What I Hear

I am speaking at the 8:00 am church service this Sunday. This is what I propose to say. I would love your thoughts.

I remember when my journey started. I was 9 years old and sitting in the front row of a packed United Methodist Church of Kirkwood, MO on Easter. The extremely traditional service in a very traditional church was trudging along. Men and young boys like me were fidgeting in their suits and ties. Women were sitting daintily in their Sunday best. I looked out over the crowd through the spaces in the balcony railing, and I thought to myself, “What hypocrites we all are.”

This is when I realized that most people are what I now refer to as “Check the Box” religious.

Attended Church on Easter                         Check

Attended Church on Christmas                   Check

Sent in some money                                     Check

SAVED, Halleluiah!!

I decided that was not the religion for me. So I began to ask questions. Some were asked of adults, but perhaps as many were asked of whatever God is. To my surprise, I got answers.

My father left our family, which was devastating. I did not like that answer.

My mother was depressed and we were suddenly poor, forced to drink powdered milk and eat Underwood Chicken Spread. I did not like that answer very much either.

I decided I did not like this thing they called God very much.

We found the Reverend Larry Watson and the Kirkwood United Church of Christ, KUCC, and things changed, not really for the better but I began to see a tad more clearly and started to get my feet back under me a bit. He was a good man and he led our Youth Group to great summer trips to Indian reservations across the west to build fences, dig drainage ditches, clear trails, etc, probably a lot like our ASP project. These were eventful. I nearly had my leg cut off at the knee by an axe in the Montana Mountains and was flown by helicopter to the hospital at Yellowstone for over 100 stitches to put me back together. I was bucked off a wild horse after a 4 second ride in front of several laughing Hopi Indians in Arizona. Just a few cactus spines to be removed from my shoulder and I was fine, with a newly earned respect from my peers and the Indians. Great fun. Not really terribly spiritual though.

High School was hell. College was bacchanalian. My first wife left me for a 6’4” gun-toting FBI agent less than one year into our marriage. So this God fellow was not yet a best friend, by any stretch of the imagination. 

Since then I secured a law degree, was married, had two wonderful children. I hated law and left it in 1999. My wife eventually divorced me as well. To say that God was not with me was an understatement.

My oldest daughter, Jessica, found a church during High School. Probably something she needed as I did after my parents’ divorce. The pastor was wonderful. We had our disagreements, (we had a humdinger of an argument about homosexuality once, and another about whether the Bible is true) but he got me to begin to read the Bible and most of all care about who and what God is. 

For the last 8 years I have been studying the Bible, other books, asking questions and listening. In a nutshell, here is what I have learned:

The Old Testament God cannot possibly be reconciled with the God of Jesus. Jesus’ God would never have a “Chosen People,” kill the first born of an entire population, destroy an entire army of human beings, order His people to enter a city and kill every living person and thing in that town, throw temper tantrums, etc. Jesus God is a turn the other cheek God. He is a passive resistance God. He is the God of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. So to me the Old Testament is a nice story of old myths and fairy tales, with some bits of inspirational thought, but it is not, to me, the Word of God.

Paul was a man. Paul was a dedicated man, but just a man. Paul met Jesus on the road six years after the crucifixion. Paul had a theology. An inclusive theology. But as we read what he wrote, we have to remember there were many competing theologies of men, some of whom actually knew Jesus, that were not chosen by the Romans when the New Testament was compiled some 300 years after the crucifixion. Paul’s letters should not, in my opinion only, be read as the Word of God. They are the word of Paul, a great man to be true, but not Jesus. We should equally revere the words of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John Wesley, and many other great men and women, many of whom also died for the cause of peaceful change. They are no different than Paul.

So, for me, that leaves us with the four Gospels to wrestle with. The inaccurate and conflicting accounts of what Jesus actually said. I believe he has several core messages, revolutionary messages indeed.

1. Personal Relationship: You have a personal relationship with God. One on one. You do not need to pray through anyone or anything. Also, there is no right or wrong. Jesus implored us not to judge others. He did not say, Do unto others according to this rule I command of you. No, he said, do unto others AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. The Lord ’s Prayer points out that you will be forgiven your sins TO THE EXTENT YOU HAVE FORGIVEN OTHERS. What is right under God, is what is right for YOU and YOUR personal relationship and path with God. What is right for you is not necessarily right for me.

