Is that your Love crammed into that box?

“Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something—and it is only such love that can know freedom.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

I was watching “A River Runs through It” on Netflix the other day, and smiled when I saw a wooden carving above the pulpit that said, “God Is Love.” Scriptures say that God is Love [1 John 4:8]; but most of us don’t know what that means. We can’t comprehend the vastness, the power and the unconditional nature of real Love. The same can be said for our comprehension of God.

God in a Box We see God through the only lens we have: Human. Our vision is myopic at best, egoic at worst, and assures distortion of the image. Our visual field is somewhat of a box—containing and confining. We’ve placed God there, where we can observe but not experience.

We’ve created and publicized God as looking human, living in the beyond. Before we could fly above the clouds, we believed that God and heaven were there. They weren’t; but at least there was sunlight, which is more than we can say for the darkness that astronomy and astronauts have found in the Deep Beyond. And oh by the way, they haven’t run into God up there, either.

Frankenstein is a rank amateur

We have bestowed upon God a crazed, conflicted, sociopathic human personality that would be natural for anyone confined to a box. In the bat of an eyelash and with the severity of whiplash, our God performs acts that are as angelic as forgiveness and as demonic as genocide.

Our God issues violent threats of eternal damnation, causes excruciating pain and suffering upon innocent devotees such as Job and Jesus, causes the sun to shine upon the wicked and the good, and welcomes prodigal children home—no matter how errant they’ve been. Did I mention that He’ll bring a pox upon your house? Not really. But He’s ordered you to kill your kids if they’re disrespectful.

According to scripture, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways [James 1:8]. What does that say about the God that we’ve created? More important, what does it say about us as creators?

Love me, or you’ll regret it!

Our God is so small and humanly insecure that He demands worship. The scriptures we’ve written say that all things work together for good for those that love God [Romans 8:28]. What does that imply about those who don’t? Have we created a quid pro quo God for whom love is a mere trade?

Our limited perception of what God is and what God does makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to wrap our arms around the notion that Love grants free will to Its beloved. Always and forever, as the song says. Wish it could be on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

If asked, we will tell you that we believe that God has granted us free will. Despite that, we’ll also tell you that we believe that God has gifted us with commandments. Our gaze is so transfixed on the God Box, we seem to have forgotten that commandments are the antithesis of freedom. Commandments control; they don’t liberate.

It’s amazing that it doesn’t occur to thinking people that it would be extremely sadistic for God to grant us total freedom, then brutally punish us throughout eternity for exercising that freedom. Wait a minute! We’re here for less than a century! Even if we sinned every day we’re on the planet, eternal punishment far exceeds any crime. That’s simply another dramatic illustration of how tragically we’ve demonized God—and how thoroughly we misunderstand Love.

The worst job in the Universe

Our God is so small and tyrannical that even though He is sovereign and can do anything He wants, He chooses the mind-numbingly tedious and distasteful task of keeping records of how we use our freedom, every minute of every hour in every time zone for every body. Why would God spend His precious time that way? Oh yeah: So that He can have documented justification for brutally torturing us at a later date. Please, are we talking about Satan or Love?

Beyond not being divine; that story line is disturbingly diabolical. It would be more merciful for God to simply force us to do what He wants. It would spare us the misery and spare Him the drudgery of watching bad acting on every stage on Earth for centuries—without intermission.

But oh! Forcing us to do the right thing wouldn’t grant us freedom, would it? And, boys and girls, if it ain’t freedom, it ain’t Love.

WWLD?

Let’s put our thinking caps on and consider: What would Love do? Well, real Love probably would create a what-goes-around-comes-around world. Haven’t we been admonished to judge not and condemn not? Not one but three gospel writers tell us that “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” [Matthew 7.2] In the Old Testament, it’s “an eye for an eye.” [Exodus 21:23]

Of course, the scribes were not referring to us as we know ourselves: as mortal bodies. We’ve seen many a body’s lifetime end without reaping what it sowed. But we’re not physical bodies. We acknowledge that with the belief that God will punish us forever. I’m sorry, physical bodies don’t last forever.

