How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), “How Do I Love Thee?” (1850)

The central purpose of Jesus’s ministry was His effort to teach us how to elevate the vibrations of human consciousness enough to bring the kingdom of God on earth. Christians since the age of Constantine have altogether missed this point that is so obvious to anyone who reads the Lord’s words without reference to later Christian dogmas! But most of the people who have been taught to see Jesus as a human sacrifice really don’t care what He might have said. They just want that get-out-of-hell-free card. And this, despite the fact that Jesus Himself insists that we focus on His words! He says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (JN 8:31-32).

Jesus uses the phrases “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of Heaven” some fifty times through all four Gospels. And the more closely you read Him, the more you see that almost everything He says is tied to His effort to raise the personal consciousness vibrations of all of humankind! He wants to elevate us spiritually to the point where life on earth will begin to mirror the love and joy that pervade the afterlife levels. He cannot be any more explicit about it. And a full two thousand years ago He gave us the template and tools to succeed! So now, if we only will follow Him, that much better world for which we yearn can begin.

We have just begun to learn enough that we can imagine some details of that better world. A surprising number of people have mastered the trick of raising their own consciousness vibrations, so we can now better grasp the obvious signs of spiritual elevation. And what is more, Jesus Himself gave us the central markers of spiritual advancement! No matter where they live or what language they speak or whether they even have a religion, spiritually elevated people are:

• Calm and Happy. They are remarkably comfortable, no matter what might be going on, since they live in the glorious greater picture! As Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father has chosen to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor does a moth destroy” (LK 12:32-33). “Do not worry … but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (MT 6:25-33).
• Humble. People who are vibrating closer to the elevated love of the Godhead have no interest in personal attention, nor in claiming credit for anything. And Jesus approves! He says, Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (MT 23:12).
• Loving and Supportive. I have never known a spiritually advanced person whose first instinct was not to think well of people, even if those people were doing him harm. As Jesus said, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:35-36).
• Slow to anger. People who are vibrating at higher levels cannot bear to be near people who are angry. When attacked, they won’t fight back; but rather they forgive, love, bless, and withdraw as soon as they can do that peacefully. As Jesus says, “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two” (MT 5:39-41).
• Not interested in wealth. People who are spiritually advanced never care one whit about amassing wealth. Rather than chasing earthly goods, their whole focus is on doing good things for others. They seem to be taking to heart the Lord’s urging to “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (MT 6:19-21).

These five characteristics are not arrived at with deliberate effort. Spiritually elevated people don’t need to struggle to be calm or humble, and they don’t wrestle down and smother their anger or force themselves to be kind to evil people. No, instead the five characteristics listed above simply emanate from the core of who they are. Strictly following the teachings of Jesus can begin to very rapidly transform your mind, too.

What is more, as you raise your consciousness vibration you can feel these changes happening! For the past ten years I have been a guinea pig for the teachings of Jesus, which is how I know how well they work. I still recall what it was like to be outraged, resentful, sullen, prideful, bitter, and obsessed with money. Ten years ago I was already in my sixties! So with all those clear and recent memories of how it felt to have overwhelmingly negative emotions rising and be powerless to stop them, I am astonished to tell you that I haven’t felt any significant negative emotion for almost a decade. At most, perhaps, I have wished that events were different when some setback occurred that complicated my life; and I did feel a bit of sadness when my mother mercifully died in her nineties.

Keep these five attributes in mind! They are so consistent among the spiritually advanced that as a set of characteristics they pretty much define this group of special people. Watching for them will help us to better support the spiritual growth of others while we also foster further spiritual growth in ourselves.

The fact that all our minds are inextricably part of the Mind that continuously manifests this universe is crucial! That wonderful fact means that when even a single mind follows the Lord’s teachings and thereby elevates its vibratory rate, that positive change will minutely raise the spiritual vibrations of all of humankind. It has been estimated that when as few as five percent of the people on earth have elevated their spiritual vibrations to the point where they will no longer need to reincarnate, just that small boost will start the benevolent process of raising the vibrations of even the most deeply fear- and hatred-filled people on earth. You and I have the power to begin to raise the spiritual vibrations of everyone, everywhere, beginning today.

The spiritually advanced are peacemakers. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (MT 5:9). They are solution-seekers. They tend to gravitate toward others like themselves, but they are patient and respectful even of those who behave in much less loving ways. As Jesus says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned” (LK 6:37). The spiritually advanced deeply live the Gospel teachings, even if they never have heard of Jesus!

It is impossible to know for certain how different everything is going to be when most people are vibrating in love rather than in fear. But keeping in mind the five characteristics of spiritually advanced people given above, we now can happily begin to guess. Here are a few thorny issues that have long been the cause of stresses, rage, and counterproductive battling. How might a more spiritually elevated society address them? Let’s think about that:

* Abortion. Killing the pre-born affects at least two lives, so abortion is an issue tailor-made to be addressed from the perspective of minds steeped in love. I would think that a more spiritually advanced society would come down on the side of allowing abortions in the first few months but banning them thereafter, and also lovingly counseling the mothers and focusing on ensuring that each child whose mother doesn’t want to rear it will have parents waiting to adopt it at birth.

* Poverty. A more spiritually advanced society would not simply throw money at the poor, which further humiliates them and reinforces their current poverty status. I assume that such a better and more just society would meet the living needs of the disadvantaged, and beyond that it would be eager to teach people living in poverty the skills and attitudes they are going to need to become self-supporting, and then to thrive.

