Tag Archives: children of God

October 25, 2015 · 4:26 pm

Non-Local (Infinite) Love

One of the qualities of being human is our ability to exist simultaneously in the realm of the infinite (non-local; spiritual) and the realm of the finite (local; material; 3 dimensions + time). Western thought traditionally separates these realms and relegates mystical and supernatural events to the spiritual realm. This perspective has given rise to a culture that has a preference towards a rational and scientific approach to life. Or does it?

Fundamentally and traditionally we westerners still dream of a love that never dies and we blindly enter marriage relationships with a fantasy like expectation of a love that will last beyond our human lifetime. Even today, when gifts are exchanged as token of marriage they are forged with materials such as diamonds, gold and titanium. These materials are used because they symbolize our hope for relationships to last beyond our physical lives.

Western civilization rests its stability on the foundations of these marriages that produce families, which in turn produce communities, which in turn produce the nations of the earth. These fundamental relationships of love are expected to transcend the current generation and leave an inheritance, which is an expression of love, for the next generation. Institutions that memorialize persons who have moved into the next phase of existence provide expressions of love that transcend and strengthen the foundation for future generations.

Even though love is eternal or non-local it requires an expression in the real-time. Any husband that forgets a birthday, anniversary or valentine’s day is quickly reminded just how long-term a relationship can be. When the spark of love begins there is a hope that it will never die and there is an expectation that each love will be continually expressed to reinforce its existence. The fact that God created the universe as an act of love, or a proposal for marriage however unique or grand the gesture holds very little meaning as we proceed in time without subsequent expression.

So what happens when the chain of love is broken?

We humans create and imaginary timeline that began with the big bang and it stretches towards the infinite (non-local) future. This current moment of “Now” is where we reside. This universally agreed slice of time has no standard duration but is imagined to be moving along the timeline towards the future. For each of us there was a spark of love that created our being. The big question is what person, what culture or what religious or secular institution is responsible to express love to us as individuals?

Before I answer that question, let me inject 2 points. The first has to do with language and the way we describe the reality in which we exist. Albert Einstein documented the principles of relativity and its language continues to dominated the context of western thought. An example would be the way you would describe the relationships and interactions of pool balls on a pool table. During the cold war nations and cultures related in a paradigm of the pool table and the ball with the greatest momentum had the greatest political influence. Religious thought also operates in this paradigm. However, Einstein also discovered the principles for quantum physics providing us with another language context with term like entanglement, non-locality and de-coherence. This posting uses the term non-locality to describe love as an object in hopes that we can discover its operations outside of our dimensions of time and space.

The second point is a real-time example of a broken timeline. If you are in relationship with a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, you are as witness to someone who experiences non-locality. People with Alzheimer’s are unable to communicate in-synch with you and our universal concept of the timeline. Short term memory storage areas of the brain is where each human correlates space and time and when we lose access to this we become separated from others that are bound to these universal dimensional constructs. These constructs vary for every individual, every culture and every religious and secular institution.

Today we are living in inter-national global societies and regardless of where you find yourself on this planet at any moment technology is making that place a nexus of multi-cultures and institutions. It used to be that home was where our heart was, that singular place of time and space, where we left behind and sent the expressions of our love. That collapse of distance and awareness, creates an entanglement between individuals cultures that were once isolated. For many people today home no longer has a fixed location, in other words home has become non-local as it relates to time and space.

What’s love got to do with this?

So right where we stand in this moment, who or what culture or what religious or secular institution is responsible to express love to us as individuals? If “God” is not the answer to that question you have just discovered why there are problems in the world. Simply put the definition of being lost is the inability to see God and His love for us in the moment and in that space. Traditionally we humans look to people and objects to generate the forces that influence feelings of love. However, in the quantum state all things are entangled and all things are possible and all things that exist, are from God.