We are eternal souls, not the physical characters we’re portraying here on Earth’s stage. As souls, we will not escape the karmic ricochet.

Life is always fair

If God is Love, Life will always be fair. It’s the first Drama Queen Workshop Principle. In a whatever-you-do-will-return-to-you world, we have total freedom to choose our outcomes; we are punished by our sins, not for them. That frees us to choose our own karmic butt-whipping. It also frees God to have more joy-filled days. And hey, who deserves it more?

If we don’t know what Love is and what Love does, is it any wonder that so few of us truly experience it? Is it any mystery that we feel emptiness and longing? We yearn for that kind of love from others because inside us, where God really lives, Love seeks its own.

Remarkably, God’s love is so intense and the freedom it grants us is so overwhelming and unfathomable that we separate from it and from each other. Now God sits over there—in a heaven we’ve created in the Great Black Vacuous Hole beyond Earth’s atmosphere with no gravitational pull, performing menial and maniacal tasks, and woefully confined to a box.

And we lie over here, lonely and dying for unconditional Love.

Nobody leaves this planet alive, but everyone does.

“In death, only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, spiritual teacher and philosopher

I received an email from my cousin Burnadette, who was outraged by a TV news story from a network in Great Britain. Watch the video and tell me: Is this an infuriating news story about a two-year-old boy who is addicted to cigarettes—or do you see something more? Let’s look at the facts that were reported here:

Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of Jakarta, Indonesia is addicted to cigarettes.
His father introduced him to smoking when he was 18 months old.
The toddler is a chain smoker who consumes two packs a day.
Efforts to stop him have failed.
He throws a tantrum and even becomes ill if he doesn’t get his cigarettes.
He’s now in government-mandated rehab.

Undeniably, these are the facts, but are they the truth? I know you’re wondering: Aren’t facts the truth? Not always. When we’re standing on Earth’s stage, our vantage point is limited. Often we can’t see beyond the footlights. And rarely can we see what’s going on behind the curtain. But when we climb into the balcony of Earth’s theater, we can see beyond the actors’ peripheral vision. Our vantage point is 360°, broader and often deeper. We can see on all sides of each character and quite frequently, backstage of the entire scene.

Ardi Rizal-infant chain-smoker This smoking baby drama is fascinating, even on the surface. Anyone who’s watched an infant transition into a toddler expects certain developmental milestones—but smoking? I’ve seen college students, dying (literally) to look more mature, who aren’t as proficient with a cigarette as this baby.

How in the world does an adult teach an 18-month-old to smoke? How do you teach a baby to hold a lit cigarette—let alone twirl it like a baton—without burning himself? How does a two-year-old develop the fine motor skills to light one cigarette with another? How does a toddler learn to deeply inhale and blow out rings of smoke without choking?

Did you see Ardi’s mannerisms? Was I the only one who saw an “old soul” in that young body?

Little Ardi reminded me of a case study I read several years ago. In this case, a toddler in another country stunned his parents by asking where was his wife. They hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. He insisted that he was married, told his parents his name—which wasn’t the name they had given him—his wife’s name and her address, which was in a city that they had never discussed with him. He also gave them details about the home he had shared with his wife, his secret hiding place in that home, and the items he had stashed there.

After the boy had pestered them relentlessly for weeks, the parents decided to prove to him that he had no wife or home elsewhere. After traveling to the nearby town, they were surprised to find a house at the address he’d given them. At that house was a woman the boy instantly recognized and who answered to the name he called her.

He insisted to the frightened woman that he was her husband. She insisted that her husband had died years earlier. Frustrated, the toddler went directly to his hiding place and retrieved the treasures he’d claimed to have stashed there.

What if we really leave Earth alive?

Over the years, I’ve read a number of dramatic (and often traumatic) soul testimonials such as this—including powerful eye-opening stories from those who survived near death experiences. Afterward, they no longer feared death. Most looked forward to it.

