DON’T GET CAUGHT PLAYING THE THREE GOD GAMES

Humans are good at playing games, be it Monopoly, Chess, Basketball pickup, or mind games. There are three mind games that I have identified that are as potentially dangerous to your spiritual well-being as is COVID. It is best not to go there if you want to keep from the clutches of the Evil One. These three will suck you under the rubric of thinking that you are doing God’s will.

MY GOD CAN BEAT YOUR GOD. Here is a seductive approach to spirituality that many of us fall into without thinking about it. If you use your notion of God to beat up other people who do not share your assumptions about who God is, you play the God game. Not that God is not Who He Is. He is. The sin here is Pride, thinking you speak for the Holy Spirit for the Church Universal from Apostolic times. Remember. Anyone can justify anything by thinking that you alone have the truth, and if people don’t believe it, you can kill them. Look at the Inquisition, ISIS, Islamic Fundamentalism, some Christian evangelicals, some Catholics who know the mind of God, and condemn all others who disagree. You will know the tree by the fruit it produces. Rotten fruit is selfish, prideful, envious, speaking garbage, and hated from their mouths.

MY CHURCH CAN BEAT YOUR CHURCH. When the purpose of using Scripture is to prove that your Church is correct and others are false, you are in danger of losing why there is a Scripture at all. (John 20:30-31) This is not evangelization but rather a proselytization. The Christ Principle is the way, the truth, and the life. You have seventy or eighty years to discover why you are here, then do what He tells you (as Mary told the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana.) Don’t judge others as to their being in the true church or not. Let God judge those outside the Church, and you don’t judge those inside it. You are not Judge, nor Juror, nor Prosecutor, nor Defense Attorney. Hold steadfastly to the truth you received from Christ and handed down by the Church Ecumenical Councils.

YOU ARE NOT ME. I like the saying, “I am not you, you are not me. God is not you, and you, most certainly are not God.” When each of us approaches the Christ Principle, we can only do so by “having in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5-12). There is only One Christ. You are not God. You have authority over what you believe from the Holy Spirit. In the Rule of St. Benedict, in Chapter 7, the first step in the Twelve Steps of Humility is fear of the Lord. To speak as though you were the way, the truth, and the life for others is a subtle form of idolatry. Who made you God?

These three temptations are just a few challenges we have to move from our false self to our true self. Awareness of who God is is key to keeping your spiritual equilibrium.

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