What is Mid-Life?

Upon returning to the lovely gateway of the Beliefnet Community today, I spotted a question asked by one of my neighbors: "Is it a mid-life crisis?" he wondered.

He made me wonder, too: When's mid-life? I mean, if we are spiritual creatures, made in the image of God, if there is no beginning or end to us, where is that point that we can designate as the "middle" of our lifetime?

Now that I've become aware of what a theater Earth is--and have become totally convinced of its departure from reality--the word "life" hits my eyes and ears differently. Words such as "life-saving" and "life-threatening", and yes, "mid-life" are curious to me. In fact, one of the questions in the Drama Queen Workshop “reality check” exercise is: It’s possible for medical professionals to save a life. True or False?

The answer, at least in that venue, is “false”. You can save a body, but you can’t save a life. We’ve confused the two, with obvious and frightening results.

We've been taught that reality is only what we can see: the slow moving molecules that constitute physical life. We've been taught that we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Consequently, we tend to be fearful and defensive. We're spooked more easily. After all, there's so much to lose; no one is guaranteed tomorrow. Gotta get it now, gotta keep it, gotta keep others from trying to take it. Control whatever and whomever you can in this finite world.

What if Paul was correct when he told the Corinthians in his second letter: "What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal?" Is reality temporary or eternal?

Wouldn't it be great in 2008, if we could more consistently "keep it real?" Who knows? Maybe the Loud Mouth wouldn't feel so compelled to rant!

Discover the Law of Attraction "Secrets" No One Wants to Talk About

You might recall that this time last year, the ancient Law of Attraction was in the process of becoming a 21st century fad. That excitement soon faded, after millions did not get the results they desired. It's not that the bearers of this ancient Truth were wrong; they weren't. They simply didn't tell us the entire secret.

I promised in this space several months ago that I would fill in some of those blanks. At that time, I'd hoped to be able to deliver it to you around Thanksgiving. However, the Universe felt that this was a better time; winter solstice, New Year, it's a period of rebirth.

It's now time to understand why many of those Law of Attraction tactics didn't work the way you wanted or expected. It's finally time to discuss the secrets of this spiritual Law that no one seems to want to talk about. (They don't call me the "Loud Mouth in the Balcony" for nothin’! I'm tellin'.)

On New Year's Day, you can find out what those secrets are: the four simple principles that determine your outcomes. They're revealed in a free audio book that will help you enter 2008 with a new aptitude for why you attract certain experiences and people into your life. This is the full narration of my March 2008 hardcover release, Crossing an Unseen Bridge. The audio book will sell for $29.95 after the holidays. Right now, it is my gift to you with every pre-order of the printed edition ($15.95).

Crossing an Unseen Bridge promises to be as enlightening, empowering and entertaining as my whimsical spiritual memoir, EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens. I hope this audio gift will be as much of a blessing to everyone as that book, and that it will provide a powerful start to your New Year.

This free audio book offer is open only to members
of my mailing list, as of December 31, 2007!
You can join that list by signing up in the

Drama Queen Workshops bookstore.

So many have commented that reading my work is like having me in the room talking to them. This time, I will really be there! I look forward to spending quality time with you.

Merry Christmas and a Happier New Year!

American Justice

I just read a fascinating article in today's New York Times. They're examining commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are unique. This kind of justice happens nowhere else in the civilized world. This article, the second installment of a series, focuses on a young man who is serving life in prison without chance of parole. Why? Because he loaned his Chevy Metro to a friend.

Read the NYT article, and share your thoughts: Should anyone be severely punished for someone else's sin--under any circumstances. If you don't mind mentioning your religious affiliation (if any) in your response, I'd appreciate it.

Does Love Hate?

A few months ago in this space, I suggested that we needed a prequel to the red hot best sellers touting the Law of Attraction. You know—something that lends credibility to claims that it’s really a law. After all, spiritual laws work for 100 percent of the people, 100 percent of the time. But 100% of the readers of these books didn’t get what they expected.

