"You will NEVER come to truly know God until you forget who you once thought He was."
Okay. It's Christmas time and there are a lot of people out celebrating a lot of different things. Some say that Christ Jesus is the reason for the season. Others say that Christ was merely a prophet; just a man with a whole bunch of wisdom. Still others say they believe something of the nature of Christianity took place, but they are not sure if Christ was that something. (However, not many of them forego the opportunity to take Christmas vacation time, take advantage of the "holiday" sales, Christmas bonuses, etc., but we won't go there today!) But still, there's a growing population of people who believe there is no such thing as God. And after learning what is being taught out there by those who claim to believe, I don't blame them. Let me explain:
Unfortunately, most who claim to witness for God don't even know who God is (John 4:21-24). They go to church, learn and memorize the stories about Him--without having any real understanding of what the stories mean--and then begin to passionately teach what they don't truly understand to others! If I didn't know God, which I do very well, I'd be turned off by such debauchery myself! They teach God as Santa, who makes a list of who's been naughty or nice, and either blesses them with a bunch of material things and money, or withholds gifts from them for merely being human! Or, more popularly, they teach Him as this Great Troll in the sky who casts people into hell for not following the rules as outlined by religion. Well, He's neither.
There are those who have part of His story right, just not enough. The problem is that they teach God as a physical being who is all caught up in the physicality of this world. For example, those who go to certain churches, and I will say no names, where what should be a simple prayer lasts for 20 to 30 minutes. Well, that's a long time to be standing there with your eyes closed, praying with someone who really doesn't even mean what he's saying. (He's typically doing it for show or saying what he thinks he should be saying because he's heard it all somewhere before!) Jesus spoke about these repetitious babblers in Matthew the 6th chapter, beginning at verse 5, although it won't hurt to start at 1. God is not caught up on the physical things we do, good or bad. He is concerned about who we are and what we do spiritually--that means how what we do forms in our hearts and minds-- our motive. When you do a good deed, for example, you connect or disconnect with God at the thought and the belief of why you're doing what you do--not at the action itself. When you pray, He feels the sincerity of the prayer from your heart, He's not connected to your words at all. Newsflash, He doesn't understand them anyway. This is not His language. Read Romans 8:26-30. The real God doesn't even expect us to KNOW what to say. He gets our fallibility as humans. He just expects us to want to say something, He will teach us the rest. That makes no sense to you? Then try this: what drives you to pray is the request for something. He doesn't expect you to know how to put that request into perfect words or the format of the Divine. The fact that you want to speak to Him at all is what bends His ear.
I think the most confusing part of understanding God is that we're taught that He's everywhere, but how can that be? God is a Spirit; not a human. Spirit doesn't have the physical limitations of a body, therefore, it can be in the United States and in Paris at the same time. Kind of like spreading Christmas cheer. If I'm in the spirit of Christmas and I greet someone at a store, for example. If I'm cheerful enough and share an exciting moment with the person I greeted, when I leave, that person is going to be cheerful, too. We are now sharing the same excitement. That person goes home and calls a friend and shares the story of having spent that exciting moment with the happy stranger at the store. The friend spreads it to his/her spouse...get it? And so it is with God. And yes, it is that simple, but religion and church has used scare tactics, rather than the excitement of God, for the purposes of controlling their congregations/parishioners over the centuries, and have turned Godliness into a very, scary thing. Because of this, things have been spinning out of control for far too long, passing the fear of what God will do to you if you don't serve Him down through the generations. Who wants to serve a troll?
So now, we have to forget what we've been taught about Him by those who were scared and start all over. Are you ready? Here goes:
God is synonymous with good. God is the Spirit of everything that is truly good. From the sincere "Good Morning" to a stranger, to the visiting of an old friend who could just use a pick me up (without you judging his situation), to the anonymous donating of time, energy or even money to families in need at a time such as this. It is God in the heart--good in the heart--that carries God from one place to the next--not the following of religious rules or practices spawned by the fear of a god you serve, but don't even know. So He is the reason for the season. This year, take some time to find out WHO you're celebrating; not what. Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 21, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Who Told You That?
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when we try to achieve the lies we believe."
