It is not realized often enough that the Bible relates an evolution in the concept of God in human consciousness.
In the Bible, we can witness a substantial difference from the anthropomorphic concept of God during the early years of monotheism (mostly the times from Abraham to Moses) to the most elevated concept expressed by Jesus. His God was a God of unconditional love and forgiveness.
Jesus did not follow the Hebrew tradition of referring to God as Lord. By calling God my Father, Jesus was conveying both a new idea of God and a new type of relationship with God emphasizing love and intimacy.
“My Father”
Although Jesus frequently employed the word Father, it cannot be said that he had an anthropomorphic idea of God.
That expression my Father simply conveyed that Jesus felt a trusting, yielding, and loving relationship with the Divine — without having the idea of God as a being — but rather as the is-ness and lovingness of pure Spirit.
The idea of God cannot be frozen in time
Just as the concept of God evolved from Abraham to Jesus, there is no reason to believe that the concept of God must remain forever exactly identical to what Jesus expressed as best as we can understand it from the New Testament.
Believing does not discourage thinking. In fact, didn’t Jesus say in Matthew 22:27 that we should “love God with all our mind” in addition to loving God “with all our heart and soul?”
Therefore, it is rather normal to expect that an evolution in consciousness will continue so long as there are God-seeking men and women.
Offensive to the Pharisees
In John 10:30, Jesus declared, “I and the Father are one.” This statement of awareness of Oneness with God is not to be found in the Old Testament. As a result, it was considered brash and offensive by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
In the Old Testament, the term Lord, in the sense of chief, was frequently used to mean God. Instead, Jesus makes an almost constant use of the term Father. He clearly wanted to convey a new way to relate to God and that also was offensive to the conservative Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Personal intimacy
The term Father clearly had a very intimate meaning for Jesus. It also emphasizes a new relationship of love that Jesus was teaching as a part of his Good News message.
Yet, for some people the term father can convey that God has human attributes. We know it was not the view that Jesus held. Yet, referring to God as his father can easily contribute to the wrong concept of God as a being with human traits of character.
In addition, the inherent personal intimacy could imply the erroneous sense that God had an exclusive and personalized relationship with Jesus. It could also imply that God might do something for Jesus that He/She/It might not do for someone else.
Universal, not personal
Spiritual truth in metaphysics, just as in mathematics, is universal and not personal. In other words, the gifts of God are for everyone and not intended only for ‘Jane’ or ‘Peter’ because they asked for them. If they receive such gifts, it is because they have made themselves receptive to the continuous flow of God’s grace and not because of an action of God targeted to a specific individual or situation.
As we are told in the Bible (Matt. 5:4), it rains equally on the just as it does on the unjust. Note that in the context of an extremely arid Middle Eastern climate, rain is a sweet gift.
It would be wrong to think that God would be doing anything for someone, including Jesus, that He/She/It would not do for anyone else.
God within
Given what we see and hear all around us, it is genuinely hard to accept the proposition that God provides equally to you, to me, and to everyone else on the face of this earth.
God’s actions are God-like and Godly. They are never personalized. In two instances (Acts 10:34 and Romans 2:11), Paul tells us that, “God is no respecter of persons.”
We can be certain that when Jesus used the term Father, there was no implication in his mind that he had a special, unique, and privileged relationship with God.
Jesus also spoke of “God within” just as he said, “The kingdom is within you.” (Luke 17:21). The notion of God being within each and every one of us is central to his “Good news” message.
Let’s not be confused
It is up to us to make the correction in our minds every time we get confused in thinking that God might respond in personal ways to our personal needs, and that God needs a reminder of what these needs are.
The American mystic and spiritual teacher Joel Goldsmith (1892–1964) stated in chapter 3 of his book, Beyond Words and Thoughts that, “God does not function on a personal basis.”
Spiritual, not material
God only functions in the spiritual realm. Everything in that realm is in God’s image, i.e. fully spiritual — never physical or material.
The material /physical world is the product of the human mind conditioned by a collective consciousness that has accepted duality.
This world is neither Real nor God-like — therefore it is not God’s creation. Yet, we experience this world as if it were real because it exists as a fundamental belief in our collective consciousness.
Let’s remember Jesus’ critical teaching, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:26).
Text derived from, Religion, Politics, and Reclaiming the Soul of Christianity: A Spiritual Imperative for Our Time and Our Nation, by Jon Canas. Available at: https://Reclaimingthesoul.info
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