Maybe it’s because they needed a tad bit more than a magnet in their back packs before they could attract the life of their dreams, valuable and vital information that anyone must know before paying too much attention to ancient secrets. I waited for someone to put it in a nice handy book that's simple to read and understand. Then one day I said to myself, “Why wait? You're a journalist. Write it yourself.”

That’s what I’ve been doing in my spare time, instead of blogging. By the way, a special edition of that prequel will be available free at the DQW Bookstore around Thanksgiving, if I’m not sidetracked by too many distractions. This week, several have given me a wink and a nod, trying to coax me back into blogging mode.

But it was the teenager distributing religious tracts in front of the Wrigley Building and moments later, the guy screaming Divine threats through a bullhorn as the crowds walked by Water Tower Place that really prompted me to momentarily push the prequel aside.

I had the distinct pleasure of encountering the young girl and a few of her family members today on my way to a luncheon and again on my way back. From several hundred feet away, I could read the big bold white letters on their t-shirts: “JESUS HATES SIN.” I groaned in disbelief, but managed to maintain my composure as I neared them.

Apparently, I appeared to be an approachable soul (or at least a salvageable one). The girl extended a tract in my direction. Instead of reaching for it, I leaned over and said quietly, “Jesus doesn’t hate anything, Sweetheart.” I smiled and walked on.

“Judge not, judge not”, I kept repeating to myself, harkening Jesus’ loving wisdom. I'm not sure it worked. I was quite offended that someone would construct a sentence with “Jesus” as the subject and “hates” as the predicate. Fewer things are more oxymoronic. Oops, I forgot—judge not.

Pardon me, I’m still evolving. And, I have to remind myself, so are those who believe that Jesus hates anything. So, on my way back, when the young lady stepped toward me, I tried to say something more empowering: “Seventy times seven, dear. Remember ‘seventy times seven.’”

I figured that she could use a reminder, too—or at minimum, she could do the math. Surely someone who says to forgive a sin 490 times can’t really “hate” sin—unless of course, he’s a hypocrite.

And that brings me to the angry man down the street, who didn’t need a bullhorn to be heard above the noisy Michigan Avenue traffic. He had an important message that he was bellowing to pedestrians within earshot: God is going to torture us with endless doses of excruciating pain if we don’t clean up our acts.

Would that be the God of “God is Love”/“Prince of Peace” fame? I wondered.

A steady flow of passersby kept it moving, pretending to ignore the rant. However, one young man objected to being assaulted by someone's religious views as he was going about his day.

And that’s when it happened, much to the chagrin of those of us who believe that God is good all the time. The man went into a rage. “God’s going to throw you right in hell! You’re going straight to hell (and more venomous blah, blah, blah)!”

I shook my head and smiled at the couple standing nearby. “Now, isn’t that Christ-like?”

Have mercy! The mouth behind the bullhorn then started screaming at me. I mean he ripped me a new one. The Christ was undoubtedly missing from this card-carrying Christian.

Call me crazy, but I think it’s folks like him who are directly responsible for the skyrocketing membership in the Church Alumni Association, as Bishop John Shelby Spong lovingly dubbed it. Fewer folks are willing to accept portrayals of God as Boogie Man or terrorist, no matter where it’s written.

That leads to the third thing that caught my eye this week: a lawsuit filed by a Nebraska state law maker. The defendant in State Sen. Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit is none other than…God.

If I may invoke legal parlance, “based on information and belief”, Chambers’ suit accused God of inspiring fear and causing “fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes…widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants.” To make matters worse, the lawsuit claims, God has threatened Chambers and his constituents with bodily harm. In response, Chambers is seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

The senator acknowledges that his lawsuit is frivolous by design. He's trying to make the point that anybody in Douglas County, Nebraska can file a lawsuit for any ridiculous reason. And he wants the practice to stop.

