You know we are living in interesting times when some obscure minister with a small mind and a silly idea can create international controversy. There is no doubt that the internet has shrunken the size of the planet and offered the ravenous media more fuel for its ever-expanding reach.

There are so many great discussions being waged over this controversial clergyman and his small flock of followers. There are debates about the legality, the morality, and the wisdom of his proposed Koran burning. It is quite remarkable that in 13 seconds Google can return links to 48,300,000 sites which are referencing this issue.

It is no wonder I have had a challenge trying to pick what I want to say about this subject. There are already so many quality conversations occurring about this on-again, off-again event that I have felt any personal contribution, to this debate, would be trite, and perhaps even clichéd.

Then yesterday, thanks to ABC News, I found my topic when I heard Pastor Terry Jones state, “We just want to do what God wants us to do.”

I have written a couple of times, already, about the fact that I do not believe in a God that has a will for my life. I do not believe in a God that wants me to do something. The whole concept is crazy to me. How can there be a God, who is reported to be all-knowing and all-powerful, yet still in need of my hands to burn Korans? Does that really make any sense at all?

Last time I wrote about this I was inundated with angry letters which informed me that my concept of God was too small; that God definitely had a plan for these individual’s lives and that it was their purpose to discover and submit to this will. I believe, in my past, that I have even shared my ideas along the same lines; but that was then and this is now. Ideas evolve. Thoughts change. Sacred cows come and go.

When I first saw the news coverage of Pastor Jones’ he remarked, “We are burning Korans to call for an end to radical Islamic fundamentalism.” When I heard Jones say, yesterday, that he was only “trying to do what God wanted him to do,” I thought to myself: “Isn’t this the same claim that every radical fundamentalist makes?” Don’t all Islamic terrorist groups claim to be serving Allah with their chosen acts? How is being a Christian fundamentalist superior to any other form of fundamentalism?

My question today is this: Are there people who actually believe in a God that wants to use them to hurt other people, or is this just a convenient excuse for acting out their own hatreds? Aside from extreme fundamentalists, the only other time we hear this defense is by schizophrenics: “I heard the voice of God telling me to kill my mother.”

Maybe it is a time to kill God off as an excuse for humanity’s refusal to get along with one another. Maybe it is time that people should just claim responsibility for their own fears, their own hatred, and their own narrow fundamentalism without seeking to place the blame on their chosen religious figurehead.

As I stated earlier, I do not, personally, believe in a God that has a will for my life. The whole idea has never made any sense to me. If God is some type of all-knowing power and it has a will for my life, why would it need my compliance? Why not just impose its will on me? Surely such a being could not be all-powerful if it is dependent upon my will in order to express its own.

While I know that thinking “the Universe has some will for our lives and it is our job to find and follow this will” is comforting for many, it really carries no weight. Why would some benevolent being want poverty for one person, great wealth for another; abundant health for one and disease and infirmity for another? My list of incongruities could go on endlessly. God, which I am identifying as the unifying Force from which everything arises; the Source of all that is, is always doing all that it will ever do. It is not directing, it is not wanting, it has no will separate from its expression. Everything is an expression of this “All That Is” and there is no separation between the will of that which is manifest and the Source from which everything arose.

When you, I, or anyone else chooses to do something we are acting out our own will. It is not because of the will of some distant God. We may choose something because we are trying to please our idea of God, but “All That Is’’ does not care what we choose. The explanation for this is very complicated and this is not the venue for this discussion but I needed to spell this out in order to complete this piece.

When I choose to do something hateful, it does not matter how the vision, to commit this act, came to me. It is my will that makes the choice to take the action.

When I choose to do something the world calls kind, or that I may define as loving, it does not matter where I received my inspiration. It is my will that is exercised in taking the action.

When I think I am doing something because it is the will of my God, it is still my will that makes the choice to do whatever it is.

Choosing to blame God or to praise God for the choices I make is nothing but a refusal to take personal responsibility for my life.

This is a very complicated issue and it is easy to find fault with these ideas, especially since I am not going to take the time here to explain, at depth, what I mean by all that I am trying to express.

The bottom line is that we, as human expressions of the one Source, do not have opposing Gods; we only have opposing concepts of what God is, conflicting ideas around who and what we are, and differing concepts about why we are here. There is no God, out there somewhere, whom we need to please. When we choose some action in an attempt to please such a mythological god, we are exercising our will, only, and not the will of some made-up entity which wants good for me and bad for my brother.

Does that make any sense?

No terrorist serves Allah by strapping on a bomb and killing people. He strictly serves himself by following his idea of what Allah wants. He is only exercising his own will in accordance with his particular beliefs.

No pastor is serving his God by burning another faith’s sacred text. He strictly serves himself by following his idea of what God wants. He is only exercising his will in alignment with his particular beliefs.

In the end, what we do to please our God has nothing to do with the One Power of the Universe and everything to do with our own beliefs about that power. Our unique collections of _ism’s create the God to whom we pledge our loyalty. Then, we adopt, inherit, and create paradigms for serving this imaginary God.

It is time that we kill such Gods off. It is time that we accept full responsibility for our choices and stop deferring such responsibility to our imagined deities, which are nothing more than projections of our own fears.

If you want to hate your neighbor because you are fearful and ignorant or because she is different from you, be real enough to admit that. Do not place the blame on an effort to please some fabled god, whom you have obviously never experienced.

Since writing this, I have noticed that Pastor Jones has stated that there will be no Koran burning. I could only chuckle when I saw him quoted as having said, “We feel that God has told us to stop.” He certainly serves a fickle God.