Thoughts on God: Ending Religion's 'Eminant Domain' on the Idea

[I started this essay a few days ago, then set it aside, as it does deep, perhaps deeper than I was ready to go. On the other hand, if I limit the depths of myself that I’m willing to share, then I limit the heights to which I can soar. Connect always to the spirit behind these words.]

While I speak of the elegance, power, beauty, and importance of oneness with God, an act of separation occurred to me yesterday that I felt, might actually be helpful. The act: separating God from religion.

What???

Hey, I said the same thing! Now I realize that God can’t truly be separated from anything, but we routinely act as though some things either are, or should be separated from God, such as sexual pleasure and orthodoxy, business ethics, politics, science and mathematics. So why not challenge religion’s stronghold on the God concept?

This is not a call to end religion. It is instead a call to examine the effect of religious beliefs on our perception of self and each other, on what we fear, and love. These unexamined thoughts influence our decisions, as well as indecision.

As Neale Donald Walsh writes in his Conversations With God series, how we live our lives all boils down to our beliefs about, and perceptions of God, as well as our relationship thereto. However, most people do not yet have a concept of God or a sense of a personal day-to-day relationship outside the confines and context of religion. And in general, if their religious doctrine, forged 2,000 years ago, says something is so, then it is so, or so it will appear. Doctrine is to be followed or there’ll be hell to pay, which most “good” people will fear.

Taking a public position on God without any religious affiliation has its own associated issues. People who are used to following someone, anyone other than their self, may elect to follow the “guru”, or think that you are looking for a following (which is sometimes true). This is not a criticism of gurus any more than it is of religions. I have embraced and studied the thoughts of many spiritual teachers in coming to the point of expressing my own. Indeed, that is how the mantle of understanding is passed from generation to generation.

My point is that virtually any time anyone takes a position on God, or expresses his or her ideas on the nature of this universal Idea, they either jump into a “religious” or “spiritual” bag, or are lumped into one. I don’t really have a problem with that. I do it myself, by embracing the spirituality side. However, I think God is more than religion, more than spirituality. I think that God is not limited to those areas of thought and inquiry, and it would benefit us to see God in all things, as well as all people.

I also think that God’s LOVING reach extends beyond the “holy” demeanor that is either presumed or expected of both the religious and spiritual types. I feel that religion’s presumed ownership, and eminent domain to dictate what is, and what is not, “of God” is therefore a limiting one. Some people exploit this fact. Presenting one’s self as a “religious” type such as reverend, pastor, or “doctor,” tends to quell the urge to question or challenge what they ultimately say.

I take issue with these things because people who claim God to be their pilot typically assume that God isn’t yours or mine if we don’t happen to embrace their behavior norms, or their point of view. I believe that is changing, but it remains the rule, rather than the exception, particularly in traditional religious camps. And perhaps we should hold our thoughts on the change that is happening, for it is real. Consider being of African descent when slavery was the order of life in America, and not being thought of as fully human, and treated worse than the farm animals. Many of the “holiest” most upstanding men and women were plantation owners who claimed closeness to God. Consider being homosexual a scant 20 years ago, and how the idea that AIDS was God’s retribution was actually given serious thought (that idea may not be dead yet).

Consider a porn queen who moves into a new community and the outrage it can cause from more “moral” people. Consider just about any time in “modern” history and the state of women, how they have endured the oppression and control of men in cultures around the world, often in the name of God. While other mitigating factors can always hold some influence (a sex offender moves in, resocializing convicted felons, etc.) These issues are all related to our personal beliefs about possibility and impossibility, “right” and “wrong,” about ourselves, and about God, though expressed on a collective level. Even our concept of health, healing, and our power to be well, is intimately linked with our sense of Godness. When we don’t take an accounting of, responsibility for, and find security in our personal relationship with God, we’ll continue to maintain the love/hate relationship toward that which clearly fascinates us. We’ll love it in private, but hate it in public, through our religion. That’s duality and illusion at its best.

God’s name has been connected with behaviors that span the full spectrum of human endeavor. This is not to say that it is all bad, or even some of it. It is to say that a religious spin is presumed to “trump” one that is not. The assumption of “presumed rightness” comes off as “wrong” to me. To deal with the wide spectrum of beliefs that can be found once you enter the realm of religion, religious people themselves skirt the issue by not talking about specifics, relative to other religions. They simply recite their doctrine. Politicians could actually learn a thing or two from that example.

