{"id":465,"date":"2008-11-29T13:55:25","date_gmt":"2008-11-29T13:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/11\/just-one-way.html"},"modified":"2008-11-29T13:55:25","modified_gmt":"2008-11-29T13:55:25","slug":"just-one-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/11\/just-one-way.html","title":{"rendered":"Just one way?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wal-Mart incident raises some very hard-to-look-at questions about all of us. Human beings like to think of themselves as an advanced species. Yet are we? At the Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, New York yesterday a 34-year-old employee was killed by shoppers trampling him to death as they pushed into the store seeking Black Friday bargains. My gosh, dolphins act better than that.<\/em>
\nI was deeply impressed — impacted, you might say — by this comment on that situation from Deb Reilly:
\n<\/p>\n

“I don’t see a difference in the rush on Walmart and the rush on Wall Street.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong>
\nWow. I have to say, I hadn’t made that connection until I saw it in print on my computer screen. Then it was like I had been hit in between the eyes with a two-by-four. Brother, does that capture everything that needs to said about humanity right now, or what?
\nI think we need to look at ourselves here. What is humanity made of? How do we see ourselves, and how to we wish our species to “be”? These are decisions being made by you and by me every second, every moment of our lives.
\nI found the following comment, from a person posting as “LZ”, to be impacting as well. Read this…<\/em><\/p>\n

“Something must be done, and it must be done fast. The world must take a cold, clear look at itself and make a huge decision: Is this how we really want to live? Is this who we really are, as a species? Is this what it means to be human?” Yes Neale, it is going to become worse. Much worse. The answer you ask? Jesus Christ who has already said what will happen and what is wrong with the human heart. Did u miss that somewhere?
\nWhy are you floundering about in your pseudo intellectualism mixed with emotional pleas when you have already heard the truth. It is a sinful generation. Are you able to see this? Do you know what the cure is my friend? It’s for people to acknowledge that in their hearts and then repent and turn back to the Lord, who said this very thing with the same direction. Neale. wake up are you getting it??? Earth to Neale. Heaven to Neale…are you getting it?
\nWE will not solve this alone. New age energy thoughts will not solve this. The human heart is the human heart. Neale, are you getting this yet???? Dear God, let them wake up and see the truth, Lord. Your truth. Let them smell the sewage of selfishness and hate that has been cooking now for so long and let them know that there is only one way for it to be cleaned out and washed away, made new.
\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now there is an important and powerful statement. Thank you, LZ, for your contribution. I agree with so much of the nuance of what you have to say here, if not the exact words you have used to get across your message.
\nIf your message is that the human race is in trouble, that we need to decide, and decide fast, who we are and who we want to be, I agree with you completely. I especially like the “sewage of selfishness” line. That’s strong language, but not stronger than Jesus’ oft-quoted line, “You hypocrites! You vipers brood!”
\nSometimes strong language has to be used to wake people up. I also agree with you, LZ, that the answer to our problems as a species will not be found in what you call “pseudo intellectualism mixed with emotional pleas.” That hit home. We must have more than that. That is empty, pointless. I agree. Emphatically. What we need now is action. Commitment, determination, and action<\/em>. We need — all of humanity needs — to make a choice.
\nWe need to answer life’s most important question: Who Are We, and who do we Choose to Be?
\nLife is a struggle for True Identity. Are we Sons of God? Or are we followers of others who would tell us how we are to be? And if the message of those Others is so good and so accurate and so ‘right,’ then why, after all these hundreds and hundreds of years, has it not worked to produce the outcomes that all of us — God AND Humans — desire?
\nI tell you, if religion was held to the same standards as science, this experiment would have been abandoned a long time ago…
\nMy friend LZ, let us agree, then, that something other than lip-flapping and mind-massaging is needed right now if we are to win this human race. Yet let us not seek to bring all of us together by sending all of us once more apart.
\nIn your post you said, in an apparent prayer to God, “Let them smell the sewage of selfishness and hate that has been cooking now for so long and let them know that there is only one way for it to be cleaned out and washed away, made new.”
\nThere is not “only one way,” LZ. Love is not nearly so narrow. There are a thousand ways for our hearts and minds of humanity “to be cleaned out,” for our non-benefiting thoughts to be “washed away,” and for our very selves to be “made new.”
\nThe idea that there is “only one way” is, I want to softly observe, one of the ideas that drives people away from each other, and one of the sources of radical fundamentalism, exclusivity, and righteousness in our world. This kind of thinking is the source<\/em> of the problem, not the solution. This sort of understanding of God, and of What God Wants, has done more in the past 500 years to produce<\/em> conflict and sorrow and violence and killing than it has to eliminate it. Don’t you<\/em> see this<\/em>, LZ? Hello…hello….earth to LZ…heaven to LZ… are you getting it?
\nYou say, “New age energy thoughts will not solve this.” LZ, there is no difference between “prayer” and “new age energy thoughts.” A rose is still a rose, no matter by what name you refer to it. If I could get all the world to send “new age energy thoughts” of peace and love to everyone all the time, the most fervent prayers of humanity would be answered — through the act of the prayer itself.
\nFinally LZ, in a second, follow-up post, you imply that if I embraced your theology and accepted Christ as my only way, “It certainly would be the end to your special messenger status and your god ‘entity’ who you think you pray to and has been speaking to you in the utmost maze of confusing declarations in your books.”
\nLZ, my sweet friend, please read my writings, both on this blog and in my 22 books, carefully. If you do, you will see that I have never, ever, ever<\/em> declared myself to have “special messenger status.” In fact, just the opposite. In all of my writings, in all of my talks, in everything I have ever said and done I have made one thing clear to any who would truly listen and honestly report what I say: I am not in any way ‘chosen’ or ‘special’ or ‘elevated’ or ‘other than’ the rest of humanity. We are all<\/em> messengers of God. We are all sending a message TO life ABOUT life through the process of Life Itself.
\nEach of us, in the living of our lives, brings a message to each of the other of us. In this way, God is made manifest in Man, and Divinity is expressed through Humanity. Now the only way that anyone would have a problem with that is if someone carried a thought that God is not supposed<\/em> to be made manifest in Man. As if that was somehow not part of the plan.<\/em> Yet I am told that it is the whole plan;<\/em> that the point of all of life<\/em> is for Divinity to be expressed in<\/em> life >em>through<\/em> life — in the person of every human being. I am told that it is God’s great joy to see God’s Creations reach mastery in living and experience spiritual self-realization.
\nAnd we’ll discuss more of this in the days ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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