Posted by Roberta Grimes • August 24, 2024 • 41 Comments
Jesus, The Source
You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord,
Who abide in His shadow for life,
Say to the Lord, “My Refuge,
My Rock in Whom I trust.”
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun!
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
The snare of the fowler will never capture you,
And famine will bring you no fear;
Under His Wings your refuge,
His faithfulness your shield.
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun!
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
– Michael Joncas, from “On Eagle’s Wings” (1979)
Wow, did Thomas and I catch flack for some of the positions we took in our blog post last week about sin! The first, and the most obvious question was why God might let some people who have done extremely evil things off scott-free. The very thought of this possibility offended some people. “So, say that someone even kills someone else. Maybe tortures and murders a child or something. Are you saying that even the most awful crime is not necessarily a sin in the eyes of God? So, then we would say patiently, “To the extent that something is a religious crime, which is the technical definition of a ‘sin,’ then God does not condemn us to hell for it.” Because for one thing, there is no actual hell. And more to the point, there is no judgment by God (JN 5:22). And finally, of course, religions are of man. They are not of God. So things simply do not work the way that you and I might think that they work. But the thought that there is not some level of divine retribution for bad deeds done is still too difficult for some otherwise sensible folks to handle. Shouldn’t retribution from God for what we can see are obviously horrendous deeds be something that exists in the air somehow, like a noisome vapor that will ignite on its own and outright blow all the villains away?
Well, no. God does not think the way that people think. And as is true of so many things, it is love that makes the difference. Each of us comes to earth to live a lifetime which is usually planned to be difficult, so this earth-life can help us to ever better learn how to lift our personal energy vibrations ever farther away from fear and hatred and all the other low-level emotions, and toward our universal energy goal of ever more perfect love. Right? Isn’t that the entire point of all of human earthly existence? That is true of each of us individually, and it is true of all of humankind universally. Each of us plans a difficult lifetime that is full of what are often complex and even painful challenges. So, if one of us has done something appalling, has for example committed a horrendous murder, then he or she has already fallen pretty far away from our universal energy goal of ever more perfect love. Wouldn’t that be true? So, I know you don’t want to hear this now, but the last thing we should ever want to do in that instance would be to punish someone in some awful way, and to thereby lower his or her personal energy vibration even more!
Yes, we want to keep all such people from ever harming someone else. But ideally, we want to do it in such a way that we are teaching and reclaiming and loving as we do it! When we treat any human being harshly, and even those who are guilty of the most awful crimes, then we only lessen the aggregation of love in the world, we lower both that person’s spiritual vibration and our own, and we offer a terrible example to everyone else who is closely watching us. Until we can learn to think only as God thinks, in everything, always and forevermore, we have not even begun to learn spiritual wisdom.
While we are on the topic of trying to ever better learn to think as God thinks, let us all be sure to keep in mind the fact that no religion on earth is God’s religion. Oh, no indeed! Every one of our religions is entirely man-made. The fact that there are now some forty-five thousand different versions of Christianity alone, and some of them even battle with one another over trivialities of human-made doctrine, is therefore not surprising, even though it is frankly horrifying. I recall when I was first writing The Fun of Dying in 2010, and I Googled the question of how many versions of Christianity there were. Back then, there were ten thousand versions of Christianity. What? Ten THOUSAND? I could not get over that! I had expected the number to be something like a few hundred. And then over the following years, I have on occasion idly done that same Google search, and to my increasingly slack-jawed amazement I have watched the number of Christian denominations rapidly proliferate, until now, only fifteen years later, the number of Christian denominations worldwide is literally forty-five thousand. Many of what are called “denominations” must consist of just one church congregation. But still, think of what a travesty this is! Human beings bicker among themselves over the smallest variations in their own ideas about the tiniest details of their own faith versions. And then they inflict their personal petty disagreements on God, and also on poor Jesus.