In some cultures, elders watch a new baby very carefully, looking deep into the eyes, searching for clues that might reveal which ancestor’s soul is inhabiting this new body. This information provides a different context for scenes such as the one in Jakarta. Plus there’s the accidental discovery of some of my own soul history, which I shared in my metaphysical memoir, EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens, that influences my world view.

Most of us believe that every human has a soul, and that our souls live forever. It’s at this juncture that we begin to confuse ourselves: We believe that there is something invisible and immortal inside of us. We believe that it leaves when the body is dead. Or did the body die because it left? Was it, in fact, the Life in the body?

We also believe that we’re not that immortal soul. We are the part that remains here on the planet; we are the carcass.

Since we believe that we are made in God’s image, we’ve concluded that God looks like the mortal part of us rather than the immortal soul. In our confusion, we’ve given God a body, gender and the temperament of a sadistic sociopath whose “behavior” is unpredictable: He grants favor to some of His children, has savagely murdered many, and has promised to torture most throughout all eternity.

No wonder we’re afraid of death.

Believing that we’re going to die—or that we have to do or say something to earn eternal life—doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t make death fearsome. But if it brings you peace, if it inspires a deeper trust in God, and if it makes sense to you, by all means, believe it.

Nobody has ever come onto Earth’s stage and stayed forever. Have you ever wondered why? Are we immortal souls who have infinite possibilities or mortal bodies with a finite lifespan?

If every soul is leaving his planet alive, but every body will be left behind, which are you?

Let’s exonerate Pope Benedict XVI

Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that hateful, hurtful, homophobic speech by a church that oddly enough calls itself “Christian” is protected as a First Amendment right seems to have eclipsed other really big church news: Pope Benedict XVI has exonerated Jews for Jesus’s death.

Pope Benedict's new book According to the Associated Press, the revelation was unveiled in excerpts from Benedict’s upcoming book, “Jesus of Nazareth-Part II.” If this declaration had been reported by The Onion, rather than the AP, I would be able to wrap my head around it. But this was not satire; it was just…well, sad.

Reportedly, the Pope’s new book explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis for “claims that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’ death.” Wait a minute!

As a whole? Hmmm, is that like: Saudis, “as a whole,” were not responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks? (Fifteen of the 19 suicide terrorists were Saudis.) Or is more akin to: Iraqis, “as a whole,” were not responsible for 9/11? (Not even one terrorist was Iraqi.) There’s a big difference.

Methinks the Pope hath forgiven too much; he has actually perpetuated the un-Christlike myth that the Jewish people killed Jesus. Anyone who’s read the New Testament or has seen a movie about the crucifixion knows that the Jews did not commit the crime, just as the Iraqis had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. By dismissing the facts, the Pope’s grandiose forgiveness of the Jews is as much an attack on an innocent people as America’s violent invasion of Iraq to “free” its people.

Centuries before Benedict put pen to paper, it was an indisputable fact that the rabbi we know as Jesus was tried in a Roman court and suffered an inhumane execution at the hands of Roman military torturers because the declaration that he was the King of the Jews was a threat to the Roman empire.

So why isn’t the Pope forgiving, oh I don’t know, the Romans who conveniently live in the city surrounding his walled compound? That loving gesture would be such a warm and fuzzy highlight to this year’s Lenten season. Forgiving the innocent, not so much.

But here’s the beauty of his declaration of forgiveness: What Benedict unwittingly has highlighted are the impossible-to-connect dots that form the foundation of our beliefs as Christians—and the gaps that simply cannot support us, except through blind unquestioning faith: Connect the Dots puzzle

Dot #1: Jesus’s life purpose. For centuries, the Church has taught that God sent Jesus to Earth to do a couple of really important things. One was to spread the good news that God is Love, and does not do things that Love would not do—i.e., is not intolerant, violent, punitive, unforgiving, condemning and judgmental. Jesus also taught that the kingdom of God is within. We don’t have to go anywhere to find God, and we are not an abomination, filthy rags or unacceptable to be in God’s presence. Wherever we are, God is—truly good news.

