Which would you choose, good or evil?
This is the question man has been asking himself over and over and over again throughout history. It comes in various formats: Should I help this person or not? Should I eat the last piece of cake or leave it for my brother? I'm hungry and tired. Should I rob this store? I see that they're hungry and tired. Should I give them food or money?
You can zoom out from this question and ask another. Which would you choose, Reality or illusion?
This question also comes in many forms, though man has not often known he is asking it. Do I believe in sickness or health? Do I think I've just got to die one day? Do I lack anything? Am I hated or loved?
I will now make some statements that I want you to think about. How do you feel when you see the statement? How would it impact your life if it were true?
There is no such thing as good and evil.
There is no such thing as right and wrong.
"Everything is permissible to me," but not all things are beneficial. "Everything is permissible to me," but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)
All of these statements are saying the same thing. Yahweh is all that there is!
Now, perhaps you read those statements and thought, "Gee, I'd love it if that were true. I'd be able to do anything I want!" That's not at all what I'm getting at here. Perhaps you read those statements and said to yourself, "We can't tell people that. They'll think they can do whatever they want!" or you were afraid to believe it yourself, lest you lose any semblance of self control.
Did you say, "What if I let go of right and wrong? I'll have nothing to hold on to, no anchor." Did you ask, "If I really believed this, would I stop being a good person?" "What if I let myself go?"
I just said there is no such thing as right and wrong, and I firmly believe this. However, there is right order. It's part of the process of creation and it ensures that things are created in such a way as to work. If you were given all the parts of a car and threw them together without any order, your car wouldn't get you very far. It's not because the parts of the car are "sinning" or "bad" or "evil" or "wrong." It simply won't work any other way than for the wheels to be in one spot, the axles in another, and the steering wheel where it is. There may be various designs and cosmetic differences, but in the end, if the pieces of a car are not connected in a certain order, it won't function as it was intended.
But wait, if I don't believe in right and wrong, but I do believe in right order, how do we go about getting right order? Isn't right order the same thing as right and wrong? If there is a "right order" can't there be a "wrong order?"
The idea of right and wrong is a concept that brings with it dichotomies, guilt, condemnation, striving, hatred, and ultimately fear.
Perfect love casts out fear.
Right order brings about none of these things, partially because believing in right order does not automatically mean that you have to believe in "wrong order" or the capacity to be "out of order" and partially because right order is not something you can do.
Right order comes from the Government of Love. There is no guilt, condemnation, striving, or fear in the Government of Love because love and fear cannot coexist. In fact, fear isn't Real. (Yahweh is all that there is.)
Remember that to be Real--to be in right order--you must let go of both Reality and illusion and focus on relating to Yahweh. To create anything, we must simply focus on relating to Yahweh; we must trust Him enough to let go of things and just be. In other words, being in right order will naturally happen as you relate to Yahweh.
Yahweh is love. Yahweh loves His creation. He created His creation to work and function in prosperity and joy. Love keeps it in right order.
Everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial. So if I want my body to be healthy (in right order), it will not be beneficial for me to eat too many sweets or consume high fructose corn syrup and lay around on the couch all day.
I can do three things with this fact:
I can decide that I don't care about the consequences and do whatever I want, not loving myself or relating to Yahweh in my choices. I limit my awareness of my relationship with Him because I choose not to let go of illusion or evil.
I can choose to--out of right and wrong/good and evil--strive and struggle to put myself on a health regimen. I can draw up a workout schedule and count the number of calories I eat every day. I can prohibit myself from eating dairy or gluten or meat or sugar (or all of these). I can get on the scale at the end of every week to see if I've gained or lost weight. I can make sure that I drink eight glasses of water per day.
And I can probably do all of this for about a month tops. We've all tried it. It doesn't work. And if it does work for a little while, it leaves us exhausted and angry. I'm tired because I've spent all this time exercising and meal prepping and denying myself and I'm angry because I'm not getting the results I want and I want to eat that pie in the teachers' lounge!
In this right and wrong government, my relationship with Yahweh fluctuates like a roller coaster based on what I have been able to accomplish. When I have exercised as often as I planned to and only eaten 1,500 calories and abstained from eating that pie, I feel good about myself and like Yahweh loves me. When I have stayed home from the gym for a week and binged at a coworker's birthday or ate a piece of that pie, I feel guilty and condemned and certain that Yahweh is angry with me. I have limited my awareness of my relationship with Yahweh here by choosing not to let go of Reality or good.
