Being a loving Father (Journal 12.05)

The only way to be a loving father is to learn who "I am." My true self. In doing that myself, I become and simply am an environment in which others can do the same. In John 4, the woman was lving the way everyone else prescribed for her. When jesus brings her old life up it is not just a new way of life, he is inviting her into the ultimate reality, her true self. A chance to live this life being "you," not having to succomb to the geers and brutal assault of those who, in reality, are not real, simply because what the false self portrays does not actually exist.

Since the false self does not really exist, despite our continous effort to cause it to be, jesus is not so much sending people away from Him (Luke 13), for not "spending time with Him," but for not becoming themselves and relating to God for who they really are. Since that is the case, the scariest point is how we teach this mode of "getting to God" in our churches. Teaching people to become something they are not in order to appear holy.