God is love

Christians Giving God a Bad Name

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 2 Comments

Ugh!  Where do I even begin? I guess the best place is what is right in front of our noses as we seem to be living through some sort of apocalyptic fever dream created by a certain kind of so-called Christian. This apocalyptic fever dream is predicated on the defense of perceived white, straight- male privilege, fortified by the narcissistic belief of having been chosen by God, and enforced through illegal capture and incarceration. In this fever dream, there are those chosen by God and those who are the enemy. Those chosen are male of white, straight, European descent who claim to be Christian (and their complicit women). The enemy is everyone else.

These so-called chosen ones claim a white, male God who loves them and hates everyone else. They believe in a time of God’s choosing where they will be ushered into heaven while the remaining are cast into hell. They believe it is their duty to first impose and then enforce “God’s law” (as they understand it).  Any and every means of enforcement is allowed and even celebrated. They consider themselves to be soldiers for God and many have the arsenal to show for it. Their God is the only god, and all other expressions of God are wrong. They celebrate power and wealth and worship the prosperity gospel – believing wealth is their divine right and that if they don’t have it, “the enemy” is at fault. It is therefore their right to destroy the enemy because the enemy is keeping them from what God wills for them. It is their duty to hate those who God hates.

These people call themselves Christian. They claim to know Christ, but I’m quite certain they do not. They may know some version of Christ that they learned from their parents or pastors, but I’m fairly certain if the Love that is Christ showed up in the form of Jesus – a dark-skinned Palestinian man – they would seek to crucify him. (interesting how history unhealed repeats itself).

The very human part of me becomes enraged when I hear people who call themselves Christian preaching racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism. I want to go into battle when I hear Christians justifying evil as “God’s-will.” I want to throw bibles at those who believe it is their divine mission to ignore the needs of the poor and eradicate the programs that provide for their basic needs. I want to throw stones at those who believe food, clothing, shelter, education, and healthcare are solely the right of the privileged and not rights for all. I want to tar and feather them with the words of Jesus (and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) that say otherwise.

I want to but I won’t. While I feel insane hearing these people speak of their God and their divine rights, the compassionate part of me also understands what I can only imagine as deep, impenetrable wounds that would cause one to see right past the Love that is God and was modeled and taught by Jesus (and a whole slew of other great humans), and into the eyes of hate.

I don’t understand it. But, I wasn’t raised in a home or by a religion that taught me to hate. Sometimes, delivered by imperfect humans (we’re all imperfect), the messages caused confusion, and at times the messages were conflicting, but at the end of the day, I saw past the human imperfection to the Love that was either right in front of my eyes, or hiding beneath the surface. While divine punishment and threats of hell may have been uttered, Love always won out. I heard the Love louder than the fear and it is that which guided me to the “God” that I know today.

My “God” isn’t the old man in the sky (even though that image still persists). To me, God is Love (1 John 4:7). As Love, I can no longer imagine a hell or a devil whose job is to drag us there. God, to me, is not defined by form, but is omnipresent – PRESENT IN ALL THINGS. God is imminent and immanent. God is in us (Luke 17: 20-21) and all around us. God is everything and is Ain-Sof (the no-thing). God is the Source from which all things come forth and to which all things return. This Source is LOVE.

This is the “God” that I have come to know in being raised Catholic, thirty years of dedicated study of scripture including modern-day scripture scholars, and over sixty years of personal meditation, contemplation and prayer over the life of Jesus and his teachings. This Love/God is what has guided me on my path, initiated corrections when I veered from that path, and led me to the deep well of inner peace and contentment that can only come as one comes to know that Love.

When Christians give God a bad name, I think of this.  I think of the God that I have come to know and the hate that is impossible in the face of this Love. I find myself sad for those who think they know God when all they truly know is hate. I wish and pray that one day Love will break them open and show them the peace, joy, and wonder that this Love brings, and how in the face of this Love all fear and separation falls away. I wish for them to realize the Love they are in this Love, and the Love that is in all things. I pray for them to understand that they, and all of creation are expressions of God’s Love. I want for them to have the change of heart that this understanding brings. This change of heart will then empower them to lay down their swords and replace them with Love. Love will then compel them on the path of goodness that knows we are here, not to serve our fear-driven desires, but to be and do the work of Love in the world – healing the sick, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing shelter for the homeless, and setting captives free, as Jesus called us to do. In doing this, they will be proof of the time-honored hymn: “They will know we are Christians by our Love.”