Dot #2: Jesus’s fulfillment of his mission. What theologians tell us is that Jesus’s Good News ministry lasted all of three years. With today’s technology and air travel, the good rabbi could have spread the word to everyone in the entire world in that time. But he didn’t get very far on foot and donkey before it was time to complete his other important task: Be brutally slaughtered for crimes that he didn’t commit.

Dot #3: Barbaric live sacrifice demonstrates God’s love. This is a critical dot. The premise here is that God loved us, His guilty children, so much that He sadistically forced our innocent brother to die a protracted and excruciatingly painful death so that we wouldn’t have to. Christians generally protest unfairness, particularly an innocent person being executed; but we’re glad as hell that it happened to Jesus because…

Dot #4: Jesus died to save us from eternal damnation. We Christians rejoice that we are “washed in the blood of Jesus,” a satanic concept, to be sure. But more damning, we believe that contrary to Jesus’s famous parable in which a faithful father excitedly rolled out the red carpet upon his sinning child’s return, God’s forgiveness has strings attached: Only sinners who believe that God inhumanely subjected Jesus to a slow and tortuous death will be spared worse treatment throughout all eternity.

Those who believe that God is Love—and believe that Love would not do something so barbaric and satanic—will regret that mistake throughout a God-awfully painful eternity. Which brings us to…

Dot #5: God’s orders should be obeyed. So many dots, so little time. Let me simply cut to the chase: If the Pope believes what Scripture tells us to believe, exonerating the Jews is utterly oxymoronic. What is he forgiving them for exactly: Following God’s orders?

And that, dear Thinkers, is the question of the day: If the Pope believes that God ordered Jesus to be brutally tortured to death, and he believes that the Jews obeyed, I’m wondering if Benedict couldn’t have exerted his authority as a spiritual leader more effectively by forgiving Christians for reviling the Jews for centuries.

In the interim, why don’t we simply exonerate the Pope?

Yoism is for Thinkers

I’d never heard the term “yoism”–and wasn’t sure what it was until I watched this hilarious performance from the Balcony of Life. See if Lewis Black’s common sense doesn’t make you ROTFL (roll on the floor laughing), too.

Caution: This is NOT for those who can’t laugh at themselves.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0gAcbAGPH4&feature=player_embedded]

God and Man in Tucson

British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton once wrote: “The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” Or, as my best friend in high school, now the Rev. Vici Derrick, chuckles, “God made man in His image—then man returned the favor.”

We live in a world in which humans have faithfully embraced ancient authors’ portrayals of God as an angry being who vindictively and violently killed humans to solve problems and silence dissent. Thousands of years later, we vigorously defend ancient scribes’ mandates to “put to death” humans who commit sins ranging from being impudent children to murdering a member of the human family.

A human—or a committee of them—declared everything the scribes wrote was the inspired “Word of God.” If we believe that, why are we shocked and repulsed by incidents such as the executions in Tucson and Pakistan? Why do we call these murders “brutal,” “demonic” and “senseless?” Why do we label the killers zealots, sociopaths and terrorists, if we really believe what we say we believe?

Holding us in Light

Tolerance and forgiveness are divine, not vindictiveness and violence. It is humans who are prone to respond with vitriol and violence. It is humans who must be taught to be civil and accepting of others. It is humans who must be encouraged to love. These virtues are not innate human characteristics.

Have we forgotten the barbaric times in which humans lived? Can we imagine how difficult it must have been for the ancients when they tried to describe God, tried to make sense of their dangerous world and bring some order to it, and when they tried to explain why natural disasters occur and how the world began?

The only context they had was human context. Man at that time solved problems through violence. They may have reasoned that if their world was dangerous and violent, that must be how God is—and how God planned it to be. Or perhaps to justify their behavior, they declared it godly: They were merely mimicking the Huge Human in the sky.

And so they passed down to us a who God is angry, volatile, vindictive, judgmental, violent and mostly unforgiving. They told us—and told us to tell others—that God ordered us to be angry, volatile, vindictive, violent and mostly unforgiving.

Have you ever taken time to count the multitude of reasons that the Word of God says that members of our human family “shall be put to death”? If our ancestors obeyed the word of God, the human race would have been extinct ages ago.

