God's Abiding Love

I think the most important thing I have gotten out of the books was a deep sense of God's abiding love. I have learned in an extraordinary way of God's unremitting, unconditional love and total acceptance of us... even the worst of us. This came through to me even as I was "writing" the books by the bare fact that I was writing them. I mean, by the earthly standards of many people (including my own), I am the last person who deserves to have been chosen to put this information into a series of books. Yet I was chosen, and I have put it into book form. So by that measure alone, I am clear that God loves without condition; that God rejects not even the least or the worst of us, and that all we need do to understand and experience that salvation is to accept it, claim it, honor it, and hold it as true.

Now there are those who disagree with me. Many, in fact, who do. They say that God's word and God's law and God's love is worthless and pointless if there was no such thing as the possibility of God's rejection. They say that the only way to God is through obedience to God's commands, adherence to God's laws, and - in some theological constructions - acceptance of God's Son. Failure to do any or all of these things means certain damnation, they say, and we'd better be aware of that, and ready for it, because we'll get what's "coming to us" if we don't watch out. In fact, we not only had better watch out, we'd better not cry. We'd better not pout... I'm tellin' you why...

Oh... sorry... that's a different myth. You see? Every myth we create, we create around a system of Judgment; around a construction of Reward and Punishment. It is inconceivable to us that there is a being in the Universe - in Reality or in Mythology - who could accept us just the way we are, and just the way we choose to be.

That is because we cannot believe in the ultimate purpose of life. We believe that the purpose of life is to follow God's law, do as God wants, and, essentially, please God. Yet pleasing God is not the purpose of life. Only an egomaniacal deity would create beings whose essential purpose was to please Him. And only an insane egomaniac would then add such treachery and misery to the mix as life contains in order to make it virtually guaranteed that his created beings would stumble and fall. And only an incredibly cruel insane egomaniac would go further, saying it doesn't matter whether they fall or not, because they have already fallen! Before birth!

As improbable as this scheme might seem, that is the theological construction which millions upon millions of people have laid upon their so-called "loving" God. So I think the most important thing the books have done for me and do for me daily, is free me from the shackles of a belief in an angry, vindictive, judgmental God. I am now more open to creating my life as I want it, not as I imagined it had to be.

The second most important thing I've learned from the books is that there is only one reason to do a thing - anything - and that is to be and to decide, to create and fulfill, Who I Really Am, and Who I now Choose to Be. You see, I thought there were all sorts of reasons that I was supposed to do this or that. My father told me. The world expects it of me, God demands it of me. Whatever. Now I'm clear that God demands nothing, the world's expectations are distorted and misplaced, and my father's orders no longer need to be followed.

The ironic part of all this is that I am now acting more in accordance with what the old teachings asked of me than I was when I was told to act that way, or else. In other words, I am finding that "being good" (whatever "good" means) feels...well...good...when it isn't having to be done because I'll be condemned if I don't.

Put another way, I tend to rise to higher expectations of me, and aspirations for me, when these expectations and aspirations are mine, not someone else's. This is a Great Secret which God understands, but which Man refuses to believe: we are basically Good...not basically bad. We do not need an angry, vindictive, punishing God to scare us into doing what is "right," act in the interests of others, or "show up" grandly. Our basic nature - human nature - is loving and kind. We are taught greed. We are taught fear. We are taught ugliness, prejudice, violence. We are LOVE... and we are taught to be something else!

By Neale Donald Walsch