Original art by the author.
Part 1
Part one introduces the themes of the world we made and the world God made compares them and asks; Which world do we wand to live in?
I am entrusted with the gifts of God
1. All things are given you. God’s trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?
“God’s trust in you is limitless.” This statement is a huge declaration and after all these years I’m still working on absorbing it. Growing up I never really felt trusted nor was it easy for me to trust. As this lesson points out we can’t give what we don’t have. Strangely enough my years in fundamentalism only reinforced this feeling, the doctrine of original sin is really no help and “trusting Jesus as my savior” has the shadow side of the last judgment plus—in my denomination—there was always the possibility of loosing my salvation. Not very comforting. So for Jesus to point out that God’s trust in us is limitless is as shocking as it is freeing. It is something we desperately need to know as lack of trust is at the bedrock of the suffering in the world we created apart from God, as we’ll see in this lesson.
Because we now know God trusts us and we do have Her/His trust unconditionally we can then give it away to our traveling companions in this world, as we see in Lesson 181:
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.
Immensely more difficult than knowing God trusts us. But when we learn not to project our mistakes onto those around us plus knowing God trusts them unconditionally, as She does us, we are now placed on a level playing field. All of humanity are beloved of God. No exceptions. “But what about ___________???? We would like to include our exceptions wouldn’t we? We’ve piled up so many grievances over the years adding to and reinforcing them day after day. When thru the years grievances are forgotten [we suppose] but can be reignited at anytime plus new ones will be added to displace the old–on and on and on world without end–this is the world we created.
One thing I appreciate about the Course is it’s declaration of who God is. That God is Absolutely God and there is no, absolutely no, opposite of ALL that God is. Anything we see that offends us in this world we tend eventually to blame God for. Because we know instinctively that any being worthy of the appellation “God” must be omnipresent and omnipotent in some sense. The appearance of another power apart from God that causes all the suffering and is the enemy of God is really offensive to us. How could there be if God is everywhere, good and all powerful? We feel it in a deep psychic, unspoken intuition usually voiced as “There is something deeply wrong here?” we feel it deep in our inner being and it quite literally drives us mad.
Few ask the very simple question: “There must be a better way, there has got to be, please let there be a way out of here?”
The religions that have their theologies built on duality offer a solutions: heaven/hell; forgiveness/punishment; justice/injustice; God/Satan. These, offer us the pressure release of knowing one day all will be made “right”. Of course the Omniscient will be able to sort it all out in the end even if we can’t. The Dark Side of this duality is we must make evil “real” as an ontological necessity. The scales must and will be balanced one day. See Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares. [Matt. 13:25-30]
The point of the Course is there is no opposite to All that is Real. This from the Course Introduction:
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.
The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
2 This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
Each of us asks this in our own way. I remember asking it many years ago when I was 20. It was 1970 I was at a party, on LSD. After the party I walked down to the ocean sat on the rocks and asked “Why is there so much pain in the world?” That question and the answer changed my life forever. And so it has for all the spiritual luminaries we study and listen to today. Every spiritual tradition was sparked by one person and their subsequent pursuit for further illumination. Also all the billions who followed in their light are answering the call. Each according to their own gifts as the Apostle Paul told us.
“So is there a will other than God’s?”
“But what would make you think there is another will than His?”
Verse one tells us God has already given us everything we need for our happiness. Isn’t that what we are searching for? So what is keeping it from us? Apparently our will is separate from His, but how could that be if only Gods will is real?
Mark 12:29 [Deut. 6:4] “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:”
This world that is not real is the very world that Jesus says was not His. He overcame the world he was born into. In this world you will have suffering but be not afraid I have over come the world.
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Is this world the will of God? Is God’s will uncertain, fluctuating, untrustworthy, untrue? But that is the world we have created and choose to live in. No wonder it is constantly collapsing and in turmoil.
Do we believe in One God or two, One world or two? Why would Jesus need to overcome the world He/God created [Genesis Ch. 1 and John Ch. 1]
3 The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God’s gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is to be pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.
Now the struggle is clarified, we are refusing to give up what we made for what God made. Yet what Jesus is pointing out here is the world we made, with a foundation built on shifting sand, needs to be left behind. We must stop trying to fix the roof of the house while it is crumbling under us. There are two houses in Jesus’ parable of the the same theme [Luke 6:48-49]. The Course and Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament are asking us the same question and pointing out the same solution. Only One world is real, solid and sure to stand.
4. Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast; homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless, too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.
We have lived in this, the only home we have ever known and even though we are frightened to death of the next storm that may wash it away, we refuse to leave. We refuse to believe there is another home with answers for all our prayers for safety. [ref: 2 Cor.5.1]We think we are home in this shack yet Jesus is telling us we are really homeless. This is not our home.
To be continued in Part 2 where we will see more of the home we made in this world.
God is Good 