fatherman

Oops. I see that I took theism as monotheism. My answer applies to both. I'd also like to address what someone, maybe you, asked about intervention. I couldn't find it, but I know I read it. I don't know if God intervenes on a grand scale, but I believe that he intervenes on a personal scale. As to whether that supernatural or natural in a way that science does not yet recognize, I do not know....yet. Regardless, I believe in the supernatural when it comes to God, but I just don't know when it occurs or in what scope. I see coincidences in my life which seem way too unlikely not to have a supernatural component which save some part of my life, a marriage for example, and I wonder if it is a supernatural intervention. It is a choice, at that point. Coincidences which are highly unlikely occur every day. I do not deny that.

Ok. Maybe it's not crap! Sometimes it is difficult for me to tell. My brain doesn't always work straight, and I don't see it until later. The cloud is a great idea to consider. The cloud to the end user is nebulous. But the reality is that it is a network of computers with a front loader which routes our requests to the individual server which is freed up to handle it. That may be where the analogy breaks down. Perhaps you can do something with that. If God is the cloud, then yes it is not in our mind. It's knowledge and capability is vast beyond the scope of our OS.

On the first, I was a member of a progressive Methodist Church for 15 years in which there were many atheists and agnostics, who put the teachings of Jesus above the divinity but in the end, it's still a Christian church, and God is kind of the point. Universalist Unitarian is a mix as well. Question: Are you looking for a church home or is this a hypothetical? On the second, yes I'm a theist. But I acknowledge that theism is a human construct. It may not be a fact. To me it simply means that there is only one God which is the source of all divine intent/consciousness. It also means that the concept of God that I am working can take a personal form. As far as creation and universe and humans, I'll refer you back to this. The relationship is manifold. When I learned to live in the moment, I became compelled to start the process of surrendering myself to the care of God. I let go of my worries, need for approval, pride, intellect, fears, family, personal interests, anything which could interfere with me being in service to others or continuing living in the moment. Letting go doesn't mean quitting, it means putting into the hands of God' will. It means admitting that my way of doing things has not worked out so well, my will, and that I'm willing to try God's will. I don't know what God's will is. Who can know that? That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that when I surrender, when I empty out my selfishness (focus on self), that it leaves room for God to put something else in me which will lead me into God's will. I've written a study on the Beatitudes. The Spirit of the Poor focuses on this concept. My response is gratitude. True gratitude has an emotional component. The feeling I get is peace. Peace which stems from assurance, not that everything will go the way I want it to, but that God intends for goodness to take seed in my life if I continue to surrender. Surrender isn't a one time thing. It may very well be a lifelong process. It leaves room in my life for God's goodness, God's Will. Then there is the God who talks. Say wut? This is where I step into the realm of mysticism. Mysticism has been studied fairly extensively. State of the brain, etc. It's a real state of mind, so to speak. The question is whether it is all in the mind or if it is a direct contact with a spiritual entity outside of oneself. I'm not sure it really makes a difference, but to me it is something greater than me, something that has it's own consciousness. I've experienced the ecstasy, peace, reassurance, and companionship of the presence of God. As crazy as it sounds, I've also spoken with Jesus,and seen his face. I believe I've had plain conversations with God on two occasions. The experience is unique and different than having a conversation with myself. God's voice comes in waves and pulses at first, which eventually forms the rhythm of speech so that when I begin to focus on it, it tunes into spoken word. God does not always make sense to me and does not always say things that I agree with. I have no history of psychosis, in case your wondering. It is a mystical state, and maybe not everybody is wired for it. I'm not the only member of the board who can do this. God does not tell me what to do, nor does Jesus. I don't expect you to believe me. I don't need you to. It would be very easy to construe what I'm saying as delusional, and there's no way of knowing whether it is true or not. But that is my experience of God.

<<Broad smile>>

But like I said, it's just a story.