But Chambers—who is known to jab unChrist-like Christians now and again—appears to be making another point, too: The acts that God has been accused of intentionally committing against mankind are indisputably terroristic and inhumane. In some cases, they are petty, vengeful, unforgiving—and even hateful. Notably, God is said to have claimed responsibility, actually confessed, to acts that qualify for criminal prosecution.

Would Love do any of it? Could it be that the heinous accusations against God are as frivolous as Chambers’ lawsuit?

Are some of us boldly promoting God’s accusers rather than God's goodness?

Truth Takes Flight

The last few weeks have been fascinating to watch from any seat in the balcony of Life. A veritable duel between contemporary and ancient thought played onstage:

Earth science students found really, really old fossils in Illinois. The Pope changed his mind about Original Sin. And Creationists opened a $27 million museum near Cincinnati with exhibits depicting the Bible's book of Genesis, which, among other things, claims that the Universe was created in six days, a mere 6,000 years ago--only 14 billion years short of geological estimates.

Speaking of geology, a University of Illinois at Chicago earth and environmental sciences professor and his students recently set out to explore a limestone cave in nearby Kendall County. Because northeastern Illinois is believed to have once been covered by a sea, the group expected to find 450 million-year-old fossils from marine life.

The fossils they found were quite a bit younger, only 310 million years old; and they weren't aquatic. But the group was hardly disappointed with their treasures. These fossils were of plant spores, scorpion parts and needles from a coniferous tree-maybe the oldest ever found in North America!

But perhaps the most astounding news came from Vatican City: Pope Benedict XVI uprooted a centuries-old Church belief, by approving a report claiming that there's reason to believe that children who die without being baptized are not excluded from heaven. Before now, it was believed that these children still carry the burden of original sin, and would go into a limbo state after death because they weren't acceptable to commune with God in heaven.

Of course, original sin hinges on the belief that God mercilessly blames every human for sins we didn't personally commit. Millions fervently believe this. I wonder how many of them believe that it is fair, reasonable or Godly to jail them for someone else's crime.

Either we believe in a just God or we don't. Wouldn't it be a novel idea if, when we read something that claims that God did something unjust, we questioned it instead of maligning God's character by perpetuating the tale for generations?

Actually, some folks will go to great heights to defend God's goodness. Case in point: the news conference for the Answers in Genesis organization's state-of-the-art Creationist museum opening.

Buzzzzzzz. A buzzing sound overhead shifted everyone's attention skyward. It was a small plane. From its tail flew a huge banner, commanding: "Thou Shalt Not Lie."

That promises to be the first of many protests at this Bible-affirming museum that features graphics in its lobby of children playing with dinosaurs. Bet you didn't know that dinosaurs were domesticated playmates, did you? In fact, one exhibit contends that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. How many cubits long and deep was that boat, again? Either the dinosaurs were runts or the ark made an ocean liner look like a tub toy.
It was that great punishing flood, the Creationist museum's founders insist, that carved out the Grand Canyon in a matter of weeks-a claim universally disputed by scientists, who insist that the canyon was formed over a period of 6 million years and its deep channels reveal two billion years of the planet's geological history.

Of course, the Great Flood story hinges on the belief that God is satanically genocidal and plays favorites.

Hey, will somebody please cue that plane?

"Secret" Audiences Deserve a Prequel

After viewing The Secret, the consensus here in the balcony is that the producers must be planning to reveal the entire “secret” at a later date. While I’m sympathetic with the position that the masses probably can’t handle the full “secret” in one sitting, I’m not sure that the Law of Attraction is the most logical or effective opening scene. In fact, it’s closer to the denouement.

Trying to create or change the scenes in your life’s drama by using only one tool in the box is like playing nine holes of golf with only one club. Fewer things can be more harmful to the body, mind or spirit than learning the Law of Attraction without context, and practicing it in isolation and out of sequence.

