THE CHOICE IS YOURS
Choose this day whom you will serve. You know that passage. Likely, you have chosen to serve the Lord, or you wouldn't be reading articles like this. Surely, millions of Christians would raise their hands to indicate they have made the correct choice. What do you mean when you say you have chosen God? Isn't my question kind of irritating, making you want to close this page rather than waste time belaboring a simple point? Okay, go ahead. Make your choice to vacate this webpage, or not.
For those who stay with me, I want to address the subject of who God is and why you are and what your reality is and why you were born, and what your end will be. Big topics! And you might enjoy some of this. How do we get the Big Picture into a perspective so that we can get it into our imaginations? Here is a mind expanding little exercise.
Let’s begin by thinking about the size of the universe, in which our little solar system is just a tiny part. If you make a model of our solar system at a scale of one million miles of space equal to one foot on the ground, then the sun would be represented by a marble and the earth would be 93 feet away represented by a grain of salt. The farthest planet, Pluto, would be nearly three quarters of a mile away (3687 feet) as a tiny speck of dust. Your model would be 7,374 feet in diameter; that’s a 1.4 miles diameter sphere. Next time you use the salt shaker, think of the earth as being the size of one grain of salt in that model where the sun is a marble 93 feet away. That great sphere of 1.4 miles diameter is all empty space in which you live on one grain of salt that is hardly visible. Next, consider that our solar system is just one of countless millions in our Milky Way Galaxy. Next, consider that our galaxy is just one of countless BILLIONS of galaxies. Okay, that is just to put God into perspective.
Now, let’s put your own physical reality in perspective. Your own body is made up of atoms, each which has a nucleus like the sun, and electrons like our planets. Just like in our solar system, each spherical atom in your body is really just vast empty space, while the nucleus and electrons are mere units of energy; they are not even "matter." The particles of an atom have no substance; they are just units of energy like little dots of heat, but there is NO substance of matter!!! This is well known to the scientists of particle-physics and of quantum-mechanics. They know there is no such thing as a particle of matter. They also know that objects exist only in our thoughts; in other words, your flesh and the things you see just exist in your mind. You perceive whatever you believe you see. You can’t pass your hand through the table simply because you believe that you can’t, not because there is any matter involved for there is no such thing.
Nothing exists except one’s belief that something exists! That means we are believing a great lie, right? More, for each person, there is no way to prove that any other person even exists. Perhaps one just thinks that others exist, or perhaps one has just conjured up other people for the sake of his own game. We cannot test that because we can’t be sure that the test isn’t just another figment of imagination.
And that’s what our REALITY is, just a game in our imagination, nothing more. Then, we might ask, what is God? Well, there isn’t anything else that He could be except the Primary Dreamer of this chimera in which we are figments of His imagination. While our night-dreams are not clearly under our control, we should probably consider that God is, at least, more consciously dreaming His Great Dream. Then, you are a character in God’s dream. You are a player in a game that He has set up. What He seems to have done for His players is this: He gave us the ability to think for ourselves, and thereby to dream for ourselves — meaning that we can create our own reality just by believing in it, in the same way that He does. The difference is that we offspring-spirits of Him are born ignorant of this Truth, and we are taught as children to believe that we are weak and stupid and that we are victims of forces much bigger than us. Okay, that’s the setup for each person’s life; he learns a great lie. Helpfully, God steps in and gives us some information in the Bible, which informs us that we are caught up in a great lie, and that we should seek the Truth in order to fulfill the wish that God has for us, inside His dream.
Unfortunately, we learn too well how to get along in this big Lie of World, and we become comfortable with it, and as we get older we even get tired of struggling and many would rather just die peacefully than trouble themselves to seek the Truth. We have emotional attachments to many things of this World, and we don’t want to give them up. We desire most strongly for the things of our world to be true and REAL. But, they aren’t. The REAL Truth is that it is all a MIND GAME, beginning with that Primary Dreamer, and then with us.
When Jesus comes along and says He will show us the way out of this lie, and how to get the Kingdom of Heaven which God promises us, most people don’t want to follow Him. He hangs from a cross and beckons for us to follow Him. But we fear death; we think death is real; we don’t want this conscious life to end; we have emotional attachments here, and we want to stay in this hell because this is what we have become comfortable with.
That’s it! Only a few rare ones are willing to reject this World for the sake of Heaven. Like God says, Many are called but few are chosen, meaning that only a few pass the grade. One doesn’t have to be an intellectual, but merely willing to look at the Truth which Jesus points us to. The problem is that God’s Truth is so opposite to this Lie which we claim for ourselves and refuse to give up.
In the Old Testament, Job was put to the test. All his wealth, his children, his home, everything was taken away from him and he was covered with painful boils. His wife came to him and said Curse God and die! But Job chose God. It was a terrible time for him, children all dead, and he was living in a grassy field with boils. But he chose God. And then his life was restored to something greater than it had been before. He passed the test. Of course, he was just a figment in God’s dream, like you and I are, but he played his part well in God’s Divine Pageant. He could have listened to his wife and found relief from his terrible anguish, but he chose God instead.