First, "God" seems to be at the core of your faith. Did God come to you, or did you search out God? I was brought to God by my parents. They baptized me and took me to church. The raised me to pray and read the Bible and to be a kind person. My dad was a minister. I stuck with it. At some point, though God became something very real to me. I began to have experiences of conscious contact with God. I believe God is always reaching out to me, and I've seen that in miraculous ways. But mainly, I'm the one looking for ways of connecting with God in a conscious way, through prayer, meditation, reading, worship, AA, discussion, living in the moment, music.... Second, Do you ever ask yourself questions like: Was the universe created by God or have they always co-existed? If God was the creator, why did God do it? Was the universe created with a purpose? I believe that God is eternal. I like the story that God has lived eternally in a perfect state of love, but he desired relativity. He wanted to experience loving and life in the form of matter relative to himself. Big bang. I believe that humanity is an experiment in love. Love is good stuff. But it only really exists in relationship. God is relative, he is a Triune force so God can experience love within himself, but maybe he wanted something more. God created something with free-will, great intelligence, the ability to form beliefs, the ability to ask if there is a God, perhaps all for the sake of love. Love only exists when non-love can be chosen. That makes us different than other forms of life on the planet. It also introduces suffering into the world. But I believe that God loves to grow good things out of our suffering. The more God creates, the more he can experience. All life emanates from God,or as has been discussed today Life Force, in every second in every cell of everything . I say "he" for lack of a better pronoun. I don't really like "it".

Ok, We're on the same page. Sounds like you'd make a good United Methodist. It is a non-creedal church. You get to believe what you want. No such thing as heresy. When you say "The Church", what exactly do you mean? The Christian religion? A church you attended? A church you saw on TV? Or the concept of a Christian community? It's a loaded question, Rodge. The load is that I'm wondering if you're over-generalizing by using the term The Church in this case. The Church to me has been a very good grounds for working out my own beliefs. I am fortunate to have grown up in the Presbyterian Church where this kind of thing is not only accepted, but encouraged. Now I have friends who see The Church as something that told them what and how to believe. If they used this as an excuse to me for not going to church at all, I would simply suggest that they try a different church, because there is really no The Church. There's my church and your church. Or my denomination and yours.

Harry, I enjoyed reading your post beginning with "I was born a Catholic," very much. It's too big to quote/post. I have many responses to what you've written. But I've found one that goes with my "God User Interface" thread that I would like to work into this discussion. In my illustration, I contend that humans lack the ability to understand the full nature of God except, perhaps, in extreme cases of mysticism, and that we have no choice but to construct, as you say, images of God if we are to relate to him, if indeed it is something we can relate to. In my post, I'm calling them interfaces with God (of which there are thousands or millions) which allow us to participate in a Life Force (God to me) in a conscious way. These two ideas, Life Force and Interfaces with God may not be compatible depending on what you believe that the ability of understanding of the Life Force gives us, and whether it is something that can be related to or worked with. I've lived with the principle of a Life Force or the Energy or the Source in many years of my adult life. My experience was that my spirituality involved becoming aware of the force and communing my consciousness with it. The principle being that when you flow with the Energy then your living will be more peaceful and abundant in some way. In that practice, which I do not reject nor do I indulge, the personification of the Energy is in our own greater self/divine/soul pattern and that this becomes the focus of the personification of God....the perfect emanation of the Energy in our lives. It is the Life Force, but in a form that we can relate to and learn from. What I've done is simplify things for myself. I was born a Christian. I'm a music minister in a United Methodist Church. I live in the Bible Belt. I'm comfortable with it. So I've chosen to take the language and traditions of the church which relates to my spirituality and name them one in the same. I choose an anthropomorphised way of relating to God because it works well enough for me. The manner in which my mind creates an image of God does not change who or what God is and the way he/it/she flows through my life. To think that I can somehow stop being a product of the Life Force because I call it God or Father or whatever and say my prayers to it every night, would be giving myself way more power than I have. I do not know what having a conversation with a non-person which I imagine to be a person helps me, but it does. It either gives me wisdom, comfort, love, or it helps me unlock it within myself. It makes no difference to me at all. In a sense, I agree with you that we create fairy tales to help us understand the unknown. I also happen to believe in the power of stories to help us navigate more complex systems. We do this in software engineering all of the time. It doesn't mean that we believe in fairy tales. It just means that the details only need to be exposed to some levels. Most people don't need quantum physics to know God. Although I love the way you do.

