As we start to spiritually mature, another sign of spiritual growth is allowing our image of God to change. Adam and Eve have been blamed for our disobedient nature, our original sin, and our suffering thanks to the choice they made to eat the apple. This made God so angry that we have been trying to get back into God's good graces for a long, long time. And this is partly how religion came to be. Because of Adam and Eve, none of us were good enough to win over God and make our relationship with God "right" again, and it has become the mission of religion to set us straight and win back the love of God, and live in His good grace. The real "sin" here is believing that we are separate from God and that we deserve to suffer the consequences of the separation that Adam and Eve caused in our relationship with God. Our suffering in our separateness has become a sort of "paradise" in our own minds. We love to suffer. We love to complain. We love to feel unworthy. We love to struggle. We love pain. We love negativity. The Old Testament is filled with images of an angry, vengeful God. A God who rewards the "good" and causes pain and suffering for those who are not "good". A God who wages war against the enemy and takes the side of the righteous. Many of us still believe we are here to suffer, and that we cannot grow closer to God any other way.
The birth of Jesus, in the New Testament, was God's way of leading us to the truth that we are of God, made in the image of God, and carry the energy of God in all that we think, say, and do. Jesus revealed to us that we are one with God and that God lives in us. He came to repair the damage caused by the belief that we are separate from God. Jesus' entire life was about helping people find God within themselves and helping others experience that oneness with our Creator. Jesus taught us to see God in everyone even the tax collectors, the adulterers, and the thieves. His life was all about demonstrating what can happen when we worship an image of God that divides instead of unites.
God thought of us, loved us, and needed to show His love for the world in a very special and unique way. And so he created you. You were a thought in God's mind. You were formed in God's imagination and brought into this world as an extension of God's love, an expression of God's compassion. God dreamed of expressing Himself through you. The world needs your love. It is your hands, your thoughts, your talents, your gifts, your actions, and your choices that make God visible to everyone. You contain a part of God that no one else does. Think about it in this way. A mother kitten doesn't give birth to a puppy. She gives birth to a smaller image of herself, a baby kitten. A dolphin cannot give birth to a giraffe. She gives birth to a baby dolphin. A mother gives birth to a baby, not a goldfish. That baby has the same DNA as his parents, he has the features of his parents, and eventually the same potential to think, learn, and do what his parents can do, in his own unique and special way. It is the same with us, we have the make-up of God in us. God thinks through us. God creates through us. God loves the world through us. We contain in our spirit, the DNA of God. Jesus came into the world to show us that we are a smaller version of God, and that our idea of God being a "larger" version of us does not give us a complete picture of who God really is.
This is so critical to not only understand with our minds, but feel in our hearts. We are God's answer to the prayer to end hunger. We are God's answer to the prayer to end war. We are God's answer to anything unjust in the world. While we wait around for God to do "something" about all of this, it is God who waits for us, ever so patiently, to be the answer to our own prayers. All of us, collectively, are the miracles the world longs for. All of us, with our thinking, our believing, and our action have the power of God and the force of love inside us to change what is wrong in our world. Martin Luther King knew this. Rosa Parks knew this. Ghandi knew this. Mother Theresa knew this. And the list of people goes on.
As women and mothers, it is so critical to help our children understand that they are an original blessing in our world, who contain the energy and the power of God within them. They are a spark of light born from the Great Light. Our image of who we are in relationship to God must be repaired if our children are going to live in a safe and abundant world. It is us, and our children, and their children, that will restore the paradise that was lost to separateness. This is the pain of our laboring, to live in union with God. Our hearts and our spirits ache to remember, and feel, that we are one with God, and one with everyone else.
Next week: The role of religion in spiritual growth