* Criminal Justice. Ninety-seven percent of the people now in federal prisons in the United States were bullied by prosecutors into pleading guilty. They never had a trial. People vibrating in love would find this situation intolerable! I think a love-based criminal justice system would favor community service over time in jail. It might decree prison terms beyond two years just for violent offenders who pose a threat to others, and it would not allow imprisonment for terms longer than a year except after a jury trial.

* Warfare. There have always been restive societies whose leaders saw some potential for gain in poking at the leaders of other societies. Sometimes these issues have been amicably resolved, but often they have led to little wars; and on a few occasions, those little wars have become conflagrations over much of the earth. Here is where a love-based humanity living in the kingdom of God on earth is really going to shine! Since there is just one human Mind in which every mind influences every other mind, once a sufficient number of people are vibrating in the divine love that Jesus taught, there will never be another war.

Until now, every system of morality has been fear-based. We have had to obey rules rooted in human thinking or else suffer human-made consequences, so living the love that Jesus taught will naturally foster a whole new morality. In fact, the shape of that better way of governing our personal lives is plain to see in the Lord’s Gospel teachings. Here again, we cannot know for certain how that new morality will look, but we can begin to glimpse beyond our present confusion a glorious new life based in love and joy….

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), “How Do I Love Thee?” (1850)

Japanese newlyweds photo credit: atacamaki <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/55169768@N00/50135492552″>おつかれさまでしたっ！</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

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Morning has broken like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing,
Praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) from “Morning Has Broken” (1931)

Two millennia after Jesus taught us how to love as the Godhead loves, that perfect divine love of the Godhead still is vanishingly rare in the world. Which fact should not surprise us! The truth is that we never have made much of an effort to understand the phenomenon that came to us long ago as Jesus the Christ. Anyone who reads the Gospels can see Jesus openly living God’s love at such a wise and fearless level that for millennia we have altogether misunderstood both the Lord’s actions and His words. We have seen Jesus associating with lepers (MT 8:2-3; LK 17:11-15), dining with tax collectors (MT 9:10), confronting authorities (MK 11:28-29), turning the other cheek (LK 6:29), using the powers of His mind to invoke the powers of the minds of other people (MT 9:28-29), and then choosing to suffer an excruciating death for the sake of all of humankind (JN 19). Each of these acts would be unusual even today. Two thousand years ago, for someone to do all of them together must have been incomprehensible! So all along we have been assuming that Jesus was so different from regular folks that we had no way to relate to Him. His Gospel teachings were seen by Christians not as directives, but just as aspirational thoughts. In fact, however, the Lord’s Gospel teachings are something more like precision tools that can easily raise our consciousness vibrations. That fact is extremely important, since raising our vibrations is the whole reason why we chose to enter these earth-lives. Following the Lord’s teachings is the most rapid way for us to raise the consciousness of this planet, and thereby bring the kingdom of God on earth.

We have been  missing the point of Jesus’s message, and of His entire life!

What Jesus demonstrates in the Gospels is just the natural spiritual state of humankind. Beneath our grabby egos, our amnesia-enforced ignorance, our human-made fears, and the daily battering of negativity that comes with living lives on earth, each of us is already a highly advanced spiritual being! So each of us, once we are free of the negative detritus of our lives on earth, will be able at last to easily live the perfect love that Jesus taught.

What Jesus is doing in the Gospels is actually telling us what our life-goal is, how important it is, and also how we can best achieve it:

* The goal that Jesus has for us is that we help to bring the kingdom of God on earth. He tells us this repeatedly! It is even the first request in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (MT 6:9-10). Nothing could be plainer! Our first and greatest request in The Lord’s Prayer is that we be empowered to bring the spiritual development of the kingdom of God to all the people on the face of the earth.

*  Our efforts to attain the kingdom of God will also empower us to get what we need. Jesus said of our need for clothing and sustenance, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you” (MT 6:33).

* We can best achieve this greatest of all goals by closely following the Lord’s Gospel teachings. As He says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (JN 8:31-32). He tells us that our following His teachings is our basic and most essential requirement.

In sum, as we work to bring the kingdom of God on earth by closely adhering to the Lord’s Gospel teaching, God promises in return to supply all our needs. That seems like a pretty fair deal to me! The teachings of Jesus are very effective at raising our personal consciousness vibrations so we can begin to purge negativity from the minds of all of humankind.

The Lord’s teachings are earth-shakingly powerful. Jesus tells us that if we will follow His teachings, we soon will attain something like His Own powers. He says, “Truly, truly I say to you, the one who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I am going to the Father” (JN 14:12). It seems clear that transcribers got this somewhat wrong. They made the Lord’s promise dependent on the fact that He would be returning to God, but so do all of us return to God. No, what is important here is Jesus’s astonishing insistence that we all will attain even greater powers than His Own! Indeed, the very core of what Jesus taught culminates in this glorious announcement: “If you believe Me and follow My teachings, you also will do the work that I do. And you will do even greater works than I do!”

But still, until we can sufficiently raise the consciousness vibrations of humankind, we are living in a world rife with fear and rage. We desperately want things to be a lot better! We can envision a much more loving world in which humankind lives in peace and plenty, and we want that liberation so badly that we think we would do almost anything to get it.

