I Think I Get From My Books

Jesus Did Not Spend A Great Deal Of Time Discoursing About The Trinity Or Original Sin Or The Incarnation, Which Have Preoccupied Later Christians. He Went Around Doing Good And Being Compassionate.

A God Who Kept Tinkering With The Universe Was Absurd; A God Who Interfered With Human Freedom And Creativity Was A Tyrant. If God Is Seen As A Self In A World Of His Own, An Ego That Relates To A Thought, A Cause Separate From Its Effect, He Becomes A Being, Not Being Itself. An Omnipotent, All‐knowing Tyrant Is Not So Different From Earthly Dictators Who Make Everything And Everybody Mere Cogs In The Machine Which They Controlled. An Atheism That Rejects Such A God Is Amply Justified.

The Early Doctrines Of The Church, Even Doctrines Like Trinity And Incarnation Were Originally Also Calls For Action, Calls For Selflessness, Calls For Compassion, And Unless You Live That Out Compassionately, Selflessly, You Didn't Understand What The Doctrine Was Saying.

And Sometimes It's The Very Otherness Of A Stranger, Someone Who Doesn't Belong To Our Ethnic Or Ideological Or Religious Group, An Otherness That Can Repel Us Initially, But Which Can Jerk Us Out Of Our Habitual Selfishness, And Give Us Intonations Of That Sacred Otherness, Which Is God.

I Had Failed To Make A Gift Of Myself To God.