Evolving Past God

It seems to me that perhaps the greatest wish that most parents have is the desire to see their children grow up to be self-sufficient. In effect, if they have parented effectively, they have protected, nurtured, fed, and encouraged their child and that child no longer "needs" them. Of course in healthy child-parent relationships, they still are happy to be in one another's lives, but it's different now, it's a relationship between two grown adults.

I wonder if the same can be said about our relationship with God. Early in our spiritual or religious lives we learn to rely on God for nurturing, encouragement, insight, and a kind of spiritual feeding.  We even call God Father or Mother and we talk to this kind of Celestial Parent. I've previously wrote about this God as being viewed or used as a sort of Santa-God figure in the sky. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows if we've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Just like any parent corrects and punishes their children, so does God we say. What's more, we think we can influence this God to give us good things, just like when we were a child and behaved nicely whenever we wanted ice cream. We think that we can influence God with our prayers. If we pray enough or using the right words, God will heal us or provide jobs for us or help our favourite team win the World Series. 

I had some thoughts on this tonight as I readied myself for bed. What if humankind can not evolve spiritually until we leave behind this parent-like view of God? As it is, we all-too-often and currently see examples of warring humans who in effect are saying, "I am God's favoured child, and you are not!" Divisions abound and millions are destroyed all in the name of this God. But what's more, we may never grow into who we were meant to be if we continue to see God as a separate Being from us. What a difference it would be if instead we saw each other, in each and every human being on the face of this fragile planet, as nothing less than an expression, an imprint, a manifestation of the Divine. I wouldn't be suspicious of you and you wouldn't even think of harming me. (Expand this to all living creatures and even our habitat and you can see the tremendously positive repercussions for our world!) 

What if God isn't a separate Being to be worshiped, but a living, breathing reality to be lived out and experienced? 

What if it's time to put off childish things?

What if it's time to evolve past this view of God?

mark-andrew