“It is this very teaching of superiority that has caused so much pain in your world. The idea, deeply ingrained in a people, that they are somehow “better” than others may give them an extra measure of confidence. This is not self-confidence, but a dangerous brand of hubris that allows an entire population to believe itself to be in the right, no matter what it says or does.
People of many faiths and nations have believed and taught this through the years, producing a righteousness so huge that it desensitized them to any other experience, including the abject suffering of others. If there is one thing which it would benefit you to remove from your various cultural myths, it is this idea that, by means of some magic ingredient, you have been made better than some other humans; that yours is the superior race, or the superior faith, the better country or the better political system; the higher approach or the higher way.
I tell you this: the day that you cause cultures to do this is the day that you change the world. The word “better” is one of the most dangerous words in your vocabulary, exceeded only by the word “right.” Both are connected, for it is because you think you are better that you think you are right. Yet I have made no ethnic or cultural group My chosen people, and I have made no path to Me the one true path. Neither have I singled out any nation or religion for special favor, nor given any gender or race superiority over another.”
God, as spoken to Neale Donald Walsch, in “Friendship with God”
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Jeff 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.