 Our dear friend Father Richard Rohr is calling for “a new story” that will encompass “new paradigms and visions” to enable us to “discern where and how God is calling us to act.” He offers the example of the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara (1909‒1999), who was a saintly man “well-known in his lifetime for his love for the poor and his embrace of nonviolence.” Fr. Rohr tells us that “his teachings have shaped many of my thoughts on the nature of evil and our freedom to choose how we respond to the suffering and injustice present in the world.” And he quotes the good Archbishop as saying:

“When you look at our continent [of South America], where more than two-thirds of the people live in sub-human conditions as a result of injustices, and when you see that the same situation is repeated all over the world, how can you help wanting to work towards human liberation? Just as the Father, the Creator, wants us to be co-creators, so the Son, the Redeemer, wants us to be co-redeemers. So it is up to us to continue the work of liberation begun by the Son: the liberation from sin and the consequences of sin, the liberation from egoism and the consequences of egoism. That is what the theology of liberation means to us, and I see no reason why anyone should be afraid of a true, authentic theology of liberation.”

Each time I read these words that were spoken by a profoundly good Christian man so long after Jesus taught us how to love, I want to weep for all of humankind. This one passage conclusively demonstrates that we still have learned almost nothing from Jesus! You and I know very well why we are “afraid of a true, authentic theology of liberation.” If we were all Jesus, we could make it happen easily! But since nobody on earth is Jesus, such a deeply good society based in lovingly helping the least of us would have to be imposed by a government. And we already know that every attempt to structure from above a “more just” society has ended in tyranny and death. It is estimated that Communism alone resulted in more than a hundred million human deaths in the course of the twentieth century. By comparison, about thirty percent of those living in South America are deeply poor, which amounts to some 185 million people. So human beings are so altogether benighted that in an attempt to help the most disadvantaged among us, we tragically killed innocents in such ghastly numbers that they were more than half of the number of people the saintly Archbishop was trying to help! A “true, authentic theology of liberation” can never arise naturally or be sustained for long unless just about everyone is operating at a spiritual level that approaches the perfect love of the Godhead.

It is clear now that for us to begin to live the love that Jesus taught is going to require that we internalize a whole new way of thinking. The love that Jesus taught is not just a coat that we can put on. No, that perfect love of the eternal Godhead is something that we must BECOME.

Living divine love is a transformation! What Jesus gives us in the Gospels by the examples from His life shared above is a glimpse of how each of us actually WILL BE when we have BECOME the love that Jesus taught! What we are witnessing in action in the life of Jesus are the core characteristics of a Being so spiritually elevated that He has attained the level of the Godhead. So none of what Jesus taught is aspirational! He isn’t only telling us how we should think and act so we can behave a little better. No, in the Gospels Jesus shows us who He is and who you and I already are!

Fr. Rohr tells us more about “the new story” that humankind so desperately needs. He says, “This new story is, of course, as old as incarnation itself! Somewhere along the line, we lost the thread of the true story of union, of wholeness, of God-with-us and us-for-each other.” And he is precisely right! But that new story is in fact the old story that still survives in the teachings and in the exemplary life of Jesus as they are preserved for us in the Gospels.

It will be up to you and me now to take seriously the Lord’s Gospel directives. The “new story” that Father Richard Rohr dreams of, and that you and I yearn to bring into being, is the very old story that Jesus tells, and that we still today can choose to become! But meanwhile, we will look next week at how it will be for us to live in that very much better future when significant numbers of people are living the perfect love that Jesus taught….

Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning,
God’s recreation of the new day.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) from “Morning Has Broken” (1931)

Golden butterfly photo credit: Wild Chroma <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/44614344@N07/50146328328″>Silver-washed Fritillary</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Caterpillar’s face photo credit: Vicki’s Nature <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7327719@N06/50754675333″>12 Days of Christmas Butterflies & Dragonflies: #11 New life – Black swallowtail caterpillar in fennel</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

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Emerging monarch photo credit: Su02420 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/90509953@N00/50776960103″>Miracle</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

I believe the children are our future.
Teach them well and let them lead the way!
Show them all the beauty they possess inside.
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier.
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.
– Michael Masser (1941-2015) & Linda Creed (1948-1986), from “The Greatest Love of All” (1977)

 I had planned today to really get down to the brass tacks of how best to live God’s love. But as I was posting last week’s offering, Whitney Houston began to sing in my mind. When I said something like, “What now?” Thomas said that we never can live God’s Oneness unless we include ourselves among our most beloved. So he wanted us to talk today about how to achieve the self-love that is essential to our spiritual growth.

But this is not my area of expertise! I was what was called a seven-month baby, and perhaps it was to assuage their own shame that my parents reared me to believe I was the most important person on the face of the earth. I figured out when I was college-age that I wasn’t fundamentally different, but by then my sense of my own preciousness was sealed. Would that all children could grow up that way! I tell you this only so you will understand that what I will say here is what I have learned in a decade of helping other people. I am confident about it, but thanks to the love of two dear angels my own growth into healthy self-love was easy.

