{"id":108,"date":"2007-10-27T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2007-10-27T01:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/what-in-the-world-does-god-wan.html"},"modified":"2007-10-27T01:01:01","modified_gmt":"2007-10-27T01:01:01","slug":"what-in-the-world-does-god-wan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/what-in-the-world-does-god-wan.html","title":{"rendered":"What in the world does God want?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The human race is losing patience with itself. I think people are saying, \u201cThere\u2019s got to be another way.\u201d We\u2019re becoming more and more clear that there is. We simply have to make that choice.
\nSometimes people think they must live the way they are living because they have no choice. The appearance of things can often make it look as though this is very, very real. But it is never real. Never.
\nPeople do have a choice, and this book is going to prove that to you. People have a choice in the life they are creating and they have a choice in how they are experiencing the life they are now living. Before you get to the final page here you\u2019re going to be given the most powerful tool there is with which to make your choices real. For now, know this: People who make a different choice are people who make a different world.
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\nNOTE: Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Openings.<\/em>
\nThis week’s prose…an excerpt from What God Wants<\/em>…
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\nIt is time now for the Choice Makers to step forward. If they do not, the world will continue moving in the direction in which it is moving. That is not a direction in which humanity says it wishes to go. Yet what is humanity willing to do about that? This is the question now before the world.
\nIf humanity\u2019s highest idea about the direction that it wishes to take is not asserted now, its lowest idea could be embraced by default. That is what is happening at this moment in some people\u2019s minds in many parts of the world.
\nThere are those who say …<\/p>\n


\n…that this is how it is because this is how it has to be. These are, they say, the End Times\u2014and this is What God Wants.
\nYet people can be saved, they say. People do not have to be Left Behind. When the Tribulation is at hand, people can be saved. All they have to do is finally accept the Good News.
\nWell, have I got good news for you.
\nHumanity does not understand What God Wants.
\nConsider this: If humanity does understand What God Wants, and if the present world situation is the best that humanity can do after all these years with that information, how much hope can there be for a brighter tomorrow?
\nIf we really know everything that it is truly important to know about God\u2014and if all that has been revealed, all that has been taught, all that has been said and sung about God has brought humanity to this, then what good has all of it been?
\nYet if there is something new for us to learn, something more for us to understand about God, then it\u2019s still possible for the human condition to change. Hope returns. Not hope for something better in the Hereafter, when life as we\u2019ve known it on the earth has been destroyed, but hope for something better right here right now, before everything has been destroyed.
\nThat hope cannot be realized, however, until some very important questions are asked and answered.
\nIs it true that humanity is utterly stubborn, completely unwilling and absolutely unable to overcome its most primitive instincts? Or is it possible that there is still some teaching left to be done, some data still missing, some important aspect of God and Life still not understood?
\nCould it be that the problem is not with the receivers of the information, but with the information itself?
\nCould it be that humanity\u2019s understanding of God and of Life is not so much \u201cwrong\u201d as it is simply incomplete?
\nFinally, is it time for humanity to throw open the door to inquiry about God in a new way?
\nFor far too long the world\u2019s discussion about God has been moving in only one direction, led in the main by those who say that we understand all there is that\u2019s really important for us to understand about God, and who assert that humanity\u2019s problems are not caused by human beings who fail to understand, but by human beings who fail to act on their understanding.
\nThis is a popular notion, but it\u2019s a misconception. Just the opposite has been true. It has been people who did act on what they understood about God who have caused many of our biggest problems.
\nThese are people who thought they knew What God Wants.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created the 200 years of the Christian Crusades and the horrors of the Inquisition, seeking to win the world for Christianity.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who told armies of Muslims to send marauders far and wide to conquer every land and culture and bring it under the Nation of Islam.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who called themselves the Chosen People and reclaimed land they declared to be originally their own, ignoring the fact that history had caused it to be inhabited for thousands of years by others, and telling those others to now leave portions of that land, and to live when and how they are told to live, as second class citizens without equal rights in their own home.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who hanged men and women in town squares, and burned others at the stake, holding up the Good Book and declaring them to be witches.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who passed laws making it illegal for humans of differing races to marry, or for consenting adults to engage in certain sexual practices.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created cultural prohibitions forbidding people to sing or dance, draw pictures of any person, or play music of any kind except sacred songs.
\nIt\u2019s people who thought they knew What God Wants who said that it was not okay to even utter or write the name of G\u00ac-D\u2014but that it was okay to kill in G-D\u2019s name.
\nIs all of this really What God Wants?
\nAre you sure?
\nIt is important to be sure, because we are not talking about a small thing here.
\nThere is much that we have been taught about What God Wants. Are these teachings accurate? Next Saturday we’ll take our first look.
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\nThis week’s gift of poetry<\/em>
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\nAll of This:
\nit is preparation for
\nwalking in the world
\nas Light.
\nYou have been found now,
\nand the running of many lifetimes
\nis over.
\nSo as each layer of dust
\nis wiped clean
\nfrom the surface
\nthe You
\nyou have known
\nmust disperse.
\nLet this Light become
\nYour speech & Your silence.
\nLet the grief
\nthat has lived you,
\npass away.
\nLet the people
\nwho love You,
\nLove Themselves.
\nLet the earth shake,
\nthe stars burn
\nthe skies break
\nwhen You do:
\nas painful as this part is
\nYou were meant
\nto Know Your Light.
\n<\/em>
\n(You Were Meant – m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For more of the work of this new American poet, go to www.mclairepoet.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The human race is losing patience with itself. I think people are saying, \u201cThere\u2019s got to be another way.\u201d We\u2019re becoming more and more clear that there is. We simply have to make that choice. Sometimes people think they must live the way they are living because they have no choice. 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