My position is this: God is behind, and in everyone, and every thing; including religions, and including everything else. God is certainly behind, and expresses through every human being. But listen to some of the “end time” opinions out there. Listen to the fear that they use like a cattle prod, to get “nonbelievers” into their particular ideological corral. “If you’re not fearing God and the evil that Satan has in store, then you must be one of Satan’s legions!”Whoa!

Who are we? What are we? Are we really meek lambs that have to be led by a shepherd, “herded” into an ideological box to pay homage to a needy, insecure, vengeful deity, one that will send an asteroid our way if we don’t get with the program?

I don’t think so.

It’s not that I’m skeptical. I’m fully aware that asteroids have in fact been detected on a trajectory that would cross Earth’s path, or definitely come near. Not that I don’t believe in “End Times”, but the real question is what do they mean? What’s more interesting to me, is the beginning that they both predict, and portend. These issues aren’t the exclusive domain of religion, nor do they define the limits of God’s relevance.

God is relevant in everything we do, think, and say. Some things that certain religions paint as inherently sinful and even antithetical to God, such as sexual expression, are rarely put together. Where will you find a religious comment on pornography, which runs the entire range of sexual expression of which there is MASSIVE human interest, and the hint of anything but condemnation? If it is expression, and it is, then God’s connected to it. And if God’s connected to it, then it cannot be totally negative. And if it’s not totally negative, then we need to find balance and understanding, not eradication.

Where will you find a comment from many religious fundamentalists on homosexuality without the hint of anything but condemnation by God? How often will you hear of the love of life that each is capable of bringing into being? One doesn’t have to be interested in, endorse, or engage in homosexual activity to nonetheless acknowledge its validity for those who practice it, as part of the spectrum of human expression chosen by some. In the same way that religions tolerate other religions (or at least say they do), they can tolerate people who don’t practice as their doctrines state. Ask a believer about atheists, and watch the claws extend. Where is the tolerance? Where is the love?

Why do we have to demonize people who make decisions that differ from our own? The short answer is that we don’t really have to. It’s simply habitual, accepted, unquestioned behavior.

Well I’m questioning it.

Many homosexuals believe they don’t “choose” homosexuality, but accept it as their orientation in this life. It’s fine by me. They are no threat to who I am, or to God. Why would a loving God concoct a way to destroy an entire group of people because they were “bad?” Only people would do such things and then blame God, or attribute their actions to directions given from God.

So how does what I’m saying jive with the concept that ALL is God, and all are of God?

It is in the simple fact that God is Love, and Love is behind, and within all, without exception. Even those dreaded atheists love love, and respond positively to it. Where the Bible warns to beware of “false prophets,” it was not about mythologies of faith, for no matter what the cosmology of your religion may be, the love that is expressed crosses all cultures and beliefs. The only parts of religions that don’t translate universally, are the fear-laden ones.

False are the “prophets” of fear, who prop it up as Lord over Love. Even if visions of Armageddon, pestilence, rogue asteroids, and trials and tribulations were all true, the real message of faith is not to fear it, and that loving God — meaning self and neighbor — can change things. There is nothing that “trumps” love or that can conquer it. Those who use fear to manipulate perception are themselves prophets of falsehood. Love is the enduring, ultimate Truth, and it permeates the atomic structure of the Universe, and ALL that exists therein.

I don’t believe in “mistakes”. I do believe that life, including human life, is, by design, far more diverse in its expression and purpose than we have been willing to acknowledge thus far. That diversity has no de facto hierarchical structure or pecking order with respect to closeness or value to God. If there is a difference, it lies in our awareness of said closeness, indeed, of our beingness.Our grand opportunity lies in realization, seeing the reasons to LOVE ALL, even when we’ve been told that we should FEAR SO MANY. Human diversity is Nature’s way and God’s way. Fear, separation, and isolation are options we will eventually ween ourselves from as a consequence and reward of growth, not only as human beings, but in our ever expanding KNOWING of our inalienable Oneness with God.

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