| THE POWER OF LOVE By W.E.B. The eyes of aw-dawm (adam) opened to the knowledge of two conflicting worlds in Gen. 3:7, and this knowledge created two perceptions of every condition ever to be experienced by the human race. The ability to discern both "good and evil" made him aware of the shame (deceit) of his nakedness (Rev. 3:18). The newly formed fear, that the (good) Lord God he had trusted also had a not so trustworthy side as well, made him hide from his (evil) God in fear. This fear produced the only two words in the universal language of the soul. Every human thought and every human action, was now based on either the good emotion of "love," or its' evil counterpart "fear." Any other feelings were simply different versions; different twists on the same theme. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. The first thought in any decision is either a thought of love or of fear. This is the first thought, which I will refer to as the "prime force." This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience. The belief in two prime forces, each diametrically opposed to the other and engaged in a constant conflict, causes humans to love, then destroy, then love again; always there is the swing from one emotion to the other. Love sponsors fear sponsors love sponsors fear. And so it is that when you pledge your highest love, you greet your greatest fear. For the first thing you worry about after saying, "I love you," is the fear that you'll never hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediatley to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose . And so all action becomes a reaction; defense against loss; even as you know God's love and you defend yourself against its' loss. The reason for this is found in the first lie: the lie which you hold as truth about God; that God's acceptance of you is somehow conditional; that God withholds some parts of Himself and cannot be trusted; that God's love may not be perfect and thus the ultimate outcome of your life is in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also? Yet if you knew who you are; that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created, you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being. But you do not know who you are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? It was from your peers, of course. It was from your mother, father, teachers, clergy and your social environment. They were the only ones whose word you were to take on everything. These are the people who "love" you the most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this and not enough of that? Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imagining? I realize that most of the time it was not an intentional plot to deciece you. These are the messages you have recieved and although they do not meet the criteria, and are not messages from God, they might as well have been; for they have come from gods of your universe, surely enough. It was your peers who taught you that love is conditional. You have felt their conditions many times and that is the experience you take into your own love relationships. It is also the experience you bring to God. From this experience, you draw your conclusions. Within this framework, you speak your truth. "God is a loving God," you say, "but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation." For have you not experienced the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with God? You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. And so you try to imagine what God's love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world. You have projected the role of "parent" onto God, and have thus come up with a God who judges and rewards or punishes, based on how good He feels about what you've been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with who He is. Having thus created an entire thought system about God, based on human experience rather than the spiritual truth about God, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. Its' prime force produces the wrong thought, but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God who is not to be feared, who will not judge, and who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of who and what God is. (1) |
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| Copyright 2002 |
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