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canajen,
Hope I didn’t sound insensitive – your topic is a good one. As you point out, Jesus’ parables, and his life, are a better illustration of forgiveness than Paul’s writings. His role was reconciling divergent types – to make room for both Mary and Martha, James and John, Romans and Greeks, Gentiles and Jews, etc.
From Jesus: Intro To The Practice Of Forgiving how to actually do it!
MultiQuote
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Posted 13 January 2009 - 10:35 PM
I also believe God created in the world an environment where every man could develop their individual consciousness in such a way as to be compassionate and loving to all.
A soul with a body, not a body with a soul. http://thinkunity.com
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Posted 17 July 2009 - 01:24 PM
Lesson 9
In this lesson, I talk about what it feels like to be forgiven.
The feeling of being forgiven is hard to put into words. The feeling of being forgiven by one’s neighbour or one’s own child is an emotional experience that’s humbling and life-changing and emotionally intimate. It’s hard enough to describe forgiveness received from other souls on Planet Earth. The feeling of being forgiven by God is even harder to put into words because it seems so . . . big. It feels like such a big gift, such an incomparable gift, that words won’t suffice.
I understand this problem. I understand it’s hard to find the right words to describe such an amazing gift. It’s normal and natural to trip over your own tongue in trying to find words that can express the deep gratitude you feel when you really “get” that you’re forgiven. Unfortunately, most Christians have stopped trying to express it. Even worse, most Christians have come to believe that if they try to put it into words, they’ll be accused by God of being proud. They’re afraid they’ll be accused by God and their peers of the sin of pride. Of a lack of humility. Of presumption. Of daring to believe they’re worthy of God’s forgiveness. For most Christians, the sin of expressing their gratitude out loud is surpassed only by the sin of believing in their hearts that God pays attention to them – poor lowly unworthy worms that they are! – and dares to raise them up with the gift of forgiveness. How dare God do that! It’s blasphemy to say that God would actually forgive you right on the spot for your mistakes. There’s no mechanism in the Church for an outrageous divine practice of forgiveness that’s just between you and God, a divine practice that altogether bypasses the need for Jesus as Saviour and/or Jesus as Satisfaction for sin.
The Church has a number of traditions that involve intercession and sacraments, but intercession and sacraments aren’t the same thing as instant forgiveness from God. Intercession and sacraments are all about middle men and middle women. Intercession and sacraments are about status and hierarchy. You aren’t allowed to speak mano a mano with God. You have to go through the proper channels, and only then can it be decided whether or not you’ll receive a gift of grace. In this longstanding Christian tradition, grace is a fickle thing. You may or may not receive it. Most people don’t, say many theologians. This explains why the world is in such bad shape. God has given the gift of grace to a small and select group of people. The rest of the people on Planet Earth haven’t been given the gift of grace, so it’s not their fault they’re making such a hash of their lives. They can’t help it.
So goes orthodox (small “o”) Christian thinking.
At first glance, you might be tempted to argue that the whole point of the Reformation was to cut out the middle man/woman, and allow Christians to pray directly to God. Small problem: Lutherans and Calvinists were allowed to pray to God on their own, but they weren’t allowed to speak openly about God’s forgiveness. To do so was the height of presumptuousness, since the doctrine of original sin was still sacrosanct. Reformation Christians were allowed to read the Bible in their own language, and Reformation Christians were allowed to bypass traditional Church hierarchy, but the theology of forgiveness didn’t change. If anything, Luther’s theology of grace made it even harder for people to dare open their hearts to the gift of God’s forgiveness.
The Church today (including both mainline catholic and protestant denominations) seems to have decided to sidestep the theological dilemma it’s created for itself over the centuries by resorting to denial. By ignoring the topic of forgiveness. By making excuses for the fact that it doesn’t actually teach its members anything about the daily spiritual practice of forgiveness. By occasionally lying to its members and telling them it’s impossible for mere human beings to give or receive forgiveness.
