Afraid To Be

We are afraid of unity.  We call ourselves Unity, and yet fear that which the name implies.  Do we really believe that there is just One Presence and One Power in the universe and in our life? Do we really believe that the Christ that dwells fully in us dwells just as fully in even Rush Limbauh?  Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”  Can we say the same of our self? Can we say the same for Charles Manson?  Do we really believe that God is love and that we are one with that love? Let’s say we can get up the nerve to say yes to all of these questions and then what does that imply?  I say we are afraid of unity.

Who among us is fool enough to place a tourniquet around our right hand and then leave it on watching all along as it turns blue, then eventually black as the life giving qualities of our blood were cut off from it? Who would continue to refuse to remove the tourniquet over the next weeks or months as their hand literally dried up, became useless, infected, and died before their very eyes. Unless we were insane, we would remove the tourniquet because it was our hand, it was part of us, a useful part and a needed part.  By not removing the tourniquet we endanger our very life.

If we are truly One as Jesus spoke so beautifully of in the 15^th chapter of John, one with him, one with God, one with each other, then are we not fools as we stand by and ignore the poverty, injustice and greed around us? In our nation, the most powerful and richest nation in the world, the top 1% own 40% of all our nation’s resources and over 50% of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds, while the bottom 80% own only 7% of our nation’s resources.  In our nation 46 million people live in poverty and 49 million face hunger.  In the world the top 1% own 46% of all the world’s assets. Every 5 seconds a child dies of hunger related disease.  Over 3.1 million children have died this year due to hunger.  One in 8 people or 895 million people do not have enough to eat.

In the parable of the sheep and goats or the Judgment of the Nations found in the 25^th chapter of Matthew we read, “⁴¹ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴² for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ ⁴⁴ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ ⁴⁵ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Christ calls us to die to our false puny separate egoic selves so that we can be born anew into the true powerful Spiritual Beings that we are. Beings who are one with Being Itself, a Unity where the least is as important as a King or Queen, President or Corporate CEO. We are afraid of Unity because we are too comfortable with our false separate selves…….too captivated to let them die…….too busy to be born again……..too afraid to be who we really are.