Pathways to Being Willing

I have written to you once before. A while ago now. I really like your site. I personally feel I need to hear that “God is a God of Love and He does not teach through fear or use fear in any way“  rather a lot.

I would like to ask you just a couple of questions. I can understand how you would interpret much of the old testament in terms of this being man’s thinking much of the time, rather than direct revelation of a loving God. But what do you make of those areas of the gospel where Christ himself uses what could be called a language of fear, of anger and wrath. The cleansing of the temple, some of the more critical denounciations of Jesus towards pharisees (declaring some of them as ’sons of hell’) and actually, there are many more little and subtle indications within the gospels that I would say that Christ definately sometimes spoke in a way which was fear-inpsiring, rather than peace-inspiring.

If I were Judas, for instance, and I heard ‘there is a devil among you’ from Christ, I think I would have been pretty afraid, that the Christ himself calls me a devil. Would that not be a cause for fear? Whether or not Judas comprehended Christ as the Son of God, is for me, beside the point. An honest appraisal of this passage clearly demonstrates, as other passages do, that Christ sometimes did not use a language and a manner, that could be called ‘loving’ in the sense that you portray on your site.

Believe me, it would be much easier for me to agree with you. I would rather sense God as all-loving, always compassionate and merciful. But would I be denying him of something of his Holiness, if I refused to believe he never convicts us on those things which displease him?

 (this is a copy of an email request received by David and has been republished here. All personal information has been removed)

I recently ran across  a  20/20 segment where a group of people were spreading the word that God hates…almost everything. Although life can sometimes make this statement appear as though it may be true, this is not so.

To this group that expresses extreme views, and to anyone who believes in these views, although not expressing them as loudly, I send to you the eternal love and peace of God.

Many of the things I have written are focused around helping to see a clearer and more realistic view of who God is. Some have determined that God is the angry and murdering God as often depicted within the Bible, even though his reported actions totally disagree with how Jesus taught us to behave. This viewpoint is fine, because, since this is a temporary error in how we see God,  it will fade as truth is eventually invited in. At some point in time, we all saw God this way and that was why Jesus came and expressed a different way of being.

Jesus talked about being forgiving, loving, peaceful, caring and considerate, because these are the true attributes of our Father. Anything that disagrees with these points of view, does not originate from the peace and love of God and can only originate from our own fear, confusion and anger.

When you become louder and more forceful, you will find that many will disagree with you and will fight against you, and this you might use to vindicate that your mission is valid, since the world appears to oppose you, but this is not so. Using force to express any idea, will result in force being returned. Forcing your ideas simply proves that you are not trusting God to heal the problem and that you are not at peace, and therefore, your thoughts and actions are not inspired by God.

God is our creator and is not so weak that he needs us to force people to change. When Jesus taught, his love and genuine desire to be helpful, drew people to him… and we are still drawn to his words of forgiveness and love. Nothing that truly originated from Jesus was forced upon anyone, but was freely shared…to be accepted or not, with the only repercussion being how long you chose to distance yourself from God.

God has no timescale since time does not exist in eternity, so it does not matter how long you take to fully open your mind to accepting God as being truly loving of all. If it does not happen in this lifetime, you will go on to whatever the next existence may be, but you are not lost and are never rejected by God. Everyone eventually makes it home.

There is nothing to fear and no need to worry about what anyone has done, is doing or will do. In time, they will see these things differently and will make better choices and step closer to God.

We all make it home, so when you see someone who appears to be taking the ‘long way’, you can help them by being kind, being loving, being forgiving and knowing they are loved and not lost. Simply seeing them as being unconditionally loved by God, helps them in ways we can not yet fathom. Trust in God’s love for them and know that the perfect circumstances will come into their lives, that will help them make other choices. Know they will make it home.

The origin of peace is in knowing there is nothing to fear. If we all make it home, but it’s just a matter of how long we choose to take to get there, there is nothing to fear. If you wish to be a part of shortening the time of our journey back to our Father, motivate yourself through compassion and forgiveness of all those around you and share what you feel is true, but never require or demand any specific response. Know that God is working with them, and often, you are simply planting seeds.

