My Holiness Blesses The World

See, the issue I have with the Course (if you're new to this, I'm working my way through A Course In Miracles) -- the problem I have with the Course is that now we're getting to the parts where I have substantive theological differences with it. The Course is predicated on the idea that Jesus is A son of God, rather than THE Incarnated Son of God. While the Course and I both agree that Jesus is our Elder Brother, I think it does so by diminishing the status of Jesus, while I consider Him my Elder Brother because of His status and, through it, His ability to elevate me.

So when the course says "My Holiness Blesses the World," I am resistant to it. I am resistant to it because it sounds pompous and self-serving to me. What I struggle to understand is that this idea contains the first glimmerings of my true function in the world, or why I am here. According to the course, my purpose is to see the world through my own holiness. That's hard for me, but if I do it, I and the world are blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through my holy vision. (I guess that way I speak life into myself and the world around me)

My holiness blessing the world signifies the end of sacrifice, because it offers everyone his full due. (I don't understand that). And everyone is entitled to everything, because it is our birthright as Children of God. This is about my Father being rich in houses and land, I guess....

There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world’s thinking. (I'm not yet ready to give up the Sacrifice that Jesus made!!!) Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something (again, I'm not ready to give up or in any way minimize or diminish the Sacrifice that Jesus made!). See, here is where I start to have problems with the Course, because this sort of thinking is about to set us up to think that The Ultimate Sacrifice was not necessary. I don't believe that, and I don't believe that I, as a perceiver, will lose because of His Sacrifice. The course says I will and that I will not have any idea why I am losing. But it says that my (and the world's) wholeness is restored to our awareness through my vision. My holiness blesses people by asking nothing of them. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.

The course says my holiness is the salvation of the world. If I see a holy world, then I create a holy world, and that holiness is the salvation. It lets me teach the world that it is one with me, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by my quiet recognition that in my holiness are all things blessed, along with me.

Yeah, I'm not really with this idea yet. Maybe later.

On another note,

This is a video from Ellen DeGeneris. I'm posting it because recently someone on FB asked for prayer for this kid's family. What resulted was a diatribe on the evils of homosexuality.

It kills me how we Christians talk about Jesus who looked beyond our faults and saw our needs, and who casts our sins into the Sea of Forgetfulness. We want to be like Jesus, but when we see someone we believe has sinned, we can't even express compassion for them without highlighting what we think is their sins (which is, of course, appropriate if you're the self-appointed moral police of the universe). While I say "it kills me" as a figure of speech, this kind of intolerance and hypocrisy is literally killing our children.

In the Bible I read, the only time Jesus got mad was at the folks at the door of the church, forcing people to effectively equate money with holiness. I see a lot of passages where He talks about not accumulating wealth, but sharing it with those who don't have it. And, of course, I see His frustration with those whose hearts would follow Him but who don't seem to "get" it. Today we have some folk who take vows of poverty to serve the Lord, and some who drive around in Bentleys and fly private jets to serve the Lord. Those two lifestyles are diametrically opposed, but I've never seen anyone express the virulent opposition to either of them, or denounce either of them as sinful the way homosexuality gets denounced. Yet Jesus said in His Word that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven... I don't see anyone having marches denouncing rich people, or accusing them of distorting God's word.

In Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21, and Luke 12:33, Jesus tells a rich young man that he should sell all his possessions and give them to the poor and THEN come follow Jesus if he wants to have eternal life. That's the Word of God. So how then, in contrast to Jesus' words, do you justify the "prosperity gospel" that's so popular, often among the same people who are rabidly homophobic because of the rigidity in their reading of what they believe to be Scripture? I don't get it. It's ok to distort the Word when it says what you want it to say, but if someone else points out something you don't like, they're a heretic or unholy?

OK, I'm ranting now. But it bothers me. The ignorance and intolerance we exhibit as Christians really bothers me. If we clung to our ideas of holiness, and they were powerful, wouldn't our being holy be enough to bless the world? And I can't help but think that, if we are truly being holy, that our actions are then not going to be hateful. When we have this judgemental attitude that makes other folk less-than, then we create an atmosphere in which it's ok for our kids to taunt them and mistreat them -- in the whole diatribe that set me off, this woman talked about the sin of homosexuality and how it was the kid's fault for being gay and the parents' fault for raising him in a gay environment (or something bizarrely stupid like that) -- never once in the discussion was it mentioned that the kids who violated this child's privacy and live-streamed his sex acts on the internet -- never once was it mentioned that THEY had any culpability. When I suggested they did, the conversation shifted to no one being culprits, but everyone being victims.

Please. Let me go back to Wesley's three simple rules: Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. Let me add to that the Course teaching for today: My holiness blesses the World. Are your thoughts, words, and deeds a blessing to all the world today?