And even so much worse, all these utterly pointless divisions among Christians still continue to proliferate, even today! The United Methodist Church has probably tried the hardest of all those endless Christian denominations to keep itself together as a big-tent unit, but in recent years it has fragmented more and more, over female clergy and over homosexuality most recently, and also over other, more trivial issues. Now, I ask you: can you imagine that the Jesus that you and I so dearly love actually gives a flying fig about issues like the genders or the sex lives of those who lead church congregations, or of their fellow church parishioners? Seriously? Can you imagine that God cares at all? Then why should the Methodist leaders care? And when you add to the terrible fragmenting of Christianity over nonsensical personal issues all the other separate religions on the earth, both large and small, most of which of course predate the earthly life of Jesus, then there are in total close to sixty thousand different ways that people might choose to worship God, or the gods, or the ineffable ether, or Mother Nature, or the Stars, or whatever else you might choose to call the Creator and the Help of all there is.
So let us now together give to God, and to every conceivable iteration of God of every name and description the arbitrary but still holy name of “God”, and let us now state just for purposes of this discussion that the One God is the God of all. As we now all understand anyway, the genuine God is what we individually experience as Consciousness, and Consciousness is all that exists. Consciousness is the Sculptor, and Consciousness is the Clay. God needs and wants no particular name, but rather God answers to whatever is in our hearts! God recognizes no religion, and the One God sees each of us as intensely and truly God’s Own. This whole religion thing is and forever only ever has been a remnant of our human-created faith-crutch. Once we simply learn to look within ourselves for the source of this ineffable call from God that every one of us feels, this core yearning, then we find its source easily! As Jesus said, the kingdom of God is within us (LK 17:21). In the end, we can easily learn to relate to God within ourselves.
Yet still, many people find that they feel best when they have some sort of religion, even now. And God does not seem to mind at all, because we live within Consciousness, within the Mind of God, so we cannot see God, since God is not a Being separate from ourselves; yet we can sense that something greater is here. So to believe in God more concretely, early people invented religions, and those first religions generally featured some often scary-awful gods. That was just how all our religions began. I guess this recent dramatic fragmentation of Christianity, which seems to have been ongoing for the past few decades, is simply the next stage of religions, wouldn’t you think? This is just the way it goes? As you know, one of the reasons why Jesus came to us two thousand years ago was to try to abolish all religions, and to teach us to relate to God individually. As human beings now become ever more individual in our relationships with God, we either are leaving our old religions altogether, or else we seem to be molding and seeking and redesigning our individual faith lives within our existing religions to ever better suit ourselves.
And our religions in their turn are either desperately becoming more draconian, as is happening with Islam; or else they are fragmenting to try to make themselves more acceptable to us, as is happening with Christianity. We note, of course, that none of this has anything to do with God, but rather it has everything to do with endlessly fallible people. In the end, it will not matter a fig what today’s religious leaders do, because to God, our notion of time does not matter, and a thousand human years is like a day. Eventually, and no matter what our religions might do, each one of us individually will learn to find our way to God, since God is always and has forever been within us all along.
And meanwhile, there are some truly delightful people who love and encourage one another in their different religious paths. They don’t allow the fact that those paths might be considerably different from one another’s paths to be any sort of barrier at all to their building a close and loving relationship with one another, and even to their building a wonderful marriage that includes parenthood. Not endorsing any candidate here, but I consider the marriage of Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance and his Hindu wife to be nothing short of amazing and delightful! I urge you to read the linked article, because I don’t think that any attempt that I might make to summarize it could do it justice. When I married my Catholic husband fifty years ago, and we planned to have children, there was no question that I would have to convert to Catholicism. But now, this beautiful young couple can happily enter a Hindu-Catholic marriage that includes parenthood, a marriage blessed by both faiths, and there has been no thought that either of them will have to convert to the other’s religion! And around them, God’s angels sing for joy.
You need not fear the terror of the night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day.
Though thousands fall about you,
Near you it shall not come.
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun!
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
For to His angels He’s given a command,
To guard you in all of your ways.
Upon their hands they will bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun!
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
– Michael Joncas, from “On Eagle’s Wings” (1979)
Dear Roberta!
Today’s message is wonderful. I realized a few years ago that once we get to heaven, that it will not be segregated by one’s religion.
