Another part of the conditioning we received as we were growing up or have witnessed in society, is that we, as everyday normal people, have no right, or more accurately, as sinners, we are not good enough to be graced with the attention of the Divine. That has always been reserved for the members of the organized clergy. They have always been the pious ones, in a position of authority, closer to God, and therefore, had been sanctioned to be the liaison between God and us. What could we know? Nothing could happen except by their intervention on Sunday morning. We were all sinners after all, and we could not even get close to the level of behavior, virtue, and wisdom as these persons of the cloth who have dedicated their lives to the church. I should say that the majority of the clergy truly do have the love of God in their hearts and are caught up in the same misconceptions as many of us. They too have not had choices presented to them. (I don't consider choosing between Catholic and Christian a choice.) They were subjected to the same type of conditioning as us.

Most of us were never given options. If you have not been presented with options you could feel a void, as if you lacked something. All our life the organized religions have told us what to believe, they taught us how to be obedient toward the church, and their version of what is correct and incorrect. They make the rules. Instead of bringing us closer to God, they put themselves between God and us. That is not natural. This may seem disrespectful; I don't want to insult anyone's beliefs, but go deeper within ourself, keep your mind and heart open and make sure that the source of those beliefs is virtuous.

Most people, at some moment in their lives will have doubts or questions, sometimes on relatively small matters. It is within our nature to want to know the truth, we don't want to be lied to, or mislead in any way, in any part of our lives. We should not accept anything less than the truth about the most important factor in our lives. Organized religions don't want you to look for the truth or look inside your own heart. They want you to believe their words, live according to their rules, without questioning their theories, and maintaining control over you even in the minutest ways. This is a long standing tradition that the churches of today have inherited.

The authoritative position of the clergy is nothing new. In fact it is the cornerstone of the major western religions. Throughout religious history there has always been a hierarchy, a governing body which decided what was going to be taught, and what disciplines and rituals their people had to follow in order to be accepted by God. There are two ways in which you can study the Bible. One is to learn the scriptures and to memorize the passages, to become proficient in the ability to quote those passages. That is to learn the material itself. A deeper study is called Bible Scholarship. To put it in simple English, this is the study of the history, the characters, the authors, the versions, the customs of the civilizations of the time, the additional documents that were not included in the Bible, and types of writings. The writing refers to the historical, narrative, poetic, laws, and prophecy. When the Bible is analyzed in this way, it has been found that there are many contradictions and inconsistencies in all areas.

The Old Testament is a collection of verbal stories passed on through many generations. They were not written down until much later. I am sure that you have known people that, let's say, stretch the truth when telling a story. If you tell something to one person, and they repeat it to another and them to another, and so forth, when it returns to you, the version of your story is completely different. Then imagine how those Bible stories would change through many mouths and many generations, even when they were careful to conserve the content.

Most of the books of the Old Testament were written promising a rain of terror inflicted by God on any nation that threatened Israel. The origin of the Old Testament is Jewish, supposedly a covenant between God and Israel. The Books of Moses; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are a part of the Jewish Torah known as the Pentateuch. The rest of the books of the Old Testament also have their origin in the Hebrew Bible.

The earliest date that the historians can assign to any of the material is approximately 1100 BC. The books of the Old Testament didn't originate at the same time and in the same place. They are a product of the Israeli culture from a thousand years or more. All the books went through a long history of development before they were gathered. It was a long journey from the time that the words were spoken for the first time, or written, to their final form, involving many people, storytellers, authors, editors, listeners, and readers. This happened even before it was obtained by the Christian church and adopted as the Old Testament that we are familiar with. It has been proven that none of the books in the Bible were written by the names that appear in the titles of the books.

The roots of Catholicism and Christianity came from the Romans, whose Church Fathers decided what to include in the New Testament of the Bible. There were at least 5000 documents written in Greek, complete or partial that relate to the New Testament. And even more documents in Aramaic, which was the language that Jesus spoke. There was a time when the leaders of the church were trying to decide which documents would be canonized, or authorized to be included in the Bible. In the year 381 AD, Pope Damascus I commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a Bible in Latin. It is known as the Vulgate. Of the 5000 plus documents available for the New Testament, the Church Fathers decided to include only 27 books. Much of the material was redacted from its original form with additions and deletions which allowed them to instruct with fear, threats, and recrimination from God. Apart from what is clear in the inaccuracies of the content, that original Bible was only used in the churches and it was not available for anyone outside of the church, which gave the church even more power. It was edited to accomplish their goal, which at the time was to achieve power and control over an unruly people. They used fear as a tool. They portrayed God as a vindictive tyrant who would punish anyone who stepped out of line. But of course, they were there to administer the punishment and collect the reward.

They needed to standardize what was being taught because at the time there was so much information being circulated. There was a conflict in belief to say the least, between the Gnostics and the young Roman Christian/ Catholic Church society. Their dispute involved many points of disagreement. Mainly, the Gnostics believed in being particular as to its members. They required that the person look within for God. The Gnostics were a selective society which had a much higher criterion based in spiritual maturity as opposed to an organization that would permit membership just for agreeing with them and accepting the doctrine, ritual, and political structure. The Catholic/Christian Church flourished by embracing everyone to achieve strength in numbers. This is how they survived.

