God's Gunna Smoke Ya

I have this friend. He's one of those crazy bible believing pastor listening scripture quoting Christian types who still tries to see the benefit of church fellowship and attendance. Despite all these characteristic spiritual flaws (as I see them anyhow) I love him and his family, And I believe they care for me a great deal as well. I love to explain my strange beliefs and crazy ideas to them, or poke fun at bible stories. I tell him and his wife, "I'm a born again pagan" because my ideas are so opposed to the current Christian morality and ethics, and I'm just not the churchian membership kind of guy. "God is going to roll you up and smoke you", he says jokingly. To which I reply, "Well I hope He gets really high".

We're taught from a young age to fear God. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" but who's to say they translated that correctly? Maybe it means respect, or consideration, or something other than a hardline word like fear. At the same time we are taught to fear what is evil, the million and one things on earth associated with evil doing. So we're supposed to fear the good, and fear the bad, and live in fear and fear the afterlife because of God's judgement on us and the life we led down here being consumed by our fears. Sorry I don't buy it. Fear comes from not knowing - but that fear is a tool used only to control, to hinder, to quench someone's desire - and God would have none of this since He made us in His own image and likeness and capabilities. Fear freezes the intellect and convinces people to avoid reason. So if I am to fear God, fear my life, fear my afterlife, then the "joy of the Lord" can never be attained. Submission to His authority is not near as perfect as the willing heart who gladly bends his knee to his creator, not because we're told too, but because we come there of our own accord.

I leave you to contemplate the words of the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tzu around 551BC , in the 13th chapter he says this:

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things.