While many have been satisfied or complacent in accepting the secondhand authority of religious positions such as rabbis, priests, ministers, pastors, and popes, there are always a few who want to have a personal relationship with The Creator. There are always some believers who want a firsthand relationship with another person, whether that is their neighbor or God. Some have wondered how they can use their religion to help them build a personal and intimate relationship with The Creator that they have always craved. 

Five questions — 

1. What do we need to learn about our relationship with God? 
There is in the balance of the universe a relationship that is personal and even intimate between The Creator and all of Its human children, whether in the past, present, or the infinite ages of the future of this dimensional universe. It is also a relationship between The One, God The Creator, and us through a fragment of The Creator in each individual. Your existence is not impersonal, distant, or immaterial to either your individual Divine Fragment or to you. On the contrary, it is personal, immediate, and very material to you and to your individual Divine Fragment. 

Only you determine to what extent, if any, this relationship for all time develops. Once you become conscious that there is a God who created the universe, you become responsible for your part in that relationship. The offer of an ageless relationship with The Creator is always available to you. It is not limited or conditioned by anything other than your willing participation. What is offered is a relationship that enables you to explore all your potential, and in doing so, when you accept, you offer The Creator the ability to explore Its relationship with Itself and Its universe to the extent that you will to engage it. By your willing consent and willing participation, you enable The Creator to explore the potential of Its creation. When you do this, you enable yourself to "ride the coattails" of The Creator to an ascendant life that allows you to explore the everwidening and deepening potential of your own being. 
 
2. Will our mistakes keep us from being in Paradise with God?
In a universe that only retains constructive, positive, and enlightened decisions and accomplishments, success is always the first option. Failure only occurs when individuals consistently make choices that do not support their progress. Every possible care is taken to help ensure your success. As time and your spiritual career develop, you will make fewer and fewer decisions that jeopardize your success. Literally trillions upon trillions of ascendant humans have become successful in achieving and enjoying the personal embrace of The Creator in Paradise. You can, too, if you sincerely will to choose to begin this journey. 

God has asked you to will to co-creatively participate in the unfoldment and fulfillment of your human and spiritual life plan. Halting or reluctant participation will yield like results. Pro-actively willing to participate co-creatively with your Divine Fragment will allow all the energy of your spiritual helpers to move you swiftly toward a fulfilling and satisfying life, even now. 

Do not be mistaken that by pro-actively willing to participate co-creatively with your Divine Fragment that you will have a life of ease. Such is not the case. Problems and difficulties will arise, as they should in any school of learning. What you will receive is sure and continual advisement and guidance to help you achieve one success after another, where one success will give way to another and another. Yes, at times you may ask during a respite of learning, "Now what?," because you may feel that your progress is motionless. Enjoy this time because soon you will be catapulted into another adventure of growth and development. 

During your planetary life, you may expect that you will become more and more at peace with your world and what it brings to your doorstep of life. This will occur as you become more at peace with yourself, who you are, your purpose in life, and the meaning you give to it. Only a loving God would give you the opportunity to grow to such an extent that you could become, in the eventuality of time, in a universe with infinite future ages to come, a veritable creator in your own right. Begin to practice that now in your life. Begin where you are.
 
God's offer to you would not be complete without a full disclosure of your current circumstances. Not all inhabited worlds are as divisive, uncertain, and difficult to live on as ours. Former junior managers of our world and the larger administrative unit our world resides in have made numerous mistakes. Centuries of wars, genocide, gross immorality, and abusive family, community, and national environments are not typical but rare. Though a Son of The Creator and many other spiritually evolved masters have visited our world recently, the examples of their lives largely go unduplicated by the vast population of our planet. Nonetheless, our world is neither forgotten nor forsaken, but does provide an environment where courageous sons and daughters of faith live out incredible lives that are examples for others. 
 
3. Will help come only to individuals? 
Even now our world is receiving advanced assistance to become more hospitable to individuals who wish to live moral lives. Eventually, it will provide a nurturing environment where children will be raised in families and communities that immediately offer a life of right decisions and outcomes without jeopardy. It is not an unreal possibility that our world will become peaceful and harmonious. Consider the immense changes in our world since the beginning of the last quarter of the 20th century. Progress will be swifter as more and more leaders of nations, industry, commerce, finance, and governance become more aligned with moral decisions and the concern and welfare of those who follow. Each of you is endowed with a Divine Fragment that even now is bringing more influence to you, without compromising your universal right of inviolable self-will. What you will see within yourself are more options for decisions and their outcomes. 

