Universal Call to Holiness

In the third stage of spiritual development, a person starts to think about God more in terms of the proper rules and regulations that must be kept in order to have a good relationship with God. This, of course, parallels what a child goes through in life. The “good” child follows the rules of his/her parents and the “bad” child breaks them. So one’s relationship with God is centered around obeying His rules. He is the judge ready is think about the child as “good” or “bad”. Rules and commandments are taken with deadly seriousness. This is fine as far as a child is concerned, because a child seems them as the true and correct rules taught by parents, teachers and clergy who are smart. They also falsely learn that the one true way to please the one true Christian god is by keeping all the rules.

The problem is, however, that this way also doesn’t allow the development of a true relationship with God. When God does not send down an immediate punishment upon the child for not keeping the rules (much as parents do), then the rules begin to lose their power of control.

Think about it. When we were children we did things, even without the awareness of our parents, that were wrong and, according to this thinking, deserved punishment from God. When, however, punishment did not come, we began to question the rule that we broke and wondered whether what we had been taught was true.

The fact of the matter is that God does not spend time punishing us for the things that we do wrong. Of course some people believe when they get sick or fail at something that it is punishment from God for the things they did wrong. This, of course, is not true even though a person might feel that it is.

If this mystical level of consciousness sounds familiar, it should, because: (1) all of us went through this level during a period of childhood that we still remember and (2) parts of most Christian adults’   consciousness are usually still stuck at this level. True spiritual growth moves us beyond this level.