The Gnostics believed in individual truths regarding all doctrines, Christian and Gnostic as an approach to the truth (including speculations and myths). The Christians forced belief in their own doctrine as the only truth; a sole form of Christian faith. The Gnostics believed in the verse, "Knock and the door will be opened, seek and you will find." They also believed that ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering. The Christians proclaimed that any person who has found their doctrine no longer needed to seek. The Christian viewpoint was to accept in faith what the church teaches, recognizing a limitation of human understanding.

Gospel of Truth 17: 10-16 (Gnostic)

Ignorance...brought about anguish and terror and the anguish grew solid like a fog, so that no one was able to see. For this reason error is powerful. If one has knowledge, he receives what is his own, and draws it to himself... Whoever is to have knowledge in this way knows where he comes from, and where he is going.

Simon Magus: As related by Hippolytus (Gnostic)

Each human being is a dwelling place, in him dwells an infinite power... the root of the universe. But since that infinite power exists in two modes, one actual, the other potential, so this infinite power exists in a latent condition in everyone, but potentially, not actually.

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Syria (c.150 ad) (Christian)

It is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold an agape (cult meal) without the bishop... to join with the bishop is to join the church; to separate oneself from the bishop is to separate oneself not only from the church, but from God himself. Apart from the church hierarchy, there is nothing that can be called a church.

This tradition continued. We now speak of the Bible as "the word of God". It isn't. I'm sorry if you don't like hearing that, it's not my personal opinion but it is Bible History 101. The scholars that have studied the Bible in depth agree. It is the result of an oppressive hierarchy, which with good intentions or bad, has left us, 1600 years later at the mercy of ancient regulation and dogma. If you have any doubt as to the validity of this history, I urge you to study it for yourself; use your God-given common sense. I have barely scratched the surface. You may be surprised at how much more there is to learn. It could fill a library on its own.

You may be wondering what this history has to do with us now and how that affects our everyday lives. I've been using the term "conditioning", but what does that really mean. Consciously or subconsciously we have a need to be connected to our Source. In this life we are affected by our environment; family, friends, school, television, movies, and any other medium that can affect how we feel about something. This is not only about God, but how we feel about various things from soup to nuts. We respond many times to how these external influences impact our life. This comes back again to the knowing versus believing. For example, you might not like liver and think it is the most disgusting food you could think of simply because your mother didn't like liver and never prepared it for a family meal. Maybe, after tasting it, you might decide you really do like it after all. As it turns out your mother conditioned you to dislike liver. This is a very simple example but the idea is the same. There are many things in life that we are conditioned about. How we relate to things is a big part of that. How we are supposed to feel. We're conditioned to behave a certain way. We're even conditioned to react in a particular way under many circumstances just because that is what everyone else does. Many times we feel excluded if our views differ from other people around us, making us self-conscious, and then little by little we give in to the majority rule and become someone who conforms instead of standing up for what we believe. Conditioning is the state in which we believe, react, and behave in a manner that does not come from our own thoughts but has been instilled in us by another person. How much of what you do, feel or believe has come from someone else's teaching or manipulation? It's time to get real. It's time to start thinking for yourself and start feeling your own emotions.

So, now we have eliminated the necessity for an intermediary between God and us. We learned previously that there is a continuous bond between the Creator and us, but why is there such a bond? How is it possible to be connected to God? The answer is so easy and so profound that it may seem complicated; Just as our sons and daughters carry our genes, so too do we carry the genes of our Creator, masculine and feminine.

Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;"

We carry with us an individual spark of the Divine, just as our children carry our likeness. Literally we are the children of God. We are made of the same substance as God; the same energy as God. To most, this energy is not visible, but it is there. We, as humanity, each walking around in a physical body have a spirit contained within that is the same energy as God. It is that energy that binds us. This may be difficult to grasp at first because we're not used to allowing ourselves the remote idea of being divine. This has nothing to do with ego or status. You, me, the Pope, the President, a priest, everyone consists of the same substance of spirit; a miniscule part of the Divine energy. To put this in a form you can visualize, imagine that the ocean is God's energy. A pitcher represents your soul. Gather some of the water from the ocean into the pitcher. Now pour some of the water into a glass. The glass represents your physical body. The water in the pitcher is still water of the ocean, the water in the glass is still water of the ocean. The substance hasn't changed; it's just in a different container. The water in the glass will always be ocean water.

We have that spark of the Divine within us. How could we not be worthy of having a connection with our Source? As sons and daughters of the Creator we are as equal to each other as any other brothers and sisters. It doesn't matter the profession, economic status, color or race, or importance of human form, the souls contained within us are totally uniform and loved in God's eyes as any parent would see their children.

Luke 17: 20-21:

"Now when he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said, 'The kingdom of God does not come from observation; (21) Nor will they say, see here!' or 'see there!' for indeed, the kingdom of God is within you."

Gospel of Thomas #50:

Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?' say to them, 'we came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, and we are the elect of the Living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your Father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'

Gospel of Thomas #67:

Jesus said, "Whoever believes that the All itself is deficient is himself completely deficient."

Lesley, May 2002