Learning to love yourself is mostly a matter of removing obstacles to your own understanding of who and what you already are. You always have lived, and you always will live in eternal divine perfection! When you come to earth, you accept amnesia about nearly everything you ever have known, and you also accept a very limited active use of your own mind. You carry a selfish ego whose purpose is to make you desperate to protect yourself so you can stay alive, and you start your life in a material body feeling much-diminished from the life you just left. Unless this infant tendency to see yourself as weak and small is counteracted in childhood with a lot of love, you may well grow up feeling defensive, resentful, inadequate, and riddled with fears. None of these feelings is useful now, but fortunately beneath it all you are already a powerful eternal being. Your task is simply to peel away what is not-you so you can resume being who you already are. Here are your necessary steps, in no special order:

Vanquish Your Ego

We have talked here about the ego, which is a separate gremlin you believe is you but in reality it is what amounts to a parasite. The ego is useful in childhood, when it gives you an instinct for survival that would otherwise be mostly lacking; but once you have learned how to navigate the world, it becomes a barrier to further spiritual growth. It functions on just one me-me-me note. We all have known people who were sadly unable to think beyond themselves, and we have assumed it was because they had “big egos.” But in fact, a selfish attitude is a sign of a pathetically weak and grasping ego fighting for a place in the world. Vanquishing your ego isn’t difficult. It will try to panic you with the fear that its diminution will be your destruction, but if you can ignore that and simply concentrate on the other steps outlined here, your ego will gradually shrivel and fade.

Vanquish Your Fear of Death

The single most important thing you can do to jump-start your spiritual growth is to put in the effort to fully internalize the fact that your mind really is eternal. You always have lived, and you always will live. And for certain, you will live a happier life on earth when you are sure that you cannot die.

I’ve been teaching about the afterlife for a decade now. I have seen the transformational difference it makes for people to take the trouble to learn and then to live the eternal truth! And this week, in time to share it with you, I received an extraordinary testimony from a young man who has reached out to me several times over the past two years. At first he was panicky and fearful. Then he sent further emails asking thoughtful questions. And then there was a silence that was followed this week by a message I am sharing with you here with his permission:

Hello Roberta, it has now been 2 years since I searched for the truth after my fear of dying really hit. I dealt with anxiety for 6 weeks, it was terrible. I thought I would never see my wife and dogs again after this life. My wife found the pets in the afterlife post you wrote and sent it to me. I didn’t believe it but I eventually went back to it and found out you have a podcast. My whole life changed from there and I’ve also found the great Craig Hogan because of you. The two of you, along with many others have helped me realize this: we are eternal, we continue to live on after this life in a beautiful world, we are still with our loved ones including pets, we will remain individuals and there is nothing to fear. The journey like you said took me 1.5-2 years to fully know everything. Took lots of reading and investigation but it was all worth it. 

Putting in the effort to do the work and develop a certainty that you cannot die will transform you from a fearful, fighting, life-sucks-and-then-you-die sort of person into someone like this beautiful young man, happy and now fully empowered to make the very most of his life.

Vanquish Your Youthful Traumas

The Christian religion and Western cultures all are fundamentally fear-based, with the result that a great many people suffer unnecessary childhood fears and traumas. For an extreme example, here is part of an email from a fifteen-year-old that was shared with me by a worried pastor: “I had intercourse with my best friend. I haven’t told my parents. Now we think she is pregnant. Please help me pray that I will die.” My pastor friend had no idea how he could help! He felt that his duty was to involve the parents, but he worried about panicking the boy into suicide. I submit to you, though, that in a more family-based and less sexualized culture, this young man’s problem would seldom occur; and with a primary religion less rooted in sin and the judgment of an angry God, no child would suffer as this boy is suffering simply for being inexperienced enough to have acted on a normal urge.

If you are carrying lingering guilt, shame, or fear from a less-than-perfect childhood, the time to lighten your burden is now. Get counseling. Do whatever it takes for you to really heal! Learning Oneness is tremendously empowering, but it cannot be that unless you can first empower yourself to embrace it from an emotionally healthy place.

Learn to Love as God Loves

Since last week’s post, I have had a number of emails and comments that were some variant of, “You can’t forgive this! Some things you must fight!” You will find that the urge to fight will lessen considerably as your consciousness vibration rises, but even before you are fully living the truth it will be essential that you internalize the need to come from a place of love and never fight back. Mother Theresa’s explanation of why we must always be peaceful and loving is brilliant. Now let’s add to it the thoughts of the Greatest American of the Twentieth Century:

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’
                – Martin Luther, King, Jr. from his essay, “Loving Your Enemies.”

Truly and forever, nothing more need be said.

Learn to See Yourself More as God Sees You

Learning and living the love of the Godhead doesn’t mean you must give up all earthly delights! God wants us to enjoy our lives. As you continue to grow spiritually, you are going to find that you naturally want less anyway; and you also will find that you are a lot less bothered by life’s daily stresses and pains. You will like yourself better. You will be so much happier! In eternal fact, you are the best-beloved child of an infinitely loving God, which was something that my parents’ devotion made me readier to accept than are most people. Always and forever, you are deeply treasured and safe in everlasting arms.  

