Man Has Smeared the Names of God and Jesus
People who think they hate God are not hating God.
They are hating those who claim to represent God, while not genuinely demonstrating and representing Him.
The goal of Christianity is to become like Jesus—to follow His example.
That is to become an expert giver, which means to be an example of unconditional love and forgiveness to everyone you encounter without expecting sex, money, or control in return.
That is what Jesus demonstrated was possible.
He showed that it is possible to overcome our selfish nature and the fears that our minds create.
That overcomes the Devil, the liar who tells us to believe a story that isn’t true and has a negative outcome.
Jesus rebuked fear, the Devil.
He showed us how to do that.
With that goal, we copy His example.
As an expert giver, Jesus was demonstrating the true nature of our Creator, our Father in Heaven.
He was overcoming His flesh, His fear, the liar, the Devil.
By not listening to His fear, Jesus showed us how God our Father would act here.
Jesus was a man who overcame the lie of fear and was a perfect demonstration of the living, walking God among us to show us how to become like Him.
Who can hate God when He is truly an unconditional giver, only seeking to help and heal us?
Jesus overcame His selfish desires.
Jesus demonstrated the true nature of God’s love in living flesh.
Then Jesus ascended and left, hoping that we had seen and heard enough to become like Him.
He wanted us to multiply and demonstrate like Him.
He enabled the true nature of the living God to be evident through more and more of us.
Human beings created a church institution.
How many of those religious Christians were expert givers, unconditionally giving to everyone around them with no expectation of money, sex, or control in return?
People who represent the living God are unconditionally giving to and forgiving everyone they encounter.
Jesus’ purpose for coming here was to teach us that God’s true nature is Love, and we can allow God to express His love through us.
The goal of Christianity is to demonstrate the true nature of the living God, as Jesus did.
Some Christians do not represent our Creator’s true loving nature.
They have given God a bad rap.
All the people who claim to represent God, but don’t, give God a bad name.
How many Christians do you know who are judgmental?
Christ taught us not to judge or hate others.
Do you judge or hate others?
Christ taught us to love others.
Christ taught us to bless our enemies.
Do you bless your enemies?
Were those people true Christians who promoted the Christian Crusades in the name of God and Jesus?
Would Jesus have promoted the Crusades in the name of God and Himself?
Would Jesus carry a gun?
When Judas betrayed Jesus, and Matthew drew his sword, Jesus said, “If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.”
Jesus would not carry a gun or a sword.
Jesus was here to demonstrate the true nature of God, which is not to fight.
God’s true nature is to turn the other cheek and forgive.
Jesus said, “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:38-39, NLT).
Jesus did not promote violence of any kind.
How have we allowed people to say that carrying a gun demonstrates Jesus’ teaching?
God’s true nature is love and forgiveness.
Jesus was not fearful, so for people to be fearful is not a good representation of Him.
People who claim to represent God, but are actually judgmental, fearful, hateful, divisive, angry, mean, violent, unforgiving, prideful, greedy, slothful, lustful, controlling, and revengeful, have caused others to reject Christianity because those are not qualities of God’s true nature.
When some people claim to be representatives of God, their behavior shows the opposite.
Their behavior is based on fear, not faith.
Their actions are selfish.
Their actions do not demonstrate helping everyone around them unconditionally, with all their resources and time, and no strings attached.
Instead, their actions demonstrate that they are storing up unshared wealth that is gathering dust.
Their actions do not demonstrate who Jesus taught us to be.
Non-Christians have turned away from faith in God because so many Christians have claimed to represent Him while being inaccurate representations of Him.
If people claim to represent God, but are only interested in money, sex, and control, they do not truly represent God.
Some people who claim to represent God end up demonstrating that they are only using God to selfishly deceive others in order to gain money, sex, or control for themselves.
Why do so many non-Christians hate God so much?
It is not God they hate, but the people who falsely claim to represent God, tarnishing His reputation.
Jesus helped unconditionally all those He encountered.
Jesus overcame man’s fear-based, selfish, and unforgiving nature and demonstrated God’s fearless, loving, and forgiving nature.
The Crusades represented human nature, not God’s.
God is Love.
To become expert givers, people only need to remove the blocks in the way of giving to others unconditionally.
This was Christ’s intention.
His only commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself.
That is a commandment to unconditionally give to and forgive everyone around you at all times.
There are eight blocks to becoming unconditionally loving and forgiving—that is, to becoming expert givers—along with ways to remove those blocks:
1. Hatred: We need to forgive people who have hurt us. (See my book Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, pp. 198–200.)