Thanks! That photo was taken last fall. I worry that when I use the handle "fatherman" on this site and others that it gives the impression that I am stating that God is the Father and that I am his man. I do not have a problem with the name Father for God and I certainly am his man, but some people might think they have me pegged because of it. I've used the handle on non-Christian sites, a neo-pagan one in particular, where I think it has hurt my ability to participate. The book had a significant effect on me back in 1998 when I found out that I would be a father for the first time. There are a million books on pregnancy and none of them have much to say about the father. I really wanted to be a participant from the beginning. This book gave me a frame of reference for ways I could be a dad even before the child was born. That's when I started using the handle. I chose it to express that there is nothing more manly that I do than being a good father. I'm not terribly masculine in other ways and I make no apology for it, but there is a pressure on men to fit themselves into a certain archetype. I'd take Madam Butterfly at the Met or a good read with a cup of tea over the Super Bowl any day!

I very much respect your viewpoint, Harry. It is honest, and I get the sense that you are at peace with it. So it's hard to believe in something that cannot be universally defined. My first response it that I choose God, not because of ideas or definitions, but because of what I've experienced throughout my life. But this is not a good case for God. Someone else might reach the opposite point of view based on their experience. But it's not an argument for making a case for me, it is a belief. I experience something that I call God, therefore I believe in God. If I had not experienced what I would call God, then perhaps I wouldn't believe, BUT, many do believe regardless of their experience. Perhaps you have experienced precisely what I have experienced and yet you did not call it God. Maybe it's genetic.

Placebo faith? Yes, I suppose. But belief is belief. I don't think it can be fake. Maybe you're saying belief in something that is fake? My idea is that we all live by a story. In the context of this idea, the question is not whether the story is a fact, rather, is this story working for you? Is believing in a loving God helping you live the kind of life you want to live? Is believing in a judging/punishing God helping you to live the life you want to live? Is believing that there is no God helping you to live the life you want to live? In the end, it is not facts that make our lives better, it is results. Whether God exists or not is pointing to a fact. We just have no way of knowing for certain what the fact is. But when it comes down to it, we believe in God because we want a result. So which is more important, being right or being happy? It makes me think of The Matrix. There's that scene at the dinner table when people are given the choice between the illusion (a steak or something) or the reality (gray mush). In this case we know for certain what the reality is. The hero is portrayed as the wise one because he chooses the gray mush. But what if the reality was uncertain? Should he still choose the gray mush just in case that's the reality? That is the choice of all people. Are you willing to relinquish the benefits of believing in God, or should say of having a relationship with God, (of which I can attest there are many benefits) based on a notion that it could be a fake belief?

Danny De Vito is just as worthy of God-dom as George! Them together makes me think of the movie Twins with De Vito and Schwarzenegger.

Here is your conundrum as I see it. The existence of God is a belief. Let's say the only way to a have a relationship with a god which may or may not exist is to believe. The truth is that God either exists or does not exist no matter what we believe. So the question is, which way do you want to live your lif?. Do you want to live a life as if there is no God? Do you want to live your life as if there might be a God because but because there might not be you would prefer not to have a relationship with him because you don't want to take the chance that you've been a fool? Do you want to live your life as if there is a God and have a relationship with him on faith? Let's say you choose 3 but find no benefit to the relationship so you either go to 1 or 2. Let's you choose 3 and your life is transformed in a positive way. Then how much does it really matter if God exists or not other than being picked on by the atheists? (I realize that this is a limited line of questioning which might not consider all of your viewpoint, but it's a starting place.)