As The Secret explained, wise souls have known this Law for many millennia. Since then, they and their messengers have faithfully spread the word. In the 20th century, Earl Nightingale became the first to record this wisdom on vinyl, crediting these not so New Age sages for his “We become what we think about” mantra.

Oprah, perhaps history’s most prolific messenger, knows and shares the Law of Attraction extremely well. Did she consciously practice it to transform her life from an unhappy, abused child with low self esteem into that of a highly respected, internationally known talk show host and billionaire? Frankly, I doubt it. I think she’ll admit that her lifestyle today was beyond the wildest imaginings of a woman who once told me that she couldn’t balance her checkbook.

Oprah and I worked at the same Chicago television station for years. When she arrived at our station, she didn’t envision that her enormous talent would redesign the TV talk show landscape forever. In fact, she was stunned when our station manager offered her the job as the AM Chicago host.

Oprah quickly stole the hearts of Chicago viewers, and advertisers stampeded for exposure to her huge audiences. Then the station manager proved that he was more than a great talent scout. He changed her air time, renamed the show and decreed that the new Oprah Winfrey Show would now challenge the venerable Phil Donahue, head-to-head.

Oprah told us that she was petrified. She feared that Donahue would obliterate her from the airwaves. Fear was her prevailing thought. But in no time flat, she reduced Donahue to Dona-who? Was Oprah working the Law of Attraction?

Few, if any, have focused our attention on developing a debilitating or deadly disease, being downsized, losing our homes and loved ones to an accident, wildfire, hurricane or tornado, or our pensions to unscrupulous corporate executives—but it happened, anyway. On the other hand, many have connected emotionally with vivid images of what their lifestyle would be like if they won a big lottery jackpot, married the mate of their dreams, landed a great job or received an admission letter to the college at the top of their list—yet it never materialized. How many have followed the directives in The Secret and received disappointing results?

I speak from experience. More than a decade ago, I followed these same steps, based on the teachings of the sages that inspired The Secret. I outlined that drama and its results in EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens. I learned the hard way that a little bit of information can be a dangerous thing.

Is the Law of Attraction all we need to know? Is it even the first thing we need to know, if we want to take control of our lives? What’s the rest of the secret—the prerequisite lessons that support this Law? The ancients have passed on that information, too; and it’s just as accessible.

Let’s hope that the producers of The Secret unveil it in a desperately needed prequel—and soon. Otherwise, many who are now open to exercising the power of positive thought and invoking the Law of Attraction to control their outcomes will lose ground and lose faith when they don’t consistently create the results they desire, as The Secret has promised.

Are We Digesting Conflicted Fruit?

Today we celebrate the greatest lesson demonstrated by perhaps the greatest teacher the world has ever known, a Jew named Yeshua. What he demonstrated more than 2,000 years ago was that there is no death.

He reportedly revealed that even though the physical bodies we wear are lifeless and entombed, we are not dead. We are immortal spirit, made in the likeness and image of our Father. We are not physical bodies. What we learned from his demonstration is dramatically different.

Yeshua, whose name was mistranslated as Jesus, was a powerful teacher who was committed to sharing the Truth as it had been revealed to him. Through parables and folksy stories, he spread the word about an unconditionally loving and eternally forgiving God. It was a soul-stirring, joyful message that resonated in hearts wherever he went. But as the Bible relates, some of the questions his followers asked reveal that they were also confused by his message.

Like Yeshua, his followers had been reared in the Jewish tradition. Many had committed Jewish law to memory and were expected to live by the letter of that law. So, despite their acceptance of Yeshua’s dramatically different perception of what God is and what God does, his followers didn’t completely replace their old beliefs. Instead, they planted Yeshua’s empowering and revolutionary teachings on top of the lessons they’d learned as children. We’ve been harvesting conflicted fruit ever since.

For example, Yeshua believed that God not only is absolute (unchanging), he believed that God loves us unwaveringly and forgives us unconditionally. In his Prodigal Son parable, he portrayed God as a Father who will welcome us Home with open arms, no matter what we’ve done.