We've all heard the story of the woman who, in preparing her pot roast, cut it down to the point of throwing away most of the meat before cooking it, right? When asked why she did that, her reply was, "I don't know. That's the way my mom always did it." And deeper into the story you find out that the mom had to do it that way because she didn't have a pan big enough to cook the meat in. The moral of that story is that if you blindly believe everything told to you, you will live your whole lifetime doing a bunch of really dumb stuff. We've all seen The Water Boy, right? In case you haven't, the main character in the movie is a 31 year old mama's boy who has never left home because his mother has abandonment issues. Rather than preparing him for life, she basically made and kept him dumb because she didn't want him to grow up and leave her. (You all know why alligators are ornery, right? Mama said it's cuz dey got all dem teeth and no toothbrush. Ha! That cracks me up every time I see that movie. Yes, I'll admit it. I've watched it more than once!) She lied to him and told him his dad died because he needed water and couldn't get any. He died of "the dehydration". Because of this, the water boy became obsessed with providing water to people who showed signs of needing it; primarily for football teams. His mother lied and his whole life was built around her stretching and far-fetching of the truth. Needless to say, the dad was alive and well. He showed up in the end.
As sad as it is, our society is filled with water boys and water girls because we never ask questions about any of the things we're taught. We believe what we're told by those we feel we can trust, but never go beyond that. Then we have kids and pass down to them what we believe, then they have kids. And so on and so on. As a result, not a whole lot of us know a whole lot of anything! We just do the ridiculous things we're taught to do, thinking that anyone who opposes us does so because of our gender, race, color, religion, or financial status. (Ouch. I know that may have hurt but, it's the truth.) We all know, for example, that most people's religious beliefs are passed down to them from their parents. We also know that many of the young republican children who express a dislike for my president, Barack Obama, aren't even old enough to vote, let alone understand the politics they so freely discuss. There are white people who feel entitled to a supreme or superior life as their minority counterparts feel they are being held down by "the white man". (I'll never forget the conversation I had back in the day with a young Black man at a bus stop who had just applied for work at a retail store. He expressed to me that he didn't feel he'd get the job because he was black. I remember trying to decide whether or not I was going to try to help him to understand that the wife beater and sagging jeans he was wearing probably had a lot to do with it, but then the red bandanna on his head seemed to come alive. I knew then that he wasn't going to hear what I had to say, so I just nodded my head as if I agreed with him! Sometimes there's really nothing you can say!) I also remember looking at the letters in an advice column one day, and stumbling across a letter that really blew my mind. I didn't think it was real, but now that I am a little more experienced and a lot older, I know it was. The writer was asking the advisor why her dark skinned best friend didn't understand why she didn't have first pick of the men they met. She wrote that "everybody knows that darker skinned women had to take the light skinned girls leftovers!" My mind was absolutely blown then, but I know now that there are people who actually believe that!
Okay, so people believe a lot of stupid stuff. We all know that. And you want to know what the problem is with that, right? People should be allowed to believe what they want to believe, right? WRONG! People build their entire lives around what they believe, so if they believe a lie, they will set out to achieve it. Nothing good can possibly come out of that; just a tangled web of lies, confusion and deceit, among other things. Let's look at a couple of examples:
We are taught that Christmas is the season that is the merriest of the year, but it isn't. Somebody lied! It's the season where depression is highest. If you believe the lie, put on a happy face, knowing inside you feel like crap, don't get frustrated when you feel like no one notices that you're in pain. If you are the one who is lying by playing the big baller Santa role, lavishing expensive gifts upon folks, and ending up in debt because you really couldn't afford to spend what you did, don't be mad at others when they expect you to do the same next year! You know that catching the bills up after the holiday may prove difficult or even impossible for you, but guess what? If you're that kind of liar, rather than spending within your means or saying you can't afford it, you will turn around and do the same thing the following Christmas. Newsflash: the debt is not the worst part of this tangled web; it's the reputation you set for yourself. If you always can, others will always expect you to!
Some are taught that perfection in this life is attainable if you join a church and follow all of the rules of the religion. Because of this, millions of people live in fear of being cast into hell because they know they are not able to follow the rules like the teachers of the law can. For the teachers of that religious law, Jesus spoke against this very hypocrisy in the very Gospel you preach (Matthew 23: 1-12). Newsflash: going to church doesn't mean you won't have any of the issues the rest of us have. God said He would rebuke the fowler for your sake; He didn't say your enemy wouldn't come. You're going to have challenges like the rest of us, but that doesn't mean that God isn't with you; it just means you need to rely on God to get you through them. If you start that lie of perfection in your life, others in your world will hold you to that standard, and they are not kind when you fail. So do yourself a favor. Don't strive to be perfect; it's not humanly possible and the pressure of it can be unbearable. Strive to be perfect-ed, for only God can perfect you!