I'd like to take the interface model to another point. "UI software translates something that humans understand into something computers understand (one's and zero's) and vice versa" vice versa. An interface for a computer which doesn't allow for return communication is limited, not useless, but limited. If my model is consistent with a relationship with God, then this part is really important. A relationship is a circuit which must be closed for it to work. Let's take George Clooney. Perhaps you're a big fan. You write letters. You watch his movies. You invest a lot of energy into his figure. But do you really have a relationship with him? Until you get a real letter back or a phone call or a visit, the circuit is open and useless. There is no light in the light bulb. That is the extent of my electrical knowledge unless you want to talk about potato batteries. What I'm suggesting is that this is the most common interface to God. The Clooney. We treat God just like George Clooney. We adore him, we write letters to him (prayers), we invest our energies in understanding him. And yet we do not hear from him. But why is that the case? The difference between Clooney and God is that God writes back. God is seeking a relationship with us as much as we are seeking a relationship with him. But we have to check our mail. We have to pick up the phone. It makes know difference whether you see God as a conscious being or a Truth or an energy. We have to experience him to have a relationship with him. If study and debate is your interface with God, I wonder if you're even expecting a relationship. My participation on this board has certainly expanded the possibilities for me to think about God. But I've never come away from here feeling close to God. Maybe that's just me. The notion of the Now is a powerful one for me. It's easy to skim over the moment in front of me. When I walk from my car to the office in the cold wind, rather than saying "Hey, this wind sucks, I'd like to get to the door ASAP" sometimes I just feel the cold air and the wind and become grateful that I'm alive to feel it. I do believe this opens a door in my mind which increases the possibility of experiencing God, but an atheist can certainly live in the now and not experience what they believe to be the false notion of God. So I'm not sure that these are the same things. A relationship with God means that I take the time to listen. With my mind, my body, my soul, my eyes, my ears. Perhaps it requires faith. I've experienced the word of God late in the night when I've called upon him. Most would doubt it. We all have chatty minds at night, but there is a difference. There is something different with, as Jen calls it, quantum communication. It is describable, but I doubt describing it would be of use to anyone here. But it's not the only way God communicates with me. We've all experienced God's communication in some shape of form. It becomes a matter of believing. And that is where I split with many here. And I say this with no pride or with no belief in right or wrong. I simply believe.

I don't disagree with anything that has been written, but allow me to chew on it a little more. My experience tells me that God is in the now. The act of searching for God is not an act of finding a lost being that requires some sort of search party, it is about searching for a way within ourselves to make contact. And we seek contact for a myriad of reasons. Understanding, assurance, peace, love, guidance, forgiveness, etc. We all have the capability of living in the now right this very moment. The possibility that we will experience God/Truth/Reality will increase. But it's not so simple for everybody. To fully live in the now requires letting go of the resentments, wounds, and regrets which keep us living in the past, as well as the anxieties, expectations, and ambitions which keep us in the future...and perhaps, as has been suggested: pride. I would also add overbearing intellect...which is just another kind of pride. The Now is an interface to God. Perhaps it is the ultimate interface. Perhaps all good interfaces to God lead to the now. But we have to have a way to get there. "Ancient belief systems" (SteveS55) began, in part, with people who were living in the now. These folks have given us models and ideas for living, some of which will work for us and some of which will not. Let's take SteveS55's theory that because a belief system is ancient, it is a hindrance. "We miss it because we are distracted by entering the realm of discursive thought, and ancient belief systems." Perhaps you are saying that there are elements of ancient belief systems which need to be let go or have been misinterpreted which are distracting us, or perhaps you are saying that Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity are invalid ways of experiencing God. Here's another "the truth is". We all have to start somewhere. I can think of several beginnings of journeys or new segments. My parents made me go to church. Should they have? What if they believed that kids should be allowed to gravitate to their own truth? They gave me a starting place for a journey. Is church the truth? I was told by a therapist that I needed to go to a meditation class. Is meditation the truth? These are the interfaces to the Truth which I experienced. Ancient belief systems are interfaces. Believe it or not, billions of people for thousands of years have experienced God through thousands of ways including ancient belief systems. The TRUTH is that we will find God the way WE find God and God will find us the way God finds us. I think God is way more powerful and flexible than we give him credit for. I've stated at least once on this site that God only exists in the present and that if we are living in the past or in the future, we will be separated from God. I think there is truth to that. But if God transcends space and time, then there really is no past or future to live in where God is unavailable. Time is an illusion that we create to help us live in the physical world. What is really happening is that although every cell in our body exists in the current moment, our thoughts gravitate toward things which happened in the past and things which may or may not happen in the future. They are really just a distraction. Some distractions even happen in the present. But there are distractions which do nothing more than take our focus away and there are distractions which elicit emotions and self-talk and physical responses. These are the regrets, wounds, unmet expectations, joys, sorrows, worries. These things keep us glued to the distraction. These are more than just the train whistle that disrupts our thoughts. These are the things that we have to let go. Surrender. Detach from. In order to live in the now. So my conclusion is that there are plenty of things happening in the now which can prevent us from experiencing God. Perhaps it comes down to judgement. This car is ugly. This work is unpleasant. The weather is good The lady is annoying. Our judgments prevent us from experiencing ultimate reality. The ultimate truth is that a car is neither ugly or beautiful. It is just a car. It gets us from here to there. Ugly and beautiful are our own creations. Living in the now is really worthless if the reality we have created is miserable. Perhaps we'd be better off living in the past if things were better then, as long as we're not able to see the true reality of the present.