By contrast, the religious tradition of Yeshua’s family portrayed God as a violent, angry Supreme Being who demanded us to slaughter an innocent creature to atone for our errors. Today, such live sacrifices are considered barbaric and acts that are frequently associated with satanic rituals.

It begs the question: Have we digested conflicted fruit? Or do we truly share Yeshua’s belief that:
1. God is always the same and has never changed;
2. God has always been unconditionally loving and forgiving;
3. God doesn't heinously punish an innocent for another’s wrongdoing?

I Wish Jesus Had Dropped Bread Crumbs

Humans are a lovely and loving lot—except when we forget we are. And that memory lapse scripts all human drama.

From the missives in my e-mailbox, there’s many a beautiful soul out there who believes that it is his or her mission to save the rest of us from eternal damnation; and by golly, they’ll do it by force, in the name of Almighty God. They’ll shake us, insult us, slap us and zap us until we abandon our belief that God is infinitely bigger—and better—than the ancient scribes portrayed. If we really loved God—I mean really, really loved God—we’ll forward their guilt-tripping e-mails to everyone in our address book, and know that a blessing is on the way.

I have no doubt that these wonderful people really mean well. They truly believe that when God does things that are judgmental, inhumane, punitive and…er, ungodly, it’s for our own good. Hey, drastic times call for drastic measures. That’s why they practice Coercive Christianity. If they didn’t, the rest of us would go to hell in a hand basket.

I received an e-mail yesterday that pimp-slapped those who believe the claims in hoax e-mails, but don’t believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. (It didn’t address the group that believes neither.) This type of e-mail used to irritate me. I guess I’m mellowing. Now, I simply wonder how closely these beautiful people have read the Bible—or what’s left of it—before imposing such harsh judgment on others.

In his utterly fascinating book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, renowned biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman says, “[T]he vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making [the scribes’] inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places.”

You don’t have to be an historian or biblical scholar to notice that there are several versions of the Noah and the Ark story clumsily squeezed into the book of Genesis. Close your eyes and let a child read it aloud. You’ll be surprised to hear things you haven’t noticed in all the years you’ve been reading the Bible or repeating that story. You’ll discover that the details and numbers conflict, from one verse to another—repeatedly.

The New Testament has its issues, too. There are four conflicting accounts of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, and even his death. That’s because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had different perceptions of Jesus and his mission, were talking to different audiences, and trying to convince those audiences of different things.

Matthew was speaking to religious Jews, and made an effort to connect Jesus to Jewish scripture. He portrayed Jesus as fulfilling Jewish prophesy—royalty, the King of Kings. Mark addressed the Romans, presenting Jesus to them as servile, the bearer of man’s burdens. To Luke, the erudite Gentile (non-Jewish) physician, Jesus was the perfect and sinless son of man. Luke was believed to be a friend of Paul. His book targeted a non-Jewish Christian audience. By contrast, John’s message was for the common man, particularly the needy. John viewed Jesus as the perfect son of God. Needless to say, the four covered all the bases.

For many millennia, schools of theology have taught our ministers truths about the Bible that many have forgotten to pass on, including the fact that none of the gospel writers actually knew Jesus. Despite the similarities in their names, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not the Apostles. In addition, few men were literate in Jesus’ day. Consequently, the New Testament never contained direct quotes, and neither do our current red letter editions.

Ehrman, who became a born again Christian as a teen, tells a humorous story about how his theological studies fine-tuned his beliefs. (At least, I thought it was funny.) At the urging of the young teacher responsible for his enlightenment, he decided to study Scripture full time. Following high school graduation, he entered Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

Ehrman considered Moody’s curriculum as “hard core Christianity, for the fully committed.” It was there that he first learned that “none of the copies of original scripture is completely accurate, since the scribes who produced them inadvertently and/or intentionally changed them in places.” All the scribes did this, he was taught.

