The Substance of Faith

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For many, a declaration of faith is an affirmation of belief in the truth of a religious system. When they say they have faith in God, they are likely referring to the concept of God portrayed in that particular belief system.   

Faith, as a faculty, is active even if we adopt no religious preferences. The atheist, for example, has faith that there is no God. Let’s look at this familiar statement from Jesus to illustrate the point.

Whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Mark 11:23

The mountain, of course, can be any seeming unsurmountable challenge. We can just as easily have faith that nothing we say to the mountain will make any difference. How we exercise our faith, however, makes a major difference in how we behave and what we expect in terms of an outcome. The substance of faith is, therefore, our own attitude, our degree of expectation.

How do we know our degree of expectation? Our first response is usually the best indicator. If there is doubt in our heart, it will show itself immediately. Like the man seeking healing for his son, we say, “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Faith pointed in two different directions is better described as hope. Hoping a thing works out is not the same as releasing all doubt.

We may wonder if our faith affects the way conditions unfold. While there is no record in the Gospels of mountains being cast into the sea, there are plenty of instances where a person’s long-standing condition of ill health changed by their change in faith. For twelve years, a woman suffered with an issue of blood that was cured the instant she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. The faith and money she had previously put in the medical help of her day was apparently diluted with doubt. As she made her way through the crowd to Jesus, her doubt disappeared, and the full force of her faith took over. For the first time in twelve years, her expectation was in her wholeness, and her wholeness is what came through.

We should not concern ourselves with how the substance of faith will manifest, only that it will.      

Who Inspired Jesus?

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It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

John 6:45

When we look at the biblical footnote associated with this passage, we see that Jesus is quoting from the prophet Jeremiah.

“I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach everyone his fellow or everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

This passage, clearly based on the paradigm of oneness, could easily have served as the inspirational model that Jesus followed.  

Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jesus: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21). “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).

Jeremiah: “And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.”

Jesus: “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (Jn 6:45. Direct reference to Jeremiah 31:34).

Jeremiah: “… for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Jesus: And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The son of man (the human being) has the power on earth to forgive sin. The father of the prodigal son did not acknowledge the obvious sins of his son.

The Resurrection Principle

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It is common today to hear people say they are pursuing a spiritual rather than a religious path. Religion, they say, is too restrictive in its scope, that the spiritual perspective allows us to lay aside the preconceived doctrine of the organized church and take a more intuitive and natural approach. I believe Jesus agreed, as he challenged many enshrined rules of Judaism while highlighting the spiritual truth behind the teaching.

I believe if he were alive today, he would call attention to the spiritual truth behind the resurrection story of Easter.   

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

He spoke of the need to be born again, to replace old wineskins with new, to “sell” our current belief system and purchase a field containing treasure, to become as trusting as a child who is not yet loaded down with spiritual preconceptions. All of this points to the need for a revamped and revitalized understanding of our spiritual nature. To be born again is the process of releasing our limited seed-self, that part of our thinking that so identifies with the body that we lose sight of the truth that we are spiritual rather than physical beings.  

From a metaphysical perspective, the crucifixion represents the death of the mortal and the resurrection of the immortal. The immortal soul has always been with us but becomes lost in our personal human quagmire.

How do we consciously resurrect the soul so that it may become the guiding feature of our daily thinking? First and foremost, we begin with the understanding that the soul, as forgotten as it may be, is still fully intact and unscathed even by our most negative thinking or thoughtless acts of unkindness. Our spiritual journey is not about developing or improving the soul but recovering our awareness of it. Our natural desire to do this indicates that we are already picking up on our soul’s natural radiance. Before they call, I will answer, is the soul’s position. We affirm, as Meister Eckhart did, that that which we are looking for is that which is doing the looking.

The Resurrection Principle is at work now. The old way of thinking of yourself is passing right now, and the new light and life of your soul is shining forth. Hold this vision for yourself.

The Beginning of the End

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The event we celebrate as Palm Sunday is the time when Jesus made his final entrance into the city of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. In addition to participating in this important observance, the synoptic gospels report that he drove the money changers out of the Temple. This would almost certainly be considered an act that prompted the Jewish leadership to turn him over to Pilate to be crucified. In other words, his final entry into Jerusalem was the beginning of the end of his earthly ministry. It also represented the beginning of the Christian era.

