13/06/2026
2ND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
God as Light
This is the message we heard from Christ and are reporting to you: God is light, and there isn't any darkness in Him. (1 John 1:5)
When we think of spiritual light, when we think of God, what thoughts come to mind? Some thoughts might be: God is a divine presence who symbolizes knowledge, wisdom, and clarity. God is the source of peace, love, and provides our connection to the universe. God provides inner guidance. God is compassionate, and understands the human condition. God is a transformative force, who seeks to illuminate our path in life.
Bishop Leadbeater wrote: “All that we have been taught about God - all that is good and beautiful - is true. But we have also heard a great deal about God that is far from good. Men have said that He is capable of anger and jealousy, that He slaughtered thousands of people at different times because they did something of which He did not approve, or failed to do something that He ordered. But the truth is that we all come from Him, we all belong to HIm, and we are all on our way back to Him.”
If we all come from God, as Esoteric Christians believe, we not only come from Him, but we all are a part of HIm. We, as Esoteric Christians, believe we are children of God, sharing in His Life, because the Spirit of God, a Spark of the Divine Fire, is incarnate in our souls. Our aim, and purpose, in life is to allow that Spark to become a living Flame, thereby allowing all the attributes of God to flow in and through us.
Much of Christianity still holds to the belief in an anthropomorphic God, whether they want to admit it or not, who displays human thoughts and human emotions. The Old Testament, believed by many, to be the infallible and inerrant Word of God portrays this ancient and unenlightened view about God. God can get angry; God can repent of what He has done; God can change His mind; God can become jealous, vindictive, send plagues and pestilence; God can order genocide, and a host of other demening thoughts about God. These ideas, thoughts, and beliefs about God should have been forsaken centuries ago, but are still persistent beliefs among Traditional and Evangelical Christians, even today in the 21st Century.
The Old Testament was the product of an ancient society, not very far advanced in consciousness, who attempted, to the best of their ability, to understand and comprehend God. They thought as an ancient people. They believed as an ancient people. They conducted their lives according to the thoughts, and beliefs, of an ancient people. They thought of God as a tribal deity, who was loving, but could also hate. A God who was generous, but could also be jealous. A God who could be forgiving, but could also be vindictive. A God who could be inclusive, but could also be exclusive. For every good attribute they recognized in God, they also believed He could, and would, display negative attributes as well.
Again, from Bishop Leadbeater: “If Christians had been content to take what Christ taught of the Father in heaven, they would never had saddled themselves with the jealous, angry, bloodthirsty God of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the others - a god who needs propitiating, and to whose mercy constant appeals had to be made. Moreover, the knowledge of Eastern Religions, which have increasingly become available in our time, has entirely dispelled the illusion that the Jewish Nation had any monopoly on divine truth, and proportionately diminishes the value of the Old Testament as an integral basis for the Christian Faith.”
Much of the carryover of Old Testament thoughts, and beliefs, into Christianity was due to the thoughts, and beliefs, of Paul of Tarsus. Paul was a Pharisee by training, steeped in thoughts, and beliefs, that he was never entirely free from, because of his training and his education. That is not to say that Paul, at times, did not rise above his narrow theological training, and was truly inspired in much that he taught and wrote. In reading Paul, as well as all other biblical authors, we have to use our gift of discrimination, and open-mindedness, as to whether we will accept, or reject, what any one author wrote.
For Esoteric Christians our conception of God is very different from our Old Testament and New Testament ancestors in the faith. We do not think of God in a localized area, just above the clouds in the heavens. We think of Him as a presence, as a power, that fills the vast recesses of the universe, but is also above and beyond the universe. When God is thought of in this way we usually think of Him as the Absolute, well beyond our human ability to understand or to comprehend.
We humans, with our finite human minds, must try to conceive of God in a more limited and understandable way. I have to compress my understanding of God to the Solar System in which the planet Earth is a part. To do this I think of that portion of the consciousness of the Absolute that controls and guides the Sun, and the eight Planets of our Solar System. An analogy might be that of the human brain. The brain is one, but different parts of the brain control different functions of the human body. So, I believe, the Absolute is one, but different portions of the consciousness of the Absolute are responsible for the operation of selected portions of the universe. In this consciousness we live, and move, and have our being. To try to picture God, I must limit my conception of God, so that my limited human mind has a focus, a reality I can understand and comprehend.
God for an Esoteric Christian is the Supreme Lord of our Solar System, who manifests Himself under a triple form, a Trinity, called, in Christianity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is everywhere and in everything. The whole of planet Earth is but a manifestation of Him. He is manifested in countless forms, in countless degrees of living intelligence, who all come forth from Him. Thus there is only One Life manifesting in infinite forms. Humanity, animal, vegetable, and mineral are all expressions of that life. A grain of dust could not be if God was absent from it; the loftiest Archangel is but another expression of Him, of the One. Thus God, being immanent in all, we all share in that One Life, and humanity forms one great brotherhood and sisterhood. God is immanent, within all creation; but God is also transcendent, beyond His creation.
God is, in Truth, Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. God is a divine presence, guiding and directing us back to Him, back to our source. He is knowledge, wisdom, and clarity. God is the author of peace, and love, and our connection to everyone else. God as Light provides guidance for His children, and is full of compassion and loving kindness. He wishes for us only the good, the true, and the beautiful. God can never forestall His Love, because God is Love. He can never forestall His Light, because God is Light.
As the Book of Psalms states: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1) God is indeed our light, in whom there is no darkness. God wishes to guide us, direct us, illuminate us, gather, and unite us, and He does this through His Love, and through His Light.
Let us be people of light, as God is Light. Let us shine with the light of God by demonstrating goodness, truth, and beauty. Let us saturate ourselves in the light that is God, so that we radiate that light in the thoughts that we think, in the words that we speak, and in the actions that we engage in. There is much darkness in the world around us, and that darkness will not be dispelled unless we, as light bearers, battle darkness, unclarity, and confusion with illumination, clarity, and certainty.
God is Light, and wants us to participate in His Light, the light that dwells within each of us. As Jesus instructed us: “Make your light shine, so others will see the good you do and will praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