I also was raised protestant and converted to Catholicism for a marriage. My parents believed it was fine to learn about various religions to find the one that fit the best and to convert to the one of my spouse upon marriage. The mandatory rules I followed as closely as possible…until we divorced 15 years later due to his abuse of me and what I saw as his over-attachment to his Mother. Twelve years after the divorce my husband wanted to re-marry in the Catholic church and had our marriage annulled by paying $1500. or so and saying that I had abandoned him which was untrue. He was also living with the woman he then married which was hypocritical since he was a strong Catholic. I began to see things like indulgences as man-made and not God-made rules, Slowly it became to clear to me that God was not dictating these rules or laws and man had simply made them up and often for some sort of monetary gain. Thank you for stating what I also believe to be true, that God did not form the organized religions that often just separate us.
Oh my dear wonderful Jennifer, no indeed, not only is heaven not segregated by religion, but reportedly there is actually no religion practiced there at all to speak of! And yes, all that you say of religions, and especially of Catholicism, is certainly true. Oh my goodness, is it true! Thank you for being so frank about it here!!
Yes, the Catholic church made a fortune on annulments, as if there was a God up somewhere who only allowed annulments as opposed to a regular divorce. Jesus never once mentioned that anyone needed to get an annulment, and he never said he wanted to start a church. Religions definitely were started by people and every one of these religions were started for control of those who followed them. What a terrible waste.
I also agree that seeking revenge and hating those who are considered criminals does nothing except lower our own vibrations. This is much easier said than done, as it is normal to hate anyone who seriously hurts another, but as stated in this blog, it does nothing but lower our own vibration.
Oh yes, my darling Lola, thank you for this! Great wisdom from you as always, my dear one. I don’t know what happened to my week this time, but somehow when I wasn’t looking more than twenty comments appeared here, and I wasn’t able to get over here even to read them until the following week’s blog had posted. But there is no cosmic rule against my answering these wonderful comments only now, right??
Thank you.
You are very welcome, dear wonderful Myron!
The Catholic church has regularly exposed itself as a fraud. Just an example of this from my own personal experience, when my already (legally)-divorced husband and I wanted to get married, his Catholic religion required an annulment (for a $ price). We went along with it and got the annulment. A couple of years later, we received a call from the ex-wife (also Catholic) saying that she was ready to remarry also and that the Church was demanding an annulment from her–for a price, of course. That made no sense at all to me; how many times can you annul the same marriage? It appears to be a classic example of “double dipping”–many times over. That is just one of the most blatant examples of the miscarriages of power in which the Church has used its self-appointed authority to use its parishioners for material gain only. Many, many other religions and faiths are guilty of these same types of manipulations as well.
Oh, good grief! So the husband and the wife in this case each had two different marriages in the eyes of the Catholic church?? Now I really have heard everything!!
Dear Roberta, Perhaps the confusion some have over the fact that God is not judgemental of how we live our intentionally difficult mortal lives concerns a failure to distinguish between the immortal soul of a material body and the body itself. The soul comes from Heaven as pure, for Heaven lacks any of the desires and needs of a mortal body (the lack of stress is in fact why our souls expose themselves to a difficut mortal life). God of course knows that the body provides a temporary vehicle for a stressful life.
What would be the point of damning the body which dies anyway, never to itself create any harm (although the body itself has a bit of consciousness that may persist as what we see in ghosts; there is a paper on this topic I have published that may be found by googling “Evidence of the Body Possessing a Form of Consciousness Beyond Its Soul”).
Oh my dear lovely Jack, how beautifully expressed, and all perfectly true – thank you for your wonderful contributions here, my dear one!
Jesus spoke about not repaying “evil with evil” (English translations of Aramaic words, and probably quite inadequate), clearly testifying to the heart of God, which is unconditional love.
I used to work for a school and when kids got in a fight, the excuse of the 2nd person who got hit and then hit back is always: “Well, he/she hit me first”. This can never be God’s justification of requiring some form of “payment” from us, like eye for eye and tooth for tooth. God will never stoop down to that anti-love or lower levels of love. Also impossible for Perfect Love to do so, actually.
And Jesus exemplifies this love supremely well.
