Big Faith

The disciples had enough faith to leave their occupations and their homes and families in order to follow Jesus. They lived with him and learned from him through all the years of his ministry. Some had even been on the mountaintop when he was glorified and transfigured. A bright light enveloped them and a voice from heaven proclaimed Jesus as the “beloved son” of the Father. Yet their belief in him could not heal the demon-possessed boy when they came down from the mountain. When they asked him why, Jesus said it was because of their unbelief. Unbelief? What was he talking about? They believed in him. What more is required? The Church says belief in Jesus is all we need. Apparently, according to Matt 17:20, Jesus says it isn’t enough. In the New Century Version he says their faith was “too small”. The question is, If faith in Jesus is too small, then what is Big Faith?

How do we learn to believe what Jesus believed in order to do what he did? 

The first thing we need to understand, and admit to ourselves, is that our historical tendency to worship Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God is not sufficient in itself to produce Christ-likeness. 2,000 years is long enough to wait for this “small” belief to miraculously transform us. The bible says it comes by the renewal of our mind. Among other things, that means a new understanding of the nature of man and our relationship to God. Jesus’ great discovery was the divinity (Christ) in himself. Paul says that same Christ is in us and is the hope of our glory. We must not balk at the extraordinary concept of the divinity inherent in man. It is ours to take hold of. Jesus tried to teach it by modeling it for us. God is spirit and that spirit lives in us the same way it did in him. It’s time for us to start believing that.

2013

It’s a new year and I feel a renewed vigor to find out why I don’t have the mind of Christ yet. PauI said it’s the goal of the Christian life, but how and when do we get it? I’m going to be 70 this year and there isn't a whole lot of time left. I don’t see it happening to many of my friends either. Most of them seem to be just getting by. But just when I decide that it’s only wishful thinking I read where Jesus says, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”. He wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t possible. I still think we’re missing something. Anyone who reads my blogs knows I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t get the Mind of Christ by believing the right things about Jesus. In Discover the Power Within You Eric Butterworth says, “You must come to believe about yourself what Jesus believed about himself”. I believe that. Now what was it that Jesus believed?

I would think that his final prayer before leaving the earth would be some of the most revealing words he ever spoke, and also the most likely to be remembered verbatim by the gospel writers. And what does he use this momentous occasion to say? He asks God to show us our unity with one another and our connection to him, and to the Father. He prays, "that I myself may be in them" and "that they will all be one (read remember that they are one) just as you and I are one, just as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. I am in them and you are in me“. This One-ness he speaks about only began to make sense to me when I learned a little bit about Quantum Physics. It was a kind of missing link for me for the understanding of things the bible says about God and our relationship to him - things like his spirit living in us - like him being everywhere and knowing even when a sparrow falls - like numbering both the stars in the sky and the hairs on my head.

Jesus knew what the rest of us are just now beginning to learn about quantum physics - the reality of life that creates, governs and sustains the universe lies far beyond the material world which has captured us all. How often did Jesus tell us not to fall for the things of this world? In the Gospel of Thomas he had much more to say about this illusion. Alas, The Church condemned the Gospel of Thomas as heresy so no one was allowed to read it. As a result we’ve gotten so involved with our earthly existence we have not seen the true reality of life (“the truth that can set us free”). Remember the great words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience”. This involves a proper understanding of the word “eternal”. It means more than without end. It also means without beginning. That means we have existed since the time when there was nothing but God from whence we all came. All of life is a constant flow of His energy (“made in his image and likeness”) connected in a dazzling array of different manifestations. God is Christ teaching us the truth about who we are (“saving us”). He is also Jim Pons trying to figure it all out. 

Jesus also said that Jim Pons is not of this world, even as He is not of it.” What then, am I of? It’s beginning to look like some magnificent manifestation of divinity that we're all part of and connected to. Somewhere in our understanding of that magnificence is our connection with God… and the missing Mind of Christ.

Post Election Thoughts

I just watched a YouTube message from a preacher reminding me what Romans 13:1 says about honoring the authorities that God has installed. It's a well known and oft-repeated verse. Less well known is Romans 13:2 which says, “Whoever resists that authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.” People seem to believe as long as they're not marching in the street they're adhering to this scripture. But is marching in the street the only way to resist authority? If I stay in my house with my computer can I speak resistance in a kind of anonymous way that God won't notice? 

