What I love about us humanoids is our ability to selectively focus on one minutiae within a panoramic and detailed tapestry … and then dismiss the whole because of the one thing that (we believe) dictates we must.

Take God and the bible. Take any faith and its sacred writings.

The humanoid fascination with extracting a detail from the whole – then wrapping a belief system around the whole that concludes (with evidence and proof verses) that the whole serves the detail.

Hello dogma dissing!

The verse-offs are everywhere.  The “my belief system trumps your belief system” ensues.  But the same happens in science, in philosophy, in love and in life.  We live by belief and seem to need a comfort blanket belief system to get us through. And if you try to pull my comfort blanket away – then God help you!

Don Merritt is writing about forgiveness.  A series. Forgiveness is complicated. I am writing about healing. A series. Healing is complicated. I commented at Don’s place yesterday and Don replied:
Me: “Reading this series on Forgiveness, I keep hearing the word “healing” thumping ever louder in my head … So for me forgiveness is becoming less doing what is right, and simply doing what is good for me.”
Don: “And the other person, too. Not mention your family and friends… co-workers and everyone else in your life.”

It reminded me of two things –

The first was that some look out and see others – are changed by others – want to heal others – set about healing others … and some look in and see themselves – are changed by what they see – want to heal themselves – set about healing themselves … and neither is right or wrong.

I have been changed by those who had no interest in changing me – and I have been changed by those who thought it their mission to change me.  But the most powerful changes have come about when I am allowed to make the decision (and subsequent changes) myself.

The second is this. That the bible can be viewed as a set of instructions, a road map, a checklist, a bunch of do’s and don’ts, a sacred text that cannot be changed … or it can be viewed as a loving pair of hands: there to encourage, to protect, to nurture, and to empower – a personal anything and everything to walk with and talk with my whole life through.

And whichever choice I make is mine. The bible does not dictate which is right or wrong – us humanoids do that.

And my choices have changed over the years.  And I will keep changing (unless my comfort belief system becomes riddled with fragile need – and then God help you!).

I made a pact with God several years ago: that He had been with me my whole life, and that whatever time I had left was His.

I never asked my wife or children if that was okay.  I never researched the bible to see if the consequences of this arrangement would be good or bad.  I never asked God if he would give or take what I had spent my whole life accumulating.  I trusted.  By that point in my living my belief system was (and is) of a God of Love – love that is unconditional and eternal.  And the bible has been my gateway to that trust.

But my living and changing and being is my reality – not “the bible”.

Subsequently, my God Soft Hands Jesus never made me an evangelist.  Never asked that I change my life, career or home.  Never threw money at me – nor ever asked for all our wealth.  In fact GSHJ never really upped the ante at all – nothing much changed at all.  Except everything changed and keeps changing – I change.

I trust and am trusted. I love and am loved. I cast off comfort blanket after comfort blanket and find less need for any “comfort blanket” at all.

With hindsight, it can seem like the destination.

But “in the present” – it is only ever “the beginning”.  There is no end (not unless I dictate it is).  So, in this, my “who is my relationship with” keeps changing.  Because this is about me and my choices. This is about my living and loving.  And the bible, for me, is now just another choice.

My choice.

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