On the other hand, I can take the knowledge that everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial and I can submit my body to the Government of Love. I can let go of right and health-food regimens and exercise and wrong and gluttony and laziness. Because of my relationship with Yahweh, who is Love, I can begin to love my body. As I love my body, I will make sure that I treat it with love. I will give it what it needs to survive while not being dependent on those things for survival. In the end, Yahweh is all that I need. So when He tells me that my body needs spinach, I will eat spinach. He told me personally not to eat meat, so I have abstained from eating meat since June. I do this not out of the fear that eating meat will hurt me nor out of the idea that Yahweh will like me better if I don't eat meat; I do this because I want to partner with Yahweh in loving my body. Indeed, I am not legalistic about it. I ate some baked beans the other day that had meat in them. I just ate around the meat.
The government of right and wrong will hold a carrot and a stick out in front of you. It will modify your behavior out of fear of wrong and the praise or reward you will get if you do right. "Eat healthy or you will die young!" "You will look prettier if you lose a couple of pounds." "Yahweh will love you if you exercise more and eat better." "Yahweh will hate you if you mess up."
The Government of Love will give you neither the carrot nor the stick. You will not get any rewards for "doing good things" or punishments for "doing bad things." Your actions can neither send you to Heaven nor Hell... you cannot take yourself out of illusion or make yourself enter Reality. Instead, by relating to Yahweh, you will begin to love everyone and everything, and out of that, you will relate in right order to them. You won't want to do the things that are not beneficial because you won't want to "hurt" them....you don't want to limit your relationship with Love. That's not what love does.
I was setting up my classroom this week to go back to school, and normally it's a chore to rearrange desks and books and put a bunch of posters on my wall, but this year it was fun. It was fun because I love my classroom, I love my job, and I love my life. It was a joy for me, in my love of my classroom and my job, to arrange those desks and boxes of books.
The Government of Love is not striving and struggling, but there will be actions involved. But sometimes Love is an action, isn't it?
Ultimately, this is a great ask to let go of right and wrong. It requires complete faith and trust in Yahweh. It requires a complete paradigm shift, one which I'm still undergoing. Your mind wants to default to right and wrong, but it can't as long as you focus on Yahweh, for even this cannot be done without Him. In this, you let go of everything except for Him.
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. ~Matthew 16:25
This is the question man has been asking himself over and over and over again throughout history. It comes in various formats: Should I help this person or not? Should I eat the last piece of cake or leave it for my brother? I'm hungry and tired. Should I rob this store? I see that they're hungry and tired. Should I give them food or money?
You can zoom out from this question and ask another. Which would you choose, Reality or illusion?
This question also comes in many forms, though man has not often known he is asking it. Do I believe in sickness or health? Do I think I've just got to die one day? Do I lack anything? Am I hated or loved?
I will now make some statements that I want you to think about. How do you feel when you see the statement? How would it impact your life if it were true?
There is no such thing as good and evil.
There is no such thing as right and wrong.
"Everything is permissible to me," but not all things are beneficial. "Everything is permissible to me," but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)
All of these statements are saying the same thing. Yahweh is all that there is!
Now, perhaps you read those statements and thought, "Gee, I'd love it if that were true. I'd be able to do anything I want!" That's not at all what I'm getting at here. Perhaps you read those statements and said to yourself, "We can't tell people that. They'll think they can do whatever they want!" or you were afraid to believe it yourself, lest you lose any semblance of self control.
Did you say, "What if I let go of right and wrong? I'll have nothing to hold on to, no anchor." Did you ask, "If I really believed this, would I stop being a good person?" "What if I let myself go?"
I just said there is no such thing as right and wrong, and I firmly believe this. However, there is right order. It's part of the process of creation and it ensures that things are created in such a way as to work. If you were given all the parts of a car and threw them together without any order, your car wouldn't get you very far. It's not because the parts of the car are "sinning" or "bad" or "evil" or "wrong." It simply won't work any other way than for the wheels to be in one spot, the axles in another, and the steering wheel where it is. There may be various designs and cosmetic differences, but in the end, if the pieces of a car are not connected in a certain order, it won't function as it was intended.
But wait, if I don't believe in right and wrong, but I do believe in right order, how do we go about getting right order? Isn't right order the same thing as right and wrong? If there is a "right order" can't there be a "wrong order?"
The idea of right and wrong is a concept that brings with it dichotomies, guilt, condemnation, striving, hatred, and ultimately fear.
Perfect love casts out fear.