Ok. I called it crap because I used what my father, a very good preacher, called the "grand illustration". My view could be expressed much more simply. But, for better or for worse that is how my brain works. I've continued to meditate on this, and I've come to another related thought which is this: I really like this statement "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." I don't know if it is true, but I like the way it sounds. If it is true, then attempting to transcend our humanity is misguided. We came here to be be flesh and blood, experience pain and joy in a way that only a human can experience it. It makes no sense to try to transcend the human experience if this is true. It does, however, make sense to be aware that there is more to us than than our vessel once in awhile. However, if this is not true, then yes, seeking to transcend human constructs for understanding God seems a noble pursuit. So, those are just thoughts, not necessarily my beliefs. Tolle proposes that the spiritual journey is a journey of returning home. He proposes that we were born perfectly spiritually balanced and having full knowledge of the Universe. It's a great idea, and perhaps it is true. I do get a sense that I was more in tune with nature and had a simpler, more pure relationship with God when I was a kid. My son showed signs of psychic abilities as a young child. That went away. But as much as I like the idea, I cannot believe that we are born with the full knowledge of God and that if we become spiritually enlightened we will know how many grains of sand are on the planet. What I do believe is that through human conditioning as we grow up, our brains grow around false suppositions of the world and that to undo that requires active spiritual and neurological conditioning.

Ok. This is crap. How do I delete this thread? I was not in an a totally sane state of mind when I wrote this.

Some bad theology not addressed. Added: As limitless as God is, I do not believe he will be everything we want him to be. He is not a random collection of stuff at our disposal. God has some sort of fundamental character, the nature of which is subject to endless debate. Just because I want a God who does my bidding, doesn't mean I get it. Ultimately, this is a poor interface which will eventually fail. Where the God and the computer fail as an analogy is that the computer is a human tool designed to do what we want it to. I do not believe God is a tool nor do I believe he is human designed. I accept that this is my belief and not a verifiable fact.

