“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I spoke lately about your communications, and some of their more fortunate ramifications. You have had what amounts to local gods, even though one name may be used, so that Carter can say “We all worship the same God.”

Begin, Sadat, and Carter are each “God-fearing” men, sincere believers in their causes. How can “God” be for the Jews and against their enemies, the Arabs, as the Jews suppose, and how can God be for the Arabs and against the Jews, as the Arabs suppose? “Decent” God-fearing men, then, must indeed question how the same God can have such different views, and at least wonder if their own nationalistic histories and prejudices may not have distorted the interpretation of God’s word somewhere along the way.

That sort of exposure, in your terms, has not happened before, and of itself it forces both mind and heart to question some dictates that have been taken for granted in the past—for in the past almost any kind of destruction or war or violence was justified if it was done in God’s name, or if the soldiers were marching “on the side of right.”

Since this “one God” of Carter’s, however, can obviously have such different ideas, saying one thing to one nation and the opposite to another, then men will begin to check their nationalistic lists of divine instructions, discovering that to one extent or another this God would seem to have told several different groups of people that they were chosen above others, that their enemies would be vanquished, and that they might indeed defend their divine rights through whatever unfortunate but necessary means.

At various times this one God of Carter’s seems to have said, on more unearthly subjects, that the Jews would be saved, while our infidels languished in the deepest hell, or that the Mohammedans would be saved—and throughout history as you know it, and as you do not know it, the stories have thrived.

It would do Carter well on one level to question this God more thoroughly. Yet on another level he is doing very well, for he is bringing about a situation in which men must question the nationalistic intent of this “one God.”

Men have indeed done more harm in the name of God than they have ever done when pursuing their own greedy or ignorant ways. In the name of God, of course, the artifacts of civilizations have been destroyed, libraries ruined—and when such harm is done, in the name of God, then men are trained to feel no guilt. Indeed, their holy sense of righteousness rises in proportion to the harm they have perpetrated against God’s enemy, no matter who or what this might be.

(9:46.) Your ideas of God are put to the test in this meeting (at Camp David), for here men who claim to believe in a merciful God discuss their mortal claims to property and land, and each feels behind him the ancient dictates of an archaic God.

Your gods, and your ideas of a God, have always followed the contours of your consciousness, your civilizations, your prerogatives, and your values. These are projected outward as giant-sized psychic patterns, architects’ plans for the cultural cities to follow. Such ideas can and have been used most beneficially by simple men and women throughout the ages, and distorted as they are, they still served to remind man that his source is not the world.

Man possesses an innate biological knowledge, however, of right and wrong, and to a large extent religions, as they are utilized, distort much of that information. Left alone, men are not murderers, though some may murder. Men always form some kind of group, in which respect is given of one kind or another to their own species, and to nature. Your communication system may, in time, make the distortions of your God concepts much more visible, so that honest men can at least question “How can God say this to the Jews, and that to the Arabs? Is it possible that we have read the message wrong?” All That Is is within each living thing. All That Is is within that which is not, also. Man is not set one against the other. The old distortions involved with the various religions must and will come to light.