Only when we have fully internalized the Oneness of the Godhead will we be ready to apply it to our daily lives. And understanding how God’s perfect love might work in every situation does take some thought! Please read again what Mother Teresa said. Read the words of Dr. King above. And let’s begin together to think about how our living God’s perfect love might actually work in the stressful rough-and-tumble of our modern lives.…

I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadows.
If I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe.
No matter what they take from me, they can’t take away my dignity.
Because the greatest love of all is happening to me.
I found the greatest love of all inside of me.
The greatest love of all is easy to achieve!
Learning to love yourself. It is the greatest love of all.
– Michael Masser (1941-2915) & Linda Creed (1948-1986), from “The Greatest Love of All” (1977)

Jesus in water photo credit: ClaraDon <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7267297@N05/6331727087″>Love Shining Through</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Jesus in Boston photo credit: Thomas Hawk <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/35203301661″>Jesus in Boston</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is your health and salvation!
Come, all who hear; now to his temple draw near,
join me in glad adoration.
– Joachim Neander (1650-1680), from the German “Praise to the Lord” (1680)

The only approach to morality that is consistent with the Godhead’s truth is based in divine love alone. From earliest prehistory, human-made gods have imposed various behavioral laws, but the genuine Godhead gives us no laws beyond God’s perfect Law of Love. Jesus makes that fact plain in the Gospels when He says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:37-40).

It is impossible to establish a love-based morality while any written moral law exists, since the written law always takes precedence. While any moral laws are in place, love can be nothing more than the optional nicety it has become for us now. And all written moral laws are flawed, since there is no written law to which we cannot soon think of some love-based exceptions! We have never had a morality based on written laws that was right in all situations. So Jesus makes it clear in the Gospels that He is moving us beyond all black-letter laws by replacing the law-based Old Testament with the Godhead’s New Testament Law of Love. When we study the Lord’s Gospel words, and we then endeavor to follow His teachings, we realize that divine love is possible only when we are free of all other constraints.

But what about secular laws? We cannot live in civilization without obeying those! So Jesus tells us how to handle that conflict. When the Pharisees try to trap him into speaking against paying Caesar’s poll-tax, He says, “‘Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites?  Show Me the coin used for the poll-tax.’ And they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ They said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Then He said to them, ‘Then pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s’” (MT 22:18-21). Bravo, Jesus! We enjoy this little interplay as more evidence of His cleverness, but He is making an important point. We can – and we must – keep the things of this world, the human-made laws and the grubbing for survival, entirely separate from our sacred effort to ever better practice God’s perfect divine love.

But how do we actually go about developing a purely love-based morality? It is only when we ask the question that we see how very different a love-based morality is from one that is based in black-letter laws. We are used to laws. We find their certainty comforting. Our old way of doing morality – starting with the applicable laws, and then looking for possible love-based exceptions – felt easy and automatic. And a love-based morality will feel easy, too, once we have become more used to it. In fact, I think we are going to find that a love-based morality makes discerning the difference between right and wrong a lot easier! Of course, we might then be seeing that what is right to do in any given situation is not what we would prefer to do. But still, the moral choice will be clear! It is time for us to test-drive an entirely laws-free morality that is based in the love that Jesus taught.

This need to operate entirely from love applies to all our daily decisions. But the simplest way to illustrate the difference that a love-based morality can make in our lives is to consider how we would make entirely love-based sexual decisions. Our decisions about sex are full of ethical thorns, so they are a great place for us to begin to think concretely about a love-based morality. Let’s look now at three basic sex-related decisions, and consider them entirely from the viewpoint of a laws-free morality that is based in love. We’ve got to start somewhere!

Heterosexual Behavior

 The decision to be intimate with someone is a complex one. Since there are no longer black-letter laws, it doesn’t matter whether a couple is legally married to one another; but still, we have a lot to consider! Let’s look at the three core love-based questions that we will first have to answer in the affirmative:

• Are we willing to rear a resulting child? To kill a fetus for the sake of convenience can never be seen as a love-based choice. So the decision to have sexual intercourse, even with contraceptive use, will always be the simultaneous decision that we are prepared to lovingly co-parent with this partner for the next twenty years; or alternatively, that we are prepared to find the resulting child good adoptive parents. For both birth-parents, that possible child’s welfare is their love-based responsibility from before its conception.
• Are we sure that no outside parties will be harmed by our actions? If either party is involved with someone who would see what we mean to do as an act of betrayal, then that other relationship will first need to be comfortably resolved. And if either party is co-parenting a minor child with someone else, then the risk of disrupting that child’s life seems to me in a purely love-based morality to trump every reason that we might have for proceeding to be sexual with this partner!
• Are both parties mentally and emotionally able to make love-based decisions about sexual activity? People who are mentally handicapped, too young, emotionally immature, or so deeply indoctrinated into a religion as to be unable to enter this particular sexual relationship without guilt and fear must always be protected by the healthier party from the emotional damage that can result if you proceed.

There may also be other considerations that we will come to see are mandatory for a sexual morality based in love, but these are the three that first come to mind. Few people even consider black-letter laws about intimate behavior anymore, so in thinking this through we are not only getting rid of the laws that nobody follows anyway, but much more importantly we are creating a healthier and entirely love-based morality that can much better take their place.

Homosexual Behavior 

Absent pregnancy, the same questions that apply to deciding on heterosexual activity are applicable when the intended participants are of the same gender. Here the thorniest moral issue is not for the participants, but rather it is the fact that so many Christians still feel free to judge and condemn people who are sexually attracted to their own gender. And it is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus while you are presuming to judge anyone! It doesn’t matter how you personally feel about homosexuality. If you ever judge anyone for anything at all, then you are acting in direct contravention of the plainspoken teachings of Jesus. The Lord says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged” (LK 6:37). He says, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23). Then on a different day, with different Temple guards, He tells us that He doesn’t judge us, either. He says, “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him” (JN 12:47). The Lord cannot possibly have made any plainer the fact that neither God nor Jesus ever judges anyone! And those that we used to think were dead confirm this fact as well. The only judgment is by ourselves alone. And when there is no divine judgment, then surely Christians have no right to judge anyone for anything. Yes, in the United States you have a Constitutional right to refuse to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding. But if you are calling yourself a follower of Jesus, just know that it is His frank request that you rise above judgment, smile, and lovingly bake that cake.