I don't usually repost from my blog, but I'd like to have some discussion on this. In the book, The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, the author states that he rarely uses the word "God" because it is a broken word. It has been used and abused in so many ways that it is no longer useful or helpful when discussing the infinite being in which our Universe lives. I would like to explore this idea; why it is the case and how we can move passed it. We all know what a user interface to a computer is. It's the part of a computer system that we can see, touch, click, type, and swipe. Every computer has an operating system that we can interact with through various apps; on our phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. So why do we need a user interface (UI)? Well, a computer thinks with zeros and ones. Those are on's and off's. It's called binary. Think "bi" as in bicycle. A pair of things. UI software translates something that humans understand into something computers understand (one's and zero's) and vice versa. Although the UI is part of the software, it's really only the part by which we tell the software what we want to do and by which the computer can tell us what it needs to tell us. But under the hood is where most of the computing happens. Stay with me now! What this means is that we can only use the computer in ways that the software's UI allows us to. And we can only use the computer in ways that the software can use it. There are millions of interfaces which all serve different functions to meet our needs. Are you still with me? We're getting very close. This is where technical becomes a little inexact so that I can make my point. There are infinite combinations of one's and zero's, but a very finite combinations of the uses of a UI. We will never fully realize the entire capability of a computer. There will never be a moment in which a software engineers says "Ok guys, we're done! There is nothing left that the computes cannot do!" Perhaps you are already guessing what I'm about to say. In my analogy, God is the computer. God's abilities, knowledge, properties, forms, and interfaces are infinite and vastly incomprehensible. I was born into a Presbyterian family. I was given a particular interface to God; particular theology, particular, beliefs, particular hymns, particular symbols, names, particular buildings. In college, I became a United Methodist and my UI shifted a bit. In my 30s, I began to meditate and study other spiritual paths. I acquired different interfaces in which to relate to God. I hear people say that they can't believe in God because they don't believe in Jesus or Christianity because it just doesn't make sense to them. It doesn't work for them. I also hear people say that God is so much greater than our way of relating to him/it/she; therefore, we should shed of all of our names and traditional understanding of God as perhaps Tolle is suggesting. But the truth as I see it is that although we might glimpse the one's and zero's of God through spiritual/mystical experiences, in general we need a human construct, a user interface, to have a relationship with God. And this is where we get stuck. Think about the apps on your phone which you have deleted. Why did you delete the app? Perhaps it didn't do what you wanted it to do. Perhaps the interface was not user friendly. Now, because of this, did you ever throw away your phone? No, you found another app which made sense to you. You found a different interface into the same computer. Over the years, my understanding of God and my needs with God have changed. And over the years, my interface with God has adjusted given the changes in me, the old way of interacting with God doesn't make as much sense to me. This idea will be rejected by many religious people; people who believe that there can be only one interface to God. But the idea that there is only one way is losing traction, at least in America. The SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) crowd it growing, and the diverse interface idea with it. The one size fit's all God User Interface concept is shrinking. If I believed that there was only one way of interacting with God, then I might not be a Christian today, because Christians can't even agree with which God User Interface to use. Do we go through Jesus? Do we got through the Father? Do we go through the God of Grace? Do we go through the God of Judgment? The God of Purity? That's just not the way I work. I name God in the way in which I need God. Did I need the guiding hand of a father. The friendly touch of a brother. The comforting touch of a mother. The infinite mystery. A God of forgiveness. These are interfaces to the same thing. And then there are those powerful moments in which God interfaces with me in ways I do not understand or would not have expected. Also, I think that the world has fallen into the trap that God is the interface. Remember how I said that the UI is just the part of the software we can interact with and that under the hood is where all of the real computing is happening? God is infinitely greater than our understanding of him. Just the word him here is a limited way of referring to God. Mainly limited by a lack of gender-neutral pronouns for another being in the English language. If the customizable God User Interface were a common accepted idea, I believe that there would be far fewer people who feel separated from God, or who cannot believe in a God at all based on God User Interfaces which did not work for them. I will continue to play with this idea this Lent. I will be examining my interfaces with God to see if there is a way to adjust my GUI in a way that allows me to have a greater understand and a fuller relationship with the infinite being which I call God for lack of a better term.

3__"Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." Luke 9:2, Mark 1:15, Matt 4:17, 10:7 The kingdom very near in time. I read this a little differently. There are several possibilities for the idiom "at hand". One is literal, as in "My tools are at hand" , if need be, I can pick up this hammer right now. Another meaning is that it is "happening or present at this time." As in, "Hey, when does Downton Abbey begin?" "Well, it's actually at hand. Started 30 minutes ago." So when someone tells me to repent, for the Kindom of God is at hand. I take it to mean that you better do it right now, because it's happening or is here right now and you're missing out,buddy!. And if repenting is what is required to experience it or go to it, then I'd better do it sooner rather than later. This is a hard thing to explain to someone who equates "Kingdom of God" with an afterlife paradise. So if it truly is at hand, though, what is it? Your collection of scriptures gives us a few hints which I will not attempt to synthesize here. I just want to suggest that it is a communal state of mind that has to do with the way we live our lives and the acknowledgment that God/Christ is at the head. And it starts with the repentance of sin which I read as the turning away of hurtful behavior and thought. Then the path becomes much clearer. It's worth trying.

