BEST of PONDER on THIS for Wednesday March 28th, 2018 by Fr. Anthony DeMello in WAKE UP TO LIFE

“In the audio program called “Wake Up to Life” by the late Fr. Anthony DeMello, I was was struck by the following statement he made: “The reality is there is too much God talk; the world is sick of it, and sick from it. There is too little awareness, too little love, too little happiness. That’s what the world is suffering from, not from a lack of religion.” When I took a moment to ponder on that observation I couldn’t help but agree with him.

Billions of people on this planet are absolutely certain they know who or what God is, and these “God-concepts” are what primarily lead to all the religious strife and violence in the world. Some are so convinced of their concept they’ll even kill themselves for it, and kill others as well, all for a belief they learned from someone else but never personally experienced. And, this has been going on for centuries. It’s really amazing when you stop and think rationally about it.

On the audio Fr. DeMello also includes this quote from St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most revered of Christian saints: “About God, we cannot say what He is, but rather, what He is NOT.” In other words, the highest form of knowledge of God is to know God as the unknown. Or taking it a step further, the highest form of talking about God is to know that one does not know. According to DeMello, the fact is we are all surrounded by God, but we don’t see God because we all think we know about him, and the terrible thing about religions is they think they know as well.

Based on all the religious-based violence on this planet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if, as DeMello once said, we had a world where instead everybody just said, “We don’t know.” Now that’s food for thought in my view.”

Jeff MJeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.

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