How Are We to Pray?

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a kind and gentle Middle Eastern man who came to know the breadth and depth of love and the peace that reigned there. He then sought to help his friends know love and peace in the same way. His method was simple:

“Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret … When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (MT 6: 6-8)”

His philosophy was true:

“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within and among you. (LK 17: 20-21)”

Prayer, as he understood it, was simply a path to inner peace through which one might remember their original nature as One within themselves, with each other, with God and with all of creation. Prayer, in this way, was sufficient unto itself and all that one needed to access the kingdom so many others had said had to be earned through the fulfillment of the law. This kingdom is already within us and part of our original nature. This man simply sought to help us remember.

This remembering, however, threatened the institutions that ruled over his lands – both the religious and political. Those who gained power through threats and intimidation and who favored a God whose love had to be earned and which could be taken away. These institutions had set themselves up as the intermediaries between human beings and God/Love, growing wealthy over the sacrifices they required of the people so they might earn their way into the kingdom of Love. The idea that the kingdom was already within people, meant no intermediary was necessary, no sacrifice expected and there was no infringement of the law that could separate the people from God’s Love. The institutions killed the man for teaching the way of Love.

The Love could not be destroyed, but where one institution was destroyed, another rose up in its place.  Soon the world was filled with outside perceived authorities who claimed to know the way of this gentle Middle Eastern man.  These institutions set forth doctrine and dogma, rooted not in Love, but in Fear. Then they created rituals, rules, and formulas for what they called prayer – all required to earn God’s Love and to find their way into God’s kingdom. Further, they set prayer as a bargaining tool, suggesting that if one prayed hard enough, and in the required way, using the proper formulas set forth by the institution, then God might be convinced to interceded on their behalf – bringing them riches, fame, wealth, power, and might even be convinced to interfere with the freewill or fate of another. If they prayed in the right way, God might heal them of sickness, raise them from the dead, or rescue them from the brink that they had chosen for themselves.

You see, it served these institutions to paint God in this light. Defying their own scripture which clearly proclaims:

 “I desire mercy, not sacrifice. (MT 9:13, Hos 6:6)”

these institutions created their own god, one who was made in man’s image: fickle, jealous, wrathful, vengeful, punitive, judgmental, one whose love had to be earned and whose love could be taken away. In their desire for power and wealth, they forgot what the kind and gentle man taught of the unconditional Love that is God. They forgot the words of the teacher who taught people how to remember the peace of that Love and that there was nothing they need do to earn that Love, that it could never be taken away and that there was never anything to ask of that Love for Love is the very nature of who we are, and when we become anxious and afraid, we need only turn within, close the door, and remember that Love in prayer.  

The Evolution of God

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Straight Talk About God Part II

Since the beginning of time, human beings have been creating God in their own image, not the other way around. In the earliest times, when humans lived close to the earth and whose survival depended on the whims of nature, it made sense that the first gods represented the movements of nature: storm gods, fire gods, water gods, all whose approval needed to be earned in order that humankind might survive. From this the evolution from nature gods to anthropomorphic deities resembling human beings in form and behavior was a natural progression.

Initially, these anthropomorphic beings were both male and female in form. At times they were primarily female as primitive human recognized that it was from woman that all humans come into being. Eventually, through events that can only be theorized, the feminine gods were supplanted by the male-only, all-powerful, warlike patriarchal god. This god, much like the nature gods, was one whose approval needed to be earned so that human beings might survive. For each human tribe, this man-god was given different names, but the qualities remained the same. Like human beings themselves, this god was jealous, vengeful, punitive, fickle, played favorites, and sometimes loved his creations. Mostly, however, this god needed to be worshiped, honored, and required sacrifice. Through “his” priests, this god delivered laws that required obedience. Straying from these laws elicited punishment, banishment from the tribe, and sometimes death.

