R E V E L A T I O N

As I grew older, I thus began my quest to find a church where the laws were more of God, and not of man’s ego. I have found several that have come close, “The Church of Religious Science”, “Unity Church”, and “The Teaching of the Inner Christ”. Yet none ever seemed to be solely based on God’s laws. They all seem to put their own human laws in, which was disheartening to me. Was there no church that was of God’s laws, only? In 1978, I decided to begin my ministerial education and now am an ordained minister. Though I have yet to find a church that does not have some sort of rules and regulations based on their own desires. I do not believe that God has laws, rules and regulations on how we should live; the 10 commandments are a guideline only, but the Golden Rule is something we really need to live by. So to me organized religion is just that…organized!…..like any other corporation.

There are several ‘religious’ concepts that I absolutely don’t believe in:
– I don’t believe in sin. I think it is “Self Inflicted Nonsense”. The word sin, itself, is an ancient Greek word used solely by the archers and means ‘missing the mark’. Besides that didn’t Jesus die for our ‘sins’? If we are sinners then his death was in vain. We do make mistakes and some commit crimes, but they are crimes and mistakes. Just remember and say this to yourself “God loves me mistakes and all!”.

– I don’t believe in SOME of the Bible. It has been translated so many times and all by humans, who put their own egos in it, which caused it to be contradicting Example: Exodus 21:16 and Exodus 21: 20-21. The first one says if you steal a man, whether you sell him or are found in possession of him you will be put to death. The second one says if you strike your slave, male or female, with a rod and he dies you shall be punished, but if the slave survives a day or two you won’t be punished because the slave was your money. So if you steal a human you are killed, but if you beat a slave and he lives for a day or two then dies you won’t be punished because of the loss of income???? WHAT???? How can that possibly be? I’ve asked priests and ministers about this and just get a sing song answer.

– I don’t believe in the devil. I really think this is an excuse humans use in order not to take responsibility for their actions “the devil made me do it”; first said by Flip Wilson in the 1960s. God gave each of us the beautiful gift of ‘free will’ (free choice), which means no one can make our choices for us….unless we choose to let them. We were taught from the Bible, Sunday School and Mass the devil was a fallen angel and destroyed by God. Well, if God destroyed the devil what makes anyone think he is back again? Or that God would allow him to come back again? I doubt very seriously God would allow the devil to ‘resurrect’ after destroying him. It makes no sense at all. (A personal human experience. I love ice cream and would love to eat it everyday. Now, it isn’t the devil who puts this desire before me, but my own mind of something I like, but I know eating it everyday would make me a big as a house. So I only eat it occasionally and the devil has no part in when I choose to eat ice cream. Thus it would really be asinine for me to blame the devil for the times I do eat it. The same holds true when a person steals a car. They make the choice to do so; not the devil.

– I don’t believe in hell. In the Bible it talks about God destroying the devil and hell. I believe our lives on Earth can be that hell, if not lived with great love in God and turning our backs on what we know is wrong. Just like the days I eat ice cream I could say I created my own hell by choosing to feel guilty for eating it (btw, I never feel guilty about eating ice cream. I simply feel it is a choice I made; nothing more nothing less.). Any time we feel guilty about something we have done or about to do we are creating ‘hell’. So if you are going to eat ice cream make sure you don’t lay guilt on yourself or you will find yourself in your own self formed hell. If you are going to steal a car just don’t do it because you are harming another and deserve all the hell that can be formed.

– I don’t believe priests and nuns should not be allowed to marry. They were humans before nuns and priests and how unjust for the church to deny their humanness. Furthermore, how in the world can a priest or nun counsel marriage partners when they have never experienced the dynamics of being married or intricacies involved in a marriage?

– I don’t believe in karma debts from one life to the next. I do believe in karmic lessons from one life to another, but only to learn from in this life. I also believe in ‘what you sow you reap’; you commit a crime and you go to jail and if you don’t get caught you are probably living miserably (poor, unhappy with yourself and surroundings, addicted to drugs, in a miserable relationship or marriage and the list goes on). What you reap happens in this life; not future lives. And when it happens one has just created hell; their own personal hell. So make sure you sow good seeds. Additionally, can you imagine a precious innocent baby being born with a bunch of ‘karma debt’. Our Creator loves ALL His/Her children and would never let a baby be born with ‘debt’ of any kind. Yes the baby is born with ‘karma lessons’ and other ‘lessons’ to learn; like crying when they are hungry, need to be changed or simply held. As they grow the lessons become more difficult; i.e. crawling, walking, potty training, but these are lessons we all had to learn. Then there are the bigger lessons that begin – the ones we didn’t learn in previous lives.

I truly believe in God and know that everything in my life, including each breath I take, is a gift from Him. When I communicate with Him it is by prayer. In addition I believe in Jesus, The Holy Spirit, The Blessed Virgin Mary, God’s angels and the saint, but when I communicate with them I talk to them; not pray to them. Throughout writings Jesus requested to be acknowledged as our brother. Though he simply learned how to let go of lack, limitation, doubt, fear, worry, guilt, and I have not. Spiritually he was FAR more advanced than I or any other human on this planet.

I also acknowledge other religious beings; such as Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha and all religions. I believe that the basis of all religions are the same. I’ve had many conversations with people of most religions and have come to the conclusion that we are all sisters and brothers, but just have different ways of expressing the path to our Creator. Remember at one time all humans spoke the same language. Read Genesis 11:1 – 9 about the Tower of Babel when our Creator assigned different languages to His children.

I never really felt that we, as humans, are really all that bad. We just make mistakes and furthermore we are allowed to! After all, isn’t that what part of being a human is…..to learn lessons? IMHO, being able to make mistakes and learn from them is how we, hopefully, grow closer to God and to ourselves. Through trial and error is how we grow and develop our “Spiritual Path”. Jesus’ had trials and errors to go through to become closer to God. One such trial was when he had to spend 40 days in the desert fighting temptations. Each of us that learned how to ride a bicycle when though trial, errors and temptation of giving up. But when we finally got it we were so thrilled by our accomplishment; hence grew closer to ourselves. We loved our success because it gave us a new sense of freedom and a fun way to travel the neighborhood with greater ease…..and as a bonus we created an excellent form of exercise; though I doubt many kids thought in this exercise venue. 😉

Our quests are few and simple; though we have a problem with it’s simplicity because we think life it supposed to be difficult. (It is, but only when we do the wrong thing.)
– Quest in life we are to rise above all temptation that we know is wrong; to let the 10 commandments be a guide for us and live by the Golden Rule; to treat others as we want to be treated; to accept others as they are; and to bring harm to no one.

– Quest let go of the ego and come from a place that is of love. Have you ever heard the expression “there are three sides to every argument”? It’s true. There the side of person one; the side of person two and then there is the truth”. The truth is seeing the situation without ego.

– Quest don’t be the judge of others because their skin color is different, their religion is different, customs or culture are different or their sexual preferences are different. Ours is to live in peace and harmony together as God meant us to live. Besides that, how interesting to learn the uniqueness of each of us. And how boring if we were all alike. One Planet; One People; With Amazingly Wonderful Diversity! My grandmother used to say “If everyone looked in the mirror and judged how they could make the person they see a better person then they wouldn’t have time to judge others”.