When you squeeze an orange you get orange juice, never apple juice. When you squeeze God, no matter with how much anger, resentment, hatred, and other forms of anti-love, etc., you will only get love back. It cannot be otherwise.
I just can’t understand what money has got to do with anything here. Asking for money for an annulment is just repetition of late middle ages indulgences.
Oh my darling Adrian, yes, exactly! It’s precisely like the Catholic church’s old system of indulgences! No matter how modern it may believe it has become, the Catholic church really has not changed at all!
In 1997, I experienced a near death phenomenon. I didn’t understand what occurred so I was on a constant hunt for information and thanks to the internet, found many sites dedicated to NDEs and to this very day, continue to gravitate towards such experiences. I will tell you: our sisters and brothers who relay their stories never include a command from Spirit to join and associate with any particular religious group; quite the opposite- they usually shed their religious affiliations and turn inward, as they realize God is within and depend no longer on man’s created churches.
My dear lovely Kitty, that is certainly true: people who have NDEs and other spiritually transformative experiences tend to leave their old religious affiliations, rather than the opposite!
I have no issues with this blog but it appears all the negative responses to the prior one were never shown. It might be interesting to read some of these on such occasions. Is it possible that some of the answers to legitimate questions raised got thrown out as well?
Interesting point…
My dear beloved Thomas, to avoid confusing anyone, please let me make clear the fact that I have never erased any even very negative comment here except for one, a while back, which was from a known personal troll. And he got the message, and never bothered us here again.
BUT when someone posts a comment here for the very first time, I do have to approve that comment before it will be shown as a comment. And whether or not I will welcome someone into our commenter family is my choice. I reject very few comments – maybe one in 70 or so – and never simply because they disagree with me. I love those who disagree intelligently, actually! But last week, as I recall, there were a couple of commenters who were nasty and combative, and were at the same time not smart about it. They were sharply lowering our standard of discourse here, so I did not approve their comments. If they come back with calmer and better-reasoned comments, you can tell them that I will let them in.
Hi Roberta!
I believe that for many the idea of judgement for awful actions is a coping mechanism to help deal with the really bad stuff that happens here.
It is difficult to make sense of the many atrocities that are committed. So the idea that those who commit them will pay for their actions helps some deal with the pain.
Take that away and it can break their reality. That is why many respond with anger. I’ve seen this time and time again when looking at different activist movements. Simple disagreements will make you evil and be treated as such.
Like you said, this is never a good thing. Anger and Hatred is only hurting ourselves. Instead, we should strive to pray that those who commit bad actions upon others will be able to forgive themselves when they return home. As you said before, we feel all of those actions during our life reviews. I don’t want any of our family to regress spiritually. No matter what happens here.
There is a sort of freedom when you can love anyone no matter what they do. I hope we all reach that point in our spiritual journeys.
Oh my dearly beloved Thomas, this is so supremely beautifully said! Just wonderful, and so very true!! The whole goal, the whole supreme end-point of everything that we do is human love for one another in all its endless myriad forms, and it is the very greatest joy to watch each of us as brothers as we together make that long journey!
I have struggled with the concept of sin. What it is, where it comes from and of course being brought up in the Protestant faith, how did Jesus dying on the cross absolve me from responsibility. Your blogs continue to reinforce that sin is something made up by man, not God. In the past, I thought of sin as any action that distanced yourself from God. What has changed now for me is I understand that I am part of the whole spiritual phenomenon we think of as God. God is not a separate entity and I am never separated form God, though I can make choices that distance me from God and thus myself. I cannot absolve myself from something I’ve done that might hurt another, but I can ask for forgiveness.
Hi Tim!
I personally believe you can and should forgive yourself. Whether another will forgive you or me for something we’ve done is up to them. It is very important that we forgive ourselves. That is how we learn and grow.
So true Thomas, forgiving oneself is crucial to spiritual growth.
