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God really wants to have a personal relationship with
people. So I think people
in our city end up
looking at God through the lens of religion and through
organized,
corporate entities, maybe nonprofits - people who are trying to do good things.
And the problem with that lens is
trying to understand who God is through other people.
I mean, we need to have spiritual conversations about this because I,
I do think it
opens up our hearts to the possibilities but at the end of the day what God is
looking for is
a personal conversation
with me, with each one of us, and if I could use the word "religion"
in a way to kinda' say a set of criteria that you've gotta' live up
to or measure up to
that I don't think is the message of God.
Doing good things, trying to be a good person -
so many people see God through that, that idea
but what happens is a subtle darkness comes in
if you, if you don't do good things, then you really let evil grip your heart and
you begin to
violate other people and you don't care about doing good. Well, that ends up
destroying you in one way or another.
That's why our prisons are so for the people 'cause
evil deeds just get ahold of people. It's also true on the other end of the spectrum that
people who try to do good all the time
and then do good, start feeling pretty good about themselves
and before long, what happens is they start putting pressure on other people to
do good.
And that pressure that is exerted on other people begins to
create guilt,
it creates condemnation, it creates
all these things that a personal relationship with God
is not designed to create.