The end of a road

It’s time to stop living in fear! I’ve been telling myself this for a long time. And yet I keep coming back to fearful thoughts. Why? Because I seem to keep forgetting that every time I feel really close to God, I get nothing but assurance that I’m loved and that everything is okay.

At the same time, I feel that spirituality is a serious matter. And this, I believe, is where a problem arises. Because if everything is okay, what does it matter what choices I make? One possible answer would be that how much we manage to soil ourselves, might determine what methods God has to use to clean us. I don’t believe that God ever would judge or punish us. But just like any good parent, God might not allow any type of behavior from his children. And the only way to affect permanent, authentic change, is to make the children see the errors of their ways. Not just force obedience upon them. And this might entail allowing the children to experience the consequences of their actions, even if they are painful. But for there to be any meaning to this, the consequences have to be finite and match the intents behind the actions. Otherwise the consequences would just be cruel, senseless suffering. 

Why would a loving God inflict that on anyone? Maybe it's time to start thinking eternal damnation out of existence? Knowing what I know about God's love, I will at least do my best to banish all such fears. And in general do my best to live from a place of love and not fear. Of course there will be mistakes along the way. And that is okay too. I know that I'm not evil. And I don't think that anyone really is. Different degrees of broken, sure. But not evil.

I believe that from where we stand now, the best approach to life is to observe and allow as much as possible. Not in the sense that we should just passively do nothing. On the contrary, I believe in taking action. But I believe in doing so from a higher place and not from our egos. I’ve noticed that when I’m present in the moment, I can allow things to just happen through me rather than struggling with them. And I believe that this is important. There is no value in banging one’s head against the wall trying to prove that we are worthy because of our amazing accomplishments or intellectual acrobatics. The wonderful thing is rather that the more we stop trying to be someone, we can allow God to work through us. He does all the smart stuff, but we still get to add our personal touch to it.

We don’t need to force things. We however need to make some room for God. And this means that we have some cleaning to do on the inside. And don’t get me wrong here. This is not about changing ourselves into something other than who we are. This is just about letting to of all the things that we are not. And I don’t think that this has to be hard. We are just making it hard, because there are so many things that we have attached importance to, that are not really important at all.