The Face of God
Every person is the image of God, but no one is God. What if they were?
What if it turned out that God really was your neighbor? Or, that all of your neighbors, and everyone in the world were God?
What if, after you died, and longingly awaited the final moment when you would actually see God, you found out you had been looking at Him your whole life?
What if God-energy connected people? What if the importance of being good was to nourish those connections instead of destroying them? So that when you feed your neighbor, physically, emotionally, spiritually, you literally feed the God-energy of these connections and hence yourself. And when you destroy your neighbor, or diminish them, you destroy or diminish the God-energy of these connections, and hence yourself. You only have to bring to mind Stalin vs. Ghandi to understand this.
Then to be good actually helps yourself, whereas to be bad hurts yourself, because you are part of that which is all hurt or helped. Self-sacrifice becomes self-help because there are no isolated persons unto themselves - all are connected.
Love heals, hate destroys.
Interesting that we are deeply individuals at the same time we are deeply part of a whole. That seems necessary and lovely to me.
"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." -- Saint Athanasius the Great, (b. 295 - d. 373)
(Auriel, you are getting preachy again! Yes, but I deeply believe in how people are related and important to each other!
Also, you have fouled up Orthodox theology a bit! Yes, but I'm not really trying to present a pure Orthodox theology, only to make a point about people and their relationships to one another. For more on the Trinity, Christology, the Energies of God, how man becomes deified, see Orthodox Christian sources on the internet.)
What if it turned out that God really was your neighbor? Or, that all of your neighbors, and everyone in the world were God?
What if, after you died, and longingly awaited the final moment when you would actually see God, you found out you had been looking at Him your whole life?
What if God-energy connected people? What if the importance of being good was to nourish those connections instead of destroying them? So that when you feed your neighbor, physically, emotionally, spiritually, you literally feed the God-energy of these connections and hence yourself. And when you destroy your neighbor, or diminish them, you destroy or diminish the God-energy of these connections, and hence yourself. You only have to bring to mind Stalin vs. Ghandi to understand this.
Then to be good actually helps yourself, whereas to be bad hurts yourself, because you are part of that which is all hurt or helped. Self-sacrifice becomes self-help because there are no isolated persons unto themselves - all are connected.
Love heals, hate destroys.
Interesting that we are deeply individuals at the same time we are deeply part of a whole. That seems necessary and lovely to me.
"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." -- Saint Athanasius the Great, (b. 295 - d. 373)
(Auriel, you are getting preachy again! Yes, but I deeply believe in how people are related and important to each other!
Also, you have fouled up Orthodox theology a bit! Yes, but I'm not really trying to present a pure Orthodox theology, only to make a point about people and their relationships to one another. For more on the Trinity, Christology, the Energies of God, how man becomes deified, see Orthodox Christian sources on the internet.)
posted by Auriel Ragmon | 8:42 PM
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