The attributes we give God are only human ways of coming to grips with a vastness that is beyond our metaphors and terminology. We suit our thinking and speaking about God to our limited selves. This can be a useful thing to do, but to conclude there must be conflicting qualities in God is sacrilege.

*William Law. Mystical Writings. In Bernard Bangley, Editor. Near to the Heart of God. "Our Illogical Ideas about God": January 19.

We are making Hell; we are shaping Heaven. And both are here, before us. Look.

For the Divine being timeless, and infinite, both Heaven and Hell are so - as forms from the one Idea of Love. For that in God, from God - for all must be of God, is one Energy, and we shape according to the created free will in you and me. Therefore, we cannot say, "Hell is there." Or, "Hell is here." We can say, "Hell I see there." We can say, "Hell manifests for us to see here."

"Hell" and "Heaven," then, are qualities, not quantities. There is no more Hell here or there, not absolutely. Yes, we manifest more of Hell and Heaven, as beings of free will.

And God's wrath? Wrath is the manifestation of a universal law of negativity opposing the Good of Love, or manifesting the Good in that its sole intent is to fulfill the choice of our freedom, which was given in the Love we each live Within. That is, wrath does not come from God, except through us and the freedom to either choose good or evil. The "through" is the potential in God prior to its division in time and space.

Likewise, Hell is eternal only in that all is eternal, and as Heaven is so - and these, as all, in each moment we experience in our experience as moment.

There is no capacity in absolute Love to send a person to absolute Hell based on the person's non-absolute choices in relative time and space. This would make God a weird Being of contradiction within a Nature, which we say is Single and Simple - that is, free of contradiction.

So, let us leave of this religious talk of illogical ideas, that when examined closely make no sense at all. And, also, such ideas as make God out to be a cosmic weirdo, not the God of Love, not the God in whom we so are that in God we are using the Love that God gives us to form either Heaven or Hell now, or an odd mixture of each personally and socially.

To be and live in Christ - who is more than just the Jesus of Christianity - is to live and be in Heaven, for Christ is the perfection of ALL-Good. Where there is Heaven, there is Christ, regardless of the religion or lack of such, for religion and all forms of spirituality are derivatives in time and not absolutes in Eternity. Indeed, where there is the least bit of communication of God's Beauty, in whatever form, there is Heaven - as much Heaven as a spirit-filled Service of Worship in a Christian church on Sunday morning.

So, St. Paul says, "When Christ appears..." When does Christ appear? Where appears Love, where Heaven shows Its Face. Why? Christ is the absolute of the Good, True, and Beautiful. This makes the spiritual Church, One without walls, name, doctrine, but of persons in the spiritual Christ-Consciousness - not merely in religion or spirituality as a social or personal phenomena.

What are the things that make for Hell, in you, me, society? St. Paul gives us those - though the list is not exhaustive: sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed.

What is the root of these Hell qualities? Paul says earthly desire. Or, harmful passion. At the root of Hell is the desire to please oneself, not serve in Love, from these desires that are "earthly"; this is a spatial metaphor for base desires met to please oneself, regardless of the harm brought to others.

This can include even religious, or spiritual, desire. Cannot religion create Hell? Cannot spirituality lead to Hell? The most traditional, sublime, orthodox, and nicely decorated faith, when arising to feed itself greedily and close off from the other - even looking upon the other as the damned, is a Hell-Producing social-mechanism. I have been in churches, for example, all my life, and served professionally in them for over thirty years: I have seen a lot of Hell spread in the name of Christ.

I am fully committed to the historical Church. Yet, God being God, I have a hunch the future of God's work in the world will have little to do with the Church - at least as we have known it. Rather, what we have known as the secular is becoming the principal arena of Spirit's act of Justice and Loving, of the evolution of consciousness.

Possibly, we could have some - many - things wrong about faith. Indeed, is it not possible that there is much Hell in the churches? Is it possible Heaven is most manifesting in places most of the "devout" would never look? I think so. I think we will be surprised, when all is said and done, and we see as God sees - or in a closer proportion to God's seeing.

Now, who are the Saints? Many of the Saints we remember are especially Holy persons who found the divine grace to live in the Hells of social-institution church structures and manifest Heaven. They loved the Church, even the historical Church, for they lived from Love, a Love that could Love even in the midst of Hell, and beyond it.

So, we make our choice. With each thought, act, and word, we choose Heaven or Hell. We cannot blame God for the "wrathful" results. We created those results. Do not assign anger and punishment to God, Who is ALL-Good, and who likely grieves at how we forfeit Heaven for Hell in so many ways - and then assign to God the consequences that are only our consequences, and which have nothing to do with the purely Good. For in God absolutely is only Heaven, and all else is a violation of the Simplicity and Purity of Love - That is God.