If you're the psuedo-wealthy or the psuedo-educated one, just stop! In order to keep up your facade, you walk, talk, and behave in ways that even a blind man would be able to see right through. Stop lying! The jig is up. We can see you! You're the female carrying the Michael Kors, Dooney and Burke, Burberry, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Brahmin, Fossil, etc. bag with the J.C. Penney or Target outfit on. No offense to anyone who shops at those two stores cuz I do, too. (Oh, stop acting like you don't know about Merona!) I just won't wear an accessory that cost one hundred times my outfit! If you're that person who buys cars and houses you can't afford in an attempt to impress people who really couldn't care less about how you live, stop lying to yourself and others. Stop weaving webs or causing others to express their Spidey instincts! (Okay. I know that was corny, but I had to say it once!)
If you're the person who uses a bunch of five dollar words that no one knows the meaning of except you, STOP! You are really annoying! And who really knows or cares whether or not you're using them in the right context? The tangled web? Once you get started, it's hard to stop. You stress yourself out trying to be someone or something you're not, and before long, you'll convince yourself that others are putting too much pressure on you. Not only that, if you act like you're more intelligent than you are, others will expect you to know stuff that you don't. And you might play that role for a while, but eventually you'll get caught. Someone is going to put you on the spot, and when it's discovered that you don't know much, those you lied to will be relentless.
Now, the moment of truth. Ask yourself the following questions: Am I a water boy/girl? What lies do I believe that are causing the struggle in my life? What does my web look like? Then do what those who want to rise above the stupidity do: educate yourself. Read some books. Watch T.V. that's not smut T.V.? Watch something of substance. (Did you know that the male lion will kill a female's cub if it's not his and he wants to mate with her? I learned that during National Geographic's Big Cat Week.) Take classes that aren't underwater firefighting level. Use your computer, smartphone, iPad, handheld device to research something of substance on the internet, and finally, stop believing the lies others tell you so you can stop weaving the very trap you will find yourself caught up in.
We've all heard the story of the woman who, in preparing her pot roast, cut it down to the point of throwing away most of the meat before cooking it, right? When asked why she did that, her reply was, "I don't know. That's the way my mom always did it." And deeper into the story you find out that the mom had to do it that way because she didn't have a pan big enough to cook the meat in. The moral of that story is that if you blindly believe everything told to you, you will live your whole lifetime doing a bunch of really dumb stuff. We've all seen The Water Boy, right? In case you haven't, the main character in the movie is a 31 year old mama's boy who has never left home because his mother has abandonment issues. Rather than preparing him for life, she basically made and kept him dumb because she didn't want him to grow up and leave her. (You all know why alligators are ornery, right? Mama said it's cuz dey got all dem teeth and no toothbrush. Ha! That cracks me up every time I see that movie. Yes, I'll admit it. I've watched it more than once!) She lied to him and told him his dad died because he needed water and couldn't get any. He died of "the dehydration". Because of this, the water boy became obsessed with providing water to people who showed signs of needing it; primarily for football teams. His mother lied and his whole life was built around her stretching and far-fetching of the truth. Needless to say, the dad was alive and well. He showed up in the end.
As sad as it is, our society is filled with water boys and water girls because we never ask questions about any of the things we're taught. We believe what we're told by those we feel we can trust, but never go beyond that. Then we have kids and pass down to them what we believe, then they have kids. And so on and so on. As a result, not a whole lot of us know a whole lot of anything! We just do the ridiculous things we're taught to do, thinking that anyone who opposes us does so because of our gender, race, color, religion, or financial status. (Ouch. I know that may have hurt but, it's the truth.) We all know, for example, that most people's religious beliefs are passed down to them from their parents. We also know that many of the young republican children who express a dislike for my president, Barack Obama, aren't even old enough to vote, let alone understand the politics they so freely discuss. There are white people who feel entitled to a supreme or superior life as their minority counterparts feel they are being held down by "the white man". (I'll never forget the conversation I had back in the day with a young Black man at a bus stop who had just applied for work at a retail store. He expressed to me that he didn't feel he'd get the job because he was black. I remember trying to decide whether or not I was going to try to help him to understand that the wife beater and sagging jeans he was wearing probably had a lot to do with it, but then the red bandanna on his head seemed to come alive. I knew then that he wasn't going to hear what I had to say, so I just nodded my head as if I agreed with him! Sometimes there's really nothing you can say!) I also remember looking at the letters in an advice column one day, and stumbling across a letter that really blew my mind. I didn't think it was real, but now that I am a little more experienced and a lot older, I know it was. The writer was asking the advisor why her dark skinned best friend didn't understand why she didn't have first pick of the men they met. She wrote that "everybody knows that darker skinned women had to take the light skinned girls leftovers!" My mind was absolutely blown then, but I know now that there are people who actually believe that!