Sure, many ministers and priests talk about the importance of forgiveness. But how many of them are standing in the pulpit and telling you how to do it? Or running weekend workshops and seminars on the topic? A few, but not many. They’re not telling you how to do it because most of them don’t personally understand it. It’s hard to teach something you don’t personally understand. And forgiveness – as I taught it during my time as Jesus – is pretty hard to experience and pretty hard to understand if you’ve been persuaded by years of seminary training that you have to impale yourself on your sword of humility, and reject what I taught through the parables on forgiveness.
The “sword of humility” is the term I use to describe a large body of Christian doctrine that deals with pessimistic ideas about the nature of humankind, the nature of people’s relationship with God, and the nature of sin. In brief, it’s the idea that a person of true faith and true service must be willing to accept their constant unworthiness in God’s eyes. When you’re standing underneath the “sword of humility,” anything you say that suggests you believe you’re worthy of God’s love, rather than constantly unworthy, will get you accused of the sin of pride, the crime of spiritual presumptuousness. To say you believe you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness will get you accused of a spiritual crime more heinous than breaking one of the Ten Commandments. The “sword” quickly falls on you, and slices off your budding sense of relationship with God. It makes you feel ashamed that you dared think for a minute that God cares enough about you to forgive you. You might be willing to accept in a grovelling sort of way that God loves you, but you won’t be able to deal with the shame the Church tries to inflict on you if you want to acknowledge and receive God’s forgiveness. Many people can be persuaded that divine love is distant, serene, detached, logical, not emotional. Forgiveness, however, isn’t like that. Forgiveness is really in-your-face, really present. If it isn’t emotionally intense and personal and life-altering, it isn’t forgiveness.
Matthew 20:1-16 tells the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. The more charitable and compassionate of today’s theological commentators will tell you that this is a parable about God’s mercy, about God’s right to dispense the gift of grace as God sees fit, not a story about just reward, status, and economic rights. Their interpretation sounds good, but it’s wrong. It’s not a parable about grace. It’s a parable about what it feels like to receive God’s forgiveness. For you to be a human being in need of forgiveness is for you to be like one of the labourers in the vineyard. No matter how long you’ve been toiling in the spiritual vineyard, no matter what awful things you’ve done in the past, no matter how bad the mistakes you’ve made, God the Mother and God the Father forgive you. Today. Right now. There are no exceptions. Each day, everyone receives the same “wage” from God of total forgiveness. Straight from God to you.
Forgiveness is dispensed equally by God to all people, regardless of how long each has been “labouring,” regardless of each person’s expectations with regard to his/her relationship with God.
In other words, forgiveness is antithetical to status anxiety.
Forgiveness is antithetical to “chosenness.”
Forgiveness is antithetical to centuries-old Church hierarchy.
Forgiveness is antithetical to service work carried out beneath the “sword of humility.” (Which is not to say service work isn’t important, because service work is very important. Just don’t grovel while you’re doing it.)
Forgiveness is the most radical emotion you’ll ever experience as a human being. But in order for you to experience it, you have to let it in. You have to open your heart to forgiveness in the same way you have to open your heart to other positive emotions, such as love and trust. If you don’t want to feel it, you won’t feel it. If you’re frightened of emotions, if you’re frightened of relationships, if you’re frightened of trusting anybody (including God), you’ll receive God’s forgiveness each day, but you won’t be able to feel it. This relates to your brain chemistry, as I explained above. Your brain chemistry and your brain wiring dictate your ability as a human being to feel God’s love and to feel God’s forgiveness. If you can’t feel the love and forgiveness, it doesn’t mean your soul is defective: it means your biological brain needs to be healed. It’s a problem with your biology, not a problem with your soul’s integrity.
In other words, What You Put In Your Brain Matters. If you want to feel God’s forgiveness, don’t allow your brain to be cluttered up with the false belief that it’s presumptuous of you to accept God’s gift of forgiveness.
It is presumptuous to refuse it.
If you want to learn how to forgive, you’ll need help on the journey, and you’ll need to be patient with yourself. But the first step on this wondrous path is for you to accept with all your heart that’s it’s okay for you to gratefully receive God’s unstinting and ever-generous gift. It’s okay for you to trust the idea that you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness. It’s okay, because God the Mother and God the Father are your divine parents, and they think you’re totally awesome. Really!