2. Anger and resentments: We must completely rid ourselves of those. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, pp. 192–199.)
3. Our character defects: We must examine which ones we have and remove them. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, pp. 203–206.)
4. Our fears: We must ignore those fears that say we lose when we give, and that there is no God to protect us. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, pp. 202–203.)
5. Harms we have done to others: We need to make amends for those. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, p. 211.)
6. Our selfishness, inconsideration, dishonesty, and jealousy: We must determine where these exist and remove them from our intimate relationships. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, pp. 200–202.)
7. Arrogance: We must promptly admit when we are wrong. (See Expert Giver—No Strings Attached, p. 212.)
8. “Bad” drugs: We have to abstain from those.1 (See my essay “Good Drugs and Bad Drugs—Don’t Mix Them.”)
I am hoping that Christianity opens its doors to Expert Giver Groups, to allow these methods of removing the blocks in the way of unconditionally loving and forgiving others to become widespread.
That will enable people to become expert givers, expressing unconditional love and forgiveness as Jesus demonstrated.
When we remove the blocks to unconditional love and forgiveness, we experience a gradual spiritual awakening of coming to know how God works through us.
The lie we tell ourselves is that we need “bad” drugs to treat our pain.
“Bad” drugs actually keep us from becoming expert givers, which is the only thing that will relieve our pain.
In fact, expert giving not only relieves our pain, but replaces it with happiness, joy, and peace that we have never known.
I developed the 7 steps of Expert Giver Groups from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, making a condensed version of the process for removing the blocks in the way of individuals becoming expert givers.
The 7 Steps of Expert Giver Groups are:
Step 1: Finding a Mentor in an Expert Giver Group.2 Admit that you need help managing your instinctual drives, and are willing to become humble and teachable, and to seek humility by finding a mentor in an Expert Giver Group and committing to being honest and accountable to that person.
Step 2: Completing Your Personal Inventories. Write down four different personal inventories: (a) Resentments; (b) Relationships; (c) Fears; and (d) Character Defects.
Step 3: Reviewing All Four of Your Inventories with Your Mentor. Once you complete all four inventories in Step 2, arrange a meeting with your mentor to humbly and honestly go over all the lists together, being open to feedback that helps you to see things that you could not see on your own.
Step 4: Making a List of Amends and Reviewing It with Your Mentor. Make a list of amends that you owe to others, and review the list with your mentor.
Step 5: Making Your Amends. After you review with your mentor which amends to make and how to make them, start making those amends.
Step 6: Continue Taking Your Personal Inventory and Promptly Admit When You Are Wrong. Continue reviewing your resentments, dishonesty in intimate relationships, fears, and character defects, promptly admitting when you are wrong, and making amends immediately when you cause harm to others.
Step 7: Mentoring Others. Offer to become a mentor for others who are willing to go through the above steps. Be as unconditionally giving as you can in service to others. Be open to starting an Expert Giver Group in your area.
If you want expert givers around you in your life, become an expert giver yourself by being involved in a community with others having the same objective.
In Expert Giver Groups, you will be surrounded by others who support you with removing the blocks and keeping them at bay, and you will help them to do the same.
You can find information on Expert Giver Groups at www.expertgiver.com/.
Please, start or attend a meeting!
Instructions and the ability to post new meeting schedules are on /.
Get busy starting meetings and helping others!
Action is the key.
Get help from your mentor and from the other members of your Expert Giver Group to remove the blocks that are in the way of your becoming an expert giver.
Be around others with the same goals.
Free yourself from the bondage of selfish pain.
Experience love, peace, and happiness.
Constantly shift your thoughts to how you can unconditionally help everyone around you.
You will experience true joy, happiness, peace, and serenity.
Start an Expert Giver Group.
Become a mentor in the group.
Get a mentor for yourself in the group.
Attend the meetings regularly.
Bring others to the meetings.
Don’t fight or argue with each other.
Forgive each other.
Have a community of friends based on unconditional love—which we all seek and want more of.
In Expert Giver Groups, the members help each other for nothing in return.
They do the helping from love.
Do the steps of the program, go through the process, so that you can love.
Use the steps to remove the blocks in the way of your loving each other.
Nothing will feel better than being an expert giver and being surrounded by other expert givers.
Don’t corrupt the steps process with debate about religion or politics.
Do not let anger control you.
Strive to be patient, kind, and tolerant as much as possible throughout the entire process.
The goal here is to make love win!
Keep it simple.
Trust the process.
Love others unconditionally all the time in every way possible.
Respect, love, and cherish all life on this planet.
According to 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (NIV).
God is love.