These human-made gods have not evolved much in the last ten thousand years – at least not in the way these gods are articulated in the context of institutional religion. “The Old Man in the Sky” god still holds sway. AND YET – while this is the god created by man, this is NOT the god experienced by the mystics, and certainly not the God that Jesus came to know and tried to describe to his companions. The god of the institution is one born out of the mind. The God experienced by mystics is one born of the heart. This is the God that Jesus said “dwelled within us” and the one we can come to know by “going into our inner room.” And yet, this God was not of Jesus’ experience alone. Mystics, contemplative, and holy people since the beginning of time have described the experience of knowing versus knowing the Divine, the emphasis placed on the former.

Through the mystics, humanity has been introduced to a God beyond the anthropomorphic god of humankind’s creation. The God that the mystics experienced was one that transcended material form and human behavior. There are no real words to describe this experience of God, though attempts have been made through such words as: Presence, Being, Essence, Transcendence, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Bliss, Ecstasy, Spirit, The Void, The No-Thing.  The author of the epistles accredited to John, called this God Love.

In the Catholic church in which I was raised, the old man in the sky God was (and continues to be) the favored image of God, specifically, God the Father.  God the Father is the source of all creation, the architect of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, loving like a father, but also one whose judgment we were taught to fear. For the majority of Catholics this father-god (specifically male) is their sole image of God, and one they will defend in spite of the fullness of Church teaching.

But the Church itself teaches that God is not exclusively male. In fact, the official teaching of the Catholic church is that God has no gender and in no way resembles humankind:

 “In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between sexes. (Paragraph 370 Catechism of the Catholic Church).”

I’m just going to leave that here for those raised Catholic to read again, and again, and again, as they/we attempt to reconcile this official teaching from what we were taught by our pastors, nuns, teachers, and parents.

God is pure spirit and in no way resembles humankind. BOOM!

God is Love. Love is God.

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in them.  In this is love brought to perfection among us… There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.  We love because God first loved us.  1 John 4: 16-19

God is Love.

Love is God.

This is the heart of Jesus’ message as it was understood by the author of the epistle attributed to John. To me, this is the single most important teaching of anything Jesus spoke or was quoted as saying, and truly all we really need to know.

God is Love, therefore Love is God.

Understanding this truth makes everything so simple. No longer do we have to argue over what Jesus meant. Neither do we have to question the inherent contradictions of scripture, or stand in conflict over matters of doctrine. With LOVE as the lens, everything becomes clear. If it reflects Love, it is of God. If it reflects anything other than Love, it is either man-made, or needs to be contemplated more deeply.

The second teaching of Jesus is that we are ONE with the Love that is God. We are not separate from that Love. It is only our conditioning and the reality of the human experience that causes us to feel separated from God or that God might separate Godself from us. Feeling separate from this Love is what causes us to feel unloved and to act in non-loving ways. Jesus shows us the way to remember that Love that is our true origin and original nature. He then proves that as we remember that Love we are healed of the false perception of separation. The more we remember Love, the more we live as Love and treat each other in loving ways.

The message and teachings of Jesus really are this simple. It’s only human beings that make it complicated.

God is Love.

Love is God.

Our Original Nature is Love.

Remember this Love.

Be that Love – in all ways, all the time, toward everyone.

This is the truth that Jesus taught.  This is the truth that sets us free. Nothing else really matters.

Is Your God Too Small?

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Growing up, I was taught that “God” is infinite (without limit), omnipresent (present everywhere, at all times), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and unconditionally loving. One teaching went to far as to define “God” simply and profoundly as love (1 Jn 4:16).

And yet, everywhere I look, even (especially) within the Church that taught me about God, I find human beings limiting “God.” 

  • “Sure God is unconditionally loving…..unless or except when…”
  • “God loves you without condition, but if you disobey God, you will be condemned to eternal damnation.”
  • “God is infinite, except when it comes to those things “not explicitly handed down by the magisterium.”
  • “God is everywhere at all times, except in those who don’t believe in Christ.”
  • “God is all-powerful, except when it comes to “Satan” or “Lucifer.”

