Forbidden Fruit

In this episode of UNTAMED WORSHIP, we return to the question I left you with last time:

Does God like you?

To answer it, we go back to the beginning, to Eden, to the myth of the Fall, and to the story that taught us to see ourselves as sinners.

Was that moment in the garden really original sin, or was it original innocence?

Today we explore our relationship to God, guilt, and goodness, and what happens when we remember ourselves as inherently innocent, curious, and divine.

You were never born in sin. You were born in wonder. And maybe that’s what God likes most about you.

This episode is for anyone who feels like they have to earn love—from God, from life, from themselves.

UNTAMED WORSHIP —a podcast for the wild, the free, and the faithful. Join me on Fridays as we explore spirituality, culture, relationship, and the mystical to invite more beauty, peace, and awe into your daily life.

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Transcript

Western Roots And Judeo‑Christian Soil

Eden And The Fall

Original Sin As Cultural Operating System

Do You Secretly Believe You’re Bad

Introducing Original Innocence

Simba, Curiosity, And Moral Charge

Humanity, Divinity, And Awe

Exoteric Vs Esoteric

Innocence, Mistakes, And Practicing Grace

Does God Like Us?

Old Testament Saturn, New Testament Neptune

Technology, Meaning‑Making, And Mystery

Deconstructing Foundations

Living Without Existential Guilt

A Word From Our Sponsor

Go Deeper

Remy Godwin 0:09

You are listening to Untamed Worship, a podcast for the wild, the free, and the faithful. I ended the last episode by leaving you with a question to ponder. And I'm not gonna leave you hanging. So let's explore this question together and see if we can land on an answer. So the question was, does God like you or does God not like you? And before we can answer this question, let's go back to the beginning and really look at the way that the concept of God has been framed to us. The existential question of God is it's an objectively universal consideration, which is like, where did we come from? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do here? Who created us? All of that. These are deep existential questions that I believe all beings have, no matter what their walk of life is. And so from that, we also have more, let's say, localized versions of this where we will meaning make based on the way that we were raised and the cultures and subcultures that we were raised within, right? So broadly, what is God? Who is God? What is my relationship to God? Where did I come from? Where am I going? I always hear cotton I Joe when these questions come up. So that's the universal. And then we zoom in a little bit more and we look to countries, cultures, regions, what is the narrative being taught to us as we relate to the sacred and as we relate to the spiritual in our subcultures? So I was raised in the Western mind, steeped in Western philosophy, because I was raised in the United States in the American South. And so as I'm looking at my own story about what I was taught about religion and spirituality and God. So for the purpose of this, let's say here's what I was taught about religion. This is the narrative that I was fed. That's coming from the philosophy of the Western mind in the United States. And this is valuable for you, wherever you are in the world, to first frame it there. So we begin here, which is what was my core philosophy? I'm gonna stay here with the West, right? So I come from Western philosophy, which means that that's the starting point for me and my practice of deconstruction around what I was taught and coming ultimately to a space of clarity and liberation about how I want to relate to these things moving forward, but we have to start somewhere. And so in the West, we are steeped in the Judeo-Christian mindset. Whether we were raised religiously, spiritually, or not, the soil of the West is being held in the Judeo-Christian mythos, meaning Judaism and Christianity and the stories that we are taught. So, in order to even begin to answer the question for ourselves of does God like me or does God not like me, we first have to acknowledge where the concept came from in the first place. Okay? And so understanding that in the West, we're steeped in the Judeo-Christian mindset, let's look at it as soberly as we can from the mythology that we are working with, which is God created the world in seven days. And here's the ways in which we were told we are allowed to engage with this world. How do we play in this playground? What are the rules? What are the limitations? What are the invitations? What are the gifts, etc., right? Like this is central to the story. And so if you know this story, and I'm imagining that if you're listening to this, you probably do, but you know, very quickly, God created the world in seven days, and in the story gives the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve and says, you know, populate the earth. Here's your playground. This is how you're meant to interact and engage with this physical place that I made for you. There's only one rule, which is don't eat from the tree of good and evil, right? And of course, what do Adam and Eve do? They eat from the tree of good and evil, and that's conversations for another time about you know the particular mythology of that moment and who did it and what it means, etc. But ultimately, broadly, this is what occurred, right? God creates the world, he says, Hey Adam and Eve, I made you. This is what you get to do here. Enjoy, just don't eat the fruit of that tree, right? And so when that moment happened, when Adam and Eve decided to eat from the fruit of that tree, is really where our story about religion begins. So as a result of that, we lose access to the Garden of Eden, right? We have sin