I don’t do Bible stuff. I walked away from that world years ago when I saw the hypocrisy, the disguised hate, the inbuilt need to feel special, chosen. I was just a teen when I realized that something was drastically wrong with the religion that I had been raised in, so imagine my surprise when this post flowed into words today.

Humans are tricky creatures. We can twist and turn our bad will, our anger and irritation, towards others into our own personal idol of gold, making us believe that what we are calling love, is actually love. We lose the thread, using love like a blowtorch to cut our way through the hard spots in life that resist our will. it doesn’t matter who gets burned. It’s love, after all.

Yeah … it is, for there’s nothing but love. And no, in the material appearing world, it isn’t. It’s distorted, messed about, misunderstood, an illusion colored by the fallacy of mind.

Mothers and fathers do it to their children: I am punishing my child to save them from greater harm … tough love is what love looks like … if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t criticize or correct you. There are infinite ways to use the idea of love, to warp it into something that doesn’t even resemble love on its worst day.

It’s alchemy, only it doesn’t turn lead into gold. Nothing can alter love, love is love is love, but the bastardization does twist the mind, turning love’s actuality into a satanic belief. Satan is not some guy with horns, a devil in the sky. Satan is us when we separate ourselves from each other. If we want to banish Satan, we need to learn to love all inclusively.

Religions are as guilty as parents and in many cases taught the parents. They use different words, but the same tough love … love the sinner, hate the sin. There’s really not a lot of difference between that and parental tough love, tough love that comes with a belt, a strap, a locked door, silent treatment, love withheld, shunning, abuse … all names for control.

Whatever the words, they send a message, not a message of love, but one of judgment, one of conditions, one of unworthiness. There’s a reason we are so fu<ked up.

I’m not innocent. If only I was … but sadly, I am not. I’ve done so many things wrong on my very steep learning curve, things that hurt those I love, that hurt me too. I guess if I’d had it all figured out, I wouldn’t have incarnated into this life.

Raised in Christianity, I still remember the red-letter words, the words of Jesus, even though I walked away from the teachings when I was 16. To me, it seemed even then, like most of those sitting in the pews were Sunday Christians at best. I never quite trusted the focus on hell and brimstone, the long arc of judgement, the exclusive nature of God’s love.

The words and actions didn’t just seem slightly contrary to the teachings of Jesus, they were polar opposites. They were the stuff of the Old Testament, the story that Jesus wiped out with his life. He was my guy. The religion created in his name, not so much.

As I little kid, I felt his immense heart when I read his words. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ and ‘so in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you …’ To me, the Jesus story was all about love. He wasn’t present in the hate and fear, the judgment and condemnation, unless it was as a bright light illuminating the way out. He was all about love, loving everyone, judging no one. He didn’t support hate and fear then, and he doesn’t now. I think if he were here, he’d be very vocal about the rhetoric that is so prevalent today. Tables turned upside down, anyone?

Life right now seems to be all about judging, splitting apart, separating families and societies, not about love. Jesus loved everyone. He knew what sin was. He saw the simplicity and attempted to pass what he’d discovered along. It’s not his fault that we couldn’t hear what he was actually saying, that we still can’t hear his words through our own closed hearts.

Sin is the absence of love. It means we are living outside of the love that is our birthright, that we are acting from fear and judgement. Judgment is based in fear. It accepts part of life and rejects the rest. That rejection is sin, is Satan.

There was a reason he said, ‘but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’ He didn’t say judge them. He didn’t say reject them. He didn’t say hate them. He said love them … and I would add, love them until you realize they are not enemies, that they never were enemies but mirrors exposing the scrunched-up places within us where we have not yet learned to love.

Years ago, my nightly prayer was, ‘Let me love like Jesus.’ I haven’t thought of that for years. It’s funny, because nothing short of that will soothe the ache, for the ache is the love we are, that I am, being short-circuited, distorted, not being allowed Its free rein.

It’s a good prayer, a wonderful mantra. Let me love like Jesus. Be careful. When you pray it … well, it’s no fun if I tell you. You have to make it your own.

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