Re: CHAT! Alien-ness (was Re: I'm new!)

On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 06:30:27PM -0400, Jim Hopkins wrote:
[snip]
> agree with you T that for me God is the only happiness there it.  I consider
> God to be the Great Mystery, the Unknowable Essence behing and within all and
> yet in some indefinable way connected personally to me and to all beings -
> each experiencing this in her/his/its own way.
[snip]

I believe that God is a living person, living inside me, with His own
likes and dislikes, preferences, and personality, and working to achieve
His goal. My view of the Christian life is not at all what the common
perception of it is -- it's not at all a matter of conforming to a set of
rules and behaving a certain way. If it were, I would be the first person
to not be a Christian, because I hate to conform to what others tell me to
be. Rather, I believe in developing a living, personal relationship with
God, and I believe that this relationship will automatically cause me to
live and act according to the principles in the Bible. God Himself is the
One who will make me the way He wants -- not my trying to conform to some
rules I impose on myself.

This freedom, I find, is what stimulates my creativity -- I am free to be
who I am, not struggling to be a certain way or act a certain way, but
just trusting that He will make me what He wants me to be. I used to be
oppressed with self-condemnation, disappointed at why I'm not what I think
I should be; but after I discovered this secret, I find that the freedom
and lightness of heart just makes me spontaneously creative and
innovative, just like the creative and innovative God.

Anyway, I do not intend to offend anyone here whose beliefs are contrary
to mine; but this is just my personal experience, my personal testimony.


T