Despite this insight, Moody students and instructors were required to sign a statement declaring that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. No one else seemed to have a problem with viewing the inaccurate copies of copies as the inerrant word of God, so he accepted it, too.

Ehrman was fired up, following his three year Bible immersion at Moody. He wanted to evangelize to the secular world. He decided to earn degrees that would enable him to teach in secular settings. First step: a bachelor’s degree. He selected Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, alma mater of famed evangelist Billy Graham—ignoring warnings from Moody colleagues that he’d find no “real” Christians there.

His study of Greek at Wheaton highlighted his concerns about the biblical translations. As he approached graduation, he was compelled to devote himself to studying the New Testament. The world’s leading expert taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. Ehrman headed in that direction, ignoring warnings from friends at Wheaton that he’d have trouble finding any “real” Christians at Princeton.

He recalls that he reached a turning point during his second semester at Princeton, after writing a final term paper for a much revered and pious professor. In that paper, he examined a passage in Mark 2, in which the Pharisees catch Jesus and his disciples eating grain during the Sabbath. Jesus defended himself and his apostles by citing 1Samuel 21:1-6, which told the story of King David and his men. The scripture says that they went into the temple when Abiathar was the high priest, and they were so hungry that they ate bread that was exclusively for priests.

Scholars who have studied the Bible in conjunction with other historical texts say this scene actually happened when Abiathar’s father, Ahimelech, was the high priest—a factual error. Ehrman faced this challenge by writing a lengthy and admittedly convoluted argument that the names in 1Samuel and Mark 2 were indeed incorrect, but the Bible itself is inerrant.

His pious professor minced no words, writing on Ehrman’s term paper: “Maybe Mark just made a mistake.” (That’s when I laughed.)

Laypersons such as myself might not be able to spot the thousands of conflicts that scholars have found, but we can clearly see the obvious ones. For example, Matthew’s “inspired” story of Jesus’ birth, written 38 to 68 years after the crucifixion, says that Jesus was born at Mary and Joseph’s home in Bethlehem, and a brilliant star in the East led three wise men to the newborn and his mother. He writes: “Going into the house, they saw Mary and the baby, and fell down and worshipped him.” (Matthew 2:11)

Luke was inspired to relate a totally different birth narrative. In it, Mary and Joseph didn’t live in a house in Bethlehem. They traveled to the city (presumably from Nazareth) to pay taxes. The reason for the trip, Luke claims, is because Joseph belonged to the lineage of King David.

In Luke’s version, it was not the three magi, but shepherds who were led to newborn Jesus—and not by a star, but by an angel: “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”. (Luke 2:12)

Historians have been unable to find any evidence of such a mandate for taxpayers to travel to their ancestral home to pay taxes—ever. Tax time wasn’t recorded to be in December, either. Personally, I’m looking for the rationale for making a pregnant woman travel by foot and donkey to watch her husband pay taxes.

But Luke had to devise a way to get this family from Nazareth to Bethlehem, because Hebrew Scriptures portended that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Jewish prophesy also said that the Messiah would be a descendant of David, so Luke claimed that Joseph was that descendant.

(Cue the screeching brakes) Does this mean that Christmas pageants and Nativity plays the world over are portraying Joseph, not God, as Jesus’ father?

So much for the biblical issues surrounding Jesus’ birth. Let’s look at the Gospels’ dueling versions of his death. Mark, who was the first to chronicle Jesus’ life, 35 to 45 years after his death, claims that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal (Mark 14:12). By contrast, the Gospel of John, which scholars say was written 25 to 30 years after Mark’s version, claims that he was crucified the day before the meal (John 19:14). There are also conflicting reports of the series of events that followed his death. The contradictions are too numerous to mention here.

As the Reverend Dr. Evelyn Boyd-Castillo, one of my favorite teachers at Christ Universal Temple, says, “There’s a lot of truth in the Bible, but everything in the Bible isn’t true.”

