Many people have asked me through the years what it takes to bring joy to life; to be happy. One of the things I often say in reply is: Life Purpose.
If we have a Life Purpose our journey will take us to extraordinary places and experiences. And our life, however short or long, will have meant something. Not to others. To ourself.
I invite every person I come in contact with to look deeply at their life’s purpose. What is their raison d’être? What are they “up to” here on the earth? Just trying to get by, just trying to make life work?
I always say, “Are you just trying to make life work, or are you trying to make life better?” And for whom would you seek to make it better? For yourself, or for another? Or, perhaps, for all others? Can you imagine such a thing as your own life purpose?
I am reminded of John Wesley’s “rule.” As you know, Mr. Wesley is credited with being the founder of the Methodist Church. And here is a “rule” that he invited people to follow in their lives…
Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, for all the people you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.
I love that. I just adore that injunction, and I have tried very hard to live my life by it. These days my own life purpose is simple, It can be stated in six words: Change the world’s mind about God.
That’s it. Plain and simple. I just want to change the world’s mind about God.
Why? Because I know that if the world changed its mind about God, the world itself would change, over night. And in ways that could bring about peace on earth, goodwill to humans everywhere, at last.
Yes, I believe this can happen. I believe this can occur. I believe human begins are capable of creating such a life, of creating such a society. But first we must change our minds about Who is In Charge, and What He Wants, and Why He Wants It, and How All of Life Works.
We must decide again about Life, what it is and how it functions and the reason and purpose behind it all. We must create a new Cultural Story about all of this, out of which will emerge a new idea about ourselves individually, and a new thought about ourselves in relationship to each other.
We must alter our perspective, seeing things from a new place and therefore in a new way. Perspective creates perception, perception creates belief, belief creates behavior, behavior creates experience, experience creates reality — and our reality creates our perspective. If we want to change our reality, we need to change our perspective. We need to see things in a New Way.
This New Way is what I call the New Spirituality. It is what we talk a lot about here. It is a way of honoring our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it. It is a way of holding the experience and the reality of God, without fearing God.
The day that we stop fearing God will be the day that we stop fearing each other. The day that we understand our true relationship with God will be the day that we understand our true relationship with each other. Then we will treat each other as God would treats us — with compassion, with understanding, with forgiveness, with a love that is unconditional — rather than treating each other as we imagine that God treats us: with judgment, anger, condemnation, and violence upon our person if we do not do What God Wants.
(For a fascinating treatment of this subject you may wish to find a copy of What God Wants, from Atria Books.)
We treat each other the way we do on this planet with impunity, for we are using an angry, violent, and vindictive God as our moral compass and our moral authority. Yet if God is not angry, violent, and vindictive, where, then, will we find our justification for acting as we do?
Our entire legal system is based upon our ideas of “right” and “wrong,” and that, in turn, is based upon our Cultural Story of a God — a Divine Being, a Deity, a Creator, who has His ideas of Right and Wrong, and punishes us for ignoring them. Our concept of “justice” is foundationed in our understanding of Retribution as a function of God. Yet what if God seeks no retribution for anything at all? Then what of our system of justice? And what of our very way of life?
I believe that everything would be altered. For the better. Even our criminal justice system — which human beings agree must have some place in our affairs, would be improved remarkably. That is why I want to change the world’s mind about God.
Right now we are doing an awful lot of killing in God’s name. Surely that can’t be what GOd intended.