Non-Monogamous Sexual Behavior

 Sexual relationships among multiple partners seem to be more common now, to the point where psychologists are urging us to accept non-monogamy as a lifestyle choice. A surprising number of people are engaged in polyamory, or in open marriages, or even in stable households that contain more than two cohabiting adults. And without any black-letter moral laws in place, such alternative living arrangements can be perfectly moral. But they still pose some much-increased ethical risks! The decision to enter into any form of non-monogamous sexual relationship is compounded by the much-increased chance of jealousies and general instability that must be lovingly addressed, and by the fact that many more outside people are likely to be affected by it. At the very least,  every person involved will need to satisfactorily answer the three questions given above.

As you can see, a purely love-based morality can be simple to apply and seems to make more sense than does one that is based in rigid laws. It surely works a lot better than trying to live by behavioral laws that require us to always be on the lookout for all the possible love-based exceptions!

Next week we’ll pause to celebrate the Reason for the Season. Then we’ll resume this process of learning to ever better practice the purely love-based morality that Jesus taught.

Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him!
All that has life and breath, come now with praises before him.
Let the Amen sound from his people again;
gladly forever adore him.
– Joachim Neander (1650-1680), from the German “Praise to the Lord” (1680)

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Don’t you think it’s rather funny
That I should be in this position?
I’m the one who’s always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool,
Running every show. He scares me so.
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)

The divine love that Jesus taught is the only kind of love that has the power to raise our personal consciousness vibrations. It’s the only kind of love that has any positive spiritual effect at all!

This essential fact is the center and sum of what Jesus tells us in the Gospels, and it is strongly reinforced in A Course in Miracles. When we remove what was added to the Gospels by the Council of Nicaea in 325, we have what we are told by people that we used to think were dead is the core of what Jesus taught us while He lived on earth. And then reportedly Jesus Himself led the group that channeled the Course in the nineteen-sixties. A Course in Miracles is essentially a very advanced version of the basic advice about spiritual growth that Jesus gives us in the Gospels.

The Lord’s Gospel teachings make it plain that it isn’t enough to simply try to be more loving to friends and family. He says, “if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (MT 5:46-48). The Lord’s stated goal for us is nothing less than the spiritual perfection of the Godhead! But He tells us that level of perfection is attainable only when we have internalized the universal love that He came to earth to teach. In A Course in Miracles, the team around Jesus makes this point more explicitly. The Course calls our love for only certain individuals “special loves,” and it tells us that “special loves” are as counterproductive spiritually as are “special hates.” Wow.

Jesus also insists that in order to live God’s perfect love, we must never judge another human being. In fact, being judgmental of others is such an ego-based, low-vibration attitude that it makes our spiritual growth impossible. And seeing how fiercely judgmental so many modern Christians are wont to be gives us a pretty good explanation for why Christianity has failed so miserably at elevating human consciousness toward the spiritual level of the kingdom of God.

We now know that what Jesus taught is a deep and transformative kind of love that permanently raises our personal consciousness vibrations. And we now understand that Jesus is right, and none of the things that Christians have been attempting for the better part of two thousand years has really done much to improve anything. It is long past time for humankind to listen to Jesus a lot more closely.

One of the Lord’s goals for us is to build a more universal morality, a better distinction between right and wrong. For all of human history, all versions of morality have been rules-based. And since every rule is human-made, morality has always been a matter of opinion. We might know in our gut that we ought to do something or not do something, but if there is a bright-line moral rule that is different from our instinctive view then it can be very hard to tell right from wrong.

Since this inability to arrive at one universal morality has been such a longstanding daily problem, a number of attempts have been made to come up with a more universally acceptable set of moral standards. For example, the hot spiritual book of the Sixties was Situation Ethics – The New Morality. Traditional Christians hated it! That book’s premise was that love is the ethical standard that trumps every rule; but since it failed to distinguish between divine love and the special loves that Jesus warns us against, all the critics of that book were likely right. At its base, it just threw away the rules without putting any sort of universally acceptable moral standard in their place.

We cannot achieve a love-based morality that will free us altogether from human-made rules unless we can first internalize the divine form of love that Jesus taught.

I think the reason why the Lord’s teachings are so effective when we actually apply them is that the sort of love He came to teach is actually our essential nature. When we get beneath all the special loves and hates and all the ego-based negativity, we already embody that perfect universal love. Clear away the mess, and our personal consciousness vibrations begin to rise naturally! And the easiest way to make that happen is turning out to be nothing more than the close application of the Gospel teachings of Jesus. Simply by concentrating on ever more perfectly living the love that Jesus taught, we can raise our own vibrations enough to make this our last necessary earth-lifetime. And if sufficient people worldwide will work to raise their own consciousness vibrations, we can indeed bring the kingdom of God on earth.