As disciples of Jesus we are authorized to love everyone. Yet, we live on a planet of 7.5 billion people who are looking for love in all the wrong places. The thing that is supposed to set followers of Jesus apart from the crowd is their ability to love and reveal the true source of love. God is the source and for persons that understand their connectedness to God’s love should flow easily. If I could encourage anything it would be for every person to discover that they are linked to God as either His daughter or son. Like the air we breathe His love flows through each of us. Understanding God and His love of all is a privilege and honor I hope each human experiences God’s love the local and the non-local realm of reality.

Gen 1:27, 31 (NLT)

²⁷So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

³¹Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

John 3:16 (NLT) “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Romans 8:31-39 (NLT)

Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love

³¹What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? ³²Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? ³³Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. ³⁴Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. ³⁵Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? ³⁶(As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) ³⁷No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. ³⁸And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Celebrity-ism Leads to Cultures of Religious and Secular Hierarchy

As members of society, we are part of both spiritual and secular cultures and hopefully our desire is for every person to reach their maximum human potential. If that statement is true then you are doing your part to help human evolution. However, I sense a negative reverberation flowing contrary to the progressive evolutionary process taking place in human society today. I could be wrong, but I am perceiving in my global connections that there is an ever-increasing part of our human population that are feeling marginalized, losing hope, having low expectation of evolving forward and worse they have an even lower expectation for their children and the generations that will follow. I believe this reverberation is a direct reflection of the value systems with in our various cultures.

We have reached a point in America’s history where its secular and spiritual cultures are beginning to recite a mantra of thought that says to 99% of its citizens that only 1% of it people have a chance to live out the American dream. But the crazy thing is how this 1% is worshiped by the 99% and thus cultural hierarchy is formed. In other words, 1% of our human brothers and sisters have achieved celebrity status. Our cultural systems have become so perverted that it only values, the best actor, best musician, largest net worth, the prettiest looks, the fastest runner, the team with the most wins, the pastor with the most followers, the guy with the best job, or the coolest car, or the family with medical benefits.

Phil 2:7-8 (NLT) Instead he gave up his privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

The original purpose of competition was to bring out the best in everyone. However the effects of over honoring the success of winners creates what I call celebrity-ism and results in hierarchical structures in our secular and spiritual cultures. Examples of this can be seen in reality TV and in the Mega Churches.

If the goal is to convince every human that they are in fact a Child of God then an evaluation of the outcomes needs another review. Well-meaning television shows that try to help people lose weight, dress better or fix their business, in the end only help a few and quickly move their focus to the star of the show for ratings. The same is true for ministries. Likewise, the goal of helping everyone walking through the door of the church quickly becomes all about the tithe to keep the ministry afloat.

Jesus had a way of empowering everyone He met. He was always trying to get each person to look at their life situations from the spiritual perspective as opposed to the material perspective. In Luke 15 Jesus tells three parables about the rejoicing that takes place when something that is lost becomes found. This is the true celebrating that is needed today.

The truth that every person is loved by God, is the heart of what Jesus came to reveal. Humanity perceives itself to be separated from God and so it lavishes affection on the so-called best and brightest among us. We create our celebrity’s or demigods among ourselves so we can create a feeling that we are winners. Even our electoral process causes us to reveal our feelings openly to the point we feel we must destroy the opponents of our choice. Fixing the competition with the focus on winning and losing is missing the point. Regardless of the last victory or lost we need to recreate our cultures so that everyone enjoys trying to overcome tougher and tougher challenges as a way of life.

Celebrity-ism has become the default perspective of the materialist. Even worst the spiritual perspective that elevates the totality of humanity to a place of equality is lost to many of our spiritual cultures. In the end these hierarchical and celebrity oriented cultures can only motivate out a sense of jealously. Today the children of America and the world are spiraling in their need to feel love (like winners) within their own cultures. For most cultures the only way to create this feeling of love is to impart shame and ridicule on others not in their sub-culture. If ever, any love was showed to another by one’s own culture, it would be treated as an act of betrayal.

