God

My belief about God’s existence is…well mixed.  What I know is nothing really.  What I speculate is much.  What I feel is whole other thing.

I was making my bed today and the thought just rose up in me that we as a God believing people are pretty arrogant to think that there is a God up in heaven judging our every action.  It’s a scary thought on one hand if this is true.  And I have lived with this being the truth for most of my life..so much so that I have lived in an almost constant state of fear and anxiety, acutely aware that I was being watched.  I have wondered too much what God would think of me in this moment and the next.  Wondering if what I was doing was good enough and waiting for some reward or punishment as the answer.  Not a good way to live, and certainly not an authentic way of being.  Every action done out of fear.  Ughh.  It makes me queasy thinking of this.

Why do we buy into this?  I think it is because we like to be judged. Really.  We want to know where we stand at any moment We want to believe that good begets good and bad begets bad…and by God, literally, we want   to be told we’re doing well.  We want it in school…working more for the grade than the actual understanding of a subject.  We judge and our judged by our peers and strangers alike, as well as by those we work with and for.  It would be nice to believe that we are not a judgmental people, but we are. I am.  I compare myself to other women all the time…most I see as more successful than I am. But often I judge myself as better than others.  It’s ugly but it’s true.  I catch myself comparing myself to others all the time.  How is this not judgment?  Pay attention one day to your inner thoughts.  I think you’d be surprised.  I was.  I had always thought of myself to be a fair and decent person; but the truth is I am pretty insecure and often judgmental.  One has to look in the mirror sometimes and face the truth.

Just the other day I heard Obama praising the firing of an entire high school’s teaching staff in Maryland. Former and current students of that school spoke up last week criticizing Obama for making an such a statement when he didn’t have the facts.  “He doesn’t even know us,” they complained, “how can he make a fair judgment.” Don’t we do this all the time?  We see someone arrested for a crime and we assume guilt.  If the person is found innocent, that story often doesn’t make the news.

It makes sense that as a judgmental people we would believe God to be this way too.  The Bible even tells us there will be a judgment day.  Enough already. Look at the universe…in the scheme of things we are a pretty insignificant part.  To believe that God is out there somewhere watching our every action is too much for me to believe and seems incredibly arrogant. I think I have chosen to believe this in the past mostly out of fear, a tradition of fear that was passed down to me. What I have come to believe about God now is very simple.

God is Love.  There is no fear or judgment in this Love…it is Love only and immensely.  Our task on this earth is to accept it.