2. What is this God? First, I want you to know that I can prove there is a God, or at least a spirit. It is provable through the basic laws and theories of physics and biology. It is too much to cover here, but if you are interested, I can provide it to you. As I spoke to physicists and scientists and others to prove God, I learned many things about WHAT God really must be.

To me, God is the connection of the souls of all those living and past, whether human or otherwise, who have souls. I call it the spiritual internet. It strives naturally and without thinking or judging or compassion or hatred, like all things in nature, to achieve balance and harmony among all beings. If we disrupt the Harmony with negativity, God, the harmony, the Spirit of Truth, will fill that rift with exactly what you are looking for, more negativity. The balance in the universe is restored. When we break the balance with positive energy, a deep positive desire for something, the Spirit fills that rift with more positivity. If we are tapped into this power, we are guided in a way that keeps us in positive harmony with all other souls and can provide us with gifts and strength we never knew we could muster. 

3. Ask. Ask for what you want out of life. Determine what you truly, deeply want. What are you most deeply passionate about? What would you love your life to be like? What do you want most in the whole world, down deep in your heart?

If you focus on the negative, God will give you exactly what you are asking for, more negative things. If you focus on the positive, God will give you exactly what you are asking for, more positive things. God does not decide for you. Ask and you shall receive. Barbara gave me a great metaphor. When you focus on the negative you create a whirlpool in the Harmony that draws negativity to you. When you focus on the positive, you create an equally strong whirlpool that draws positive things to you. When you are deeply focused on what you want in particular, and do it in a positive way, you will create a whirlpool that will draw that to you. 

When you do this, it is very cool how often it works, even in the littlest examples.

When we all pray as a group for something we all deeply want and care about, we can create a maelstrom of positivity toward the result we all are driving for. That is perhaps as cool a part of this as anything.

This is the Power of Positive thinking and it has been around for centuries. Jesus taught us this.

4. Believe. Have faith that what you want will come to you. You have to truly believe that you will get what you are asking for. 

Jesus did not really heal anyone. Read the stories. The faith of the person who came to Jesus healed them. They healed themselves or their friends by asking for it, believing deeply that it would happen and then acting upon that faith, even if it would get them into trouble or it seemed impossible.

5. Act. The final step is the act. For many years the following was the sole part of my belief system

Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do and you will find yourself in harmony with all of God’s souls.

I still deeply believe this is the key, and it serves me well every day. I know that you know in your hearts what the right thing to do is, pretty much every minute of every day. You are often afraid to act on that because it is scary, embarrassing or your mother would not approve, or that chocolate chocolate chip cookie just looks too good to pass up. Can I get an AMEN on that one!!

The story of the rich man who came to Jesus and wanted to follow him is not a condemnation of the rich. The man knew what he wanted. He had faith he could achieve it. He even stepped out of his comfort zone and met Jesus where Jesus was. Jesus offered to accept him into his fold. BUT when Jesus explained what that entailed, the rich man was not willing to do what was required to secure what he knew in his heart was the right thing for him. Giving up his fortunes was too difficult. He failed to have the faith to act on what the Holy Spirit guided him to do. That was the failure of the rich man.

On the other hand, the story of the friends of the paralytic knew what they wanted, believed with the deepest of faiths that it could be achieved, and they climbed onto the building and broke a hole in it to achieve their results. Despite the difficulties, a nearly certain arrest and the near impossibility of their actions, they acted with faith that they were doing the right thing. They were doing what the Holy Spirit was driving them to do. 

How many of us would give up all our wealth to follow Jesus? 

How many of us would haul our paralyzed friend up onto a building, break a hole in the roof and drop him in to cure him?

This is the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, guiding you through the harmony of all the souls in the world, living and dead. If all you do is do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do, you will live in God’s way. You will follow the path that is right for you.

But your life can be more than that. Ask for what you truly want. Create your own positive whirlpool. No matter what happens along the way, keep the faith that it will come to you and most of all, ACT.

Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do, do it with deepest faith that what you want will come to you, do it with positive energy, and act on what you know the Holy Spirit is guiding you to do, and you will receive what you have asked for.

That is what I hear.