I have been experimenting for more than a decade now, and I have told you something of how different special loves and universal love actually feel. As I got to the magical moment when I realized that prevenient forgiveness works, I also developed the sense that I was loving my family a whole lot less. This bothered me at first, but soon I saw that in fact my love for my family hadn’t changed. Instead, I had simply stopped differentiating them from all the rest of humankind. It was all people that I loved now, all children and everyone I passed on the street! And my new love for humankind felt highly pleasurable, as all forms of love are pleasurable. It was cooler, not possessive at all in the way that special loves often feel possessive, but still it was as rapturous and intense as any love that I have ever experienced. In a sort of muffled, human way, I can envision that this must indeed be the way that the Godhead loves all of humankind.  

So now, based upon the teachings of Jesus, we know that what matters to God is not any of the things that we might do. All those Ten–Commandments–style rules were human-made; and the more we have progressed spiritually, the more we have seen exceptions to the rules. Thou Shalt Not Kill (except to protect innocents); Honor Your Father and Your Mother (unless they are harming others); Do Not Steal (except to feed a starving child); and Do Not Bear False Witness (except in 1942 Germany, when you have Jewish refugees in your closet). It has been many generations since we stopped considering the Old Testament rules to be black-and-white governors of our behavior, but rather we now routinely consider those rules to be no more than good suggestions that can be overridden when the facts get complicated.

In the same way, the Old Testament’s sexual laws are human-made and culture-based. So once we have mastered divine love, we will be able to ignore them all. From a spiritual perspective, there is nothing inherently sinful about any kind of sexual behavior! We can morally have sex in every possible way, whether inside marriage or outside of marriage, with or without a partner or three of any combination of genders, and in private or in the middle of a public street.

We know now that God doesn’t put much emphasis on what we do. No, what matters to the Godhead in all our actions, and matters very much indeed, is just two things:

• Why we are doing what we are doing. If we have any motive other than perfect divine love, then that secondary motive cannot be ego-based or in any other way negative (fear, revenge, etc.). Anything we do that might affect others must be done from love alone.
• The effects our actions might have on others. If we feel confident in saying that love is our only motivation, then we still must make certain that even those who are not directly involved are unlikely to be negatively impacted.

So morality has become a more personal process. There are no longer any rules! But instead, before we take action in any situation, we must weigh on our internal scales of perfect and selfless love both what our reasons are for doing it, and how what we are planning to do might affect the other people around us. Always having to be sure to do the love-based thing might seem to be a complication, but trying to follow the old rules was even worse! Before we ever did anything, we had to mentally check to see whether there were applicable human-made laws. Then we had to look for any love-based exception (like a murderer going after your family, or saving the refugees in your 1942 closet). Then, since we still would be acting in violation of those human-made laws, we would fret about whether there might be some way to do the right thing without violating those laws. We might well carry even our well-thought-out and apparently justified but still non-legal choices on our consciences forevermore!

 The key to an entirely rules-free morality that is based in love alone is simply learning and internalizing the perfect divine love that Jesus taught. And then we can altogether and forever entirely banish every rule from our minds!

You may have been wondering what all of this has to do with sex. In fact, the sexual decisions we make are some of the most complex and intensely emotional decisions of all, and inevitably they can affect other people in what are often traumatic ways. Reasoning through some sexual decisions is the best way for us to better understand and begin to implement the Lord’s love-based morality. So next week we will consider how we can best apply divine love’s true measure to some of our thorniest moral decisions of all….

Yet, if he said he loved me,
I’d be lost, I’d be frightened.
I couldn’t cope, just couldn’t cope.
I’d turn my head, I’d back away, I wouldn’t want to know.
He scares me so. I want him so. I love him so.
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)

Abstract balloons photo credit: Raphael Perez Israeli Artist <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/99581103@N06/37889570271″>naive art paintings Painting Modern People Sculpture Design Artworks City England Watercolor</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Abstract fireworks photo credit: Raphael Perez Israeli Artist <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/99581103@N06/37169911243″>naive art Simple Cat Ideas Autumn Angel Town Beautiful Dog Collage Girl Seaside Fashion Love</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

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Fall mountain photo credit: RS2Photography <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/99241048@N04/50426525693″>The Reds, Yellows, & Greens of Fall</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

I don’t know how to love him.
What to do, how to move him.
I’ve been changed, yes really changed.
In these past few days, when I’ve seen myself,
I seem like someone else.
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)

Animals reshuffle genetic material in the process of producing each new generation. The usual method of mixing genes involves two genders, one of which has a penis that is inserted into the vagina of the other. To make animals want to reproduce, the act itself is pleasurable; and every material body has a powerful drive to do this odd thing at certain times of its life. But that’s it! Sexual intercourse is a minor aspect of the broad scope of human activities, which fact feels confounding when you realize how much of a fuss we have made about it for all of human history.

The divine love that Jesus taught is so different from most of the emotions that we think of as “love” that it is going to take some effort for us to learn to love in the Lord’s Way. And because the act of sexual intercourse is pleasurable and surrounded by rules and taboos, while at the same time it requires our interacting with other people in complex ways, our sex lives can be an excellent place for us to begin to practice the love that Jesus taught.

