posted 22 August, 2011
I am excited this week to share with you a wonderful excerpt from The New Revelations that I happened upon the other day as I was re-reading this extraordinary text. This passage answers a question that I am asked all the time, and I just knew as soon as I chanced upon it that I wanted to put it in this space, so that you could be touched by it!
Here it is...enjoy!
I have to admit that I always did find it hard to believe God would tell people they may not intermarry, or that women must not allow any portion of their body to be seen in public, or that couples may not use contraceptives, or that men must wear beards.
I never did understand why God felt he had to give human beings so many orders.
I don't. I don't have to give orders to anyone, and I've never done so.
Never?
No. And I never will.
You never will? You mean that we will never know what God really wants?
No.
Why? Why would you do this to us?
Do what to you?
Why would you tell us to follow God's law, to obey your wishes, and then not tell us what you really want?
Because there is nothing that I do want. And this is what you cannot understand or refuse to accept.
There is nothing that God wants or needs.
God demands nothing, commands nothing, requires nothing, compels nothing. Teach this in your seminaries and your madrasas.
God neither orders nor requests, insists nor expects, anything. Tell this to your young.
I am the Author of Everything. I am the Creator and the Created. There is nothing that is that I am not. I have no need to give orders to anyone.
To whom would I give orders? There is no one to command but me. I am the All In All. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And whom would I punish were my orders not kept? Would I use my right hand to slap my left? Would I bite my nose to spite my face?
Your teachers and your doctors of law, your priests and your ulamas, tell you that God is to be feared, for He is a vengeful God. You are to live in fear of God's wrath, they say. You are to tremble in His presence. Your whole life you are to fear the terrible judgment of the Lord. For God is "just," you are told. And God knows, you will be in trouble when you confront the terrible justice of the Lord. You are, therefore, to be obedient to God's commands. Or else.
Most of you, therefore, spend much of your adult lives searching for the "right way" to worship God, to obey God, to serve God. The irony of all this is that I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary to serve me.
These behaviors are the behaviors historically demanded of their subjects by monarchs--egomaniacal, insecure, tyrannical monarchs at that. They are not Godly demands in any sense, and it seems remarkable that the world hasn't by now concluded that the demands are counterfeit, having nothing to do with the needs of Deity.
Deity has no needs. All That Is is exactly that: all that is. It therefore wants, or lacks, nothing--by definition.
If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something--and has such hurt feelings if He doesn't get it that He punishes those from whom He expected to receive it--then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I. You truly are Children of a Lesser God.
No, my children, please let me assure you again, through this present writing, as I have done in writings past, that I am without needs. I require nothing.
Then you haven't given us "orders"?
No. It was human beings who felt they had to give human beings orders, in order to keep order. And the best way they knew how to get people to follow orders was to say that they came directly from God.
There were also those who sincerely believed that they were receiving directives from God about how life should be lived, and what they said that they received was passed on by others in good faith. Yet this does not mean that what was passed on was always accurate, nor does it mean that the person who claims to have been the original recipient of these revelations was infallible.
Any more than this book is infallible.
That is correct. That is exactly right. Any claim of infallibility for this book would be inaccurate.
It would be inaccurate to say that this book is accurate.
Yes.
So this book is accurate when it says that it is inaccurate.
That's clever, and that's another yes.
So if it's inaccurate, why should I believe it?
You should not believe it. You should apply it and see what works.
Incidentally, put every other writing that claims to be a communication from God to the same test.
