Stories, Illustrations, and Quotations, Vol. III

Volume III

Thank you so much for sharing this work with me. I'm honored to read something intended only for you and your family, and even more so to be invited to respond to it. It must have been quite an experience to write it. Sorry it's taken a few days to get back to you, but I wanted to take some time with it.

I can imagine what a struggle all that must have been, especially at such a young age. It's difficult for me to identify with the circumstances of your experience, though. I've never been involved with the church too much, and made no real investment in faith when I was in the church, so I'm more of an outsider looking in as far as organized Christianity goes. But I feel I understand the experience itself well enough. The ground just came out from under my feet one day, and suddenly I was groping in darkness. I guess it's a state of mind that's common to us. That fear of annihilation, when things are more real somehow but in an unmistakeably negative way. I hope you won't mind if I just ramble on for a bit as if we were continuing our conversation (which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way).

I think what we discussed about putting something or someone between ourselves and God is at the heart of the matter for us both. I find that the nature of religion itself makes it easy to get distracted from God by the very means we use to worship Him. I've tried to seperate God from religion in my own mind, and in doing so I've had to give the idea of religion a fair amount of attention (the writings, the people, the organizations, etc.). It's not difficult to see the extreme fragmentation among the major religions of the world, as well as within each religion. This fragmentation seems to occur over the very type of thing you discuss in the book (speaking in tongues). This group believes this, and that group believes that. Somebody's right and somebody's wrong. To me, it's not unlike the clique mentality of high school, where everyone wants to make their crowd the best, to the exclusion of all others. My response to being confronted with this is to say nobody's wrong and nobody's right. Nobody's wrong because everybody is counted among the believers of something at least. I'm not going to argue with that. But nobody's right because no one will come to the common ground. The one thing that every sincere worshiper of every kind in all the world has in common with every other one is that we all believe. Period. Focusing on the common ground focuses us on God. Focusing on the differences of form focuses us on conflict, which is a function of the personaility, ego, outer self, lower nature, sin, darkness, or whatever. No matter what we call it, we're describing that which is not of God.

So when I read of your experience, it struck me that the need to choose may have played a role. If someone tells us that we have to do this or that to know God, and we believe it, it creates a kind of oppression in us. We aren't free to be ourselves. I have felt it in my own experience. We have made that person or system our master, not God. That person or system may or may not be closer to the Truth than we are, but as soon as we give anything outside us more power than what we have inside us, we are lost. There is no reason to believe that another knows the will of God for us better than we do, so why should we give them that authority? But by the same token, there is no reason to believe that we know better than another either, so why should we seek that authority? I believe we should let one another experience God for ourselves, and point one another inward.

There seems to be a quality of the human side of us that seeks recognition from others, or more still, power over others. I consider outward displays of spiritual prowess to be a bit suspect in this regard. Consider the Pharisees of Jesus' time, praying in sight of all to demonstrate their righteousness. On the other hand, Jesus went around demonstrating His power, not for the glory of Jesus, but for the glory of God. He didn't seek to be recognized by or have power over anyone. But mankind began to glorify God through Jesus, and to argue about how we should go about doing it, and now we have the current condition of fragmentation.

What gets lost in all the commentary of fragmentation is the very message of the Heavens (and Jesus) to all the people of the earth: Love. I have found that every major religion has this same message of Love at its core. Even an honest intellectual journey has this revelation at its end. While we take this message figuratively and focus on differences of opinion, we are not taking this message literally and focusing on God. Love is the will of God, the well of God, and the wall of God. Anything else is something else.

This brings me back around to our common experience of the darkness. We had different things pull our attention away, but I think it's the same thing. When we try to fill ourselves from the outside, whether it's through the rules of being a good Christian or through winning golf tournaments or through whatever, we are empty and lost. No matter what the distraction, I believe the darkness is a lack of Love within us. I have found that the only way for me to rise out of the darkness is to Love. Suddenly the Light comes back on.

Well, I got a bit carried away, as I tend to do sometimes. All I'm trying to say is "Yes, I think I understand." In reading back over this e-mail, I almost hestitate to send it on. I hope I haven't overstepped the bounds of your invitation, but this is what I felt compelled to write, and I want to share it with you. If you get a chance, I'd love to know your thoughts on my thoughts on your thoughts, so to speak. Again, thank you for sharing these passages with me, and everything they contain. Take care!

Wyatt