Host: How does a healthy religious community address my anxieties and fears?
Rock Schuler: All the great spiritual masters have said and I think quiet rightly, that the core anxiety, the core fear that is lodged within us as human beings is the fear of death. We fear the utter loss of our life; the loss of our experiences, the loss of who we are as individuals. Death comes to every human being and that inevitable reality creates great anxiety and great fear within all of us; as individuals and as human beings. A healthy religious community; being in touch with the spirit, being in touch with God, knowing how God loves us, frees us from this anxiety of death.
In my own experience, I have found that watching Jesus become alive in the lives of other people, knowing the resurrection to be made real in the lives of other people and the worshipping communities of which I have been a part, has shown me that God has in fact, conquered death. The God has taken death out of the picture for us, so that our life will continue as he planned, as he dreamed for each one of us. That freedom from worry and anxiety about the loss of who I am as an individual, allows me to freely give of myself to others, to be moved by God s love and compassion, to try and become more like God. That is what God does for me; God does for all of us. When we are freed from anxiety and fear about death, we are freed essentially to love and that is the great joy of being a spiritual person, of seeing the spirit alive and at work in the world.
The great joy of knowing God; to love, to be a part of love, a love that endures, a love that is remaking the world, a love that will endure forever in the lives of everyone we love, a love that will keep us alive as individuals, a love that will make us a part of the life of God for eternity.
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