now. And from this sin, we have a whole dogma and doctrine that develops as a result of this moment in time. And from this moment in time, we have the Abrahamic religions that emerged, which come from this moment, come from this core seed, and come from this particular origin story or soil, if you will. And they have their similarities and differences about how we essentially come into right relationship with God as a result of the moment where we chose to eat the fruit. And so the primary Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Again, each having their own dogma around what do we do to come into the right relationship with God as a result of this thing. So previous to that moment in the story, again, choosing to eat the fruit, we didn't have a need for religion because we were, according to the story, in a space of you know peace and perfection, Garden of Eden, more in an existence space. And so then we eat the fruit, and suddenly, as a result of this disconnect, and I say disconnect like in the story, right? Like we did the thing in the story that we're not supposed to do. And so that created a disconnection between us and God, or between us and the Garden of Eden in the natural law of that realm. And so all of the religions, as a result of the disconnect, have their beliefs about what the fuck do we do about that now? And so this is the origin of religion. That's what made us need it, right? And so from that, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, metaphorically, perhaps even metaphysically, it makes a lot of sense that the tree would be called that, because eating of the tree then gives us access to something, right? And so you could say, perhaps, that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil gives you access to knowledge, but also gives you access, let's say, to like anxiety or a drive to meaning make the knowledge. So perhaps before that moment we were existing more in like a present, almost childlike state of existence, right? Like when we're in the child moment of our life, we don't have the same perception of time and we don't have the same concept of our mortality. We develop this over time, but when we're really little, it's just not something that we're present to, we're just simply existing, right? And so, anyway, that moment occurs, then religion develops as a result of it, and each religion has their own relationship to what do we do to resolve this fundamental core issue. And so this is where we have this concept of original sin, which is to say that that moment we sinned, we did something wrong, we broke a law, we went off book, we did the thing that we were not meant to do. And the Judeo-Christian mindset teaches that this moment was in fact a sin, and we are learning how to now come into right relationship with God as a result of that. And everything is picking up from that moment to build upon that moment into now. And so in the Judeo-Christian mindset, which is again what is holding Western philosophy, which shows up in our political systems, it shows up in our relationships, it shows up in our relationship to our bodies, to earth, to what we define our moral compass around. That's what I mean when I say that we are going to be steeped in the Judeo-Christian mindset, whether or not in our individual household as children, we were taught these beliefs or values or stories, right? So again, in the Judeo-Christian belief of that moment, we sinned against God. And this moment is referred to as original sin. And when we have this deep core existential mindset of original sin, this is going to govern how we move through life and the world again, whether we recognize it or not. And so if you have a core belief, and I encourage you to be with this question, it's not an easy question to ask or to answer, and it takes time sometimes to find your clarity. But ask yourself: like, do you have a core belief that you are a sinner? That you were born inherently bad, or you were born out of right relationship with God. Because if you do, then you are going to believe that you have to do something to be worthy of God, or to have God forgive you, or to simply be in right relationship with divinity. You are going to have a feeling that maybe God is mad at you, or maybe God doesn't like you, or if you do X, Y, Z exactly the right way enough times for long enough, then perhaps you could, in your own relationship to God, bring it into balance, right? So essentially, I said as simply as possible, if you follow the Ten Commandments, then you will go to heaven. And if you don't, then you're gonna go to hell. And so in the Judeo-Christian mindset, there's this fear of punishment and there's this seeking of eternal reward. And this is that the origin point, I believe, of this entire good versus evil narrative that you see in children's stories and you see in movies for adults, and you see in every political conversation as well, which is like there's a bad guy and there's a good guy. And if we follow the good guy, then we're gonna get to the good place. And if we follow the bad guy, then all these bad things are gonna happen. And so we have this deep existential connection to good versus evil. And again, this is coming from in its core origin, this original sin moment, which is we are out of right relationship with God, and as a result, here are the things that we need to do to fix that, and so let's be there internally just for a moment, and again, I'll ask you to ask yourself do I feel like inherently deeply in my bones, like I'm a sinner? Like I was born a sinner, and I need to fix that. Do I feel in my deep core nature that my desires are bad? Or do I feel like my desires are good? Like, do I have a deep moral charge around my relationship to myself as a body and as a being moving through this world? Most people do in the Western