I have never in my life seen more unashamedly slanderous opposition to the President of the United States than I have during this election period. I can't believe I'm saying it but it's almost enough to wonder whether or not race is really a non-issue. I'm not talking about those who disagree with his policies, just those who hold animosity for the man who is our duly elected leader. I can even understand (though it sounds terribly misdirected) someone like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowing, "My number one priority is making sure president Obama is a one-term president.” But when a good Christian like Sean Hannity can go on the air and refer to the President as a liar, an agent of the devil, even the anti-Christ... can it still be in adherence to Romans 13:1? The fact that he covers himself with the biblical admonition, “Let not your heart be troubled" doesn't excuse him. In fact it’s so disingenuous it makes me physically sick to my stomach. People who feed on this kind of thing are spreading the same kind of damage on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The continual demeaning of the President does more than just ignore scriptural teaching, it is contributing to the polarization of our society, damaging it in a way we don't seem to recognize. 

Maybe we really are bringing judgment on ourselves.

Is God's Love Enough For Us?

There’s something troubling about the way we live our lives these days. Last night at a local restaurant we sat next to a family of four that didn't speak a word to each other. Each one was pressing buttons on a hand-held electronic device, in communication with someone else, but totally absent from each other. We just don't take time to be present anymore. Everything we do has such a frantic quality - the way we shop, the way we travel, the way we treat each other, even the way we entertain ourselves. A family of four will fight traffic and the elements and spend close to $1,000 to see an NFL game in an economic downturn. We seem to have a deep need that isn’t being met which is causing us to fill our lives with busy-ness and clutter, as if we could, as Kierkegaard put it, “hold chaos at bay for one more day”. The Church tells us we have a God who's love is sufficient, but is it? If so, why do we have such a compulsive need for fulfillment and validation from the world? There must be something the Church isn't telling us. For some reason we're not understanding the fullness of God’s love. Either that or something is keeping us from receiving it. It’s been several months since I’ve written because I’ve been told to take a break from finding fault with the Church. But the bible tells us to examine ourselves to see if we’re in the faith. The question is, What is it we have put our faith in?

I’ve said it before and I need to say it again. If the Mind of Christ was being modeled by more of us in the Body of Christ there would be no problem, and I wouldn’t be looking to create one. If church attendance was a more deeply satisfying experience, if believers were leading joyful and victorious lives, if the blind were seeing and the lame walking… if there weren't so many men in church addicted to internet porn.

The truth is, our faith tradition has resulted in a powerless church, an apathetic community of believers, and a prevailing disappointment for many who are seeking transformation by the power of God. Joy may be glimpsed from time to time, only to be stolen by the routine of daily living. Most of us have decided to accept this deeply flawed routine because we don’t have a vision for anything else. We've been told we're sinners and all we can do is wait for Jesus and hope for the grace of God which we don’t deserve. We don’t question this belief because it's all we have, and when our world is threatening to turn upside down we need something to hold on to. 

And so we accept our Mega-church pastors who drive luxury cars and live in luxury estates,  then preach on Sunday what Jesus said about not needing a second pair of sandals. We’re no longer appalled by politicians who smile while they lie to us, saying whatever it takes to advance their objectives and ignoring what Jesus said about letting your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' be 'No'”. It doesn’t bother us that the church condemns abortion by proclaiming the Word of God and the sanctity of human life, then looks the other way while our sons and daughters go off to kill other peoples' sons and daughters who understand God differently than we do. It’s easy enough to overlook what Jesus said about who our brother is, and how we should love our enemies. We’ve learned to rationalize all this stuff so completely we don’t even have to notice it anymore. Meanwhile the hypocritical and self-serving life we live is becoming harder and harder to satisfy us.

I recently decided to go back and read the stories about Jesus in the New Testament again in hopes that some new revelation would come, but I just found the same thing I saw last time. It's amazing how the truth of it can continue to escape us. We don’t have the life Jesus said we could have, because we don’t do the things Jesus said we should do. Could something as clear as that be the stumbling block that keeps us from finding fulfillment in God's love? Is that the reason real contentment seems to be escaping us? I need to look at this more fully someday, but there's one thing I know already. The Church has put so much emphasis on the atoning Death of Christ we forget about the victorious Life of Jesus. Like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, we carry his Cross down the wide road to the Good Life he told us not to take. It's a lot easier to worship God from there than it is to walk in the footsteps of one who said, “Follow me”. 

THE FALL OF MAN

I just read a book called The Starseed Transmissions by Ken Carey. His description of the Fall of Man and it's consequences is extraordinary and I have abridged it here for anyone who might never have read him.