The Gospel of John has Jesus foretelling this event using this parable:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

In its original context, Jesus the mystic would not likely have used this parable to refer to his own execution. He was illustrating the need for a rebirth in one’s self-perception. Most people saw themselves as a physical body with a soul that is presently separate from God. The mystic would teach people that all people are primarily a soul with a physical body, but existing in a state of absolute unity with God. The grain of wheat dropped into the earth and dying represents a major paradigm shift from separation to oneness with God.

This paradigm shift is graphically illustrated in the crucifixion account of Matthew:

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:5).

This curtain shielded the inner sanctum of the Temple, the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter, meaning the public could not access the presence of God. The tearing in two of this curtain is symbolic of the truth that all people, not just the priesthood, have access to the presence of God. In other words, on our personal cross, the thing that must die is our belief in the paradigm of separation. Affirming our oneness with God is the beginning of the end of our imagined separation from God our Source, and the promise of a spiritual life that is certain to bear much fruit.  

The Gift of Jesus

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When I think of the gift that Jesus brought to the Jewish population of his day, I’m not inclined to think in traditional terms. What I believe he brought was a new way to think of God, man, and the relationship between God and man. He was born into a culture that believed God and man were separate. He taught from what I call the paradigm of oneness: we are one with God. To the average Jew, the kingdom of God was coming someday. To Jesus, the kingdom of God was not only present, but it was also centered within each person.

It is my belief that his message was lost in the movement that followed. A kingdom that can be described in observable terms is much easier to grasp than the rather abstract, inner-oriented model that we find throughout his sayings. With Jesus out of the picture, his original message took on an entirely different meaning that was more in alignment with the Jewish hope for a religious and political revolution.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were so adamant about the belief that God and man were separate that they threatened to stone Jesus for claiming his oneness with God. The Temple contained a sacred room called the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter this inner sanctuary once a year and offer sacrifices on behalf of the people. In other words, the people’s connection with God was made through the priesthood. The gift Jesus offered to the people was to tell them that God was not in a temple made with hands, that every person was, in fact, a temple of God. The connection with God was an inner one.

An important observation that I offer is this: The original teachings of Jesus were firmly grounded in the paradigm of oneness. The teachings of the entire New Testament are firmly grounded in a paradigm of separation. Jesus taught that the kingdom is present and found within each person, the early church taught that the kingdom was coming, and no one knows exactly when.

The gift of Jesus was a new understanding of God, and each person’s relationship of oneness with God.

The Simple Prayer

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“And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Matthew 6:7-8

Emerson described prayer as “the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” A great starting point is the one suggested by Jesus. The Father knows what we need before we ask. From this positive and accepting attitude, we engage in prayer as a two-fold action of releasing and affirming. We release all resistance, all fear, all doubt and we affirm that we have already received that which we ask for in prayer.

As Jesus points out, this activity does not require many words. Prayer is more of an acceptance, a conviction, a shift from want and doubt to a deep sense of knowing that our greater good, in whatever form we seek, is now coming forth.

It’s important that we understand that prayer does not cause God to act. Prayer brings us into alignment with the action of God. If we think of God as the creative life force, we see this as the river that flows in but one direction, from the inside out. Jesus said it isn’t what goes into your mouth but what comes out that matters. This creative process picks up on the frequency of our consciousness. A negative internal environment is a low frequency. As we release this energy and raise our consciousness frequency, things tend to go in our favor. We’re not being rewarded by God, we are being rewarded by working at a God-like frequency.

If your need is healing, release all negative appearances and begin to affirm the healing power of God is flowing in and through you. If you need greater prosperity, let go of your fear of lack and know the perfect abundance of God is pouring through you now. If you are seeking harmony in family or friend relationships, release all appearances to the contrary and affirm the perfect harmony of God is expressing through you and others this very moment.

Prayer as the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view invites us to lift up our spiritual eyes and see the greater good that we seek is flowing in and through us now.

Tapping Into Universal Wisdom

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The Lord created me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work,
    the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up,
    at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

Proverbs 8:22-23

The Old Testament is broken into categories by genre. The OT books that fall into the genre of wisdom literature are grouped together as Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. In this passage from Proverbs, the “me” that the Lord created at the beginning of his work is Wisdom. The Greek word for wisdom is Sophia. If you delve into the Christian Gnostic literature, you find they regarded Sophia as a feminine figure comparable to the human soul. They considered Sophia the female twin of Jesus, the Bride of Christ, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity, and a direct emanation of the godhead.

