A
challenge from a skeptic - Part 1.
I have a few questions for you to answer, and I believe you cannot
or will not choose to answer them:
1. Why is it acceptable to follow any founded religion that has been
the cause of so much bloodshed throughout the history of mankind?
(religious people tend to give a response like atheists have killed
many, but what they also forget is that many Christians & Catholics
& atheists fought for these so called dictators. (Christians and
Catholics voted and fought for HITLER.)
I never said it was acceptable to follow a religion that violates the
principles of God or the teachings I gave during my ministry. The Ten
Commandments state clearly that “thou shallt not kill,”
and it specifies no conditions under which it becomes acceptable to
kill. Therefore, there is absolutely no justification for killing a
human being in the name of God. There never has been any justification
for this, and there will be, as I explained in more detail in my discourse
on the war with
Iraq.
If you honestly read the scriptures, you will see that I was in constant
opposition to the dominant organized religion of my time, namely the
Jewish religion. I challenged many aspects of that religion, but what
I truly challenged was the approach to religion taken by the Jewish
authorities.
As I explain in an important discourse,
the true purpose of religion is to set people free. However, God has
given people free will, and free will is an absolute law in the material
universe. Therefore, it is quite possible that people can misuse their
free will and therefore pervert the original purpose that God has for
giving them a religion. When that happens, the religion that God gave
as a tool for setting people free can now be perverted into becoming
a tool for controlling people.
As I explain elsewhere,
throughout recorded history there has been a small elite of people on
this planet who are seeking to set themselves up to control, or even
to own, the general population. This power elite will use absolutely
any means available in order to attain and maintain this control. Religion
is no exception, and there are many examples of how organized religion
has been used by a power elite in order to control the general population.
This was truly what I challenged in the Jewish religion, and that is
why the power elite of the time did what they have always done to those
who speak out against their misuse of power—they eliminated me.
The fact that something can be misused by people does not mean that
it does not have a higher potential. Organized religion does not have
to become a means for control. There are examples of how organized religion
has done much good, in terms of filling people's spiritual and material
needs. If you look at my discourse on the different levels of spiritual
attainment, you will see that some souls have a need for the kind
stable environment that organized religion offers. You will also see
that those souls who rebel against God or are angry at God can often
use organized religion to create their own image of God and then use
it as a justification for taking out their anger against God upon other
people.
You are reading these words on the Internet, and I am sure you are aware
that the Internet has become a vehicle for the spread of pornography,
even child pornography, and a recruiting ground for many terrorist organizations.
Does this mean that the Internet is wrong or that it should be abolished?
No, because the Internet has also become an incredible tool, whereby
positive and constructive people can communicate new ideas and expose
the fallacies of many of the old belief systems, including many organized
religions that are misusing the mandate they were originally given from
God.
The simple fact is that human beings can misuse anything. The challenge
facing you is whether you will allow other people's misuse of religion
to cause you to reject all religion, or even reject all faith in God,
as many people have done. Many atheists use the errors of organized
religion as a reason to reject all religion or even to reject God. The
problem with that approach is that these people limit themselves, and
they stop or abort their spiritual progress.
I am very well aware of the many fallacies and atrocities committed
by organized religion. I have no need or desire to find any excuse for
them whatsoever, because there is no excuse for this in the eyes of
God. Yet I am also aware that the misuse of power by organized religion
is orchestrated by the forces who are seeking to turn people away from
their belief in God.
What I am saying here is that the devil can win in two ways. When I
challenged the Jewish authorities 2,000 years ago, I accused them of
being the blind leaders, and I told people not to become the blind followers.
If you blindly follow an organized religion that is out of touch with
the reality of God, then the devil has won. Today, many people are beginning
to see through many of the claims made by orthodox religion. Yet if
you go to the other extreme and use the fallacies of some organized
religions or some religious people as an excuse for rejecting all religion,
then the devil has also won, and he has you exactly where he wants you.
You see, the devil has one goal only, namely to prevent you from attaining
union with your Christ self and therefore becoming the living Christ
as I was. If you blindly follow an organized religion, you will not
dare to put on your Christhood because you will believe the lie that
it is blasphemy to do so. So the devil wins. Yet if you see the fallacies
of organized religion and thereby reject God or reject the possibility
that you could rise above the consciousness behind organized religion,
then the devil has also won.
There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are
the ways of death. What this quote is truly saying is that there is
one way that leads to multiple ends. The one way is to think that you
need something outside yourself in order to reach God. That is the fallacy
behind the mindset of many organized religions, and that is precisely
the fallacy that I came to expose 2,000 years ago. I said that the kingdom
of God is within you, meaning that the key to union with God is inside
yourself. You do not need an organized religion to attain that union.
Because people do not understand this, they think the only possible
path to God is an outer path. So they blindly follow an organized religion
or they go to the opposite extreme and reject all religion. Whether
you go to one extreme or the other, you have missed the true path, the
inner path to God.
