No One To Give and Take

The journey of the spiritual life is one of revelation in who you truly are. Revelation is only valid when it smashes through the preconceptions of a deluded identity and forces us to accept a truth that has always been. Acceptance is not merely acknowledgement by the shaking of the head in agreement, but by the hard act of living the truth through actions.

In the beginnings of my writing on the subject of grace I was adamant in trying to find a way to get back to the original understanding of what the New Testament writers, particularly Paul, meant when they used the term “grace.” This meant finding out what the Greek word “charis” meant in all its various forms. There are plenty of writings herein, along with published books, I have made about what this means. In a nutshell, according to what I discovered throughout the original Greek writings which predate the biblical writings of the New Testament, “charis” boils down to reciprocal giving.

In later writings I became convinced that grace, as it was being offered in the writings of the apostles, is the activating power of God’s grace. This stemmed from an understanding of the principles of a kingdom and how it functions in relationship to the power of its throne. A throne of “grace” is an action of a divine being who IS love.

As my journey has expanded, my writings have become fewer due to difficulty of trying to put into words the unveiling which revelation presents. The importance of the clarity to Oneness with the Father, as described by Jesus, has led to many personal key insights which, when held up to the message the church has offered to the western world for two thousand years, can be and often has been declared heretical in nature. Attempting to blast through the calloused mindset of these past teachings is somewhat challenging since most people have adopted them as sacrosanct and cannot be challenged no matter who says differently – even Jesus!

So, with this as a foundation, what I am about to present is a clarification spurred on by a passage I recently read from a book entitled, “Liberating the Gospel from Christian Myth” by Michael Hardin. In this passage Michael speaks about the issue of charis falling under the banner of an “economy of exchange.” Whenever you place anything God has done in and through Jesus under this economic vehicle it defiles the truth of the gospel.

Consider the exchange we have all been indoctrinated in: God so loved the world that He gave… Do you see this giving as reciprocal? Charis, in its traditional rendering demands it of you. But what are we expected to give in return? This after all is a sacrifice of the highest order.

We have been taught that to meet such an exchange we must offer ourselves to God without reservation. He in turn will take our offering and…and what? This is the workings of what Michael calls the “Janus-faced God,” the pagan deity whose face was smiling on one side and scornful on the other. Under this god you never knew how he would look upon you or your actions. Regrettably, most of the Western teaching of the Father are directly employing just such a motif.

“I am God, there is no other,” is a most important passage to base your spiritual journey upon. Most reading this passage take the position that there are no other gods, which for starters is a good thing. However, “other” applies to ALL, not just a theological narrative. This is vital to our oneness. You can’t claim to be at one with the Father if “you” consider yourself to be “other.” There is no God and… There IS God, period. In oneness, there is no “you.”

That statement scares people. They have invested a lifetime believing in “themselves” and now in oneness, not only do they not exist, but they never have. All those therapy sessions dealing with “who am I and what is my purpose in the life” just went up in smoke. This is the delusion we have all been living. It is fostered by an ego that believes itself to be separate from God. Any such separation is merely a need to be “other” who knows how to function in this life according to its best interests. Those interests remarkably function on vast economies of exchange.

To fully embrace the nature of oneness with the Father, it demands knowing how the mortal shell seen in the mirror is not “you.” Within the interior of that shell resides a Soul which is truly, forever One with the Father. No exchange placed it there. The Soul is as God IS. When the mortal decays and expires, the Soul returns to the Father liberated from the confinement of the ego, whole and resplendent in the glory which has always possessed.

As the fullness of oneness reveals itself, suddenly comes the realization that there is no “other” who gives and takes. Exchanges which operate from a sense of lack disappear in the truth of abundance in the One who is ALL in ALL. Grace becomes the action of Love to those still living in the delusion of their ego who believe that they get only according to what they have giving. Sometimes the best answers and their revelation come when “you” finally give UP.