So why do millions of us still believe today that God’s response to human error is brutality: torturing innocent individuals to death so that the guilty could go free or bragging that He drowned “every living thing”? Why do we believe that God would accept an impotent demon’s challenge to inhumanely test a good man’s faith by killing all of his children, drying up his crops and making him suffer untold physical and emotional pain? Why do we believe that God will satanically torture us throughout all eternity for our indisputably finite period of human error? And why do we believe that if humans did any of these horrific things, it would be appalling, unacceptable, deranged—and criminal?

We don’t believe that it’s OK to kill politicians who disagree with us, whether it’s Tucson or Pakistan! Why is it OK, defensible—it’s even worthy to be praised when God commits these inhumane acts? Are we subconsciously holding God to a lower standard than ego-driven humans?

We are accountable for own our double standard. We can’t say that it’s unacceptable for humans to solve problems by killing people, while simultaneously proselytizing that God sinks to such a low, human, and sometimes demonic standard of behavior.

The irony is not lost on us that the youngest victim of the mass murder in Tucson reportedly was born on September 11, 2001—the day when other individuals chose to solve a problem with violence. What was the human response? Claim that God told us to solve that problem with violence. Throughout that child’s lifetime, we tried to solve the problem violently. We inspired support for the violence by fanning the flames of fear.

And how’d that work for us? How many lives did we save? How many families did we destroy? How many young men and women have suffered sustained mental and physical injury?

Historically, the toll for for miscasting God in our vindictive, violent image has been high. Blindly believing in the drama written by ancient scribes has actually breathed life into the demon they created. Every time we treat someone in ways that we would not want to be treated, we feed the demon and share responsibility for its continued destruction around the globe, in homes and parking lots, on city streets and rural countrysides.

Perhaps it’s time to stop worshipping our ego-driven human selves long enough to learn what the murderers and murdered are teaching us: Violence destroys; it is ungodly. True power and true victory come from living as if we were created in God’s true image—as the spirit of Unconditional Love and Forgiveness.

Only human? What if you’re not?

Imagine this: It’s 1/1/11—and you suddenly discover that you aren’t merely mortal, after all: You are an infinite spirit having a temporary physical experience.

After you recover from the epiphany and sit down to write your New Year’s resolutions, will you approach the task from the same perspective—or will you see different, deeper, more expansive opportunities?

What would your resolutions look like if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are going to outlive your physical body?

What happened to Jesus’s dash?

It’s been said that it’s not the dates of a person’s birth or death that are important; it’s the dash between the two: What did they do while they were on the planet?

As I witness the annual frenzy surrounding Jesus’s birth—weeks of preparations, billions spent on decorations, office parties, gifts, wrapping paper and bows—I can’t help but wonder: What happened to his dash?

Christmas Tree

Let’s not kid ourselves. Jesus is not the reason for this season. Nowhere in the scriptures is it said that Jesus was born on December 25.

What we do know is that it’s the same birthday as mythological gods and saviors who were born of virgin mothers. They all healed the sick, raised the dead, were brutally murdered at a young age by those who took issue with their talents and teachings, and were resurrected in three days.

We also know that pagans celebrated the all-important winter solstice at this time of year, with decorated trees and other vestiges of modern celebrations. In fact, these grand festivities posed the greatest hurdle for those who were trying to convert pagans to Christianity. The Jews had Hanukkah in December. The pagans had Solstice. The Christians had, well, nothing.

Wait! We can still have a party! How about if we call it Christmas?

Even if we don’t care to bone up on our ancient history or mythology, those who actually read the Bible know that there are conflicting narratives of Jesus’s birth. The Book of Luke, written by a gentile physician who wanted to convert gentiles to Christianity, claims that Jesus was born in a Bethlehem barn.

As the story goes, Jesus’s very pregnant mother’s husband, Joseph, made her ride 80 miles from their home in Nazareth on a donkey so that he could pay his taxes in Bethlehem. Why Bethlehem? Because Joseph was of the lineage of David, and Hebrew scriptures had prophesied that the savior would emerge from that lineage and that village. But Jesus’s father was Invisible Spirit, God; so what was Luke’s point, exactly?

