Creating God | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Creating God | Previous Challenge Entry
By Tracy Nunes
05/10/11
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Jenson was a bright and thoughtful young man but he walked away from the funeral home with a chip on his heart. His mother’s death from kidney failure after months of suffering despite her life-long devotion to God and prayer put a dent in his view of God, the Healer. His respect for her faith remained but it had a limp.

When he graduated from college with a degree in Business he looked for an entry level job at a financial institution with room for advancement. The economy nosedived in his final semester before graduation and he did indeed take an entry level job – at a restaurant on Fifth and Vine. The chip grew and the dent deepened. Now his faith foot was dragging. God the Provider became God the Roadblock.

He married a delightful woman named Hailey. They loved each other deeply and passionately wanted to have children despite all the month left over when his paycheck ran out. They wholeheartedly tried but after several years and many doctor visits were resigned to not having children of their own. The chip grew and the dent deepened. His respect for his Mother’s faith was on crutches.

All of the incoming trials of life festered and stirred and became an outgoing flow of disbelief that affected his marriage, his work and his health. And finally, that began to bother Jenson. He remembered a verse his Mother would often repeat:

But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' (Matthew 15:18 NIV)

But, it didn’t seem fair. In his view a person shouldn’t be held accountable for how they responded to being dealt a bad hand.

Anxiety grew and restlessness increased until he was sure he would go mad. Something had to change. He dug out his Mother’s old Bible and began to read it. At times he felt an increased peace but oftentimes felt frustrated and confused. His memories of her death and the years of disappointment made the stories in the Bible feel personal. ..too personal. From the vantage point of his crutches he couldn’t see the stories of God’s dealings with His children as anything other than divine chess playing.

Something had to change alright and Jensen decided that it had to be God.

It started with parsing pieces and parts of the Bible he liked or disliked. He avoided words like wrath and judgment and highlighted words like peace and provision. He was drawn to the words of Jesus and the Apostles that spoke of love and healing but was repulsed by passages referring to sin and death, consequences and Hell.

He posed the question to Hailey. “I mean, really now, do we really think that a loving God would allow His people to suffer in a place called Hell?” She tilted her head and lifted her shoulders in shared perplexity.

Jensen began to read every spiritual, metaphysical and scientific source he could find that would explain things in a way that he could accept. Little by little the foundations of faith laid by his mother in the One True God were torn down and in its place a god made in Jensen’s own image.

God, the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son? No, Jensen the god source, the divine consciousness, seeker of harmonic convergence became fluent in the Jesus whose greatest accomplishment was walking on water, who brought people together in peaceful union. Jesus became a nice role model for unity; His blood sacrifice on the cross a forgotten tidbit and a reanalyzed historic event. A great show of love undoubtedly, but not necessary for entrance into the Divine Presence.

With slow but sure precision Jensen’s chipped heart and dented views of God led him down a path to spiritual paraplegia and by seeking healing, instead of the True God of Healing who loved him with utmost intensity, he became a pliable tool in the hand of the Deceiver. His certainty that God could only be God if He conformed to Jensen’s idea of His true nature, laid the ground work for the ruse. Thus being deceived, he in turn released his deception on others.

The incoming flow became the outgoing flood and the water was not pure.

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