Nearly all religions are obsessed with controlling our sexual activity. For example, there are strict notions in every Christian denomination about what is and what is not acceptable sexual behavior; and yet, too often Christians will suffer an overpowering need to violate their own religious laws. They will then be harshly judged and disgraced. Meanwhile, we are allowing our children to be sexualized to an appalling extent! These three problems – our struggles with sexual temptation, all the judgmental Christian congregations, and our grotesque worldwide obsession with sex that is deeply harming our next generation – all spring from our historical obsession with treating the sex act as deliciously forbidden and thereby heightened in importance beyond reason. Unless we can get past our negative obsession with our own sexuality, we never will raise this planet’s consciousness vibrations enough to bring the kingdom of God on earth.

The problem is not the act itself. Sexual intercourse is a bodily function that is fully as morally neutral as eating. But with intercourse, what should be a natural act is complicated by a mess of rules and taboos that damage many people’s lives. And our deeply judgmental views on sex are splintering the forty thousand versions of Christianity even more! To move all modern societies toward a love-based and not a fear-based view of sexuality, we first must understand the ancient mindset that still underlies all our modern taboos. The two rules that follow are from the Christian Old Testament and based in Hebraic law, and they are typical of the mindset of the ancient world:

*Female Sexual Behavior Must be Strictly Controlled. The ancients wanted paternal certainty, so female extramarital sex was forbidden. If a new bride was found to be not a virgin, ^“then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death” (Deut 22: 21).

* Male Sexual Behavior Should be Focused. Many children died, which meant there had to be a lot of extra births. This led to a strong cultural preference that all semen emissions be penis-into-vagina. Masturbation was frowned upon, semen emissions were considered unclean (e.g. Lev 15:16-18), and “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death” (Lev 20:13). Female homosexuality is not mentioned, perhaps because it doesn’t interfere with reproduction.

In the Old Testament, every act of sexual intercourse is a matter of public importance. To change that, Jesus had to do away with all the human-made Old Testament laws and replace them with God’s law of love. He reinforced His abolition of all religious laws, but He did it carefully, since for Him to have been heard by the Temple authorities speaking against an Old Testament law would have been a crime punishable by death. Still, He did what He could. For example:

“Now it happened that Jesus was passing through some grainfields on a Sabbath, and His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And Jesus, answering them, said, ‘Have you not even read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions?’ And He was saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath’” (LK 6:1-5). Whether Jesus spoke those last words or they were just implied, it was clear to those who were close to Him that He intentionally defied all the strict Sabbath rules. For example, healing on the Sabbath was forbidden, but apparently He did it often (see LK 6:6-10; LK 13:15-16; JN 5:9-10). His style seems to have been to avoid confrontations, and instead to teach that the old rules were gone by displaying repeated casual violations of them.

Jesus’s treatment of the woman taken in adultery is a clear repudiation of Old Testament laws. And it is quite brilliantly done! The scribes and Pharisees “brought a woman caught in the act of adultery, and after placing her in the center of the courtyard, they said to Him, ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?’ Now they were saying this to test Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. When they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up and said to them, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Now when they heard this, they began leaving, one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman where she was, in the center of the courtyard. And straightening up, Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on do not sin any longer’” (JN 8:3-12). Jesus is not reported to have specifically denounced the Old Testament law against male homosexuality, but since that law is based in fear and hatred we can take His repudiation of it as a given. And my dear Thomas wants us to mention here the fact that there is evidence in the Gospels that Jesus Himself, who came from the highest aspect of the Godhead, may have been homosexual. I await a more enlightened day when Christian scholars love the Lord enough to openly discuss what many of them also by now surely must have noticed.

Jesus readily pardons violations of the ancient and outmoded sexual laws, but still He considers marriage to be a profound commitment. When He is asked about divorce, He says that when people marry, “they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.” People said to Him, “Why, then, did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” He said, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (MT 19:6-9).

So Jesus repudiates the sexual laws of the Old Testament, but He affirms the love-based importance of marriage. In doing this, He removes sexual behavior from the realm of public criminality and transforms it into a private matter to be lovingly handled within families. Jesus means to move us from a sexual morality rooted in fear-based tribalism to one that is deeply grounded in sexual privacy and familial love. But for two thousand years we have ignored what would have been a profoundly love-based change, and instead Christianity has kept and has enforced the ancient human-made, fear-based laws. Our only change has been to replace stoning sexual violators to death with just the pain of shame and ostracism. None of this is what the Godhead wants! None of it is based in love, and none of it improves anyone’s behavior. Indeed, it has led to a modern culture worldwide that is built around sexual titillation, with predictable bad effects on our personal lives and on the precious lives of our children.

We can begin to live as God wants us to live only when we have banished every fear-based sexual rule and taboo. And we must stop judging others! Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned” (LK 6:37). But since Christians seldom listen to Jesus, all those sexual taboos that He outmoded two thousand years ago remain at the center of Christianity, and the busybody judging of others continues to be a horrifying Christian obsession.

As we better learn to live the Lord’s love-based Way, we will need to rethink so many deep-seated aspects of our lives! And to start that process, we will consider next week how our sexual views and practices will change as we begin to live the love that Jesus taught….

Should I bring him down?
Should I scream and shout?
Should I speak of love,
Let my feelings out?
I never thought I’d come to this!
What’s it all about?
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)

Expulsion of Adam & Eve photo credit: Thomas Hawk <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/49312166413″>The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Adam accuses Eve photo credit: Halloween HJB <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/72185053@N00/50307487488″>FIDUS (Hugo HÖPPENER). Eva, 1931</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Hands photo credit: trustypics <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/26668694@N05/13699188365″>Creation of Eve (Day 7) Theme: hands</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>