mind. Most people have this concept of sin that has trickled into their relationship to life. And I'm not saying that this is wrong or bad. I am simply trying to bring us into the most succinct somatic connection to that moment of original sin so that we can either deconstruct around it or at least see where everything is originating from, right? And so I'm not saying that the concept of sin of sin is bad, and I'm not saying that I don't have my own relationship to sin, I do, and I can share with you what my definition is of that, but let's stay focused on this first. If you believe that moment was a sin, if you believe when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that that was a sin, and ever since we have angered God, and we have to do all of these things, again, depending on which religious mindset you subscribe to, is going to give you the guidebook for the things. But ultimately, we have to do all of these things to fix that moment, and so much of our spiritual lives are dedicated to fixing that moment. And again, it's existential, which means it's like it's it's hard to pin down, it it might be inherited, it's something that can't quite be answered or can't quite be resolved because it's it's like a longing, like existential things, I believe, are deeply connected to our feeling of separation from God and our desire to feel closer to the sacred. And when we feel disconnected from the sacred, then we have this like existential dread feeling or anxiety feeling or tension around trying to merge again with that which is sacred. And so if you relate to this moment when you hear it, and if somehow this is you hearing it for the first time, like feel this moment. Does it actually feel like your truth that that was a sin? Like to you. And from that question, whether or not you think that moment was a sin, because in the context of the mythology, it was. But I'm saying go deeper than the story. Do you yourself feel like a sinner in your core? Not I'm not saying do you feel perfect? Do you feel the way that you imagine God to be? I'm saying do you have a deep belief in yourself, that your desires are impure, that your essence, your core essence is wrong in some way. Because if you do, that is steeping into every area of your life, whether you realize it or not. And so from that moment, let's return. And I will now tell you what I believe. And this is the philosophical origin point of where all of my work in spirituality is coming from when it comes to this space, meaning supporting our deconstructed, non-dogmatic, holistic relationship to ourselves as spiritual beings and our deep shared longing to know God, right? So this is really the soil, the the core seed, the vision, the why, the the fulcrum of where my beliefs are coming from, which is this moment. I don't see this moment as original sin. I don't believe that it's original sin, meaning we are not born as sinners. We are born as innocent. So my desire with this is to bring this provocative idea, which is was it original sin? Or was it original innocence? Was the desire to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil inherently bad and wrong? Or was it a completely innocent decision? Was it a completely innocent longing? Because if we in fact do have a deep longing to know God, then why would we not want to know the knowledge of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why would we not want to allow ourselves to have that curiosity? And so I believe that our longing to know God makes us inherently curious, and I believe that that moment came from a pure and innocent place of curiosity. I don't believe that that moment came from a place of God told us no, so as a result, we're gonna do it. Mufasa told Simba not to go to the elephant graveyard, and so Simba said, I'm gonna go because I'm bad. Simba went to the elephant graveyard because he knew that he was gonna become king someday, and he wanted to understand the whole realm of the terrain, including the terrain outside of the terrain, so that he could become who he was gonna become. It wasn't a sin for him to go there simply because he was told not to. It was his nature, it was his longing to understand himself and his relationship to life and ultimately his connection to nature, right? He's a child, he's innocent. He did not say, I want to piss off my dad on purpose, or I want to have my dad be disappointed in me, or I want to potentially endanger Nala. Like, I mean, you know, I could stay with this story longer as a metaphor, but this is my point, right? So if you're if you're watching The Lion King and you're thinking, oh, Simba disobeyed his dad deliberately, which is what Mufasa says, right? Like, you deliberately disobeyed me, and worse, you put Nala in danger. That core story feels very similar to that choice point of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? Like we could see, I think it's easy to imagine that God could say that same thing to us that Mufasa said to Simba. But does that make it wrong that Simba chose to go there? Does it make it wrong that we chose to eat the fruit? Or is it just our nature? Okay, and so philosophically you can be where you want. But I'm inviting you to hold the nuance because just because we were told not to do it doesn't make it wrong that we did. It does mean that we did something that we were told not to do. But does that have a moral charge, or is it simply our nature? Do you see what I mean? So it is possible to make mistakes, to fuck up, to misunderstand, to take the wrong path, etc. But does that make us inherently bad, or does that just make us human? And if our humanity, our desires and our dreams and our longings and our curiosities were in fact a result of God creating us in his image, as we're taught in this biblical text, then what if our whole understanding of and