2. Why would a loving, perfect GOD be a jealous GOD?
As explained in another
discourse, the consciousness of humankind has, over thousands of
years, systematically been raised. The purpose of this growth process
is to bring people to a higher understanding of God and their relationship
to God. During Old Testament times, humankind was in a much lower state
of consciousness than is the case today. I know that seems hard to believe
when you read the headlines in the newspapers, but it is nevertheless
true. During Old Testament times, people could not embrace a correct
image of God. They tended to approach God with fear, and therefore they
projected an image upon God as being angry and judgmental, even vengeful.
The first commandment is to have no other gods before God, and the true
meaning is that in order to attain Christ consciousness, you cannot
let anything in this world or any aspect of the lower state of consciousness,
the carnal mind, come between you and your inner union with God. That
is why I told people to be willing to lose their lives for my sake,
meaning for the sake of attaining the Christ consciousness. This is
also expressed in the saying to choose this day whom you will serve
and in my statement that you cannot serve God and mammon.
The true meaning is that you cannot attain inner union with God as long
as you maintain any attachments to the things of this world. This simply
is not possible, and it has nothing to do with God being jealous or
angry. It is a fact that you become that upon which you put your attention.
If you put your attention on the material world, you begin to think
that you are a mortal human being. The only way to rise above that state
of consciousness is to put your attention on your Christ self, until
you realize that you are an immortal spiritual being who is only temporarily
abiding in a mortal human body. You can then attain the clear sense
of identity that you are a spiritual being, and this allows you to be
in this world without being of this world. If you
try to do both, you will inevitably be polarized toward the lower state
of consciousness, and you will be trapped in a state of mind which is
dominated by relativity and duality. There is no middle way. You either
see yourself as a spiritual being or as a human being. You can draw
a shape that is square or one that is round, but you cannot draw a shape
that is round and square at the same time.
Because of the fear-based approach to God that people had in Old Testament
times, the original command given to Moses was misinterpreted, and after
many translations it was turned into the expression that God is a jealous
God. In reality, God has no human feelings, neither jealousy nor anger.
God simply is who God is, and God truly is a God of unconditional love.
The statement that God created humans in his image and likeness is true
only in terms of how human beings were before the fall. After people
fell into the lower state of consciousness, they started projecting
their own dualistic, relative state of consciousness upon God, thereby
ascribing human imperfections to God. They now created a false God in
the image and likeness of fallen man.
3. Why would a loving perfect GOD condemn people to death
for working on the SABBATH? (So a person cannot work to feed his or
her starving children, but when Jesus came people are no longer bound
to these commandments. But GOD before Jesus did such a spiteful thing.)
I realize that Exodus contains
the statement that he who violates the sabbath shall surely be put to
death [Exodus 31:15]. Yet I as I have explained elsewhere,
the Bible is not the infallible word of God. As explained above, those
who are willing to misuse religion in order to attain control over the
people have in many subtle or obvious ways changed religious scriptures
to allow them to gain this control.
The command about the sabbath was given to help people attain spiritual
growth by setting aside one day a week, when they would forget about
the things of this world and put all their attention on God and upon
spiritual growth. Once again, the human consciousness can misuse anything,
and the sabbath has been misinterpreted in many ways. During Old Testament
times, people were in a lower state of consciousness and therefore they
needed a set of very clear rules for outer behavior. They were given
the command not to perform any work, meaning any outer activities, on
the sabbath.
Over the centuries, this became misinterpreted by the Jewish authorities
and was turned into an absolute outer law. They set themselves up as
a human authority with the power to reinforce the laws of God. They
thought they had the right to punish people in God's stead. This was
never what God intended. As part of my challenge to the fear-based,
outer approach to religion, I demonstrated the fallacy of the quote
that you will be instantly put to death by performing work on the sabbath.
Obviously, God did not kill me for healing a man on the sabbath.
The real key here is my statement that the sabbath was made for man
and not man for the sabbath. Once again, this means that a religious
teaching is given as a tool for your soul’s liberation. When people
use the carnal state of mind and their quest for power and control to
turn a religious teaching into an outer doctrine and an outer rule,
then they have misused the teaching. This is what I sought to demonstrate,
but unfortunately many Christians do not understand my intention. Instead,
they have turned many of my own statements into the exact same type
of outer rules and doctrines that I denounced so forcefully in the Jewish
religion. Many well-meaning Christians have actually become as the lawyers
that I denounced by saying that they had taken away the key of knowledge.
Woe unto those, Christians on non-Christians, who take away the true
inner meaning of a religious teaching.
So you are not correct that God did a spiteful
thing before my coming. God never killed anyone for performing work
on the sabbath, nor did he ever say that he would. The true intention
behind the sabbath is that you need to put aside a certain amount of
time and attention for God and your spiritual growth. Once again, you
cannot serve two masters, so if all of your attention is placed upon
the things of this world, you cannot build or maintain your spiritual
identity.
It really does not matter whether you do do this one day a week or whether
you do it for a few minutes or hours every day. In fact the true way
to keep the Sabbath is to always put God first and all material things
second. This does not mean that you neglect the material things; it
simply means that you reach for the Christ mind and allow all of your
thoughts feelings and actions to flow from the love and the truth of
that Christ mind instead of from the relativity and duality of the carnal
mind.
Go to Part
2.
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Copyright
© 2004 by Kim Michaels |
