SEEING THE WHOLE BIG PICTURE

The teachings on non dualistic thinking are beginning to bear fruit in the way I am viewing things.  I still believe there is good and evil, a way of life and a way of death, but looking at the big picture those distinctions are very clear and there is a lot in the middle that people tend to put those clear and distinct labels on that God didn’t.  Those distinctions are man made constructs and tend to be based on personal preference and opinion.  I learned this the hard way when a teacher said that all music, except classical music was evil and I gave away all my records.

God created human beings with a freedom of choice; listen and obey God or not.  Not listening and obeying God means listening and obeying another voice, one from outside or one from inside; ones own voice.  Adam and Eve listened to an external voice other than God and then listened to their own voice, deciding on their own what to do.  The world still suffers the consequences of that choice.

Depending on my own understanding of good and evil or listening to another voice other than God’s leads to judgment and prejudicial thinking which leads to hate, violence, and injustice.  In the end we have only ourselves to blame for the condition of the world today.  As a people we have committed the two evils that God spoke of in Jeremiah 2:11-13.  “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”  As a nation we have “changed its gods, even though they are no gods, and have changed their glory for that which does not profit.”

This evil is done so simply and blindly by people.  We put our trust in government or we protest government. We put our trust in money or business or we protest money or business.  We uphold some ideals and values or look down on other ideals or values. We fight amongst each other about solutions to these problems but only offer faulty solutions to the problems; faulty because they are just other man made solutions composed of opinions and prejudices.  And, in the midst of all of this warring and confusion we keep rejecting the God who created us and the standard of life we are meant to live so that live will go well.  It is a clear standard but unfortunately we ignore and/or reject it in favor of having our way.  Most people think nothing of this treatment towards God.  But to God it matters a great deal and He speaks out to the rest of creation, saying, “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord” (2:12).

What are they thinking?  What are they doing?

God was speaking to the Israelites but His words ring true today.  We are working hard on many minute issues created by our own knowledge of good and evil rather than seeing that in the big picture there is only one issue and one solution.  Listening and obeying God’s Standard of Living.  That was the picture Jesus was teaching and demonstrating.  He did not come and correct the faulty systems of humans; he did not come and offer a new and better religion, philosophy, or political solution to the problems of life.  He came to remind people that God’s Standard was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, from the beginning until the end, the alpha and the omega.