These metaphors point to the truth that there is no place where God leaves off and we, as individuals, begin. As emanations of the godhead, we are literally infused with the wisdom that was set up before the beginning of the earth.

Emerson said it this way:

“There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. . .. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.”

Wisdom is that which is in alignment with the natural way things work. What Emerson calls “lowly listening” is intuitive or soul-based knowing. It is the harmony demonstrated through the natural world, through the birds of the air and the lilies of the field whose needs are met and who live in perfect peace with their environment.

We tap into universal wisdom by seeing ourselves as an emanation of the godhead. In moments of quiet withdraw from the world, we envision the wisdom of God radiating from the center that is our soul to the circumference that is our life. This simple, heartfelt act opens the natural channel for the light of truth to shine in and through us.

I Am the Door

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In the Gospel of John, we find Jesus saying, “I am the door” (Jn 10:9). Mainstream Christian theology teaches that accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior is the only way to God. In truth, God is accessible to all, regardless of their religious orientation. John is using the voice of Jesus to lend credibility to the teaching of the church.

When I read John, I have found it helpful to think of his voice of Jesus as the voice of my own soul. When he says, “I am the door,” for example, or “I am the way,” I read this as my soul, my spiritual essence as being that door, that way. Our spiritual essence is our only way to God. When Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice,” the sheep represent that part of us that recognizes the genuine inspiration that rises from the depths of our being. It begins as a still small voice but becomes more pronounced as we learn to listen and know.

The door is a powerful metaphor. The front door of your house opens to the interior of your home and it also opens to the limitless outdoors. In Revelation, Jesus is quoted as saying,

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

 In this case, Jesus is not portrayed as the door, but as the one who is knocking and would like to come in. Again, the voice of Jesus is the voice of our soul. The knocking we hear, or actually feel, is our natural urge to open our mind to greater possibilities of being. This is an intuitive knowing, very natural but not widely understood. Jesus says there are thieves and robbers that will try to steal your sheep, meaning there are all kinds of distractions that can take us down paths that lead nowhere. We want our sheep to find rich pasture, or open the door to true spiritual nourishment.

For me, this is the real message coming from John. When we begin to understand our oneness with God, then it becomes clear that the door to God is within us. This is not about Jesus; it’s about each one of us and our developing understanding of the guiding promptings that bring us into firsthand knowledge of our unity with the Infinite.

Empowerment From On High

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When we think of power in connection with God, we may envision the Almighty throwing mountain-splitting lightning bolts, or something of that nature. Or when we think of powerful people, we may think of those who possess great wealth or hold influential positions, such as a political figure.

Spiritual power is quiet. Empowerment from on High is the silent impartation of spiritual revelation. And we should not assume a person is spiritually empowered because of the position they hold. The exact opposite may be the case.

Spiritual power manifests through us as strength. For example, it may require a great deal of strength to admit we are powerless to resolve an addiction, or to control a difficult situation. Now we are moving into the notion of empowerment from on high.

We associate empowerment from on high with vision, the kind that evokes the understanding that we are more than the sum of our perceived resources. When we think of a power greater than ourselves, we do not think of a power outside of ourselves, but as the larger spiritual context that includes us. Empowered by this vision sparks new thoughts, new feelings of greater possibilities, and new strength to take needed action and move forward in creative ways.

We’ve all had moments when we felt we lacked the strength to take even one more step. But from such a place we also know that it can take only a few simple inspirational words of encouragement, spoken or written, to open the floodgates of power. Just a slight shift in the way we’re looking at a situation can bring us strength we didn’t know we had.

Like all of our spiritual resources, power is inherent in the soul. God as power is our underlying, unlimited source. When we feel weak, inadequate to meet that threatening challenge, we become still, take our mind off the appearance, and open ourselves to empowerment from on high. We wait in silence and in peace for the infilling. If it does not come immediately, we get up and go about our life. It is often in unexpected moments that we experience our desired renewal of strength.

The Gospel of Jesus

As our spiritual interest eventually directs us inwardly, we begin to understand that there are two conflicting influences at work within us. One is seeking to gain the world, and the other, our spiritual counterpart, is often drowned out in the hustle of keeping everything together. 

In his parables, Jesus frequently uses pairs of opposites to make this point. He compares a house built on rock with one built on sand. He contrasts the far country with home, the prodigal son and his obedient brother. He speaks of evil treasures and good treasures, sheep and goats, wide and narrow gates, wheat and tares, foolish and wise virgins, light and darkness, water that quenches thirst permanently and water that quenches thirst temporarily. He speaks of those born of the flesh and those born of the spirit. We have statements on God and mammon, good fish and bad fish, rich man and poor man to name a few. In every case we can see these as examples of that part of us that struggles to gain the world (the self-image) and that spiritual center of power (the soul) that is calling us home.