relationship to this moment of original sin versus original innocence is completely misinterpreted? What if God sees us as completely innocent and God actually grieves when we don't see ourselves this way? What if that's the truth? And if we believe that God is perfect, and if we believe that God did in fact create us in God's own image, and all of the stories that we're being taught in the Judeo-Christian mythology, then I think it's very likely correct to say that we were designed by God to have the longings and the curiosities and the proclivities that we have, and that it's not that we are inherently sinners. It's not that we are inherently bad or wrong or that we need to do anything to earn or deserve or continue to receive God's love, and instead, it is simply about acceptance of our own innocence and our own purity as we relate to life. So just allow yourself to feel into that for a moment, which again is was it original sin or was it original innocence? That core driving force within our own humanity in that moment. What was the thing that drove us to do it? And how do we now define that moment so that we can relate to spirituality outside of a space of fear, of God is mad at me, and so I have to fix that, and instead we can relate to it from a place of God made me exactly the way that God made me on purpose because that was God's decision, right? And as a result of that, maybe I broke a rule, but it didn't come from a place of me being bad, it came from a place of curiosity and desire to know God more deeply. And when I say this is a space about liberation and deconstructing dogma, that's what I mean, right? Like it doesn't it feel better when you think about that moment not to carry that deep existential fear and that deep existential guilt of like I feel guilty because I sinned. I'm an original sinner, like I'm a sinner in my nature, and I'll never be good enough, and I need to be afraid of God, and here's all the things that I need to do to not be smited by the Creator, and instead to say my desire to know God is sacred and holy, and I'm inherently innocent. And even though I will fuck up sometimes, that doesn't make me bad or wrong. It simply is just my nature. Right? Like curiosity killed the cat. And so, in order to answer this question of does God like me or does God not like me, we return to this origin point of is it original sin or is it original innocence? Am I bad or am I good? And how do I orient around this? And if we're gonna have an orientation around believing in original innocence and believing that we're inherently good, that doesn't mean we get to spiritually bypass the ways in which we are imperfect and the ways in which we are guaranteed to fuck up in this human experience. There is a difference between our humanity and our divinity. Like they're connected. We are a piece of, I believe that we're a piece of the divine. However, we are also deeply mortal. And I think this is something that the spirituality side of the conversation gets confused, which is to say, we are here to have a more sacred and holy experience. We're trying to transcend our humanity, we're trying to transcend our shadows, we're trying to become more like God. And like there's a whole belief system in spirituality that says that, which is again, so it you see it's steeped in the same belief, whether it's religion or spirituality, which is you are in your shadow, you are imperfect, you need to do something to heal something, right? And there's that polarity of the good guys and the bad guys, or the right and the wrong, and because of that, it still shows up in spirituality, which is to say your job here, your role here, your spiritual practice here is to become more like God. And I think that's incorrect. I believe that the spiritual practice actually is to have reverence and awe for God, which is another way to say have reverence and awe for beauty and the sacred. And these transcendent experiences we can have, again, to love another person is to see the face of God, or to watch the sunrise, or to sit around the fire with those that you love, or perhaps it's go to church. Whatever is transcendent for you. Instead of believing that what we're here to do is to transcend our humanity and to become more like God, to walk a more pure path and to be more in alignment with what religion would have us believe is the right way to be in existence on this planet. I think it's actually to be more human, to feel more, and to give ourselves more permission to actually engage with this planet and this realm as if it's a playground and as if it's the Garden of Eden now, because perhaps it always has been, and I know that's provocative to say because there's so much going on in the world that is seems awful and seems scary and seems violent and seems like it's disconnected from God. And I'm not saying that these things are okay. I'm not saying that in order to have this philosophy, you need to become a sinner and not have morality and not care about your impact in the world. I'm not saying that in order to live this philosophy and practice spirituality in this way that you have to ignore suffering. What I'm saying is that we are here to come to terms with our humanity and our imperfections and learn how to be present to that, to feel that and to integrate that. And so it's not that we are here to become more like God, it's that we get to have awe of God and we get to seek the transcendent holy experiences as humans, as imperfect beings, as innocent beings who fuck up sometimes, not as beings who are trying to be God, who are constantly feeling afraid of God, constantly juxtaposing ourselves to God, and instead saying, wow, what a blessing it is to be here imperfectly and to figure out how to show up the best I can. And if we're comparing ourselves to God constantly, we're always going