July 16, 2006
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Martin Luther King, Jr., in being asked to publish some of his sermons, wrote in the preface to his book, ““. . . a sermon is directed toward the listening ear rather than the reading eye. . . I offer these discourses in the hope that a message may come to life for readers of the printed words.”” This is my hope for you, dear reader.
——Rev. Linda
SPIRITUALITY IN TOMORROW’S WORLD:
THE NEW GOD
Sufi scholar Henry Korba says that the God of western monotheism is actually an idol. Carl Jung asked if God is a neurosis. And Meister Eckert said, “God save me from God.”
This morning we continue our series Spirituality in Tomorrow’s World with The New God. What about the old God? Is nothing sacred?
Brother Matthew, a monk who was for the first time far away from home, and walked into a monastery. But he noticed right away that this was very different from the monasteries he was used to. And he became very curious about the religion these strange people were practicing, so he got permission from the abbot to do some exploring.
As he entered the first corridor of the monastery, he heard a soft, distant sound of eerie, chant-like singing and set off to investigate. His search led him eventually to a large heavy closed door; so he opened this portal a crack and peeked inside.
The room was huge, even bigger than the main cathedral in his home city. In the very center there was a large altar with the numeral 0 engraved on it; above the altar hung a huge banner that just read “NIX” 0.
All around the altar, white-robed people knelt, uttering prayers to the Great Nullity and singing hymns to the Blessed Emptiness.
The young Matthew was shocked. He watched for a moment, then turned to a white-robed worshiper beside him and demanded, “Is nothing sacred?”
If we’re creating a new God, what about the old one? Was It not sacred?
In Tomorrow’s God, Neale Donald Walsch writes about 9 characteristics of the new God. The first one is that the new God doesn’t require anyone to believe in God. (p. 22) All that talk about if you don’t believe you’ll be doomed—right out the window. You don’t even have to believe in God.
2. The new God is without gender, size, shape, color, or any of the characteristics of an individual living being. (p. 23) Our anthropomorphic ideas of God that make God humanoid will be gone. No more old man in the sky, or mother in the sky.
3. The new God talks with everyone, all the time. (p. 27) Are you aware that God is talking to you? Right now. That you are precious to God? That God is routing for us to wake up from our sleeping stupor and live our lives in the grandeur and splendor we were meant to live in?
4. The new God is separate from nothing, but is Everywhere Present, the All in All, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Sum Total of Everything that ever was, is now, and ever shall be. (p. 32) We are not separate from God. Everything is God. God is everything. And we must begin to really live as if we are not separate from anything or anyone. God is not separate from Its creation. The creator and the creation are one and the same. So what we do to another, we do to ourselves. Period. We’re not separate.
It is this unity that will change the world. It’s been the ”missing message” of so much of the world’s religions. But it’s this oneness, this at-one-ness that will bring, is bringing, about the day of atonement, the day of at-one-ment.
And it’s fast approaching as more and more people wake up to this truth.
But we must work together as a collective. “The day of the individual teacher has passed, and the time of the single master is over. It is now time to work together in multiple numbers. . .” to reach critical mass when the consciousness will shift. (p. 37) When we know we are one with each other, we’ll no longer be able to hurt each other, because we’ll be hurting ourselves.
5. The new God is not a singular Super Being, but the extraordinary process called Life. (p. 71) (Read pp. 66-69)
6. The new God is ever changing. (p. 76) And it’s a gosh darn good thing It is! Because yesterday’s God was a pretty brutal beast, who would turn against us at the slightest thing and throw us into a fiery pit to burn for eternity for not much of a good reason. It’s our understanding of God that’s changing.
But guess what. Change is another word for God, because “Life is a process of Change.” (p. 76) So God is changeless in the fact that It is ever changing, always expanding and becoming. This is the process we call evolution.
7. The new God is needless. (p. 169) God doesn’t need us, and we don’t need God. We are not needy beings. And God is not a needy God. We need nothing. We already have everything. We don’t need Life. We ARE Life.
8. The new God does not ask to be served, but It is the Servant of all of Life. (p. 180) When you serve Life, Life serves you, because you and Life are one, and service to Life is service to you. That is why God’s job is to serve you.”
And lastly, 9. The new God is unconditionally loving, nonjudgmental, non-condemning, and non-punishing. (p. 196) Just to say unconditional love is silly, because if it’s conditional, it’s not love. Life and Love are interchangeable. Does Life judge or condemn or punish? No judgement day, no death.
The New God. How can God be new? Does God get old?
So “. . . what we are talking about here is not a new God, but a new experience of the ‘old’ God.” (p. 21)
Well, God got old for me. And It gets new all the time. We put off the old and put on the new. We have to keep recreating our idea of what God is to make it relevant to our lives.
Carl Jung says that once the gods have abandoned a temple, they never return to it. Think about that. It’s quite a statement. Has God ever abandoned your temple? Well, the old God I used to believe in abandoned mine. It slipped away gradually, and then was banished.
It all started when I was a teenager. I was attending a very conservative Baptist church and becoming uncomfortable with some of the things I was being told, like it was a sin to dance, but it was okay to roller skate arm in arm. I just couldn’t believe God cared about that.
About that time my parents became interested in and I started learning about the Mormon church, which I eventually joined. This was a good thing because it expanded my ideas about God. But after about a year, I started questioning things I was being told. And I couldn’t understand why it was a sin to do the twist when I first joined, and then later the prophet said now it was okay. Did God change his mind about it? Did God even care about such a silly thing as that?
Then as a senior in high school I started studying metaphysics through Christian Science. And that really changed the way I thought about God. God was no longer a male, sky God, but was Principle, Truth, Mind, Love, Life. That was a difficult switch for me, one that took me many years to firmly establish in my mind.
But when I was in my 30s, I went through a traumatic divorce, through which I lost all faith in God. And I became an atheist for a while, then an agnostic for several years. And this was good because it allowed me to really empty out so many of those old beliefs I had. God truly did abandon my temple.
Then several years later, I found the Science of Mind and Spirit and I knew I was home again. It made sense to me. I could relate to this God I was being introduced to.
I believe we all have our journeys to understanding that have brought us to where we are today. The old ideas are constantly falling away, and new ones taking their place. In the end, we can’t ever really know what God is because It’s always expanding and evolving. It’s Consciousness, It’s Life. Can we know Consciousness? Can we know Life? The best we can do is to know ourselves. Because that Is God.
I believe we’ve come to the earth at this time to help make this consciousness shift, to be part of the critical mass that will make it happen. And I honor each and every one of you for being here and doing this work. It’s not easy. It’s not an easy time to be here on this planet. But together—and I believe we must do it together—we can make the changes in our thinking. We can create the new God, which really isn’t a new God, but a new experience of Life.
