III. The God of Sickness
- You have not attacked God and you do love Him. Can you change your reality? No one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking yourself, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and only this, can be attacked by you. What you think you are can be very hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although those who make idols do worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness. God would have them released from their sickness and returned to His Mind. He will not limit your power to help them, because He has given it to you. Do not be afraid of it, because it is your salvation.
- What Comforter can there be for the sick children of God except His power through you? Remember that it does not matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is always accepted for all, and when your mind receives Him the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship. Heal your brothers simply by accepting God for them. Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing because He has but one Son. God’s remaining communication link with all His children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick.
- To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love cannot suffer because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God even if he believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the Love of God he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as part of God reminds him of the truth about himself, which he is denying. Would you strengthen his denial of God and thus lose sight of yourself? Or would you remind him of his wholeness and remember your Creator with him?
- To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. God created love, not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds too divided to know that creation shares power and never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that power can be taken from you. Yet this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who is all power. A sick god must be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks he is. And that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God, a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable. Is this the idol you would worship? Is this the image you would be vigilant to save? Are you afraid of losing this?
- Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the ego’s thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity in your brothers and lose sight of yours. And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist.
- There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for everything that God created, because of the calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. God’s Son knows no idols, but he does know his Father. Health in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I contribute to you but my love, for you do not value yourself. When you do not value yourself you become sick, but my value of you can heal you, because the value of God’s Son is one. When I said, “My peace I give unto you,” I meant it. Peace comes from God through me to you. It is for you although you may not ask for it.[1]
It is important to remember through all of our learning that we are dreaming of separation from God, we are dreaming of a reality that would, if it were possible, keep us in a place devoid of meaning, of knowledge, of truth. In our innocence we took a wrong path – it is not because we have attacked God, it is not because we did not love Him, we simply chose fiction and uncertainty over truth and certainty. We choose an opposite to that Which can have no opposite. We chose to oppose that Which simply cannot be opposed. Just as a loving parent does not hold their tots accountable for the ways in which they rob them of peace and quiet and uninterrupted slumber, nor does God hold us accountable for the ways in which we chose the wayward path. We are simply asleep in our dreams of opposition. We listened to the wrong voice. And that wrong voice continues to lull us into the perceptual world of strange and hateful images that are very destructive – in the world that is not God’s Kingdom and has no ongoing reality or substance or meaning of any kind.
Idols, like lies, are nothing. But when we believe in them, when we worship them, the Sons of God dream dreams of disease, suffering, and death. God is certainly not jealous of lies. He is not jealous of idols. He is not jealous of anything we make to take His place. He does not punish those who believe in lies or mistakenly worship the idols of sickness we have made to take the place of truth. He just wants us to give them up. He wants us to awaken to His love, His devotion, and to His Kingdom where no heartache, no loss, no deprivation of any kind exists.
For those of us who remember, who choose to awaken and remember what they are and where they belong, God gives us power to awaken others. We do not awaken to be whisked away in the sky to the delights of an eternal kingdom while the rest of our brothers are left to continue in sickness, shame, and sorrow. If this is what you have been taught, if this is what you have accepted as your salvation, you will feel shame and sorrow, for you will know that the love of God is not in you. Our salvation would compel us to save others. None of us could be happy, happy, happy in Jesus if there was one brother left behind. It is not our job to judge who has the right belief system, who is worthy of God’s Kingdom. It is our function to understand our oneness and recognize it as our salvation, for we find our salvation in the brotherhood of Christ and in the Sonship of God. We cannot find it in our selves, or our tribes, traditions, or our own little band of brothers who agree with our doctrines and our political beliefs.
When our brothers are sick, we do not let them to their own devices. When we will with Holy Spirit, we become the Comforter, the Voice for God, the Second Coming of Jesus. We can stop begging God to fill us with the Holy Ghost. We can stop looking in the sky for Jesus to come back and save us from the world. We can stop searching for omens, signs, and wonders to give us a sneak preview of the things to come. When one mind remembers the love and devotion of our Father for His Creation, the whole of the Sonship awakens. We do not have to go about bragging and boasting about the goodness of God, thinking that we will somehow entice others to give up their sins and follow Jesus with us. We heal our brothers by accepting God for them.