With love to our beloved parents, and love to our divine family: You rock!
Jesus
July 17, 2009
In this lesson, I talk about what it feels like to be forgiven.
The feeling of being forgiven is hard to put into words. The feeling of being forgiven by one’s neighbour or one’s own child is an emotional experience that’s humbling and life-changing and emotionally intimate. It’s hard enough to describe forgiveness received from other souls on Planet Earth. The feeling of being forgiven by God is even harder to put into words because it seems so . . . big. It feels like such a big gift, such an incomparable gift, that words won’t suffice.
I understand this problem. I understand it’s hard to find the right words to describe such an amazing gift. It’s normal and natural to trip over your own tongue in trying to find words that can express the deep gratitude you feel when you really “get” that you’re forgiven. Unfortunately, most Christians have stopped trying to express it. Even worse, most Christians have come to believe that if they try to put it into words, they’ll be accused by God of being proud. They’re afraid they’ll be accused by God and their peers of the sin of pride. Of a lack of humility. Of presumption. Of daring to believe they’re worthy of God’s forgiveness. For most Christians, the sin of expressing their gratitude out loud is surpassed only by the sin of believing in their hearts that God pays attention to them – poor lowly unworthy worms that they are! – and dares to raise them up with the gift of forgiveness. How dare God do that! It’s blasphemy to say that God would actually forgive you right on the spot for your mistakes. There’s no mechanism in the Church for an outrageous divine practice of forgiveness that’s just between you and God, a divine practice that altogether bypasses the need for Jesus as Saviour and/or Jesus as Satisfaction for sin.
The Church has a number of traditions that involve intercession and sacraments, but intercession and sacraments aren’t the same thing as instant forgiveness from God. Intercession and sacraments are all about middle men and middle women. Intercession and sacraments are about status and hierarchy. You aren’t allowed to speak mano a mano with God. You have to go through the proper channels, and only then can it be decided whether or not you’ll receive a gift of grace. In this longstanding Christian tradition, grace is a fickle thing. You may or may not receive it. Most people don’t, say many theologians. This explains why the world is in such bad shape. God has given the gift of grace to a small and select group of people. The rest of the people on Planet Earth haven’t been given the gift of grace, so it’s not their fault they’re making such a hash of their lives. They can’t help it.
So goes orthodox (small “o”) Christian thinking.
At first glance, you might be tempted to argue that the whole point of the Reformation was to cut out the middle man/woman, and allow Christians to pray directly to God. Small problem: Lutherans and Calvinists were allowed to pray to God on their own, but they weren’t allowed to speak openly about God’s forgiveness. To do so was the height of presumptuousness, since the doctrine of original sin was still sacrosanct. Reformation Christians were allowed to read the Bible in their own language, and Reformation Christians were allowed to bypass traditional Church hierarchy, but the theology of forgiveness didn’t change. If anything, Luther’s theology of grace made it even harder for people to dare open their hearts to the gift of God’s forgiveness.
The Church today (including both mainline catholic and protestant denominations) seems to have decided to sidestep the theological dilemma it’s created for itself over the centuries by resorting to denial. By ignoring the topic of forgiveness. By making excuses for the fact that it doesn’t actually teach its members anything about the daily spiritual practice of forgiveness. By occasionally lying to its members and telling them it’s impossible for mere human beings to give or receive forgiveness.
Sure, many ministers and priests talk about the importance of forgiveness. But how many of them are standing in the pulpit and telling you how to do it? Or running weekend workshops and seminars on the topic? A few, but not many. They’re not telling you how to do it because most of them don’t personally understand it. It’s hard to teach something you don’t personally understand. And forgiveness – as I taught it during my time as Jesus – is pretty hard to experience and pretty hard to understand if you’ve been persuaded by years of seminary training that you have to impale yourself on your sword of humility, and reject what I taught through the parables on forgiveness.
