October 3, 2005

• What Does God Want?

  
  

  Over the years, the various answers to this question have caused an untold amount of suffering.  In days of old, when knights were bold, a bunch of English folks thought that God wanted them to go on a crusade and “liberate” the Holy Land from the infidels–in the process, they killed and raped a lot of people, robbed and pillaged to boot..  A little later, the guys who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum thought that God wanted them to persecute women they called witches, and hang them or burn them–mostly, in reality, for the crime of being female.(By the way, this book was pretty much the law of the land–both among Protestants and Catholics–for two hundred years.)  More recently, many Catholics thought that God wanted them to refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and He was so vehemant about this, that He would send you to Hell forever if you scarfed down a Big Mac on Friday and failed to ‘fess up.  (Apparently God changed his mind on this one.)

  
  

  Today in the Middle East, a lot of people think that God wants them to strap on a belt of explosives and blow themselves and as many other people as possible to bits.  Here in America, many people seem to think that God wants us to kill and torture people who think like that.  Others in America think that God wants us to deny basic civil rights to gay people. Still other folks, of the Jewish persuasion, believe that their God wants them to sexually mutilate their infant sons. Just the other night at an NA meeting, a young woman who had relapsed was wallowing in guilt and shame, sobbing as if her heart would break because “God  wants me to be clean and sober. . . .I let God down.” 

  
  

  Clearly there is, and has been, a lot of confusion on the issue of what God wants.

  
  

  Ty this notion on for size–God wants nothing. 

  
  

  No matter what you do or fail to do, God will not punish you.  No matter what sacrifices you may make, God will not single you out for some special reward.  In other words, God is not Santa Claus.  God does not make a list of who’s naughty and who’s nice. 

  
  

  God is love, unconditional and infinite.  To want something means that you do not have it, that you lack it.  God is everything, and therefore cannot lack anything. 

  
  

  You do not have to pray to God for anything because you have already have been given everything.  All the wisdom and courage and strength and compassion you will ever need is within you right now–you need only to find it, own it, and use it.

  
  

  This, in brief, is the message of the latest book from Neale Donald Walsh.  The name may ring a bell–he has already written five books which were New York Times best-sellers. (None of which the Tmes bothered to review, I might add.)  He takes seventy-five pages to lead up to the Big Answer, however, but to me and my sweety and many other people, he will be largely preaching to the choir.  For me, the really good stuff–the stuff that changed my life, filled me with such a sense of empowerment that now, every day of my life is just exactly as good and rich and wonderful as I choose it to be–is roughly from page 182 to page 211. 

  
  

  It is not a  big book. It is, however, a great enough book to change humanity, one life at a time.  With all the ernestness at my command, I urge everyone to read this book.  The publishers’ price is $23; it is less expensive on Amazon.  If you choose not to make that investment for any reason, go to your local library and read it for free.  Just read it, think about it, and act on it. 

  
  

  And prepare to be amazed.

  • 3:23 pm
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