Therefore competition has become a tool for choosing of winners and losers by many secular and spiritual sub-cultures to express love on its membership. Our spiritual and secular cultures today desperately need a renewed vision if we are to make winners of all in humanity. Our definition of winning must not remain defaulted to “not losing”, but instead the fulfillment of overcoming the obstacles set before us. Jesus rightly brings out this point in the last part of the parable of the lost son.

Luke 15:31-32 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found’”

So let us go forth and celebrate everyone equally.

Transforming Power Of Adoption

Adoption is a legal term that implies a change in status. Things separated, become things unified. This term has applicability in secular, scientific, theological and cultural contexts. For this post we will look at the scenario of a child adoption from the point of view of the child recognizing its new relationship (hint: not the best point of view). Adoption is mostly about a change in perspective. After the moment of adoption, the child’s point of view is free to conceptualize a different life because he or she now has access to a different set of resources.

Romans 8:15 (NLT) So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”¹⁶For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:22-23 (NLT) For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

This change in perception not only affects the perception of the child, it also changes the perception of everyone already in the family and those remaining outside of the family. In my opinion, it is a myopic point of view, of only perceiving adoption from the child’s point of view, and this is where Christianity can find greater meaning in the interpretation of scripture. (Try rereading the above scriptures from our Father’s point of view) Once a child is adopted, his or her point of view must change to that of the Father’s point of view. This was the point of view that Jesus held when He said “not my will be done”.

To perceive the kingdom of God from the non-adopted child’s point of view creates the aberrant social structures in the local spiritual communities. For example the tendency to treat the kingdom like an exclusive club. Other examples would be the hierarchy between brother and sisters , and the excessive fear of God, Satan, and the potential of losing one’s status as a child of God. From the Father’s point of view these examples become moot. Even a lost child is still His child.

Psalm 82: 2 (NLT) “How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked? Interlude

Psalm 82:6-7 (NLT) I say, ‘You are gods; you are all children of the Most High. ⁷But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler.’”

Gal 4:1-3 (NLT) Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. ²They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. ³And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.

Love is the primacy of spiritual reality and it is the nature of God and His children. To perceive God’s love and to communicate His love to others, one needs to be of God. An adopted child not sure of the love behind their adoption is like a blind person viewing the world. Every incident is a potential threat and any unfamiliar area can cause fear to rise up within.

However once and understanding is realized that no-thing can separate us from our Father’s love a new confidence begins to emerge. The judgmentalism that characterized much of my early Christian walk, begins to give way to a new confidence in loves ability to overcome all things. Often our religious training dismisses the non-orthodox feelings as a hyper-grace, which is defined as the act of overlooking and accepting blatant sin. But in reality of God’s love there is a deep confidence in the power and authority of that love to overcome the sins of the world.

1 John 3:1-2 (NLT) See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Mark 10:13-15 (NLT) One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. ¹⁴When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. ¹⁵I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”

My encouragement is for us to perceive life from God’s point of view as His child. A life that is freely given to us and one that we are willing to help others freely enter into. Consciously or unconsciously keeping others out of God’s family by making there sin to be more than the one we repented of is an example of not understanding the grace made available us.

There is a place of revelation (God’s point of view) that once God becomes our Father every human on earth is our brother or sister. Grace is living life as child, before the realization that every other human is also God’s child. For a lot of religious folk, the only proof that God’s loves them is when they perceive He is not loving someone else. One day humanity will consciously rise above that childish interpretation of spiritual reality.

Until then it is up to you and I to reveal the greater truth, the hidden truth that has not dawned in the hearts and minds of everyone. We have been given the honor and a privilege to go into the entire world and reveal the truth. This truth has the power to transform all human life. God unconditionally loves us all. God reveals to us in our perception that we are separated from Him, that we have been adopted and that we are now His children. The realization of the truth that God loves us all and that He considers us all His children is truly a transforming power.

Tag Archives: children of God

Non-Local (Infinite) Love

Celebrity-ism Leads to Cultures of Religious and Secular Hierarchy

Transforming Power Of Adoption

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