The “sword of humility” is the term I use to describe a large body of Christian doctrine that deals with pessimistic ideas about the nature of humankind, the nature of people’s relationship with God, and the nature of sin. In brief, it’s the idea that a person of true faith and true service must be willing to accept their constant unworthiness in God’s eyes. When you’re standing underneath the “sword of humility,” anything you say that suggests you believe you’re worthy of God’s love, rather than constantly unworthy, will get you accused of the sin of pride, the crime of spiritual presumptuousness. To say you believe you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness will get you accused of a spiritual crime more heinous than breaking one of the Ten Commandments. The “sword” quickly falls on you, and slices off your budding sense of relationship with God. It makes you feel ashamed that you dared think for a minute that God cares enough about you to forgive you. You might be willing to accept in a grovelling sort of way that God loves you, but you won’t be able to deal with the shame the Church tries to inflict on you if you want to acknowledge and receive God’s forgiveness. Many people can be persuaded that divine love is distant, serene, detached, logical, not emotional. Forgiveness, however, isn’t like that. Forgiveness is really in-your-face, really present. If it isn’t emotionally intense and personal and life-altering, it isn’t forgiveness.
Matthew 20:1-16 tells the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. The more charitable and compassionate of today’s theological commentators will tell you that this is a parable about God’s mercy, about God’s right to dispense the gift of grace as God sees fit, not a story about just reward, status, and economic rights. Their interpretation sounds good, but it’s wrong. It’s not a parable about grace. It’s a parable about what it feels like to receive God’s forgiveness. For you to be a human being in need of forgiveness is for you to be like one of the labourers in the vineyard. No matter how long you’ve been toiling in the spiritual vineyard, no matter what awful things you’ve done in the past, no matter how bad the mistakes you’ve made, God the Mother and God the Father forgive you. Today. Right now. There are no exceptions. Each day, everyone receives the same “wage” from God of total forgiveness. Straight from God to you.
Forgiveness is dispensed equally by God to all people, regardless of how long each has been “labouring,” regardless of each person’s expectations with regard to his/her relationship with God.
In other words, forgiveness is antithetical to status anxiety.
Forgiveness is antithetical to “chosenness.”
Forgiveness is antithetical to centuries-old Church hierarchy.
Forgiveness is antithetical to service work carried out beneath the “sword of humility.” (Which is not to say service work isn’t important, because service work is very important. Just don’t grovel while you’re doing it.)
Forgiveness is the most radical emotion you’ll ever experience as a human being. But in order for you to experience it, you have to let it in. You have to open your heart to forgiveness in the same way you have to open your heart to other positive emotions, such as love and trust. If you don’t want to feel it, you won’t feel it. If you’re frightened of emotions, if you’re frightened of relationships, if you’re frightened of trusting anybody (including God), you’ll receive God’s forgiveness each day, but you won’t be able to feel it. This relates to your brain chemistry, as I explained above. Your brain chemistry and your brain wiring dictate your ability as a human being to feel God’s love and to feel God’s forgiveness. If you can’t feel the love and forgiveness, it doesn’t mean your soul is defective: it means your biological brain needs to be healed. It’s a problem with your biology, not a problem with your soul’s integrity.
In other words, What You Put In Your Brain Matters. If you want to feel God’s forgiveness, don’t allow your brain to be cluttered up with the false belief that it’s presumptuous of you to accept God’s gift of forgiveness.
It is presumptuous to refuse it.
If you want to learn how to forgive, you’ll need help on the journey, and you’ll need to be patient with yourself. But the first step on this wondrous path is for you to accept with all your heart that’s it’s okay for you to gratefully receive God’s unstinting and ever-generous gift. It’s okay for you to trust the idea that you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness. It’s okay, because God the Mother and God the Father are your divine parents, and they think you’re totally awesome. Really!
With love to our beloved parents, and love to our divine family: You rock!
Jesus
July 17, 2009
#25
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Posted 17 July 2009 - 06:09 PM
Wow!
I hadn't found this topic in my poking around. Wonderful!
Dutch
I hadn't found this topic in my poking around. Wonderful!
Dutch
Reverence for Life leads us into a spiritual relationship with the world independent of a full understanding of the universe. [Albert Schweitzer,]