"use the mind of Christ to rid ourselves of the guilt" Do you equivocate this with the Christian notion of forgiveness or grace? Living in a state of Grace? For you, does it have anything to do with Jesus Christ having walked the earth or, even further, dying on the cross? Or are you thinking of Jesus being a Christ, just as we are capable if we live in the Christ mind? Curious about your Christology here.

This is difficult for me. I believe that you are correct in every way here, soma. But it is very difficult for me to separate the actions which I believe to be harmful from my guilt. When I "miss the mark", and it hurts someone or myself, it will eat me up if I let it. On the the flip side, if I do not attach a negative judgement to it at all, I feel that I'm more likely to continue behaving that way. But the truth may be that neither ways are the answer. Perhaps it is only in surrender that I will climb that next wrung. I like the metaphor. It's difficult to climb with the extra weight of guilt and judgement. I must lighten my load to climb the next wrung, letting go of more with every wrung where pure consciousness awaits. Thanks, soma. This is just what I needed to read today.

There are so many ways to relate to God. I'm sure there are so many ways in which I have not yet discovered for myself. Many reject the notion of a "personal" God, but I would propose that we are persons and unless we stop being persons we will seldomly experience the world beyond the personal. Of course, we strive to be one with something greater than personal. We may at times ascend to a level of consciousness that is greater than our person, and we will surely find something greater. A personal relationship doesn't exclude something greater; something non-personal. It is the window or means of relating to something beyond what we can fathom; something to work with until we experience ourselves as one with God. Jesus can be that personal relationship, but there are certainly other ways. Father is common in Christianity. A father is something that many can understand. Or mother. Or guru. Or wise person. Or however God chooses to come into our lives. Perhaps God will relate with us the way he chooses, no matter what we may believe about him/her/it/us. Or perhaps it is our choosing. It's a starting point. As far as what the purpose of the relationship goes, perhaps that is very personal. Beliefs about this are diverse in Christianity. I can only speak to my own experience. God, to me, is the potter and I am the clay, to put it simply. It's a choice I make, to be molded. It requires complete surrender of all of my expectations, resentments, burdens, or any part of my consciousness where my helpless ego is dominant. Simply prayed, "Thy Will Be Done". I confess that God's will is greater than mine. When I do this, God does not eliminate my free will, but he begins working with me to break up the obstacles to free, peaceful, loving, joyous, and abundant living, and most importantly, obstacles which prevent me from being of service. Many folks feel very uncomfortable with the notion of surrender. Surrender can imply something a defeated person does with an enemy. Or perhaps we don't like the idea of losing our tight control over our lives, regardless of how much it may limit us. Or perhaps we just don't trust God because of an imagined abuse; the loss of a loved one for example. But for me, it is none of those things. The only thing I'm seeking to give up is my suffering. EDITED: I final thought. A wise young man told me that we will not experience God in the ways of living in the past (resentments, regrets, dissatisfaction), nor will we experience him in the future (our anxieties, ambitions, fear). We will only experience God in the present moment. I've found that to be true.

Happy New Year, friends. Just stopping in to see what's new and wish you peace in 2016.

I know several transgender Christians. One is extremely conservative, one is moderate, and one is extremely liberal. How they reconcile themselves to God and the scriptures is between them and God, but it seems highly illogical to me that an all powerful, all knowing, all loving Creator would make some sort of mistake in the creation process. I think your conclusion is correct. God made you the way you are on purpose. Psalm 139 is my favorite psalm because it reminds me that I am not a mistake and that God will chase me to the ends of the earth to form a relationship with me. And that God accepts me no matter what I do or where I go. There are churches in my city (in the reddest state in the union, Oklahoma) which are openly welcoming, accepting, and affirming of LGBTQ folks. If Oklahoma can have it, any state can. You can never go wrong with a United Church of Christ church when it comes to acceptance. Presbyterian Church USA is a good place to investigate as well. I hope your parents will find a way to support you in your Christian journey. I know that so many transgender kids never live to see 18. I hope that that option is off the table for you. You can reach out to anybody here if you find yourself struggling with this.