The Book of Matthew, written by a Jew who wanted to convert Jews to Christianity, totally disagrees with Luke’s barn birth narrative. Matthew says that Jesus was born in Joseph and Mary’s Bethlehem home. It is to this home that the brilliant star guided three wise men.

Archeologists recently discovered homes in that region, built during that era. They looked more like little caves, and were very close to each other. That starlight was either laser-focused or the wise men knocked on several doors before finding the savior in Matthew’s story.

Creches tend to combine the conflicting birth stories

Either confusion or compromise has resulted in a plethora of manger scenes and school plays that include the wise men and the star. Heaven forbid that future generations would think that Jesus was born twice, in different parts of town.

Aside from agreeing that Jesus was crucified, the Bible’s death narratives are just as argumentative, which to this Christian lends credence to the claim that it’s really not the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth or death that matter, it’s his dash. Most Christians disagree, some more vehemently than others.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told that I’m not really Christian unless I believe Jesus’s birth narrative. Which one, exactly?

And, they say, I’m really not Christian unless I believe that only three years into Jesus’s “good news” ministry, God had him murdered in a manner that can only be described as satanic. Let me get this straight: Our Father is going to brutalize me eternally unless I believe that He inhumanely subjected the innocent Jesus to sadistic torture instead of me. Yes, they say, and if I was really a Christian, I’d be grateful.

I generally don’t celebrate when an innocent person is executed so that the guilty can go free. Instead, I celebrate a God that is bigger, better and less barbaric than portrayed by ancient scribes for whom live sacrifice was normal. I also celebrate Jesus’s dash, which overshadows the curious narratives about his birth and death.

During his dash, the religious rebel and rabbi Jesus taught us how to heal ourselves and our relationships. He taught us not to judge or condemn each other; he urged us to love our enemies and love ourselves. He taught us to forgive 70 times seven. He also taught that God is the unconditionally loving father of prodigal children who celebrates our return, even after an errant lifetime away from home. He taught that he is One with the Father, and we are One with him.

In our focus on Jesus’s beginning and end, we’ve given short shrift to the dash. In the dash, Jesus cautioned against putting new wine in old skins: Combining the ancients’ view of God as vengeful, punitive, angry, judgmental, distant, male, genocidal and hard-to-please with the “good news” that Our Father is spirit, is love, is forgiveness, is within. As a result , we’ve created a bi-polar God who loves us—but will satanically brutalize us if we don’t toe the line.

Many Christians I know believe that it’s not enough to live a life that emulates the lessons Jesus taught. Good people will be sent to hell and robbers, thieves and murders who confess with their mouths that they believe the birth and death narratives will be spared God’s horrific punishment.

Perpetrating beliefs such as that not only demonizes God; it dishonors the good news of Jesus’s wholly empowering dash.

If God cares…

Is it about the mistakes you make—or the lessons you learned?

Is it about how well you study a man-made book—or how committed you are to the Truth embedded in your spirit?

Is it about fulfilling the prayers from your mouth—or the wish list of your eternal soul?

Is it about whether your body is cloaked—or the love with which you cloak others?

Is it about the place you live—or the soul in which The Divine Spirit lives?

Is it whether you pass an exam, win a game or get a job—or that you fulfill the purpose for which your soul came to Earth?

Is it about your physical attraction to someone of the same or opposite sex—or your intimacy with the divine part of you?

Is it about your religion—the rules, regulations, readings, rituals, restrictions and ramifications that reflect what humans believe about God—or your direct, unfiltered, interactive relationship with The Divine?

Is it about punishing your enemies—or forgiving your desire to punish them?

Is it about whether you have physical companionship—or that you are fully aware that you are, were and never will be alone?

If God cares, is it about the same things you care about?

The Beginning of the End of Levitical Ignorance?

Here in the Balcony of Life, where we can see over the heads, behind the backs and beyond the wings of the daily drama that seems so real to the players, we often talk about Soul and Ego: Soul being that eternal part of us within which God resides, Ego being the mortal part, the personality and physical costume that are visible on planet Earth.

