God of Love or God of Control? My Personal Theological Take

When we heal ourselves, we heal the world

I wrote this story unexpectedly. I was working on the next article for my series on dealing with trauma, in the process I got deep into theological woods, and decided to showcase the theological woods as a separate story, for the sake of keeping things clear and relatively short. This story a sum of my theological views, as they evolved in the course of my life. (I was born in the atheist USSR. As a toddler, when I felt misunderstood by adults, I spoke to Lenin in my head, Then, as the country moved from militant atheism to militant Orthodox Christianity as the state religion, replacing symbols of reverence almost overnight, I suffered from the sudden onslaught of strangers who became very interested in expressing their God-given opinion on my taste in music and the length of my skirt. Oh wait, now I am writing another story. Let me stop right here and get to the original point.

Painting entitled 'American Progress', by John Gast, depicting 'Manifest Destiny' (the religious belief that the United States should expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in the name of God))

I believe God is spirit, and we can only feel God, we cannot describe God with words.

If we are born in the West today, we are usually handed a menu of theological systems, i.e. organized collections of  words that strive to describe God, or sometimes pretend to strive to describe God.

Theological systems that we have on the menu today have been designed at different times, by different people, for different reasons and with different intentions.

If we look at Christianity, for example, we can ponder the Nicene Council, or the Arian Controversy, or the debate around the major revisions of the King James Bible, or the  story of the Scofield Reference Bible, or the reason for bitter political and financial competition between different Christian institutions—and those questions—all legitimate questions--still barely scratch the surface of the long list of questions that an honest seeker of God who walks the Christian path may wish to ask.  

If we look at Buddhism, one may ask why Buddhism, the peaceful Buddhism that we know today, has been used historically (just like Christianity and other world religions) for political control and violent subjugation of unwilling souls? That’s what happened, for instance,  in the 7^th century in Tibet (according to how history is told today) when the famous reformer king of that time decided, for political reasons, to convert Tibetans to Buddhism, and proceeded to do so in a violent way.

Speaking of the violent way, I am mad that my Slavic ancestors were converted to Christianity against their will, by sword. In the tenth century, they found themselves on the receiving end of theological terrorism when the rulers of the land decided that it would be better if they made the people convert to a more “civilized” religion of some sort. The rumor goes that the great resetters rulers at the time were choosing between two types of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and finally decided that Eastern Christianity, as a theological mandate, would serve them the best. And then came the boot.

What did that geopolitically motivated violence done upon regular people have to do with God? Someone please tell me, what did it have to do with God?!!

Even so, even though we deal with verbal approximations and at times, outright lies, we have timeless souls, and our souls have a sensory memory of our direct connection to God.

Sometimes, external words touch just the right part of us, move the right strings that take us straight to the Source---and sometimes, external words chain us, trap us, reinforcing the two-dimensional sensory prison that had been set up a very long time ago by the people with not-so-good intentions to catch and vampire souls.

At the end of the day though, no matter what words we choose to think about God, we take words we are handed, and we use them to  either awaken our pre-existing connection to the actual timeless Spirit (love and respect for free will) or to help our prison guards and reinforce the prison’s door (fear of what defective people may do, desire of dogma and control).  

Sadly, lying about God in a way that keeps people forever caught up in trauma and a sense of unworthiness is perhaps the most successful way to vampire people’s souls.

Now, among my friends, there are people practicing different faiths. To my senses, people’s relationship with the Spirit is the most intimate, the most sacred thing. I have love and respect for other people’s faiths  Each of us is walking our unique spiritual path. Each of us is entitled to connecting the Spirit in our way, in a way that makes sense to our soul. It is my belief that there is only one Creator, and that every human being takes a theological system that appeals to him or her the most, processes it through internal circuits, and comes up with a completely unique, one-of-a-kind religions belief.  

It is always imperfect, always work in progress, we can’t know God while being human beings on Earth. But our faith either walks us the way of freedom and love, or it walks us the way of twisting  other people’s arms, fitting them into shapes that they are not seeking, controlling their thought processes, and stealing their stuff.

If it is the former, to my senses,  that faith has something to do with God. If it is the latter, to my senses, it has more to do with desiring power over others against their will, i.e. walking on the dark side.

And yes, whenever there is a forced religious reform, the rulers may say the word “God” a thousand times  but, in my opinion, it has nothing to do with God, it has to do with control.

I detest theological terrorism with passion. I mourn the pain it has created in the world.  

If God is mystery, love, infinity, then what honest person could possibly take it upon themselves to feel or claim that they have the ultimately correct and superior understanding of God, correct enough to tell others how to pray?! Is it even  possible for a human being to have  an ultimately correct, universal, and superior understanding of God, so correct that it calls for practicing domination on behalf of God and shoving one’s theological views down other people’s throats?

Light at the end of the tunnel

Times has been rough for everyone. Actually, the past few thousand years have been rough on our collective soul.  We may not intellectually think about it at all, but whether we think about it or not, we carry the cellular memory of the violence that our Ancestors experienced at the hands of various tyrants, the pain that wants to heal.

All that wounded energy wants to heal.

Personally, I think that we heal parts of the world by healing the corresponding energy in ourselves. We are led to believe that we “fix” the world by nuking the enemy—and protecting ourselves from enemies is most definitely important—but I think that as far as healing the world goes, we heal the world by healing corresponding parts of ourselves.

Let us say, we want to counter the energy of tyranny in the world. Do we want to do that? Yes, we do. Can we mechanically influence the extremely highly positioned tyrants who oppress us the most? Sadly, no. As much as they censor us, they don’t care about our angry social media posts, and we can’t go to their mansions and tell them to their faces that we don’t approve of what they do. And even if we could tell them to their faces what we think of them, they still wouldn’t care! That’s the honest truth.

But wait, can we we counter the energy of tyranny by not complying with tyranny on the ground? Can we do it by acting brave where we are and by refusing to throw our brothers and sisters under the tyrannical bus? Yes, we can do that!!

We can also see if there is any tyrant energy hiding something deep on the inside of us. If we look and locate an inner tyrant staring at us from the mirror, we can try to understand that energy, understand what kind of trauma brought it about in us, and heal it in ourselves with love. It is my experience and observation that the way to heal every dark spot on the inside is love.

By the way, when we make that internal change, we actually change the world. And we don’t need to wait for anyone to give us the permission to start healing ourselves. We can start now…

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