to fall short of that because nothing can breathe against that concept. Because we relate to God as this all-knowing, perfect, loving being. Or they're going to again punish you in some way, right? Like there's going to be a consequence for you breaking the rules of this world and other religious worldviews, generally more in the esoteric space. And if you're not familiar with the term esoteric, I'll briefly frame it here. So you have exoteric and esoteric. Exoteric in this the in the interest of this conversation, exoteric is like the way that we come to, let's say, a religion without needing to be initiated or without needing to double-click on anything to understand the concepts more fully, right? Like without needing to go through some kind of rite of passage to either in the traditional like secret society lineages, esoteric would mean you need a teacher and you need to be initiated and you need to be invited essentially to hold certain technologies or to hold answers or to hold practices, right? So it's like we see a version of this in the Christian church where the priest serves communion, right? And the priest is initiated to be a lineage carrier of the way that we serve really the way that we serve communion. And so the priest is serving communion because they've been given permission to do that from the church through their study and through their rites of passage. And that's a form of esoteric. So you can still go and receive communion, but you might not know exactly why every single chalice is put in the same in the in the spot that it's put, right? And so that's an example of exoterically, you could, if you go to a denomination, we're speaking Christianity, right? So if you go to a Christian church and you go to a denomination where it's appropriate there in their worldview to receive communion without being confirmed, then you receive communion. And they're not explaining to you really what it means. They're definitely not explaining to you why they move every object the way that they do, or where the objects come from, or the meaning and significance of it broadly. They're simply just saying, hey, you're invited to experience this moment with us. Exoterically, that's what we mean. So it's something that you can access without being initiated, without having to go through some kind of rite of passage, and without needing a teacher, and without needing to be taught or to do anything to receive it and hold it and be a lineage carrier. That's exoteric. Esoterically would be the opposite, which is I want to go into a particular lineage or worldview or experience, and I'm looking for a teacher, and I want to be held, and I want to be initiated, and I want to be able to be a carrier of this lineage. And as a result of that, in exchange for my devotion to this lineage, then I will receive answers and secrets that I can hold with care and with caution so that I don't give out the esoteric secrets, right? Uh before someone has also devoted themselves to the lineage. And this is a bigger conversation that for sure we'll go into, but just to frame those concepts. So another time I'll tell you what I think and feel about that and my relationship to that because it's a very interesting conversation. But right, so exoteric and esoteric. So in esoteric relationships to the Judeo-Christian religions, instead of believing that God is going to punish you and that the type of love that God offers is this parental love that's very black and white, and here's the consequence for your action, the esoteric relationship to it would be more in alignment with what I'm suggesting, which is you are inherently innocent. And even if you were to fuck up, even if you were to sin, let's say, or break one of the Ten Commandments or something, it's not as much about God punishing you as a result and being this like potent patriarchal daddy deity, and it's more about grace, right? And so you have, if we're using Judaism in Christianity, and Judaism, you have the archetype of God is this more punishing being to come into a right relationship with, and the archetype of God in the New Testament, the Christianity mindset is grace, which is like even though you're imperfect, God still loves you anyway. And again, in the more esoteric worldview of that, it's less about needing to do anything to earn grace, and it's more about your ability to be in reverence and awe for divinity within you and without you. So you could see divinity in nature, you could see divinity within the people that you love, or even harder practices to see divinity in the people that you disagree with, in the people that you think are sinners in your definition of sin and your worldview, and then to see divinity within, right? And so that's the esoteric relationship to it. And so that's more dense. So let's rein it back in and return here to this core central question that we're with for now, which is original sin versus original innocence. I believe that you are innocent in your core. You are innocent in your core. Your curiosity is holy, your mistakes are not evidence that you don't belong in the kingdom of heaven or that God doesn't love you. And instead are experiences that we will all have as we ourselves become more evolved. And so this is an essential thing that we're going to go through as we experience the natural world here, which is to say we're gonna have conflict, we're gonna have challenges, we're gonna have life to respond to. And I'll bring forth the paradox here, right? Which is though I don't believe that we're here to try to be God, I do believe in our relationship of awe of God, that our practice is to see more God in life, right? So it's you're human and you're holy. It's wow, this looks really scary, this looks really bad, this looks really violent, this looks really painful. God is in that too. And