How did you lose your God-consciousness and “fall” into the idea of separation from Me? Initially it was through a loss of confidence in the absolute perfection of My universal design. Doubt appeared through the subtle process of reasoning, and pride was conceived that encouraged you - not exactly to stop trusting in Me, but to stop trusting exclusively in Me. The moment you did this, your consciousness began to shift from God-centeredness to self-centeredness. For the first time you became aware of an identity that was distinct from the One-ness of My Spirit. This shift was minimal at first, but as you began to focus more and more upon your “personal” experience you also began to think in terms of defending it with meaningless and complicated ego structures. Such activity took you out of the present moment and diminished the pure energy of your true nature, which in turn, created greater anxiety and a greater need to protect yourself. Gradually, as you identified more and more with your own personal expression of My life, you were drawn into a long downward spiral where denser and denser levels of energy began bonding itself into matter.

This process went on for many ages before you actually found yourself in the Garden of Eden described in your Scriptures. By then you had already fallen a long way from your original state of grace. You had clothed yourself with increasing layers of material identification and had come to believe you were, in fact, separate from Me. Even so, your time in the Garden lasted for many centuries of earth time before you came to rely so much upon your physical senses that you were cut off from the direct nourishment of My divine light. In reality, you were never cut off from that nourishment. But the sense of your own identity had become so great by then that your material bodies needed even more substance for their support. You finally reached a point where you could no longer meet the demands of your bodies without “work”. It is at this point your chronicles state that you were “driven from the Garden”. But you were not driven from the Garden. The time has come for you to you understand this. You were not born into sin. It is only in the illusion of your current state that you perceive yourself to have been separated from me. Despite your belief in a Fall and an Original Sin, I do not accuse you of your free-will expression of individuality. That was my purpose in creating you. You have made it difficult for yourself - and created all the problems you are now experiencing - by misunderstanding your true nature in me. But you may take heart. It is only a misunderstanding which will one day be corrected. The truth is, you are born daily into My presence. If daily you persist in the foolish idea of sin and separation, it’s only because you are still under the influence of an illusion which has caused you to become vulnerable to confusion, disease, aging and death. Now, created by your own past-oriented guilt and future-oriented fear, Satan follows you around like some dark shadow hiding the truth about your true nature. In this fallen state of consciousness each human being functions in disregard of the song of life going on in everyone else. There is no harmony, no arrangement, and no direction. You are like random notes of an orchestra tuning before the conductor raps the baton on his music stand. But watch and listen. The Grand Conductor has approached the stand and is getting ready to call everyone to attention. It is time to stop tuning separate instruments and begin to accept the direction of One who understands the wholeness of the symphony. 

That wholeness was understood, and modeled for you by the person called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus took on an earthly body in order to prepare the human population for a great awakening. He taught people on earth to do the opposite of what their matter-bound inclinations told them; love your enemy, give away your material possessions, disregard world acclaim. When he finished with his body and returned to One-ness with Me, his followers organized the story of his life and teachings into a book. That book was written during a time of human history when there was no science, no understanding of the evolution of life or consciousness, no concept of anything but the most basic facts of mortal existence. Nevertheless, it proved to be a living bombshell. Satan knew his influence would be ended forever if people began doing what Jesus told them to do. So he devised a clever scheme for using his teachings in a way that would prevent their actual application. He organized a vast bureaucratic structure to interpret his words, and an elitist priesthood to go and preach them in his name. Initially you were inspired by your emotional response to their beauty - but gradually you have become confused, contentious, and finally disabled. You search in vain for the victory and abundance that Jesus promised and wonder why you still can't do things he said you could do. The Deceiver knows well the transformation of the heart that is required. He doesn’t mind if you worship Christ superficially, as long as you also continue to worship your material possessions. He doesn’t care if you give lip service to his teaching about turning the other cheek, as long as you stop short of doing it. 

His primary maneuver for distracting you from the message was convincing you to glorify the unique nature of the messenger himself. Raising Jesus up as an object of worship has only increased your sense of separation and caused you to overlook the kingdom within you. Thus, rather than taking responsibility for your eternal soul you became lost in crucifix adoration and scripture worship. The message of Jesus, to disengage yourself from the influence of man and find your life once again in the Holy Spirit, has become buried under a catalog of religious verbiage and dogmatic interpretation. Many of you kill each other in defense of your own interpretation, flaunting your superiority in the face of those who exercise their belief in Me with different words. There is nothing more sorrowful than to observe this behavior among those who claim to live by My truth. One tree nurtures many leaves, yet no two are the same. Do not separate yourselves any longer according to the different ways you think about Me. Reality is far beyond such childish ideas. I am about to come into the world again, this time through your own consciousness. Look there for my living presence. If words written in days of old continue to divide you, recognize that the time has come to begin listening to me in your heart. There I will inform you directly.