Jesus called His disciples away from their jobs, their homes, and their families to follow Him. Even of those disciples, several fell aside and were never mentioned again; they evidently didn't step up to the plate and fulfill their destinies. Only a few of them later passed the grade, like Peter who was crucified upside down. A couple were beheaded. St. Paul was beheaded. Then, in the years after Jesus, many thousands of Christians were killed by crucifixions and by contests in the Coliseum arena with wild animals. They could have escaped those deaths if they would just deny Jesus. But they chose God. They passed the grade. They were figments of God’s great Dream. They won because they chose God. I don't mean to imply that one must suffer a horrible death in order to fulfill his assignment, but it is important to make the choice that one is willing to do that if necessary. Many people pass from this life peacefully because they demonstrated a zeal for God through difficult lives, and passed the grade that way.
Sadly, there are a great many people who have found their worldly satisfaction, pleasure, and gratification in the emotional relationships with other people, like family members. This emotion of family-love is an extremely powerful bonding of ourselves to worldly limitation, thereby preventing us from realizing the spiritual fulfillment that God calls us to. Consider for yourself what you would do if you were asked to choose between your beloved family and God. Once when Jesus was visiting in a home and surrounded with listeners, he was told that His mother and brothers were wanting to speak with Him outside. Jesus answered, saying that His mother and brothers and sisters were those who do the will of the Father in Heaven were His true family. That's a pretty strong statement, and it probably felt hurtful to his family, but Jesus had to say it for the sake of us who live many years later, and who need the strengthening of His hard Truth. Actually, Jesus was even more explicit on other occasions. Once He said that He came for the purpose of setting a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and that a man's enemies would be members of his own household. He added that one who loves a father or mother or son or daughter more than Him is not worthy of Him. Another time, he said that one must hate (read "disconnect from") his family members, and even his own life also, in order to be His disciple. You can probably imagine that if preachers taught the real Jesus, they would be quickly out of a job. God makes it clear that as one seeks the Truth, he will understand that each and every person is a character in God’s Dream and that we are all just players on God’s stage with a challenge to seek the Truth so that we can have the reward of Heaven. If you choose worldly/emotional attachments over God, you lose. It’s that simple.
Finally, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, His mother was standing there, watching. Jesus gave the care of His mother into the hands of one of His disciples. Even though He had disconnected Himself from family attachments, that didn’t mean that He actually hated them or pushed them away from Himself. Rather, it is a spiritual achievement to find the Truth for oneself and then one finds that he is a singular character in God’s Dream, and there is only himself and God. No one else can walk that path to Truth with you. You must do it alone, and must be willing to leave behind anyone else. It is for this task that you were born. You can refuse it, as so many do. God will not step in to save you from rejecting Him. Either you devote yourself to God, or to emotional attachments in this world. One, or the other, but no one can have both. If you demand both, God will not prevent you from making that choice, but you will be rejecting Him. It’s not His doing; it’s yours.
For any reader who wishes to ponder this difficult Truth which Jesus teaches, I would recommend the article titled DISCONNECT, which can be found at the bottom of the Articles Index. This is perhaps the most difficult subject for any Christian who truly seeks God. Disconnecting from world attachments seems as difficult as for a fish to disconnect itself from water, for it is in this world that we have learned to live and love and struggle and survive. Here we have chosen to make a home because there were no other tangible options. We were taught this world is real and that our physical lives are our highest treasures. To deny all of that is to deny all those who believed it before us and who lovingly taught it to us. We came to learn that our own thinking is not valid unless confirmed by others, most of whom have more authority. Therefore, who dares to deny the entire world of people and things that provided us a seeming security and a seeming life? How few people dare to value their own thoughts as being more valid than all the authorities in the world? Yet, that is exactly what the Spirit of God would work in any individual who is willing to choose God above all else. It is so terribly difficult to do! Many are called, but so few step up to the task. Consider that little David stepped forth against Goliath while the entire Israel army held back in fear. For those rare individuals who dare to say with David, I'll show you there is a God in Israel, their arrow will not miss the mark, but they will have the full assistance of the Father Himself. All the angels of heaven would step forth to support the one who dares to stand alone against the world.
Dear reader, it is my prayer that you do not reject God for the sake of this figmentary world, as most people do. The truth is that Jesus is a hard Man to follow. It is likely that if you knew the real Jesus, you probably would not like Him. Most people who heard Him speak turned away from Him. They said His teachings were too hard. The Christian religion attracts members because it teaches an effeminate Jesus whose teachings aren’t hard at all, but really super-easy. People are glad to pay money for that kind of Jesus. They want an easy path to Heaven.
I would like to tell you this: It is you that is important, not me or anyone else. You are responsible for what you choose to believe or deny, and whether to seek God or stay with attachments which this illusionary World provides. But, God does ask you, as His beloved individual child, to choose between Him and everyone else. That does matter. And it is totally up to you.