how can I try imperfectly to access peace and compassion for the parts of myself that aren't in a neutral space about anything? If someone pushes you down and you skin your knee, I'm gonna be pissed about that. I would be. And I don't know if that makes that person bad. I think that's a deeply philosophical question that only you can answer for yourself. But this is where I invite the concept of grace. And so when we say give each other grace, we mean to give ourselves permission to be human and to fuck up, and to invite ourselves in the moment that we are being invited to give someone grace to be as God creators in that moment. Okay. And so as we're playing in this playground of life, that's not to be like, oh, I wish we were in heaven. Oh, it's bad to be here. The desires and the experiences of the lower world are bad or wrong in some way. It's not we're trying to go to heaven, it's we're bringing heaven on earth. So it's not that person pushed me down and I skinned my knee because they're bad. It's I'm being invited to give this person grace, which is to say, me right now, I am the God of this moment in my life. Like, meaning I am creating my story about how I'm going to define what occurred here. So if I don't know anything about this person who pushed me down and I skinned my knee as a result, or let's say someone who cut me off in traffic, like I don't know why that person cut me off in traffic. I do not know. You don't know. Very unlikely that you know. You could make that person bad, bad driver, bad person. Oh, what an asshole. Or you could be like, wow, maybe the person that they love is in the hospital and they don't have long to get there and they're really scared. And that's why they cut me off, because they're just doing their fucking best. And I, as the creator of the the definition in my life of what that moment means, I am choosing to give that person grace. And so because I don't know the story, I'm gonna make up whatever story I need to make up in that moment to make that person not bad. That's what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna say, ah, I fucking hate that that person cut me off. That sucked, that scared me, that hurt, whatever. And I bet wherever they're needing to go is really important to them. And I hope that they get there safely. And I hope that if they're rushing to see someone that they love, that they they get to see that person that they love and they get there. And I hope that me being able to hold that frequency of offering them grace, like God would offer us grace, in the belief that we're not, that it's not original sin, it's original innocence, right? Like, I believe that that's gonna make the world a better place. I hope that that's gonna make the world a better place. And so it's not about spiritual bypassing the feeling in that moment of being cut off in traffic. Like, be pissed for a second, like do what you need to do to be like, ah, fuck that, that fucking sucks. But remember that, well, and this is my belief, you have to decide this on your own, and it's again connected to the same core thing. My belief is that everyone is trying their best, everyone is doing their best, and they might be able to do better, even in their own definition, but that doesn't mean that they have access to that whatever it would take for them to do better in that moment. You know, if we're driving and we're really scared that the person we love is lying on the side of the road and we got called, or they have like the emergency technology that you know, like, you know, if your like parent falls down in their house and they have whatever that technology is called to take care of your older parents. And anyway, like if we are rushing to that moment, I don't give a shit if I cut someone off in traffic. I'm gonna try not to. I really don't want to do that. I don't want to inconvenience anyone else, but it could happen because I'm not perfect. And if I'm trying to be perfect all the time and I'm having this very deep moral definition of every single thing I do, then I'm setting myself up for failure and then I'm actually showing up less well to the people that I love. And so I believe that in this original innocence philosophical mindset, that's what we really need to be able to understand grace. And so if you're a Christian, or if you are raised Christian, or you're like curious about Christian philosophy, this is not, this is a concept that's very challenging. Like the concept of God's grace is one of the big philosophical ponderings, and it's not easy to come to. And so this is my attempt to explain how I think we get there, which is everyone's innocent, everyone's doing their best, we all want the same things. We are just trying to protect the people that we love and experience life the best way that we know how, and we're all really scared. It's fucking scary to wake up every day and not know and to worry that we're gonna go to hell, and to worry that we're inherently bad, and to feel like there are all these things that we need to do to earn God's love. And that's a really hard way to go through life when it's already scary enough to just wake up and to just get out of bed. So instead of believing that God loves us but doesn't like us, what if we instead believe that God loves us and God likes us? What if we believed that we are not sinners, we are just imperfect beings doing our best, and that God, more than anything else, wants to offer us grace and wants to invite us to offer ourselves grace and to offer each other grace as well. So it's not that we're sinners, it's that we're innocent. Paradoxically, it's not that we won't break the rules, fuck up, do the wrong thing. It's that in our core nature this isn't wrong. This is a part of the human experience. And this is what it means to be waking up, getting out of bed, showing