In some religions the prophets, priests, ministers, teachers, … have called God our Father. That concept of God has infiltrated the very heart of humanity. God became absent from the family circle, becoming the god that provided a physical environment but is out of the picture, while the church (symbolized by womanhood) cared for the needs and told us what to think and feel. My (biological) father was missing from my life. The only things I knew about him were stories told to me by my mother in hopes of keeping me from him. In my life people have told me stories about God for what now seems to be the same reason. Once I accepted responsibility for my relationship with my father, things changed. Once I accepted the responsibility for my relationship with God, things changed. My father is now my father and God is my God.
In the story of Jesus, God played the role of father. Mary was Jesus’ mother. She gave birth to the physical Jesus. She provided the physical environment and training. In the relationship with God (in the role of the father), Jesus received the spiritual. A church provides us with a physical understanding of God and an environment where we can grow. It is up to us to develop a relationship with the spiritual. In the spirit there is no male or female, God is God. It is unfair to put man in the role of the almighty. A man cannot be all knowing, all powerful, or everlasting. It is unfair to humanity for a man to try to be all knowing, all powerful, or everlasting. Man has no special hook into life that grants him God qualities. A man must seek to find and eat to live. He must rest when he is tired. He will age and he will die. It is what is passed on to humanity that remains. That is true of all that lives the mortal life, male or female.
I shall place no other gods before God. I shall not place myself, another mortal, works of mortal hands, nor a church before God. God is God, I am not. What I am is something that is part of the greater being, I am not the being. A single part is not greater than the whole or any other part. Each has its own place in the whole and its own needs. God is both mother and father of my spiritual existence and will be treated with love and respect.
The earth is a gift from my spiritual mother and father, passed to me by my mortal mother and father. The mortal’s home is where I walk as I move through the first heaven. Everything around the mortal protects and decays. The food, water, and air the mortal requires for life moves it towards death. I am in this mortal life, it is not in me. My house is this mortal body. I am not a mortal body with a soul, but a soul living in a mortal body.
My God is being used as a reason to oppress humanity under the rule of freedom. All humanity must be oppressed so that every individual can be free. And the cost of those protecting our oppression is high and laid directly on our backs. Great is as great can posses. And the acquisitions of the great are destroying my home. We must have the great. They give us meaningful existence in our attempt to imitate their greatness and they give us the monies we use to pay them to destroy my home. Great, I am not. My wish is that it is never said that this one is/was great, only that this one cared and cried.
My God is not oppression nor possession. My God cries within you. Open your ears and hear. Open your eyes and let the tears fall. Open the doors of your house and let your soul be free. The mortal’s home is your home also. My God is God, there is no other. There are other places and other paths that need tending and other ways of talking about God, but there is only God. Christianity was my path to God, being that the forgiving of my wanderings from my path were shown to me by the teachings of those that followed Jesus of Christ. My soul and the greater spirit put me on the path and light the way. There is no blame other than what we lay on ourselves and our attempts to control others by their wanderings. Forgiveness belongs to the wanderer not the witness. We must forgive ourselves to be forgiven. We must forgive others in our heart (because their forgiveness is not ours, we steal it if we lay claim to it) to be free
© 1996 Tim D. Coulter Sr.