Oh my dear wonderful Thomas, this is precisely right! Learning self-forgiveness while we are on earth is so very important, since soon after we transition, we will undergo a life-review, during which we will be asked to forgive ourselves for literally everything that we ever have done on earth. And even the very tiny things! If we haven’t learned to forgive ourselves while we were on earth, our personal vibrations then can begin to slow, and if we really cannot forgive ourselves for everything, we can put ourselves into what Jesus called “the Outer Darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.” So, everyone, forgive yourself for everything, and right now!! Because the alternative is too horrible even to contemplate.
I loved your uplifting theme, Roberta. So often we have differed in our approaches but everything you wrote this past weekend resonated strongly for me. blessings
Well, thank you, my dear Mac! And blessings to you as well, my dear one!!
Dearest Roberta,
These last few blog posts have raised some wonderful topics. Of course, nasty, derisive, ‘smart’ and downright rude comments only confine such commenters to a lower vibration; It is equivalent to shooting oneself in the foot. It only hobbles progress and it is not very wise.
I realise all that exists are consciousness and experiences. Maybe to see this world as a play or hologram is to glimpse how unreal (and temporary) it actually is. Therefore one realises that God Consciousness is actually reality and our world is nothing but a convincing illusion.
So is God’s outlook opposite the human viewpoint? We think this world is real and God is, well, kind of abstract and hence not real enough for us. We human beings often see things the wrong way round, I reckon.
When we shift our perspective things start to make more sense. For example, if the crucial thing for God is for us to raise our vibration towards love, then to do this is to actively participate in reality. Conversely, higher thinking also shows us that to punish a criminal physically and severely is not the point, as this does not come from a place of love. This desire for corporal punishment is not aligned with reality. The God perspective begins to explain much!
( Please note that I realise justice must be delivered for a crime, but in a more love based way than current thinking allows.)
As to bemoaning that the corrupt prosper outrageously in this world, while the good and humble are trodden upon, this is also limited, human thinking. When death happens the soul transmigrates. Then it resides in the true life, or the afterlife as we call it. So, how can we know what happens there, as we bemoan God’s injustice while here on earth? Surely we must realise that we only see part of the picture while in this life. We don’t see (or remember) what occurs beyond this earth life. So, how can we judge what is fair?
I guess I’m saying that a shift in thinking does us a power of good; It frees us of heavy conditioning and opens us to awe. Roberta, these days I just love and trust in God Consciousness and realise that what is as yet unknown is okay. 😉🙏🏼❤️
I love this “We think this world is real and God is, well, kind of abstract and hence not real enough for us. We human beings often see things the wrong way round, I reckon.” It really changes how you view everything including the seemingly “bad” things that happen each day.
Yes Tim, this understanding does change how everything feels, even the bad stuff.
I’ve got to say, I stopped saying: ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ Instead I started to ask: ‘What can I learn from this?’
That simple change has made all the difference in terms of happiness – and the clearer resolution of a life problem. 🙂
Oh my dear and so much beloved Efrem, how very wonderfully all of this is said! Yes, our perspective is so very far from God’s perspective! We cannot even conceive of how God sees some of these complex things, and how God’s wisdom operates in the greater reality that is our true home, and that we enter not only after death, but even also during each night as our bodies sleep!
Oh my dear wonderfully beloved Efrem, of course we are seeing things the wrong way around, and indeed only God is real! You made Jesus smile with that comment. 🙂
Outstanding commentary Roberta!!! Your writing style is so smooth, loving, and logical…i connect with it so well. The first verse mentioned was similar to the verse i chose during my confirmation as a Lutheran almost 60yrs ago..Ps 18:2. Am now Methodist for wife’s sake and do finding it challenging to have belief system almost identical to yours and trying to mold into Methodist teachings/rituals. Rupert Sheldrate helped me when he described how religious rituals & practices do serve a purpose for spiritual growth despite holding belief system consistent with a more broader understanding of God than your choice of religious practice ( although im still struggling with that…i still feel like im in the closet by not expressing my new belief system that is outside boundries of Methodism. Dr Sheldrate said his Hindu teacher encouraged him to continue in his original Presbyterian faith when he returned to the US after several years of hindu teaching. Im babbling too much so ill sign off. Thanks for all you do and for being the biggest impact in my recent 5 year journey struggling with trying to find a marriage of science with religion. Your brother, Steve Grimes
Oh my very dear Steven, this is lovely! And I believe that I do owe you a response about a lunch date, don’t I? I am sorry to have been so elusive, when you have been so sweet, but I have now chosen a date and time and made a suggestion. My problem is that since I am still practicing law, plus both blogging and podcasting and answering very many emails from people, my time really is not my own! But I have chosen a time of the week, and far enough ahead, that I think I can defend it. And I do look forward to meeting you!
