There are two perspectives about God. The first theory says that God created everything and then let us loose to watch what we do. In this theory we are separate from God. The second theory says that God is the source of everything in existence, seen and unseen, and everything in existence, seen and unseen, is part of God. In this theory we are all one with God.

The mentality of believing God to be fearsome and controlling can be explained by understanding Theory One of the Universe (Theory One). The first theory of the universe says that God is a monarch and that the physical world we live in is basically inert. If we see God as a monarch, then we must believe that he is superior to us and we are subjects to him. If this is so, then God makes the rules and we have to follow them. We are not exactly sure of all the rules, but God did send down ten of them that are written in stone. These are not just rules, they are commandments. In other words, this God commands us to follow them. We aren't very good subjects under this monarch because we keep breaking his commandments.

Obviously there is something wrong with us. We have been told that to break God's rules is a sin. In fact, just the act of being born has somehow made us sinners. It's like our original sin. At our core there is something wrong with us. We cannot be trusted. Since we cannot be trusted, we must rely on this entity, this monarch, who is outside of us and separate from us, in order to sustain ourselves.

We understand God to be a loving God because He gave us a nice place to live and if we can follow the rules close enough and pay homage to him faithfully, and sometimes just give him lots of money and things through his representatives in the church, then we will be granted entrance into Heaven. Once we get to Heaven this God will be nice to us all the time and everything will be fine.

Because we are basically untrustworthy and we have shown a penchant for breaking God's rules, we must also understand that this monarch, who is separate from us, can also be an angry and vengeful God. The Bible says ?Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.? Kind of puts the fear of God into you, doesn't it?

We must therefore be careful about breaking God's rules because if he is mad at you when you die, He may not invite you into Heaven. He may just send you down to another place where his arch-enemy dwells. He could very well send you to Hell. Yes, and he doesn't mind doing this even if you didn't exactly know all the rules and even if you are young and innocent.

You can put yourself in God's good graces early on if you are willing to acknowledge God as the Monarch King and declare yourself as one of his loyal subjects by committing your soul to him through baptism. So, apparently even your soul is separate from this monarch God, because until you commit yourself, there is still a chance that God won't take you and you will have to spend eternity with God's enemy, the Devil.

As we see in Theory One, God is not an omnipotent power. Oh yes, He is very strong and can move mountains and do all kinds of things, but he also has this enemy, the Devil, who used to be his friend, who is also very strong.

This Devil guy is very sneaky and he's always on the lookout for those souls who are weak in the ways of the flesh, because if he can exert his influence on them, God may reject them and then the Devil could add to his body count down in Hell. From what we understand, it's not a lot of fun down in Hell like it is up in Heaven, where there is a benevolent God. We are talking eternity here, folks. You have one shot here on earth, but then you have eternity in either Heaven (good) or Hell (bad). Now, it is possible to land in limbo or purgatory for unusual death situations, but for the majority of us, it's either Heaven or Hell.

This is ?Theory Number One of the Universe.? Have you ever heard of this perspective of God? Have you perhaps held beliefs that are in alignment with this theory? Do you believe yourself to be separate from all things, including God?

Only you can answer these questions. How you answer them will help explain a lot about your life.

Theory One of the Universe says that we are separate from God. Theory Two of the Universe says that we are one with God. Which of these theories serves you?