4. Why do we call God "Father”? 
God was not known as "Father" until Jesus shared this relationship with his disciples. His own relationship to God was extended to us. Jesus knew this relationship firsthand, and knew that it existed for us as well. 

There are several other reasons, but in every case it is not a factor of the nature, attributes, characteristics, or traits of God, but our view of our relationship to God. First, our western culture recognizes that families are governed and supported by the father primarily and by the mother secondarily. That is not a matter of importance, but of recognition of authority. It is not the same in other cultures where the mother is recognized as the governess and authority of the family. 

Second, we live for a very short time during which we primarily experience the attributes of God as "father." After we pass from this world, we will gain a far larger perspective of God's activities in the universe. God is "mother" in her attributes as Creator, sustainer, and provider of abundance to the entire universe. As "father," God is seen in our culture as the authority, rule maker, and the one who ultimately decides on issues concerning the course of the universe. 

We see God as "doing" masculine, fatherly things, but our culture has limited our definition of God in a biased way. God is not only a "doer" of things but also exhibits "emotions" from the human perspective. Were we to see God in the feminine role more often, we would recognize the generosity, mercy, compassion, beneficence, and intimate care of each of us as those of an endearing mother. Our culture has given more attention and importance to the attributes of a firm and unwavering father who knows that his children will need a firm grasp on reality in their adult years in order to survive by their own wits, as well as by the generosity of their Mother-God. 

In this regard we see in God the authority, justice, and executive functions involving the management of our world. We mistakenly assign to God the authority for dispensing rewards and punishments for good and bad decisions we personally have made concerning the events of our lives. For those we are solely responsible. In this regard, we are as much the "father" in determining the course of our own life and its rewards and punishments. 

When we become more fully aware of the attributes of God, we will see that God is all of Father-Mother-Creator God and more. We will see God as the Infinite Upholder of the universe necessarily exhibiting the traits of a father as well as those of a mother. Given time and further maturity, we will see, too, that we exhibit traits and attributes of a father as well as a mother. When we come to that plateau of realization, we will know that we too are more than man or woman, father or mother. We are spiritual children of The Creator-Mother God. In the infinite duration of our spiritual career, we will come to know that we are without gender, without social and familial role, with only one chore — to grow into perfection of being. 
 
5. If God is solely a God of love, then what effect does this have on the traditional Christian doctrines of the sacrifice of Jesus' life for the atonement and redemption of mankind from sin?
Many people who come from traditional Judeo-Christian backgrounds were raised with a theology that no longer serves their spiritual growth. Their traditional *theology depicts God as filled with vengeful wrath and love. How can we have a powerful, loving relationship with God if the descriptions of God's nature are in opposition? We cannot. 

* the-ol-o-gy
1. the study of God and the relationship between God and the universe; study of religious doctrines and matters of divinity,
2. a specific form or system of this study, as expounded by a particular religion or denomination. 

Not knowing how God will react to their actions has caused many sincere believers to mistrust God and to develop a co-dependent relationship to God. We need consistent beliefs about God as a loving God in order to develop trust in all God's actions. Only then will believers want to be like God, which allows for the possibility of expressing all the potential of that relationship through their lives. We must have consistent and clear beliefs about God as a loving God in order to align our energies with God-Mind energies within ourselves. 

As a young adult, I came to the conclusion that a faith that accepts conflicting, irrational, and illogical beliefs about God is an unreasonable faith. It is reasonable, I believed, to have faith that God exists. It is reasonable to have faith that Jesus came to give us an example of how to live life filled with love of our self and love of others. It is reasonable to have faith that life exists after death. It is reasonable to have faith that Jesus showed us that this is possible. But it is unreasonable faith to believe that God deliberately created man imperfectly so that He would have to send His Son to earth to die for this imperfection. I concluded that it is reasonable to have faith that God has only one nature in an eternal universe: totally and wholly loving. But, I didn't know how to prove it then.