Roberta blog
I agree from personal experience on Thomas Belknap’s comment that its tough ( especially for those entrenched with strong religious beliefs) to reconcile an unconditional loving God without judgement allowing those who choose to do “evil”. My journey from the science side has softened this angst by my current understanding of our physical reality being one that is subject to a universal law that basically supports the idea that any free choice decision/action is reflected back to them, ie “you reap what you sow”, although it may take time for that impact to rebound back to the perpetrator. Also helpful in processing this angst of non-judgement for evil deeds is my understanding of the concept that we plan our earthly lives before we incarnate to facilitate spiritual growth. So, as an example of planning to grow in the area of forgiveness, we may choose a life that favors high probality of experiencing life as a victim. Both these “science/consciousness-based” perspectives help me to understand “evil” actions in our earthly lives are actually needed for spiritual growth.
Wow, my dear one, quite a lot to process! I find it difficult to swallow the thought that fully “evil” actions by anyone might actually somehow, somewhere contribute spiritually….
Dear Roberta,
I was very delighted with your blog both last week and this week. I would say that to accept that people we may have judged “unworthy” here that end up in the upper realms there should give us hope! I’m grateful for the growth toward a fully open heart, even if the work Heaven had to do caused me some discomfort in letting go of old beliefs. Gosh I can remember getting all huffy and obstinate! LOL.
I want to tell you that I read a book about a Catholic Mystic, Maria Schimma. Now, my missionary sister presented this, so I was wary. I did some research, and what I read gave me the nudge to get it. Roberta! Aside from the obvious “Catholic-y” input from the author (wrote many books on Medjugorje) and Maria being educated only through grade school and reliant on her pastor, what she is saying ALIGNS with After life research, like Seek Reality! I was so happy! She says WE are our judges on our life! That God is Love and will not judge us; that even if we choose punishment in a lower state, we CAN and SHOULD ask for help, that we are always connected and can help, that forgiveness is at the core of opening to Love, that we must embrace all faiths because God is found everywhere! I was so so happy to see this which means my sister who has been on the Catholic conservative soap box for awhile can step down as she has read it too! But more importantly, don’t you think this also means that Jesus and The Light Gang have been working in every corner and fruits of the labor are growing stronger? Maria got her info from the souls she was helping; she explained they were in an upper of the “purgatory” level (she was Catholic so she used that term) but she was clear that they all said they put themselves there or lower. She helped non Catholics too.
I was just excited because the work you’re doing is most definitely not in vain.
Oh wow, my dear lovely Fran, thank you for sharing this!!
Fran: Would like to know more about Maria Schimma. Do you remember the name of the book?
Hi Lola-
I ordered from Amazon though it comes from the Catholic Bookshop.
“Get Us Out of Here!”
By Nicky Eltz and Maria Simma.
You will cross much conservative Catholic stuff as the author is a staunch Medjugorje supporter. But I just focused on what Maria said.
Hi Lola –
I ordered from Amazon though it comes from the Catholic Bookshop.
“Get Us Out of Here!”
By Nicky Eltz and Maria Simma.
You will cross much conservative Catholic stuff as the author is a staunch Medjugorje supporter. But I just focused on what Maria said.
Hi Roberta,
I was wondering what Jesus would say when it comes to people taking advantage of others. If I were to feel like some were taking advantage of me, would it be best to walk away from those without any bad feelings?
I’m trying to figure out when it is better to distance myself from others or if I need to change the way I think and continue interacting with those people.
Thanks!
Thomas
No, my dear much-beloved Thomas, I always feel that it is best to love and bless and withdraw in such situations, for the sake of your own peace.