Monthly Musings
January 2008
ONE GOD
This month is all about the truth that there is only one God, one power and one presence standing behind all life. This is a not a new idea or “new thought” but is a truth found in most of the worlds traditions.
Judaism - “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one”.
Christianity – “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being”.
Islam – “There is no God but God”.
Buddhism - “In the suchness of being, there is neither anything which has to be excluded nor anything which has to be added”.
Taoism – “There is one thing inherent and natural which existed before heaven and earth. It stands alone and never changes. It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the mother of the universe”.
What all these scriptures are talking about is substance. They are referring to the substance or essence of all life; not just some of life, but all of it. First cause, God, as substance, is that which stands under all that is.
God is expressed as you and me...... and the whole world. We are all made of the same stuff, the same spirit, and the same first cause. Science has proven the fact that regardless of who we are, how we look or where we live, we are 99 percent made up of the same stuff.
In truth, we can never know all there is to know about God, for God is always greater than our current human perceptions. However, for us to communicate with one another in meaningful ways about our source and manner of faith, we need to identify and use terms that reflect our common understanding of that source.
Using our limited human language we sometimes give human characteristics to God, but make no mistake, God is not a person but rather the animating principle behind every person. Better words to describe God are power, spirit, law, principle, order, energy, harmony, wholeness and perfection.
These are not so much qualities of God, but the essence of God itself.
God does not love, God is love. God does not heal, God is health. God does not give strength, God is strength.
“In the beginning, God”. In the beginning Spirit only. There was no manifest universe, no system of planets, and no visible forms, there was nothing but life principle. God as spiritual energy had not yet moved upon the waters. Then this spirit moved and began to create. This begs the questions….Where did spirit move? Upon what did it move? In short, out of what did it create?
If we suppose God to be the energy running through all manifestation, then we must accept that God has substance within itself. God is self-existent consciousness and God is self-existent substance. God makes things out of itself through a movement within itself. This inner act is an act of consciousness, of self-perception and of self-knowing. This knowing of God is the word of God referred to in the first chapter of John.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was Go. All things were made through Him and without him nothing was made that was made”.
The word of God here simply means the power of God to declare itself into manifestation. The word of God means the self -contemplation of Spirit. The entire universe as we experience it, as well as that which has yet to be discovered is a result of the first cause, the self-contemplation of God. All that is and ever will be, is a manifestation of the mental activity within the mind of God acting upon itself, to create from itself, in an ever-expanding awareness of itself. It is the miracle and mystery of creation laid out to Moses in the burning bush when God answered him saying, “I am that I am”.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned next month for the next question. If God is expressed in and through everything, then why do bad things happen?