Jesus isn’t contrasting good and bad things. He’s pointing to two levels of consciousness. One rises from the spiritual dimension, the house built on rock. The other has its origin in the senses-driven self-image, the house built on sand. In all of his illustrations, the favorable element refers to the spiritual, while the unfavorable refers to that part of us that interfaces with the material world.

Did Jesus denounce this material interface and encourage his followers to do the same? On one hand, we could present evidence that he did:

And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.[1]

And again, we have this incident:

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.’”[2]

His actions do not bear out that he shunned family and the world. Though scholars suggest his father must have passed sometime before he reached thirty, his mother was with him to the end. He often withdrew from the crowds for prayer and rest, but he always returned to his family and to his public life. According to John, he utters this prayer on behalf of his disciples:

I do not pray that thou should take them out of the world, but that thou should keep them from the evil one.”[3]

We need not think of the evil one as a horned devil wielding a pitchfork determined to steal our soul. Think of it as that blaring distraction that comes through the senses and hinders our quest for a first-hand experience of the Presence. Any proclamation denouncing the world and family is best understood as Jesus acknowledging the soul’s true source. If we are of the world, we are controlled by it. The soul, he is saying, is not of the world but of God. And if we are of God, we take our lead from our intuitive promptings. Our moral compass is set by our understanding of our spiritual status. But we understand and participate in our physical relationships, as did Jesus. Concerning his attitude toward parents, it’s clear that Jesus maintained his native religious values: 

For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.‘”[4]

Our parents gave birth to our body, not to our soul. The soul has its source in God, which is what Jesus is saying here as well: 

And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.”[5]

This is not a put-down to fatherhood, but a reminder that the body, that physical being we see when we look into a mirror, is the offspring of our parents. The I that is the offspring of God, the soul, is the one seeing through the eyes of that physical image peering back at us.  

One might think that if Jesus advocated shunning the world, he would denounce the institution of marriage, a key element in the perpetuation of the human species. From the following passage, it appears that he did not:   

Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female,  and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.[6]

The mystical thread in this passage includes a pair of opposites, but in a different, more complimentary sort of way. Whether it was originally intended, we can understand it as a reference to the mystical union between the intellect (male) and the intuition (female).

The intellect is our interface with the material domain, that fact-gathering logic-based aspect of the mind that is essential to our material interaction. The intuition is our interface with the spiritual domain. This aspect gives us full exposure to our spiritual identity, our spiritual source, our “one Father who is in heaven.”

Before these two are joined in marriage, the intellect wanders the world gathering a storehouse of facts from which it builds its surface identity. The world of appearances is its father and mother. He discovers his intuitive side and the marriage takes place. This is the spiritual awakening of the individual. To say that God has joined these together is to say this is a natural and deeply felt experience, the individual waking to the truth of his or her being and to their full range of perceptual faculties. One who experiences this union cannot be argued away from it. No man (intellectual argument) can put it asunder.

This same dynamic is presented elsewhere in the Gospels. The third chapter of John opens with a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee, Nicodemus. In these passages Jesus makes the distinction between two kinds of people, one who is born of the flesh (the strict intellectual) and one who is born of the spirit (the intuitive). One who is born of the flesh draws his or her identity from the external realm, the body and environment.

It is also difficult to think Jesus encouraged his followers to abandon their children.

Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”[7]

On the physical level we are obviously related to people and we have strong emotional ties to them. Likewise, we have property that is ours to own and enjoy. But spiritually we do not draw our being from either our families or our possessions. Jesus’ invitation to leave them is a rather dramatic way of driving home this critical point.

This makes sense when you treat the you Jesus refers to as the soul, the true essence of the individual. You, the soul, have one Father, one Source, who is in heaven, the spiritual domain. Is this not true? Again, your parents gave birth to your body. But where did your soul come from? It rises from this boundless, omnipotent field of energy we call God. 

