96 THE TRUTH
96 THE TRUTH
Man is forever trying to rationalize religion. Put it in a box that he can understand and make it into a simple set of rules that he can keep so that he doesn’t have to be continually thinking about it and checking himself, to see if he is doing it right. This way, he doesn’t have to worry about being right or wrong, he just has to follow those set of rules and God will accept him into paradise while he can get on with his, much more important, lifestyle.
God started with a man and they were friends. He added woman and man then had something else to occupy his mind with instead of God. Mankind went to hell.
God started over with Noah and mankind again went to hell after so many generations.
God found Abram and, still trying to find a long-term solution, got some people living for Him instead of religion. It was shaky but working to some extent.
God brought in Mosses and gave the people some laws and they were put in a book; great, they now had something that they could hold and see. They didn’t have to go to God every time and check themselves; they could go to the book and read it for themselves and make up their own minds. God would send them prophets to correct them and hear from God, words that they needed to hear. They soon killed those prophets because their correcting was not the way the people wanted to go; they had the book and could do it themselves. They wanted a king so God gave them Saul, who took them to battles that they lost.
God found David and the people had a living example of how to live right for Him along with the book. A few generations later, the people were gone again; their selfishness and independence taking them to hell again.
By the time God sent His Son, Jesus, to us, the people were so religious and had so many rules to follow that the ordinary person did not have any hope of pleasing the God of the Jews.
Jesus’ words were so different then those of the religious leaders and gave hope to the common man. They were so simple and so easy that the religious, who had come up with over 2000 rules that one had to obey to please their God, killed Jesus to shut Him up and stop this new, easy way to avoid hell and get into heaven.
The truth is too hard for the ‘everyone is going to make it, do whatever you want to’ ultra-liberal religions because there is something that one must do and a lifestyle that one must live; but it is too easy for the ‘3, 5 or 10 step to heaven’ ultra-religious because pleasing God and being accepted by Him is not a repetitious routine that is the same for everybody.
There are people all over the world and in most religions who are doing it right. These few are far outweighed by the rest who only think that they are doing it right.
The simple truth is God will accept all those who want to live their lives His way.
Those that are doing it right are those that keep this ‘want to’ towards God while all around them have taken up ritual, habit, obedience to others, self-sacrifice or some other security to replace the spontaneous requests of our first love; God and His pleasure.
Jesus showed us how it was done by loving His father even when He asked Him to die on a cross at our hand and still love us enough to give us the gift of His death for our salvation.
Love starts in the heart as a ‘because I want to’ and ends in the heart as a ‘because I love, I want to’.
