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The Healing Power of Oneness
God Doesn’t Care What Religion You Are — or Aren’t.
Rejecting religion — that I get. Rejecting God? Impossible. Unless you mean the manmade God conceived by religions — then yes, sure. But God, the One that created all, and is All, doesn’t care about religion.
As Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong said, “God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist…. I walk through my tradition, but I don’t think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
Let’s agree that God = Good. Even if you’re not sure you believe in God, or in prayer, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is some good in the world. God isn’t an anthropomorphic Supreme Being; God is All Being, Life Itself. God is a process, an interactive verb. And just as God is “God-ing,” and I am “Janis-ing,” you, too, are reflecting Divinity in your own individual way.
No matter how much we grapple with God — believing, doubting, wrestling, or outright rejecting such a concept — I propose that there’s really only one thing we need to know, upon which everything else rests. It’s this:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD Our God, the LORD is one.”
This declaration is a verse from the Bible (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the beginning of the Shema, a prayer recited…