Over the years I’ve encountered a number of people who were either criticized or denounced by their families. Their crime? They questioned their religious upbringing and began pursuing a different spiritual path. They were either constantly warned and criticized or shunned altogether. I know a few who were assured in no uncertain terms that they were going to Hell. I’m always a little saddened by this, though not surprised. I’m saddened because people can justify their hard religious attitudes toward their more open-minded family members with sayings like these:  

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law … “[8]

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”[9]

Doesn’t this strike you as a rather odd saying coming from one the world has accepted as Isaiah’s prince of peace?[10] And yet to one who understands the mystical thread of his teachings, you know Jesus is speaking of an internal struggle. The teachings of the inner kingdom, wielding that double-edged sword of Truth, stir and break up our existing worldview.

The notions of an inner and outer kingdom are based on two completely different sets of principles. The first deals with ever-changing external conditions, signs to be observed, while the second deals with changes within one’s own consciousness. There is nothing peaceful about this internal battle between old and new ideas. For most, the notion of an inner kingdom is like new wine being introduced into the old wineskins of an established, senses-based consciousness.

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”[11] 

For one who has spent years looking to the heavens for answers, the shift to the inner, intuitively acquired experience will cause a major stir. The sword is drawn every time you close your eyes and seek that inner stillness, the abode of the Lord of your being.

As we grow in understanding, we become sensitive to being drawn by worldly concerns away from our center of power. We share Paul’s dilemma: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.[12]

The one and only thing that blocks us from seeing the spiritual dimension is our preoccupation with the external part of life.

The Gospel of Jesus in a Nutshell

We have four Gospels about Jesus, but do we have a Gospel of Jesus? For me, the Gospel of Jesus is summarized in the parable of the Prodigal Son.[13] This story provides a superb summary of the entire problem of sin and salvation and I believe it serves quite well as the standard by which we can determine the principles found at the heart of his message.

Luke positions this parable and the two that precede it—the lost coin and the lost sheep—in the early Christian context of the wayward sinner, which is how it is typically considered today. Though we’re led to believe that Jesus taught a repent or else message, his original intent was probably more in line with the less abrasive, forgiving words and actions of the father of the wayward son. It’s been suggested that Luke was seeking to appease a remnant of John the Baptist’s following who would have been accustomed to John’s harsher tone.   

An overview of this parable shows that it contains all three phases or acts of the Hero’s Journey: Act 1) the departure Act 2), the initiation Act 3) the return. In act 1 the son leaves his ordinary life to heed the call to adventure. Once out, he encounters severe trials that lead him to the brink of disaster. In act 2, his transformative moment occurs when he comes to himself. The arrogance of youth is replaced with humble compliance. In act 3 he returns home a changed character. 

I think the perfect litmus test for Jesus’ gospel is found in how well his various saying align with the principles illustrated in this parable. The sinner is punished by his sins, his own, self-destructive choices, not for them. Notice that Jesus doesn’t have the father forgiving his son. In his clear display of unconditional love, the father never condemns the son.  The only condemnation in the story comes from the older brother. This brother represents the demand for punishment found in so many mainstream religions who seem to think that the way to save a person from Hell is to scare it out of them.

I like to think of Truth as the omnipotence of God expressing as the spiritual essence of every individual. This is a perpetual, unstoppable action. We see this principle portrayed in the prodigal story. The father represents this perpetual state of self-expression in his love for both sons. Our wayward thinking does not change the ever-expanding, expressive activity of God in us. We may wander into the far country of despair, but because this relationship of oneness never changes, we can come to ourselves and begin our journey home, no bargaining necessary.

The younger son breaks the rules and his older brother insists on his being punished. Both suffer as the result of their respective transgressions. The father goes out to welcome his wayward son but he also goes out to console his angry son. Isn’t this an illustration of the unconditional love of God, a message worthy of being treated as the good news, the Gospel that Jesus intended to bring to the world?

Regardless of how far we stray from our inner connection with the omnipotence of God, our spiritual center of power, we may return with our soul fully intact. Yes, we will undoubtedly be lured repeatedly into that far country of suffering. But the omnipotence of God continues to express as our spiritual beacon even through our darkest, self-inflicted moments of pain. We can turn from God, but God can never turn from us. This, I believe, is the good news that Jesus intended to bring to the world.


[1] Matthew 19:29

[2] Matthew 12:46-50

[3] John 17:15

[4] Matthew 15:4

[5] Matthew 23:9

[6] Matthew 19:4-6

[7] Matthew 19:14

[8] Matthew 10:35

[9] Matthew 10:34

[10] Isaiah 9:6

[11] Matthew 9:17

[12] Romans 7:15

[13] Luke 15:11-32

[14] Luke 15:11-32