I AM,

The very notion that a mere Man could be God is what put Jesus on the cross! Other claims that He made & things that He did just exacerbated the situation, but when it came down to it, what really twisted their knickers was that He, a mere Man, claimed to be God. Jesus, however, never out & out said, 'I am God', so how did those Pharisees get the idea that Jesus claimed He was God? 'Well', one might say, 'He said that God was His Father, therefore making the claim that He was equal to, or One with God'; He also said things like, 'before Abraham was, I AM' ( remember that YHWH told Moses, 'I am that I am' ). So, was Jesus correct in His claims? Could a mere Man be God? More to the point, maybe, can a man ( or woman ) be a god ( or goddess )?

If we can trust our Bible translations, YHWH Himself said, through the Psalmist, 'you are gods and all of you are children of the Most High'. Now, admittedly, these words were aimed at the spiritual leaders of Israel, but, is this not a Universal Truth? Can we not rightly acknowledge, along with the Author, the Great Progenitor, that we are indeed 'gods'?  'Okay', one might admit, 'we may be small 'g' gods, but we are not big 'G' Gods'! What then, one might ask, is the difference? The difference, biblically speaking, is that One comes from the Other, from the same Source, so to speak. Jesus said, 'My Father is greater than I', making the claim that He was One with Father, just as we, at the very core of our being, are One with The Source.

What is a god/God! Well, there are many gods, but, as the Bible says, 'one God'. We may understand this as saying that we are mighty ones ( for this is basically what the word means ), but that there is One mightier than we, the One who, according to Scripture 'made the worlds' & set the stars in 'their courses'. We are undeniably gods in our own right, both because we are children of the Creator & because we are creators! We judge for ourselves what is right or wrong & if we judge according to the aforementioned Universal Law, or Truth, then we manifest our Unity with the Divine.

The Universal Truth that we are all 'children of the Most High' can be an unnerving, even frightening proposition! If all are Children of God, could we in good conscience kill our brother or sister! The argument has been made that only those who have consciously entered into Covenant with their Creator are Children, or Sons of God. However, if we posit that this must be, are we not saying that one makes his or her own decision of whether not to be a Child of the Father? One might well go back into the Story of Israel, beginning with the so-called Adamic Covenant & ask if Adam ever asked or decided to be a Child of God! Did you ask to be the child of your particular earthly father?

Since 'it is what it is', whether one acknowledges it or not, the fact remains! One can deny it till the cows come home, but we are all Children of our Father. Having originated from the Source of All, the fact that we are gods cannot be denied. That we are One with God only needs realization; the Truth is there whether we realize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not! The fact that not all realize or acknowledge this glorious fact does not change it. Maybe if we treated others as brothers & sisters, they would be more inclined to act in like manner, joining us on the path of realization.

As Christians, we tend to call the Creator 'God'; other religions have a different name for the Source, but it is all the same God, only the perceptions differ. One might liken it to the tale of the four old blind East Indians who tried to describe an elephant. Each one felt a different part of the animal & each one thought that the part he was touching was an accurate representation of the whole. Each was right in part, but only in unity could they truly describe the elephant. So it is with us; because of our different religions, our different beliefs, we say, 'this is what the Creator God is like, not that',: in doing so, we deny the Unity that IS!

The Scriptures again say, 'He has made from one blood every nation of men' & so, taken at face value, we must realize that there is actually one race, the human race & that, like it or not, agree or not, we are all Children of our Father God! Many are the reasons that separate us & continue to do so, religion being the foremost.& while those differences are unavoidable, they need not divide us, or cause us to fear, hate & kill one another. The Unifying Factor is that we all have one Father, one Source, the Great Progenitor, thus, we are all One in Reality, though not so much in Actuality. Unity is not uniformly; a house, for instance, cannot be rightly called a house until all the different parts come together in unity to form the whole. Biblically speaking, the Body, whether metaphorical or biological, is made up of many different members, though it is one Body.

The claim that 'I am God', therefore, should not be made lightly! There is one Unifying Principle, as we have seen, One Source & while we originate from that Source, being a part of it, indeed One with that Source, we are not that Source; we are not the Great Progenitor. Here in the West, as Christians especially, we like to call this Source 'our Father' & those from the Far East, anything from Krishna to Shiva: different aspects, one God.

To call a human being 'God', for the Western Christian especially, seems blasphemous. Indeed, it rather is, because to most, if not all Western Christians, even many Eastern ones, that name is reserved for the Creator alone, for the Originator of Life itself! Since Scripture has called 'mere mortals' 'gods', then may we not rightly make that claim? Have we not the same necessary makeup as did the biblical Jesus, who was, by all accounts, the Son of God, or Yahweh to the Hebrews? We are imbued with the very same Spirit that Jesus was & are told that, believing in Him, the Source of Light & Life, we will do, not only what He did, but that we will accomplish even 'greater works': furthermore, we are told that nothing will be impossible for us! How much more God-like could we get?!

Those who read these words must judge for themselves, but to this blogger, it is clear that there is more to these claims than meets the eye. No, humans did not create themselves; in fact, the mere thought is rather ridiculous, although we do, to a great extent, create our own existence in this biology, by our own words & deeds. The glorious Fact that we, as Christians, are more than certain of, is that there is One Intelligent Designer who is the Origin of All. That we are His Image is abundantly clear as well. What is not so clear to many, sadly, is what exactly that Image is. Is our humanity, our biology, this Image? Again, the reader must judge for him or herself, because the answer comes from within!

Charles Haddon Shank