I am continually amazed at all the ways in which human beings limit their “God.” It seems instead of coming to know the Divine, they are creating “God” in their own image:  jealous, fickle, wrathful, vengeful, judgmental, hateful, prejudice, racist, etc.

How can one preach a God of love while simultaneously preaching a God of vengeance? How can one preach a God of welcome while preaching of a God who excludes? If I wasn’t a woman of reason, I might find myself confused. Instead, I find the answer to this quandary quite simple…an answer that has been given to us by the very guy who called God LOVE:

He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. (1 Jn 4:8)

As John points out, those who find themselves limiting God don’t really know God, and I find that very sad.

There is No Sin

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Below is an excerpt from my book Authentic Freedom – Claiming a Life of Contentment and Joy. Visit my Amazon bookstore to learn more.

If we look carefully at the life and teachings of Jesus, we see that he is inviting us to embrace an image of God that is a departure from the traditional image of the Hebrew religious authorities of his time.  Jesus was constantly being challenged by the religious authorities who believed in a God whose approval needed to be earned.  God’s love was thought to be conditional, at best, and only attainable through strict adherence to the law.  If you were disobedient to the law, you were known to have lost favor with God and were considered to be a “sinner.” 

Jesus invited those “who had ears to hear,” to consider another possibility.  He set forth not only a new image of God, but an entirely new paradigm – a paradigm based on personal relationship and compassion.  Having grown in the knowledge of God’s love and his Oneness with God, Jesus was able to lead us to his understanding as the truth which sets us free.  The God that Jesus knew was a God of unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness.  This is the God that Jesus invites us to embrace.  When we know God in this way, sin is no longer “that which separates us from God,” but merely a symptom of our own false perception of separation.  Jesus explains it this way in the noncanonical gospel of Mary Magdalene:

Peter said to Jesus: “Since you have become the interpreter of the elements and the events of the world, tell us:  What is the sin of the world?”

The Teacher (Jesus) answered, “There is no sin.  It is you who make sin exist, when you act according to the habits of your corrupted nature; this is where sin lies.”

Gospel of Mary Magdalene 7: 11-19

Sin, when viewed in this way, is no longer subject to judgment, but instead invites us into the greater depths of compassion.  “Love the sinner and not the sin,” becomes our mantra.  When sin is looked upon as a symptom of the fears that come about as a result of an unhealed core wound, then all sin becomes an invitation to healing. 

From this perspective, we can now look upon even the Jeffrey Daumers and Charles Mansons of our society with compassion.  This compassion does not excuse their behavior, but it allows us to see the deeper fears within them that drove them to such heinous acts of violence.  In our own journeys, it allows us to let go of the blame, shame and guilt that so often plague our lives.  Our compulsive behaviors (sins) are no longer something to look upon in anguish, but something to treat as a wake-up call to a deeper healing being called forth.  The compulsive behavior becomes the trigger that alerts us to our false sense of separation, to the need for healing, and invites us to name the fear and allow God to heal us of these fears so that we may once again live in the knowledge that we are loved.  In this knowledge of God’s love, we know peace, we know joy and we are able to openly and freely share our gifts in the world.  It is to this place of Oneness that Jesus invites us when he proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  (Matthew 4:17)

Enroll Today!

Learn Authentic Freedom

Authentic Freedom is a protocol and practice developed by Lauri Ann Lumby which supports you in identifying and then healing the fears that have kept you imprisoned by your past wounding and cultural conditioning.

Through recorded lessons, reading, discussion, mindfulness and creativity practices, you will be given the tools to identify, heal and transform the fears that:

There is not enough.
You are insignificant and have nothing of value to offer the world.
You cannot live as our most authentic selves.
You are not loved (or that love has to be earned or can be taken away).
You are not free to express our truth.
You do not know the truth.
You are alone.

At the end of this course, you will have the tools to support you in the continued liberation from your fears and the conditioning that has placed them there.