READERS, GET INVOLVED
With over 1000 clicks--and in just a few days--on this topic surely there are others--besides the less than a handful who post here--who are willing to say: This is what I choose to believe (I presume it means to be + live).... Or not to believe. And here is how I choose to act.

Aye, there's the challenge: the putting into practice, on a daily basis, what we say we believe. Read the letter of James--the brother of Jesus. Its central theme is: "Faith without works is dead." It calls on us to have a rational faith which inspires us to do socially useful works. Faith and work must act as a team.

Of course to act in good faith is to act lovingly. IMO, "Love", which I like to capitalize, is more useful as a verb than as a noun. Agape, the Greek word, means to choose, to will and act in the now on the basis of finding the good in all circumstances and in all people. Not easy to do. But, in GOD, there are many people out there who are willing to be of loving help to those who need it.

ABOUT Eckhart Tolle's concept of GOD
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In his book already mentioned, Tolle--who, BTW, is not affiliated with any one religion--points out that he never talks about "finding God". When people ask him about how "to find God" he usually responds, I presume with a smile on his face: "...how can you find that which was never lost....? (P.224) He adds,"God is being itself, not a being."

I find myself in absolute agreement with ET when he writes about his idea of "God", especially when the word is used as a proper noun. The noun "God" is filled with so much baggage and so many misperceptions. It has been constantly misused over the centuries to this present day.

He writes, "There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God."

I can't remember the last time I thought of people as being here, separate and apart, and God as a being up there--and looking like the Sistine-Chapel version of God as painted by Michael Angelo. For decades I have thought of people as being as much a part of GOD as we are of the cosmos. While I have every respect for all forms of theism, including agnosticism and atheism, I prefer to speak of GOD--Goodness, Order and Design--as an acronym, rather than as a noun.

Last edited by Revlgking; 08/21/08 08:44 PM.
G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org