We are children of God

Living persistence

(Religions officialdom says to Jesus) “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’(Psalm 82:6)? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? (John 10:33-37, NIV)

*******

“. . . I know the truth of what my people say: that we are all spirit, we are all energy, joined to everything that is everywhere, all things coming true together.” (Wagamese, Richard, Embers)

*******

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God . . . (Romans 8:16)

“We are all sons of God,” some have said. And others have replied, “Oh, no we're not! God has only one son!”

Quite frankly, the usual concept of parent/child makes little sense in the realm of the spirit. The religious authorities accusing Jesus of blasphemy—in declaring himself God's son—make a classic mistake. Either intentionally or out of ignorance, they turn what is meant to be a teaching metaphor into evidence for a legal indictment. They're tangled up in the complexity of language, blind to anything but the literal meaning of the words they're using.

The primary reluctance in calling ourselves “children of God” most likely stems from hesitation in seeing ourselves as Christ's brothers and sisters . . . his equals. This can easily become victim to legalistic over-thinking. In a first nations community in which I lived and taught, sister meant a girl or woman to whom one had become closely bonded over time. Brother and sister have long been used in the Christian Church to indicate acknowledgment of spiritual kinship. Sons and daughters of God? . . . well, not so much.

“For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother (Matthew 12:50).”

Picture it this way: the disciples have grown up in a vertical culture where authority is arbitrary and trickles down. Jesus preaches a horizontal worldview where his genetic mother, father, brothers and sisters and his spiritual brothers and sisters are all on the same plane, are all siblings under God, if you will.

But it's not easy to make the leap from genetic sisterhood to spiritual sisterhood when we use the same language for both. To learn this, we might well engage indigenous elders as our mentors—or read the New Testament as it was meant to be read when it was written. We are kin in every way with all that lives on this earth, one planet, one people-hood, one family. At one with the living world that nourishes us, all breathing the same spirit.

But then, even the spirit is deified in our thinking, calling it he, and in that perception possibly missing the meaning of sonship, of brothers and sisters on Jesus' terms. “ . . . we are all spirit, we are all energy, joined to everything that is everywhere, all things coming true together.”

Granted, this gets difficult to follow; we're not used to talking and walking in the spirit, of experiencing the mystical in creation and creator. Kinship for us westerners tends to be seen as physical, genetic, biological, even economic. We can illustrate the handicap western culture has placed upon us by asking ourselves: when we see trees, do we just think “lumber?” and when we see deer, is our first thought “meat?” And when we meet a stranger from a foreign culture, do we think about what connects us . . . or what divides us?

Much as we may say that all of creation is family because it all has but one father, we know that family is meaningless until we feel it. It's true of our earthly families where we sense, or don't sense, that we are loved and that we belong. To walk into the light of the knowledge that we are kin to all creation, to all things and creatures, that the creator loves all of us as family, that takes a rebirth, or a "being saved," or catching the vision of sonship and daughtership in the great family of God.