Jesus tells us that our minds are not separate. There is only one channel for healing. We are joined together just as we are joined to Him. Simply to be aware of this is to heal because to remember our oneness, sweeps away all our false beliefs in God, in Creation, in sin and shame, in salvation being for the few and the elect instead of for all. Just as nobody is alone, adrift and dying unless we are all alone, adrift, and dying, so everyone is united, loved, and eternal when one is united, loved, and eternal. We do not leave our brothers behind because God loves His Creation as one. To believe otherwise is to believe that a part of God is punitive, petty, and perverted. Such beliefs sicken our minds and our bodies.
Love protects and never attacks, love corrects but never punishes, love forgives lies and illusions because they are dreams of the hapless. When we remember Love, we remember our invulnerability. We do not side with anything but the Love of God no matter what our brothers may believe for if we accept the perversions of God, we are accepting the idols of sickness. When we recognize our brother as part of God we remind him of the truth about himself. No matter what drivel he may be spouting, Jesus tells us to refrain from arguing with him, refrain from judging him, refrain from putting him down – but above all refrain from siding with him. We are to simply remind our brothers of their wholeness in God and remember God’s Love with him.
That is why we do not pay much attention to sickness; we do not revere cancer or lupus or tuberculosis. We do not make a big deal about covids, colds, or flus of any kind. Nor do we go on about substance abuse, mental illness, or aging and decay. We do not concern ourselves with political rivalries, war, social unrest, or media warnings and forecasts. Idols are false beliefs and practices intended to misuse time, keep us in fear, in submission, and enchanted by that which is not of God. These idols are purposefully designed to keep us from remembering that we are part of God, who is all power. Meditate upon this teaching today and ask Holy Spirit to reveal its truth to you.
In paragraph four, Jesus tells us that a sick concept of God must be an idol devised by people who forgot God’s love, devotion, and Fatherhood of all creation. The ego perceives God and His Sons as very vicious and very vulnerable. Fail to give this sick version of God its ration of blood, its meaty sacrifices, its overarching need for adoration, worship, and flattery and it becomes vengeful and pours out its wrath upon its helpless, vulnerable, fleshy creations. Is this the idol you would worship? Is this the image you are vigilant to save? Are you afraid of losing this concept of God because you have devoted your life to preaching and teaching that which makes us sick instead of that which awakens us to the reality of God’s Love?
Quietly and calmly look at the logical outcome of the ego’s concept of God found in most of the world’s major religions and ask whether it is offering that which brings peace, love, and joy – for all? To save ourselves, must we be willing to attack all that is divine in our brothers and thus lose sight of our own divinity? We may believe that the myths and fables our ancestors made up about God will save us, but history proved them wrong then and will prove us wrong now. We can believe in illusions all we want, but we cannot make them true. Fabrications mislead, they enchant our minds, they give us a false sense of belonging and specialness, but they do not save us, they spin us. Fables which divide and keep us stuck in cycles of bloodshed, sacrifice, and bickering do not bring us peace, they bring us war, hatred, and strife.
We will end today’s section with paragraph six. There are no idolaters in the Kingdom because in heaven there is only truth. In truth there is full appreciation for all of God’s creation. We do not have to worship something to be grateful for it. When we know God, we have no idols for we realize that idolatry leads us astray and sickens us. Where there is specialness, there is un-specialness, there is rivalry, there is jealousy, there is insecurity, and there is strife. Idols turn upon their worshippers, manipulate, and condition them for thoughts, words, and deed that are unworthy of God’s Son. We are to let our health in this world reflect our value in Heaven. Jesus loves us because of what we are, not because of what we do. When we forget what we are in God, we grow despondent, we make wrong choices, we become sick, we become dangerous to ourselves and a burden and a danger to others. But through Christ we remember our worthiness because we know ourselves as God’s Son through God’s Son. The peace of God flows through Christ to each one of us, freeing us, healing us, calling us Home – all we must do is ask.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 10 The idols of sickness. III The god of sickness 1-6. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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