Will I or won’t I …what? What is this thing I am supposed to do or not supposed to do?
That thing is: make a choice.
We are all given free will so that we can make our own choices, yet we abrogate that right, over and over. How? By allowing others to make that choice for us.
Do you read the entire bible? I mean, from Genesis all the way through to Revelations? And if you do, that’s good, because like it or not, you are going to be held responsible for everything that is in that book, from Genesis through Revelations.
In the bible God tells us what He wants from us: how to worship Him and how to treat each other. Yeshua said on these two laws, to love God and to love each other, rest the entire meaning of the bible.
Yet, how many people accept what they are told they should do without reading it for themselves? How many people (maybe you, too?) accept from “learned” men and women what the bible means, and what God wants you to do?
Wait a minute! Didn’t I just say God told us how to worship Him and treat each other? If God has said what we should do, then why is someone else telling me something different? If we all worship the same God, then why are there so many ways to worship Him? Why do some religions say drinking is OK and others call it a sin? Why do some people only eat what God said to eat and others ignore it? Why do some people think that it is OK to do some things and others say it is a sin?
The answer is: God has no religion, but people do. People created religion in order to further their own goals, to make you do what they want you to do, and to gain power and authority over you that they should not have.
Will I or won’t I? Will you or won’t you? That’s the question: will you accept what you are told to do and follow whatever form of worship you have been raised with, or will you read the word of God, the ENTIRE word of God, and accept only that whatever God said, in the old and the new, is what He wants from us. If you can start with this, just make a choice to read what God says and willfully accept that His words are just as valid today as they were that day when the Israelites heard Him on the mountain, then you are beginning a journey that will bring you closer to God, gain you more blessings on Earth (when you start to obey all His commands) and help to secure your salvation.
I am not saying to disrespect your spiritual leaders, but I do ask that you remember they are human, and just as full of human weaknesses as we all are. They are also just as willing to accept what they have been told (or maybe I should say, just as unwilling to question what they have been told) as you are.
The people who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have been led astray from the pure word of God. When God showed Himself to the Israelites, and (consequently) the world, there was only God’s laws or paganism. That was it. And for the next 1600-1700 years or so, there were Jews that worshiped God and there were the pagans. After the resurrection of Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) and the giving of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), the pagans began to convert. Not to Christianity- there wasn’t any such thing then. They were converting to Judaism, or more accurately, they were converting to the belief in a single, all -powerful God whose commandments about how to live were in the Torah. They were learning how to worship God as He said to.
Then all heck broke loose- the government took over the religion. The Jews became separated from the converting pagans, and out of the midst of that confusion came Christianity. Government regulated, government decreed and government ran. Worship of God became state-run religions: Italy and Spain are Catholic, Great Britain is Protestant, Germany is Lutheran, …must I go on? Yes, and Israel is Jewish, but there is a difference- Israel has always been Jewish because that is where Judaism began and because that is what God decreed. God didn’t come down from the mountain and tell Henry VIII to separate from the Roman Catholic Church, Henry did that so he could divorce his wife.
I could go on, but the point is being lost in the history- you have to make a choice. Like it or not, you are going to be held accountable for how you worship God, and that will be weighed against is what is in the Torah. It is not going to be based on what your Priest, Minister, or Rabbi told you is allowed, and when you try to use that lame, childish excuse, “But that’s what they told me to do” you will not get very far with that, at all.
I am very concerned for people. I am intolerant of what I call “Programmed Stupidity”, which is people misusing their gift of free will to freely choose to not choose but be told. Faith is all about making a choice. We all choose what we will believe, and that choice will follow us not to the grave, but beyond the grave to the Throne of Judgment.
They say you can’t take it with you, and they are right, except for one thing: the choice we make about God. That will follow us past this life into the next. You can’t tell me I am wrong, anymore than I can tell you you are wrong, because neither of us has died and come back from beyond the grave. However, I respect your right to make your own choices and you should, at least, respect my right to do the same.
Will we or won’t we? We are all in this together- there is only one planet, only one species dominating the planet (the different colors and facial formations don’t matter- they are only skin deep), and there are many, many different religions, each with it’s own god. Even within Judeo-Christian religions, each religion has it’s own god, because the god of Lutherans says to do things differently than the god of Jews, than the god of Western Orthodox, than the god of Latter Day Saints, then the god of….well, you get the picture.
One God, one way to worship, one way to treat each other- what God told Moses, Yeshua told His disciples- nothing new, nothing different, just a more detailed and thorough explanation of the same thing. God told us what do do, Yeshua showed us how to do it.
That is what I have chosen to believe, and that is what I will take past the grave. When I present myself to God, I will be able to say, if nothing else, that I tried to follow what He told me to do from the commands He gave us.
Will you be able to say the same thing?
