A CHALLENGE TO FEEL WORTHY

This is a concept I continually work with in my life. Perhaps you too struggle with this idea of deserving all good, all health, wholeness, vitality, well-being, and abundance in every area of your life. I did not grow up being told I was loved unconditionally by a God who created me in Her-His own perfect image. My parents knew only those concepts with which they were raised. God as Love was not one of them. Still, they did the very best they could with the knowledge and understanding they had. 

They grew up in much different circumstances than my own. Both were children of the Great Depression. And with what little real understanding I have of that deeply disturbing and challenging period in the history of our country, I realize enough to feel empathy for them and deep gratitude that they were able to not only live through that era, but manage to pull together a life, find one another, marry and begin the family of which I am the youngest and the only living member.

I inherited a strong sense of conscience, a conviction that I had to work hard to please an exacting God who watched me, waiting for me to make a wrong move, so God could strike me with vengeance and punishment. This belief system colored my whole world just as it had colored the world of my parents. Understandably this was problematic in their relationship with one another, their relationship with me and with the fearful way in which they functioned in the world.

God as “exacting punisher” is not an uncommon view. And the effects of that belief system are evident everywhere we look: angry people who are angry with God, angry with one another, acting out in anger instead of with love and understanding, a penal system which takes “criminals” and turns them into even more hardened individuals. How could it be any other way? How can we behave any differently if our awareness remains at the survival level, at the level of managing to “squeak by” with a belief in a creator that is watching our every move and waiting to hurt us? This belief system keeps us mired in guilt, anger, fear and depression.

What if, instead, we saw God as God REALLY is: All Loving, All Giving, All Forgiving, All Understanding … a Creator that designed us for greatness, for joy, love and wholeness? Well, this is the God I know now inside me, outside of me, around me and within all of creation. This is the God that lives and moves and has its being in me and within every being on the planet. And belief in this kind of God is indeed a game changer.

When we live in full recognition of the glorious creations that we really are, we have no need for vengeance, fear, war, punishment and aggression. Life is no longer a competition for who wins the most, has the most, exerts the most power and influence, who can hurt one another the most. Because seeking to hurt another is a kind of hunger for power and dominion which are not ours, morally, to possess. Instead, let us strive to possess the infinitely more powerful gift given to us by God: LOVE.