"Oh, and by the way, just because the God in Conversations With God talks about these Bible stories, doesn't mean he is a fan of Christianity. He addresses the ridiculous underlying premise of Christianity here…"
Then, pray God, tell me — what promises should I make in relationship; what agreements must I keep? What obligations do relationships carry? What guidelines should I seek?
The answer is the answer you cannot hear — for it leaves you without guidelines and renders null and void every agreement in the moment you make it. The answer is: you have no obligation. Neither in relationship, nor in all of life.
No obligation?
No obligation. Nor any restriction or limitation, nor any guidelines or rules. Nor are you bound by any circumstances or situations, nor constrained by any code or law. Nor are you punishable for any offense, nor capable of any — for there is no such thing as being “offensive” in the eyes of God.
I’ve heard this before — this “there are no rules” kind of religion. That’s spiritual anarchy. I don’t see how that can work.
There is no way it cannot work — if you are about the business of creating your Self. If, on the other hand, you imagine yourself to be about the task of trying to be what someone else wants you to be, the absence of rules or guidelines might indeed make things difficult.
Yet the thinking mind begs to ask: if God has a way She wants me to be, why didn’t She simply create me that way to begin with? Why all this struggle for me to “overcome” who I am in order for me to become what God wants me to be? This the probing mind demands to know — and rightly so, for it is a proper inquiry.
The religionists would have you believe that I created you as less than Who I Am so that you could have the chance to become as Who I Am, working against all odds — and, I might add, against every natural tendency I am supposed to have given you.
Among these so-called natural tendencies is the tendency to sin. You are taught that you were born in sin, that you will die in sin, and that to sin is your nature.
One of your religions even teaches you that you can do nothing about this. Your own actions are irrelevant and meaningless. It is arrogant to think that by some action of yours you can “get to heaven.” There is only one way to heaven (salvation) and that is through no undertaking of your own, but through the grace granted you by God through acceptance of His Son as your intermediary.
Once this is done you are “saved.” Until it is done, nothing that you do — not the life you live, not the choices you make, not anything you undertake of your own will in an effort to improve yourself or render you worthy — has any effect, bears any influence. You are incapable of rendering yourself worthy, because you are inherently unworthy. You were created that way.
Why? God only knows. Perhaps He made a mistake. Perhaps He didn’t get it right. Maybe He wishes He could have it all to do over again. But there it is. What to do…
You’re making mock of me.
No. You are making mock of Me. You are saying that I, God, made inherently imperfect beings, then have demanded of them to be perfect, or face damnation.
You are saying then that, somewhere several thousand years into the world’s experience, I relented, saying that from then on you didn’t necessarily have to be good, you simply had to feel bad when you were not being good, and accept as your savior the One Being who could always be perfect, thus satisfying My hunger for perfection. You are saying that My Son — who you call the One Perfect One — has saved you from your own imperfection — the imperfection I gave you.
In other words, God’s Son has saved you from what His Father did.
This is how you — many of you — say I’ve set it up. Now who is mocking whom?
That is the second time in this book you seem to have launched a frontal attack on fundamentalist Christianity. I am surprised.
You have chosen the word “attack.” I am simply engaging the issue. And the issue, by the way, is not “fundamentalist Christianity,” as you put it. It is the entire nature of God, and of God’s relationship to man.
The question comes up here because we were discussing the matter of obligations — in relationships and in life itself.
You cannot believe in an obligation-less relationship because you cannot accept who and what you really are. You call a life of complete freedom “spiritual anarchy.” I call it God’s great promise.
It is only within the context of this promise that God’s great plan can be completed.
You have no obligation in relationship. You have only opportunity.
Opportunity, not obligation, is the cornerstone of religion, the basis of all spirituality. So long as you see it the other way around, you will have missed the point.
Relationship — your relationship to all things — was created as your perfect tool in the work of the soul. That is why all human relationships are sacred ground. It is why every personal relationship is holy.
In this, many churches have it right. Marriage is a sacrament. But not because of its sacred obligations. Rather, because of its unequalled opportunity.
Never do anything in relationship out of a sense of obligation. Do whatever you do out of a sense of the glorious opportunity your relationship affords you to decide, and to be, Who You Really Are.
Neale Donald Walsch
"So, yeah," I said. "God isn't the biggest fan of organized religion."
"Then how come he allows organized religion?"
"Oh, come on, Zac. We've covered this a million times. Why does God allow anything?"
"So we can create and experience Who We Are?"
"Exactly. God is just observing us play our little games. One of those games is called 'religion,' and there are many different variations of it. None of them are actually True. The only Truth is this simple algorithm and the fact that it's giving us a physical experience of whatever we believe to be true. But that doesn't make what we believe to be true, actually True — if that makes sense. Something can be true in the explicate order, but not True in the implicate order."