We also frequently discuss purpose: Why are our souls here, in this place, at this time? What unique thing did we come to do to facilitate the evolution of the planet and its consciousness—and how do our egos try to interfere with the fulfillment of the Soul’s desires?

Bishop Eddie Long

It’s with those questions in mind that we direct our attention to the stage on which the sexual abuse drama at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta is unfolding. If you entered the theater late, no problem, it’s very early in the first act.

You’ve only missed the part in which an anti-gay activist minister who counseled gay men and women in his 25,000-member congregation to “go straight,” became the defendant in two lawsuits claiming that he sexually abused teen boys. Within a couple of days, the number of lawsuits had doubled, and none of the plaintiffs withheld his name, choosing to be publicly scorned and permanently damaged personally and professionally, if they have filed false charges.

This is delectable fodder for the gawkers and gossips on the main floor of Earth’s theater. Up here in the balcony, where we can see the larger picture, the plot appears much deeper than that: Consider the possibility that the soul we physically recognize as Bishop Eddie Long has come here to jettison human consciousness above the level of Levitical ignorance.

The scribe of Leviticus had a particular hatred for those with same sex orientation. When the clergy at the Council of Nicea included the book of Leviticus’s hate-filled words in the anthology that they declared to be the Word of God, thy implanted the belief that homosexuality was a choice, that God considered it “an abomination,” and that those who engaged in same-sex relations “should be put to death.” We’ll love them anyway. That was 2,000 years ago; they didn’t know then what we know now.

In the centuries that followed, scientists discovered same sex orientation in the animal kingdom as well as in plant life. Choice? In addition to biological and botanical findings, genetics, meteorology, physics, geography, history, archeology, cartography, astronomy, other fields of study, and plain old common sense have proved that what the ancient scribes believed to be true simply isn’t. Claims that their works were inspired or dictated by God, who permeates every living thing, portrays God as ignorant rather than omniscient, and evolving rather than absolute.

We all have relatives, neighbors, dear friends, co-workers, bosses, students, teachers and other loved ones who are gay. If we’ve known them since childhood, we were aware that they were gay long before they knew what sex was. They taught us that gender preference is not a choice made on the physical level.

It amazes many learned Bible scholars, theologians and Thinkers that in the 21^st century, millions still believe that everything in the Bible is true—and will vehemently defend the book, rather than defending its sometimes disparaging portrayals of God. As retired Episcopalian bishop, best-selling author and Bible scholar John Shelby Spong concluded: Anyone who thinks that everything in the Bible is true simply hasn’t read it.

One of Bishop Spong’s bestsellers, Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the Love of God, concluded something with even deeper relevance to our Atlanta-based drama: Paul of Tarsus, the man most responsible for the spread of Christianity, was gay. Bishop Spong was challenged on his theory by a very defensive fundamentalist host of a TV show. I thought the host was going to pop a blood vessel, he was so incensed by the thought that Paul could be gay.

Like Paul, there are those who presume that God “hates” certain aspects of “His” creation, and that if something or someone is different from the majority, they are unacceptable in “God’s sight” and should be chastised, ridiculed or even eliminated. For all we know, the writer of Leviticus might have been fighting his own demons, unwilling to accept himself and his natural attraction to those of the same sex. Or maybe it was run-of-the-mill bigotry, the unruly child of pure ignorance.

If Bishop Spong’s theory is correct, perhaps, like Paul, others have assuaged their own discomfort or hatred of themselves for being different. They controlled their natural attraction to the same sex by convincing themselves and others that God hated that behavior and would violently punish it. Perhaps they forgot that God is Love; Love does not hate, judge, punish or respond violently.

Perhaps 21 centuries is long enough. Maybe it’s time for this unloving behavior to end, time for us to evolve to a higher level, to align ourselves with divine consciousness, the Love Consciousness that is the real God. Maybe it’s time to put down the picket signs, stop condemning or trying to change those who are different, and accept each of us for who we are.

