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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
Title: Discovering God Beyond Religion: Reclaiming the Message of Universal Restoration
Today's Saying: God is not a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, … God is not literally Father or Mother. God is No-thing, but in all things, and all things are through and in God.
Sagely Words
In the end and consummation of the universe, all are to be restored into their original harmonious state, and we all shall be made one body and be united once more into a perfect man, and the prayer of our Savior shall be fulfilled that all may be one.
-St. Jerome, b. 331
*Quoted in Carlton Pearson. The Gospel of Inclusion.
We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Spiritual Teaching
Why do I feel trepidation at sending this writing out? I, like many, was indoctrinated that to differ with "evangelical" Christianity, or, for others, the "Church," means to be a heretic. And, that is like saying, "Brian, you are being unfaithful to God." And, "You are possibly going to hell." So, faith meant agreement, and agreement was more important than integrity and common sense. If you were a pastor, you got rewarded for intellectual dishonesty and shallowness; if you were a pastor, you got fired for questioning "the faith." The "church" rewarded even a so-called leader for not thinking, or conformity: a co-dependency in the name of God.
Well, let me be a "heretic." I would rather be a heretic in Love with a God who includes all in Love, than an "orthodox" who parrots teachings that on even a purely human level do not make sense, and because these teachings are not sensible, either spiritually or logically. Appealing to faith does not make an apple an orange, and it does not make a lie the truth.
So, I send out this writing. For those who have "your" God, then, this will be heretical. For you who enjoy "our" God - the God of us All - then, may you be encouraged by this opus. Fortunately, now, no "church" can fire me, for I serve outside the "church": I serve only for Christ. And, as of now, Christ has not forsaken His beautiful Love to me, and He is as near to this man as ever when I taught "evangelical orthodoxy."
A question, before proceeding. If Universal Restoration is so wrong, why did four of the six major theological centers in the early centuries of Christianity teach Universal Redemption? Another question: Why did a number of other theological centers do the same? Finally, why did one as great a theologian as St. Augustine declare that some persons in his day held faithfully to the Bible being God's Word and, at the same time, maintained Universal Restoration, in Christ?
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The Jesus of John's Gospel says, in chapter 7: 37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" 39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (NASB)
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Likewise, in John 4, we read: Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.'” 11 She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?” (NASB)
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The theme of "living water" was already well known to contemporaries of Jesus. An example from the Hebrew Scripture derives from Jeremiah: For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters [or, waters of life, life-giving waters], and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2.13, AV)
Remarkable is the insight given by the Jeremiah passage, as it addresses a propensity to resist surrender to the One Who is living water, in a pride that refuses to humble oneself to receive. Indeed, acquisitiveness is one of the chief obstacles to enjoying Grace; a grabbing for "cisterns" of purported truth and faith that cannot contain the Living Water.
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Thus, contemplative prayer and living is an opening to that which Itself lives in and from Itself. This Self-Subsistent, Self-Giving One pours Itself out for all, without losing any of its plenty. All life derives from It, and It loses nothing in giving all of Itself to all, always.
So, the reception of life, flowing like fresh water, is the receiving of Love. This Love never needs to be replenished, for it never loses any Love in giving all Love, for the nature of Love is irreducible.
The Jeremiah passage identifies the "life giving water" with the Spirit, as does Jesus, clearly, in John 7. That is, God is Living Water, and to partake of God is to partake of Life, for God is Life, living Life.
This is a reason we meditate. We go to the "innermost being" and find that point at which only One exists: the Godhead. Essentially, we are of God and God is of us. We are One, of One, together One with All.
Being in the Image of God, we all together, as one, are living water, the Presence of the Divine. Meditation, then, leads us to the realization of the plentiful, abundant Life in which we participate in all things and as part of everything, as God, without God being other than God or us being other than us.
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Then, through meditation, we drink of what we are, delving to imbibe the Truth that is at the beginning and end, as one, of who we are and have always been. With this, we are reoriented to our true Identity, an Identity-in-Communion, and refreshed to live presently and in service through our particularized expression of the "innermost being" and the God-in-Life we embody integrally in service with all others.
Religion cannot give us this “living water.” Rather, our faith path, rather than closing us in to think we are the only ones with the answers and Way, must open us to the Truth in all truths, the Way in all ways, the Life in all lives. God is not a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, … God is not literally Father or Mother. God is No-thing, but in all things, and all things are through and in God.
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I share a metaphor. Let us imagine there has always been air. Then, an air Teacher arises. Then, the air is packaged in a religion of air. Likewise, other religions of air arise, each claiming they have the only air. Each says, “Come to us, get the air, or you cannot have the air.” Now, is that not nonsense? How much more nonsense that religions package the Spirit – Literally, Wind – and claim its package is the only right one? Is this not idolatry? Yes, a religious one. This is a people claiming to take the eternal Divinity and hold the only package a person can meet and enjoy the Divinity in.
So, as we meditate, and drink of the inward, living Water, we find we feel that in many new ways, through other paths, and persons we might once have excluded from having the Wind – Spirit. Then, likewise, we can more likely share the inward living Water with others, as it pours from our beings into the world. We become more hospitable and compassionate to those unlike us.
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I watched the Dalai Lama, of Mahayana Buddhism, and a contemplative leader in Christianity join together at the border between Northern and Southern Ireland – the mark of religious hostilities and violence. They crossed over that boundary: a Buddhist and Christian, in unity. Children ran up to the Dalai Lama. I sat, and I poured forth profuse tears. I prayed, “This is what I've always wanted to see.”
See, my heart knows the Truth of our unity. My eyes saw it. The tears were tears of joy, to see the transcending of the religious division, into a unity in the Divine. My heart had been prepared to see, even though I had been raised a religious exclusionists - where I had served many years, and have an M.Div. and Ph.D. in such indoctrination. I had been taught I was part of a special tribe, and the rest of the world was damned by a God of Love. As long as I agreed with the tribe, other tribal leaders and members hailed me as a "good child."
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I truly believe Jesus offered “living water” without setting out to start a religion. I truly believe the church soon became another “Roman empire,” with its own “emperor” and “Roman senate.” I truly believe Jesus never intended that Christianity be the only way. God is not a Christian; Jesus is not a Christian; the Holy Spirit is not a Christian. The Divine One is “living water,” and Jesus never gave a theological test before he healed anyone, and He never gave a creed for admittance into relationship with God. He gave Love.
Now, what shall we do with this way of Jesus? Try as we may, we cannot package God into any one earthy package, regardless of how “consecrated” we claim the package is.
Responding
1) Is it possible to honor a religious path, while transcending it in universal Love? Explain.
2) Why do you think persons fear a God free to express in ways outside a narrow definition of “the Church”? Or, have they been taught to fear that “God” will punish them, if they do believe in a God of Universal oneness with all? Do you believe this writing consistent with common sense, or not? Explain.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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