What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like.
Holism is when two plus two equals infinity.
It is as if the smallest amount of light is infinitely more powerful than massive amounts of dark.
There are more atoms than molecules, but a molecule is more complex than an atom. There are more molecules than cells, but a cell is more complex than a molecule. And so on up the hierarchy it goes, with increasingly complex levels of organization at each higher level.
Goals and plans are fine, and they can often be effective motivators, but success promises something it can’t deliver. As soon as you reach your goal, success creates a new one, which creates new anxieties and stresses.
The point of the Abraham-and-Isaac story isn’t that you should sacrifice your kid but that you can leave behind any notion of a god who demands that you sacrifice your kid.
This extraordinary technology that makes it possible for us to connect with someone on the other side of the world also disconnects us from the person on the other side of the table. Be intentional about what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. If you’re with a person, be with them.
There’s a line in the Bible about the God who is above all and through all and in all. Just one line, but so massive. Above all and through all and in all.
I saw how the Bible isn’t a book about how to get into heaven, it’s a library of poems and letters and stories about bringing heaven to earth now, about this world becoming more and more the place it should be. There is very, very little in the Bible about what happens when you die. That’s not what the writers were focused on. Their interest, again and again, is on how this world is arranged.
We’re all endlessly figuring it out because Spirit keeps doing something new. We can fight this, resist this, dig in our heels, wish things were the way they used to be, or we can embrace it. We can choose to see it with fear and frustration, or we can see it as thrilling and invigorating. Organizations can keep trying to relive their glory days, wishing things were like they were when they started.
God is not a question about what may or may not be up there or above or out there – God is what we’re unquestionably in.
Spirit often exposes the assumptions we’ve been living with that we haven’t been aware of.
Spirit often reveals the ways in which we have ever so subtly submitted to the belief that this is just how it is. Spirit refuses to accept that this is just how it is, because spirit is inherently creative.
There are those, like the church websites quoted at the beginning of this chapter, who put it quite clearly: “We get one life to choose heaven or hell, and once we die, that’s it. One or the other, forever.” God in the end doesn’t get what God wants, it’s declared, because some will turn, repent, and believe, and others won’t.
When I look far enough inside of you, I’ll find me. When I look far enough inside me, I’ll find you.
The writers of the scriptures consistently affirm that we’re all part of the same family. What we have in common – regardless of our tribe, language, customs, beliefs, or religion – outweighs our differences. This is why God wants “all people to be saved.
Forgiveness is unilateral. God isn’t waiting for us to get it together, to clean up, shape up, get up – God has already done it.
You can capture a butterfly, and pin its wings down to study the colors and shape and design, but the moment that butterfly is still and you’re able to make the most precise and detailed observations about that butterfly is the moment the butterfly can’t fly anymore.
Gospel is the divine announcement that you are loved and accepted exactly as you are, that everything has been taken care of, that everything you’ve been striving to earn has been yours the entire time, that you belong, in exactly this condition that you are currently in, nothing additional required or needed.
Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god either. So when we hear that a certain person has “rejected Christ,” we should first ask, “Which Christ?
There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it “Spirit,” and Obi-Wan called it “the Force.