Maybe that’s the mighty job that Bishop Eddie Long’s soul bravely agreed to do on a very public stage. Time will tell, and we’ll all be blessed.

The deceiving power of perception

As I opened my email inbox several days ago, I realized that I was holding my breath. (You know you’re stressed when your breathing is shallow or you’re barely breathing at all.) When I saw that there were only 1,162 messages in there, I was actually relieved. That’s just sick.

Despite reading, deleting, and spam purging hundreds of messages from my inbox I couldn’t seem to whittle them down. I decided to spend all that day, if necessary, deleting everything superfluous, starting with the top six messages in my reading pane.

One click and they were gone—but wait! I had mistakenly clicked the “Select All” box!

That triggered a miracle: Within less than two hours, I had only 93 keepers in my inbox—and I had learned a huge lesson about the deceptive power of perception.

For months, I had held onto emails unless I had a good reason to delete them. But suddenly those same emails were looking at me from my trash can, forcing me to have a good reason to retrieve them. That shift in perception made a huge difference in my mailbox and my stress level.

This lesson can be applied in more evolutionary ways. For example, many of us are holding onto beliefs in our mental inboxes and haven’t taken time to closely examine or purge them. Someone “sent” us their beliefs, and without discerning them, we simply let them take up space. Our space.

Perhaps it’s easier to maintain a daunting pile of conflicting beliefs that we don’t understand and can’t explain than to pore through them, study or verify it. One thing for sure, we can’t truly believe something we don’t understand. At best, we can only believe that we believe it. That’s fulfilling.

I was lucky enough to have been encouraged from an early age to be a lifelong learner: to explore, to question and to grow. As a result, it’s become important and evolutionary for me to understand what I believe, and be conscious of the implications of what I believe.

Years ago, I discovered that many of the beliefs that had poured into my mental inbox were in serious conflict with each other. While I believed that God was Love, I also believed that He did things that were vengeful, judgmental, genocidal, violent, sadistic, inconsistent, mysterious and unforgiving. I came to understand that believing that God would do anything that Love would not do had serious implications: My beliefs actually denigrated God.

As a baptized Christian, I didn’t dare question what I’d been told to believe; in fact, I was discouraged from doing so—told that asking rational questions meant that I didn’t have faith. But as a human with God-given intellect, I couldn’t rationalize my failure to use my intelligence to inquire, explore, understand and thus build a closer relationship with my God. Building my relationship with God was more important than pleasing the humans who were judging me. I concluded:

When we think that it dishonors God when we question our beliefs—and that we will be punished for doing so—what we really believe is that God is controlling and dangerous.

Let’s be serious, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who is controlling and dangerous? Do we please God by ascribing to Him behaviors that are associated with sociopaths, dictators and mass murderers? Is torture or genocide wrong when a human does it, but divine when God does it? Does a father accused of dropping his kids off in an unknown part of town without telling them how to get home any different from accusations that God has created only path home but only told his Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist, etc. kids how to find it? Is that what we believe about God, or is it just another reflection of humans’ propensity for discriminating against or one-upping each other?

What will be our breaking point—that one thing that will make us resolve to clean out the confusion in our mental inboxes? Is our desire to build a close relationship with God resolute enough for us to click the “Select All” button and start from scratch? Are we ready to pore through the contents of our trash folder, carefully examine each belief message and retrieve only those that match—whether they portray God as totally heinous or totally loving. Are we willing to give ourselves permission to use our God-given intellect to examine, understand and embrace our beliefs so that we are not dismissing God as an inexplicable mystery? How can we have a loving relationship with an inexplicable mystery?

Our beliefs shouldn’t overwhelm or confuse us; they also shouldn’t be unmanageable. How can we experience the peace of mind, body and spirit that comes from being in the loving care of a Higher Power if we’re juggling wildly disparate beliefs, often contorting ourselves to keep all the balls in the air?

Every moment is pregnant with opportunities and possibilities. The opportunity that is available to us in this moment is either to choose peace—or hold our breaths and feel our hearts pound every time someone asks us to explain what we believe and why in heaven’s name do we believe it.

Spirituality