Right order brings about none of these things, partially because believing in right order does not automatically mean that you have to believe in "wrong order" or the capacity to be "out of order" and partially because right order is not something you can do.
Right order comes from the Government of Love. There is no guilt, condemnation, striving, or fear in the Government of Love because love and fear cannot coexist. In fact, fear isn't Real. (Yahweh is all that there is.)
Remember that to be Real--to be in right order--you must let go of both Reality and illusion and focus on relating to Yahweh. To create anything, we must simply focus on relating to Yahweh; we must trust Him enough to let go of things and just be. In other words, being in right order will naturally happen as you relate to Yahweh.
Yahweh is love. Yahweh loves His creation. He created His creation to work and function in prosperity and joy. Love keeps it in right order.
Everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial. So if I want my body to be healthy (in right order), it will not be beneficial for me to eat too many sweets or consume high fructose corn syrup and lay around on the couch all day.
I can do three things with this fact:
I can decide that I don't care about the consequences and do whatever I want, not loving myself or relating to Yahweh in my choices. I limit my awareness of my relationship with Him because I choose not to let go of illusion or evil.
I can choose to--out of right and wrong/good and evil--strive and struggle to put myself on a health regimen. I can draw up a workout schedule and count the number of calories I eat every day. I can prohibit myself from eating dairy or gluten or meat or sugar (or all of these). I can get on the scale at the end of every week to see if I've gained or lost weight. I can make sure that I drink eight glasses of water per day.
And I can probably do all of this for about a month tops. We've all tried it. It doesn't work. And if it does work for a little while, it leaves us exhausted and angry. I'm tired because I've spent all this time exercising and meal prepping and denying myself and I'm angry because I'm not getting the results I want and I want to eat that pie in the teachers' lounge!
In this right and wrong government, my relationship with Yahweh fluctuates like a roller coaster based on what I have been able to accomplish. When I have exercised as often as I planned to and only eaten 1,500 calories and abstained from eating that pie, I feel good about myself and like Yahweh loves me. When I have stayed home from the gym for a week and binged at a coworker's birthday or ate a piece of that pie, I feel guilty and condemned and certain that Yahweh is angry with me. I have limited my awareness of my relationship with Yahweh here by choosing not to let go of Reality or good.
On the other hand, I can take the knowledge that everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial and I can submit my body to the Government of Love. I can let go of right and health-food regimens and exercise and wrong and gluttony and laziness. Because of my relationship with Yahweh, who is Love, I can begin to love my body. As I love my body, I will make sure that I treat it with love. I will give it what it needs to survive while not being dependent on those things for survival. In the end, Yahweh is all that I need. So when He tells me that my body needs spinach, I will eat spinach. He told me personally not to eat meat, so I have abstained from eating meat since June. I do this not out of the fear that eating meat will hurt me nor out of the idea that Yahweh will like me better if I don't eat meat; I do this because I want to partner with Yahweh in loving my body. Indeed, I am not legalistic about it. I ate some baked beans the other day that had meat in them. I just ate around the meat.
The government of right and wrong will hold a carrot and a stick out in front of you. It will modify your behavior out of fear of wrong and the praise or reward you will get if you do right. "Eat healthy or you will die young!" "You will look prettier if you lose a couple of pounds." "Yahweh will love you if you exercise more and eat better." "Yahweh will hate you if you mess up."
The Government of Love will give you neither the carrot nor the stick. You will not get any rewards for "doing good things" or punishments for "doing bad things." Your actions can neither send you to Heaven nor Hell... you cannot take yourself out of illusion or make yourself enter Reality. Instead, by relating to Yahweh, you will begin to love everyone and everything, and out of that, you will relate in right order to them. You won't want to do the things that are not beneficial because you won't want to "hurt" them....you don't want to limit your relationship with Love. That's not what love does.
I was setting up my classroom this week to go back to school, and normally it's a chore to rearrange desks and books and put a bunch of posters on my wall, but this year it was fun. It was fun because I love my classroom, I love my job, and I love my life. It was a joy for me, in my love of my classroom and my job, to arrange those desks and boxes of books.
The Government of Love is not striving and struggling, but there will be actions involved. But sometimes Love is an action, isn't it?
Ultimately, this is a great ask to let go of right and wrong. It requires complete faith and trust in Yahweh. It requires a complete paradigm shift, one which I'm still undergoing. Your mind wants to default to right and wrong, but it can't as long as you focus on Yahweh, for even this cannot be done without Him. In this, you let go of everything except for Him.
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. ~Matthew 16:25
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