who am i to judge?

There is no right or wrong path,
There is only the path that you choose.
Whatever you choose, there will be many opportunities
for you to grow and expand.
-Kuan Yin

Just as there is no right path or wrong path to God, there is no right or wrong path to walk in life – as long as either path does not go against the Divine and Universal Laws of love and light to all fellow creatures, human or not. Who am I to judge the women who choose to serve God in the form of the Goddess? Who am I to judge the people who serve Allah? Or Buddha? Or Jehovah? Or The Great Spirit? Or ????

There are more aspects of God that my simple mind can ever possibly be aware of. Just as I, who was created in God’s image, have more facets than even I am aware of, there are as many ways to serve God. I have never held with the notion of ‘if you don’t serve God as a Christian, you are doomed to hell’ and ‘if you are not born again in the blood of Jesus Christ, you are doomed to hell’. Who am I that I can make such a hefty judgment call? Especially when my day to day life isn’t always in service to God but in service to self?

Who am I to judge? Only God is remotely qualified to make that call. Only God is able to see into the heart of the matter, the heart of the believer. Only the God who created me, created all of the world, can decide if a path is of Him or of self. If I spent the same amount of time loving others as I do judging them, what a different person I would be!

If I am in no place to judge anyone for anything pertaining to God and their paths toward him, then why do I feel compelled to do it? Why must I compare my relationship with God to others in similar or even not so similar relationships with God? Why do I feel so superior to them? What makes me so special that I get to be God’s right-hand woman with the vast wisdom and knowledge to judge?

There is a delicate balance between feeling confident, yet not arrogant; secure in God but not complacent; knowing who I am in God and knowing who I am in the world. These are skills I am still learning. So I try and try and try not to judge others, especially those who serve God. The bigoted grooves in my brain get in the way at times and I have to manually push the needle onto the next track.

My only hope is to continue moving forward with an occasional step sideways or backwards, but always, ultimately, moving forward.

what is so wrong with conformity?

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it,
and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.
Virginia Woolf

Why should I do what other people do? Why shouldn’t I conform to societal norms? In order to function in society successfully, I must conform to the rules of where I live and the people who make the rules. However, there is a caveat here.

God calls His children to be in the world, but not of it; to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s – the difference being the natural world versus the spiritual world. I do my best to obey the laws of my country, state and city. I pay taxes (however unwillingly), stop at red-lights and stop signs, don’t take what is not mine, and so on. But if there is ever a point at which the people in charge say it’s okay to do something against the eternal law of God, then I may have to rethink that position.

Obeying God but disobeying the law of man is not without its consequences. First, I have to figure out if the law of man is against what I believe to be of God – does it cause harm to another living being (plant, animal, human)? If it does, then according to my understanding of God, it would be against God. Second, I have to decide if I am going to abide by man’s law or God’s law. Third, once that decision is made, I have to live with the consequences. If I break man’s law, I may be jailed or in extreme societies, put to death. If I break God’s law then I will have caused a gulf between us, a gulf that may or may not be able to be bridged. (Please note that I said I caused my separation from God.) Would I be able to live with that? Would I be able to die with that decision?

We who follow God closely as we are able walk a fine line between man and God. We must be careful to obey the law of man but remain blameless before God. It isn’t easy, nor is it meant to be. Our sojourn on this planet, this Earth we call home, is a place for refinement, a place where our love and devotion to God and all things spiritual is purified so that when we once again stand before God in all of our nakedness, we might do so with purity of heart and a clear conscious.

 

seedlings of God

We were born to die and we die to live.
As seedlings of God we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.
– Russell M. Nelson

I cannot separate death from God. God is Creator of all living things and where there is creation there is death. Death is not something we should be fearful of, even though I am, or rather of the process of dying. I won’t discuss this here, as I have already done so earlier. I have no new revelations to share so I will leave it as it is.

But once that last hurdle in this life is crossed, we can only hope to truly blossom in heaven – whatever the form heaven in our hearts means for us. Having ‘shed our mortal coil’ we are free to be our true selves and none of what was said and done to us here on earth will matter. We will have no choice but to bloom and blossom in the Presence of our Creator.

I do think it matters what we say and do to others, however. I don’t know what form judgment will take but for all things to continue to be in balance, as our Wonderful Creator is in Balance, there must be an accounting of our deeds and misdeeds. Whether or not there is a punishment as we understand it is not up to me nor anyone else to decide. That alone belongs to God. And to be at peace with that is another thing entirely.

So in order for me to fully bloom and blossom in my life after my life, I probably need to shed some of the chaff here rather than deal with it afterward. We may not carry material things into the afterlife but surely we carry our unclaimed baggage as it were.

Some folks believe in reincarnation, that we are reborn life after life all the while working out our issues and past misdeeds. I don’t know how I feel about that. I can see the wisdom in the doctrine but that would mean that there is a finite number of souls rambling around the ether and for me, it would mean God is finite rather than Infinite and Eternal.

I prefer to believe in an Infinite God rather than a finite one. I want my God to be bigger than me or I will ever be. I want Him to be so Vast and Expansive that no matter how good I am or will ever be, I will never attain His Perfection or Beauty.

For me, there is comfort in His Never-Ending Presence. You may call it naïve; I call it faith.