Okay, so people believe a lot of stupid stuff. We all know that. And you want to know what the problem is with that, right? People should be allowed to believe what they want to believe, right? WRONG! People build their entire lives around what they believe, so if they believe a lie, they will set out to achieve it. Nothing good can possibly come out of that; just a tangled web of lies, confusion and deceit, among other things. Let's look at a couple of examples:
We are taught that Christmas is the season that is the merriest of the year, but it isn't. Somebody lied! It's the season where depression is highest. If you believe the lie, put on a happy face, knowing inside you feel like crap, don't get frustrated when you feel like no one notices that you're in pain. If you are the one who is lying by playing the big baller Santa role, lavishing expensive gifts upon folks, and ending up in debt because you really couldn't afford to spend what you did, don't be mad at others when they expect you to do the same next year! You know that catching the bills up after the holiday may prove difficult or even impossible for you, but guess what? If you're that kind of liar, rather than spending within your means or saying you can't afford it, you will turn around and do the same thing the following Christmas. Newsflash: the debt is not the worst part of this tangled web; it's the reputation you set for yourself. If you always can, others will always expect you to!
Some are taught that perfection in this life is attainable if you join a church and follow all of the rules of the religion. Because of this, millions of people live in fear of being cast into hell because they know they are not able to follow the rules like the teachers of the law can. For the teachers of that religious law, Jesus spoke against this very hypocrisy in the very Gospel you preach (Matthew 23: 1-12). Newsflash: going to church doesn't mean you won't have any of the issues the rest of us have. God said He would rebuke the fowler for your sake; He didn't say your enemy wouldn't come. You're going to have challenges like the rest of us, but that doesn't mean that God isn't with you; it just means you need to rely on God to get you through them. If you start that lie of perfection in your life, others in your world will hold you to that standard, and they are not kind when you fail. So do yourself a favor. Don't strive to be perfect; it's not humanly possible and the pressure of it can be unbearable. Strive to be perfect-ed, for only God can perfect you!
If you're the psuedo-wealthy or the psuedo-educated one, just stop! In order to keep up your facade, you walk, talk, and behave in ways that even a blind man would be able to see right through. Stop lying! The jig is up. We can see you! You're the female carrying the Michael Kors, Dooney and Burke, Burberry, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Brahmin, Fossil, etc. bag with the J.C. Penney or Target outfit on. No offense to anyone who shops at those two stores cuz I do, too. (Oh, stop acting like you don't know about Merona!) I just won't wear an accessory that cost one hundred times my outfit! If you're that person who buys cars and houses you can't afford in an attempt to impress people who really couldn't care less about how you live, stop lying to yourself and others. Stop weaving webs or causing others to express their Spidey instincts! (Okay. I know that was corny, but I had to say it once!)
If you're the person who uses a bunch of five dollar words that no one knows the meaning of except you, STOP! You are really annoying! And who really knows or cares whether or not you're using them in the right context? The tangled web? Once you get started, it's hard to stop. You stress yourself out trying to be someone or something you're not, and before long, you'll convince yourself that others are putting too much pressure on you. Not only that, if you act like you're more intelligent than you are, others will expect you to know stuff that you don't. And you might play that role for a while, but eventually you'll get caught. Someone is going to put you on the spot, and when it's discovered that you don't know much, those you lied to will be relentless.
Now, the moment of truth. Ask yourself the following questions: Am I a water boy/girl? What lies do I believe that are causing the struggle in my life? What does my web look like? Then do what those who want to rise above the stupidity do: educate yourself. Read some books. Watch T.V. that's not smut T.V.? Watch something of substance. (Did you know that the male lion will kill a female's cub if it's not his and he wants to mate with her? I learned that during National Geographic's Big Cat Week.) Take classes that aren't underwater firefighting level. Use your computer, smartphone, iPad, handheld device to research something of substance on the internet, and finally, stop believing the lies others tell you so you can stop weaving the very trap you will find yourself caught up in.
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