November
15, 2006
Atrocities
In God’s Name? Don’t Blame God
The state
of Ohio recently executed a man who professed to be a prophet of God for
the execution-style slaying of a family of five, including a
seven-year-old girl.
Jeffrey
Lundgren told the jury that God commanded him to kill Dennis and Cheryl
Avery and their three daughters - reportedly because the Averys didn’t
display enough of the right kind of faith to suit Mr. Lundgren.
People like
Mr. Lundgren give God a bad name – or so I believed at one time.
The
bloodstained history of the world’s religions prompted me (and many
others) to the opposite extreme of denying God altogether. If people can
murder, discriminate, rape and commit all manner of mayhem against
others in the name of God (or Allah, or whomever), then it’s a nasty
good riddance. Who needs that kind of vengeful, wrathful God?
I dismissed
God, angry and disgusted at the divisive, judgmental religious rules and
“thou shalt nots” promulgated and enforced in God’s name.
I don’t
feel that way anymore. Twenty years ago, God’s unconditional love
touched me and helped me transform my life, addressing and healing many
soul-deep emotional and spiritual wounds. The God I have come to know,
however, has never directed me as to how other people should believe,
live, think, do or feel. It’s flat out none of my business.
Instead,
God and I discuss our own relationship, my need and desire to be more
whole, the issues in my life, God’s joy at my emotional and spiritual
healing steps. We often end up giggling and finger painting a sunset. I
take the browns and purples and pink tones, while God chimes in with the
golds, yellows, oranges and crimson hues. We’re a pretty good team.
When God
and I speak, I feel complete love and acceptance from God exactly the
way I am. If God accepts me with all my (human-designated)
imperfections, how can I not do likewise? And why then should I care
what other people think about me?
Through my
private conversations with God, I have come to understand and accept
that free will gives us the right to question God, to blame God, to
disavow God. Ironically, when God bestowed free will upon us, it came
with the right to throw God away.
Yet I know
that eventually, I was not able to function or to heal myself without
God. And in the course of healing my wounds, I also came to experience
the huge difference between human-made dogmas and doctrines and the
reality of God.
God is love
- unconditional love. That means God is love without limitations,
conditions, standards, expectations of any kind attached to that love.
We merit that love simply because we exist as created souls, not because
we believe certain things, look a certain way, eat certain foods, are a
certain skin color, gender or sexual orientation or follow a certain
creed.
My
experience of God’s love leaves me doubtful that any one person has the
one and only hotline to God. After all, I found my way to God by a
highly unconventional route, yet I still got there. And if I can find
and speak with God and feel God’s unconditional love, surely anyone else
can do so, too.
Somewhere,
in some other world perhaps, there are colorful sunsets with God’s and
my names on them.
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