and that he is to judge us and punish us, and in the name of this God we feel free to force people into service, and to judge and punish others as we see fit.
The Judeo-Christian God is the God of the vengeful ego. Why else would he punish us?
The Jews even claim to be the Chosen People.
Why would God choose?
The early Christians, however, did not believe in this God.
They said that God is Love, and love is not a being but a relationship.
They personified this relationship as like that of a Father to his son.
Some early Christians called God the Father-Mother.
Others: the Great Life.
Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God, but only the Son of Man.
Read the Gospels. It was Paul who called Jesus the Son of God, and he is distinguished in the story of Jesus by the fact that they never met.
In fact, Jesus made it clear that we are all Sons and Daughters of God.
He said, “Our Father who art in heaven.”
He did not say, “my Father.”
Jesus’ God was the God of forgiveness, not of punishment.
Jesus’ God was the God of freedom, not of the law.
He came to overthrow the Ten Commandments. He came to take away our sins.
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1 comment:
Peace
You say Jesus didn't claim he was son of God? Check out John 10.
30I and my Father are one.
31Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
32Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
33The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
34Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
37If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
38But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
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