You teach by being. Be peaceful and be loving and you will be teaching others about our loving and peaceful Father, without having to say a single word. 

When I was younger, (teen/young adult) many aspects of my life focused on church and the Bible. I was a bible toting junior in high school and proudly read my Bible in class when completed with that days assignment. As a young Christian, I embraced the Lord as passionately as possible and was a true Pentecostal believer.

Time passes and life happens. I fell away from God, but eventually was drawn back, but not through religion, but through the absence of religion. I read the first ‘Conversations with God‘ book, and although I did not really buy many of the things the author related, it did help me see that God might be different than what the Bible had explained.

I later began reading ‘A Course In Miracles‘…which was a very difficult read at first, but still, it portrayed God differently. It portrayed God as I had always hoped he could be…unconditionally loving of everyone.

As I began writing articles, while also getting a clearer picture of God’s true being, my articles slowly introduced many things about the Bible in which I disagreed and in which I believed were responsible for our very distorted image of God. At the time, I did not realize that I was Bible bashing with an attitude to some degree. I later read an article by Ken Wopnak that stated that those of us who were brow beaten with the Bible, might have a tendency to then brow beat Bible believers with A Course In Miracles….but this is of course, an error in judgement and totally unnecessary.

I left my original writings as they are since they still portray a viewpoint that may be helpful to some and since all things work together for good, I can’t let myself think anything but good will come from them.

Now, as I opt to include the Bible as part of a discussion or in an article, I focus only on those things I believe as truly depicting our God as loving, and I do not debate those things that disagree. It’s not my job to say “hey look how wrong you are about that“, because then I am judging and it’s not possible to judge here. We simply don’t have all the facts.

My base premise for seeing God as a truly loving God is also confirmed within the bible in  1st John where it states that perfect love casts out fear, and in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says to pray for your enemies, do good to your enemies and to give without expecting anything in return. These are just a few of the true characteristics of an unconditionally loving God. Anything else that is written within the Bible or any other text that shows God as using fear or playing favorites or establishing requirements by which he’ll give, I know is written from the heart of man, and does not have anything to do with the truly loving characteristics of God.

Overall, I believe that the physical things that we so dearly cling to, need to be let go. Who cares when they happened, if they happened or how they happened? Does the story convey a truly loving message? Are Gods actions in the story peaceful, kind and unconditionally loving? If so, the story may be true, but the actual events are not important if they occurred as written. What is important is the lessons of love they teach.

God is not physical and I don’t believe there is a single physical thing he requires from us, nor is there a single physical thing he has blessed above another. Nothing physical matters because only spirit is eternal and only the eternal matters. Jesus proved this as he rose again. He showed his followers that no matter what anyone does to the body, you don’t die…only the body dies.

The Bible is a great source of information, provided you can accept that it is not 100% inspired by God and can be questioned. People, like you and like myself, wrote the stories and accounts in the Bible. They wrote what they felt was true or necessary to say at the time, but this does not make it Gods inspired word, it just makes it words.

I believe I am inspired, but not every single word…or even every paragraph or even every article, however, I am open to allow the Holy Spirit and Jesus to work through me more and more with every time I write, and I know as time has passed, what I write today is more inspired than what I wrote 5 years ago…as it should be, otherwise, I have not grown.

Nothing on earth is perfect and nothing on earth provides all the knowing that will reveal God’s truly loving nature, including the Bible and A Course In Miracles. To accomplish this, simply open yourself to contemplating that god is more than all the feeble attempts any man has made to describe him, and be open to let him reveal himself to you. Be willing to see things differently by setting aside everything in this world that has created any image at all of God in your mind, and god’s true image will begin to break through.

You mention that the story of Noah never happened and that God would never kill all those innocent people. The story of Noah is mentioned throughout the New Testament as well. Matthew 24:38 for example.

You give examples from Matthew that we should accept but we are supposed to just disregard others as made up? Are we to just read the bible and disregard any mention of God or God’s acts that are not loving?

 (this is a copy of an email request received by David and has been republished here. All personal information has been removed)