For one thing, Jesus can’t be born in different places or die on different days. But more important, believing that the Bible is inerrant doesn’t make us “real” Christians. Reading it for guidance in practicing the teachings of the Jew named Yeshua, whose name was changed to Jesus in one of the many translations, is what makes us “real” Christians.

Yeshua brought good news that has long outlived his time on Earth: God is not the sun or an object, as believed by Roman pagans. And God is not the intervening, score-keeping Bogie Man who angrily smites, vengefully commits genocide, heinously demands the live sacrifice of animals, as described in the Old Testament.

Even though Yeshua’s actual words were never recorded verbatim, their essence was this: God is Love. God is Spirit. God is unconditional forgiveness. God is within everyone. God is good all the time; and all the time, God is good. That was his story; and he stuck to it, no matter what.

For three very challenging years, Yeshua dutifully served as God’s PR person. That’s an awfully short time to change centuries of firmly entrenched images and perceptions of what divinity looks like, especially if the religious establishment virulently opposes you. He knew that mere words wouldn’t do; so he put on a show and took it on the road. He demonstrated what it looks like to exude the real power of the Loving, Living God that is within us: a power that compels us to treat others the way we’d want to be treated, love and forgive unconditionally, and honor free will, forcing no one to do anything.

He issued no commands. Instead, he gently and lovingly extended an invitation for us to mimic his thoughts, beliefs and behavior beyond his space and time.

“Follow me,” he urged.

Sigh. If only he had dropped bread crumbs.

Dare to Think?

“Mankind must evolve, for all human conflict, a method that rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is Love.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

My route to the office passes a large orange sign in a window of the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum on the Mag Mile that screams: “WE DARE YOU TO THINK”. That sign always makes me giggle.

Thinking is often discouraged or forbidden in this Land of the Free, especially when it comes to religion. Typically, we are scared to think, rather than dared to think.

Suppose you have a friend who makes you feel lucky to have him in your world. In fact, everyone who knows this guy speaks of him with admiration. What a cool dude: kind, generous, trustworthy, always lending a helping hand to others. He’s a source of comfort and solace. You’ve never seen him angry or heard him utter a discouraging word.

Then one morning you pick up the newspaper and see his picture beneath a headline that screams “CHARGED!” He’s walking with his head bowed, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, hands behind his back and surrounded by a gaggle of police and TV cameras.

Your knees buckle as you read details of the crimes your dear friend is accused of committing: rape, murder and child abuse. Investigators say they also found evidence that he is involved in a terrorist plot to kill a great number of people.

Your head is spinning. Do you believe what you read—or trust what you know? That is our challenge when we read certain accounts about God: believe what we read or trust what we know.

If, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. suggests, mankind must evolve beyond a barbaric level of conflict resolution, surely God is light years ahead. And if we share Dr. King’s belief that we evolve to a higher level of conflict resolution through love, and we believe that God is Love, is it possible to believe that God resolves conflict with revenge, aggression and retaliation?

We are dared to think.

When I was nine or ten years old, I recall leaving Sunday school a bit dazed. I couldn’t quite wrap my child’s brain around what I’d just read in class. I comprehended the God is Love part; but the book lost me when it claimed that God had done cruel and unusual things that Love absolutely positively would not do, under any circumstances.

We are dared to think.

I've been told that God is everywhere, knows everything, and is all-powerful. If that's true, how are we also supposed to believe that God has a rival? A rival can only be taken seriously if it is an equal. God has no equal.

We are dared to think.

One thought always seems to lead to others: For example, if jealousy is such an undesirable human trait, how can we believe that God has claimed to be jealous? And pray tell, what exists in the Universe that would invoke jealousy from a God who is everywhere, knows everything, and is all-powerful?

We are dared to think.

It is claimed that Love had a fit of rage so intense that it killed everyone and everything in Creation, with a few exceptions. And they want us to believe that Love has threatened to do it again.

Anybody dare to reflect on that “revelationary” method of resolving conflict?