In my head, I always knew how it was gonna be. I had it all planned out. I knew what I would be doing and whom I would be doing it with. It was exciting. It was new.
It was all in my head.
I’m taking a class through my church called “Freedom In Christ.” I had to take a spiritual inventory as my first assignment. One of the questions asked if I had ever fantacized about something.
The answer, of course, was yes. I’ve fantacized about going on a roller coaster ride somewhere. Or riding along somewhere on a boat. Harmless things, really.
Apparently not. The point my church is trying to make is that we need to accept the reality we have. If we fantacize about being somewhere else with someone else doing something else, it means that we aren’t accepting the current situation that God’s given us.
I never thought of it that way.
I remember being so disappointed so much as a child when things didn’t turn out the way that I wanted them to. If a conversation didn’t happen the way I envisioned it. Or if my relationship with someone didn’t pan out ideally. I had so many pre-conceived notions about what course my life would take.
And they were usually wrong notions.
Unfortunately, I got notion-ish before I moved to Tennessee. I thought things would be different. I thought I’d know different people better. I thought I’d have more time with my roommate. I thought I’d have more money. I thought I’d have closer relationships with the folks down here. I thought I’d have a heightened status in many areas of my life because I lived here.
I was wrong. So wrong. And I have been disappointed because of it.
I have thought several times, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. It’s not how I envisioned it.”
I hear God say, “Yes. You’re right. This isn’t what you wanted. This is what I know is the best for you.”
Sometimes I am so selfish. The reason I am so disappointed in so many of my life’s outcomes is because my expectations were based on my human self. As a human I am imperfect, thus my expectations in my life will fail.
I can’t base my hopes and dreams on what I think would be the best. Instead I need to build my life on the foundation of God and the promises that He’s made. God’s promises are the only expectations that will come to fruition.
Letters from Lindsay | A blog by a Lincoln, Nebraska, writer 
You were wrong? I don’t think so.
Probably you are so. Right now.
The only reality that exists is one which we choose to make of ourself. The world is in a state that it is in, not because God wanted it to be in this way. God has no desires. We, in fact, are a part of this entity that God is.
The world is in this state because of the individual choices that people have made since time began. It is our free will: not the Christian free will, where you only have one right choice: I don’t see how that’s “free” anyway!
The world is in this state due to the individual as well as the collective will power and aspirations of us-its inhabitants.
Humans have a problem in dealing with power. We see this in leaders who become corrupt and those who become tyrannous when they are endowed with power.
We also see it in trying to ward off things to someone higher up in the hierarchy- there has to be something greater out there – we cannot take it that we are powerful. That our will is done.
By terming God as something that exists outside of creation, all religions have been successful in distributing this power in a way that humans can handle it. But in doing so, we don’t know about our own powers-or how we can use them to do tremendous good.
By fantasising something, you are not saying that the current disposition is not good. You are envisioning something that can be better – and with the power of the will that we have (which is one of the strongest forces in the universe-after love, perhaps), we can actually bring about this transformation.
But in submitting ourself to the present in a complacent manner, by a capricious claim that someone higher up in the hierarchy wants it this way, we are not helping the problems we face. And until we help out, nothing will happen.
Wars, hungers and diseases will prevail. And, indeed, the death of human incarnations. Yes, would you believe if I tell you that human beings can actually be immortal – that’s it actually the way we live our lives and treat our bodies, that we end up decaying them? . No. Of course you wouldn’t. Because you can’t handle the truth- the truth of how powerful you have the potential to be. You would rather that we are dying because that’s what God wants of us.
there is no hierarchy in the universe. God is the creator, not a tyrant. Just as an artist doesn’t “rule” over his creations, but loves them unconditionally, so does God not “rule” or “judge” its creations. God created us out of itself, and indeed we are fragments of God. There is equality in powers – no hierarchy or subordination. For truly I say unto you – true love cannot exist in subordination. And God is true love
I disagree with some of your points.
I do, however, agree that God isn’t a tyrant. He is a God of love. Humans have free will and that’s why we mess up, sin and fall away from God. After Jesus comes back to earth, every single person will be judge for what they did in their life. So, yes, God is a judge. He is the ultimate judge. We aren’t fragments of God. We were actually made in His image. Our power is not equal to God. The desire to be equal with God is what caused the Fall in the first place. There is a total hierarchy in the Christian faith and also in life. Wives need to submit to their husbands. Children need to submit to their parents. People need to submit to the authority of God and obey Him.
God is the truest form of love, yes. But He also disciplines His children.
Yes, yes: I am not so ignorant! I know the Christian theosophy.
But sadly, it’s you that have made God in your image! It’s you (and your humanly made church), that have decided that God is a parent to us. It’s again people and the churches that have told you that there needs to be hierarchy. And that there needs to be submission.
But it’s your naivete and your gullible nature that has predisposed you into this forlorn of imaginative beliefs. The bible, too, did not fall down from heaven.
Your concept of an authoritarian God is plausibly humorous! If that is true, then we are basically whimsical creations of a capricious sadist?
I am not asking you to give up your beliefs blindly. But I will counsel you to read the book “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch. After all if what you believe is so true, your beliefs will be able to tolerate the book.
Unless you are afraid, that is. Of the truth…
Very good!