up every day, doing our fucking best, so that we can become better every day. And becoming better isn't the definition coming from the uh religious dogmatic beliefs, the better is coming from uh this definition, which is to be more present, to be more loving, to be more here, to feel more, to be better is to allow grace to exist in our life. And if you even for a moment, and I don't know that I can more than for little seconds at a time, perhaps even enlightenment is this experience of being steeped in grace and like really feeling it uh in a way that creates peace. I'm not sure because I'm not enlightened, but I think maybe it's that. And so if just for a moment you can access the feeling of grace from that place, you can ask yourself this question again, which is does God like me or does God not like me? Am I a sinner or am I innocent? My belief is that God likes me. I believe that God looks upon God's creation with awe. Just as we look at the sacred with awe, God looks at our humanity with awe. I believe that God's divinity, the sacred, the transcendent, like let's just say God in the monotheistic sense of God. I believe that the only thing that God doesn't have is finite time. God doesn't have the feeling of fear of death. God doesn't have the concept even, in my opinion. God doesn't have perhaps God it's very likely that God has a cognitive awareness of the existential fear humans feel of death. I'm sure that God is cognitively aware of this, but I don't believe that God has the ability to fully understand that. And so if that's the one thing that God doesn't have somatic awareness of, whatever somatic awareness means to God as a concept, if that's the case, then we might feel like the most sacred things to God. And from the polytheistic mindset of like other gods, you know, interacting with each other and whatever they do together in the land of the Titans, I think it's very likely that they look upon humanity for access to what feels sacred to them. I think it's very likely that there's something about the way that we experience life so holy and fully and potently, and with such longing and with such curiosity and with such naivety and like just raw life force, if we allow ourselves to. I have a theory that that's the best way that we can honor God, not just because it's what God made for us and so we should enjoy it, but also as teachers together, right? Like in this co-creation between divinity and humanity and the sacred and the profane, which is to say, like the the moments of the sacred versus all the other moments. Like I think that the best way to honor God is to forgive ourselves and like really be here. I think the best way to honor God is to be in gratitude for what it means to be alive and to seek the transcendent beauty around us as we seek to understand God more fully, not from a place of trying to bypass what it means to be alive, but instead from a place of connection and longing and the beautiful, raw messiness of these complex feelings that we have, I believe is our birthright in this human existence. So if you subscribe to the concept of God at all, and you probably do, whether you realize it or not, because whether you believe in a God in the Judeo-Christian mindset way of like a monotheistic being sitting in the sky, delivering out yeses and noes and sins and not sins and forgiveness, etc., right? Whether that's your relationship to God, or you're atheistic and you're like, God doesn't exist, that's not a thing, or you are agnostic and you're not sure, right? Like whatever your relationship is that you frame yourself to God to define this very deep concept. God is inherently existential, right? Like, however, you orient to that, you have a concept for God. So, in some way, whether you believe in God or don't believe in God, you believe in God because you either believe in God in these ways, or you believe in God in these ways, or you're choosing to take yourself out of the conversation, or you believe that there isn't a God. But even still, the presence of God is in existence philosophically, right? And so, with that, if God doesn't like you, then there are all these things that you are consciously or unconsciously doing to try to get God to like you, or you're waking up every day being like, I don't fucking care if God likes me, fuck that. I'm gonna go through my life, right? And in order to do that, you're disconnecting from the sacred, like you're opting out of the conversation, and even that is a form of spiritual bypass. And I'm not saying it's inherently a spiritual bypass to be agnostic or to be an atheist. I'm just saying that if you are not available for the conversation and you have a huge charge around it, or you're just choosing not to participate in some of the most deep existential, beautiful, scary philosophical questions of humanity, you might be spiritually bypassing, but that's a conversation for another time. And so here, this moment, this conversation right now, wherever you are, if you believe in God or you relate to God in any way, and you believe that God doesn't like you, then that is shaping your life. And you might be holding more fear, you might be holding more guilt, you might be holding more anxiety, you might be feeling like here are all the things that I need to do to try to fix this problem that I need to make myself better. And if you have that worldview, then you're very likely projecting your definition of what it means to be correct, good in right relationship with God onto other people. And when other people are not walking the same path as you in the exact same way, they become bad, they become sinners. So your response to that is either going to be to evangelize to them and save them, to try to prevent them from going to hell, or it's gonna be to tell yourself a story that you're better than them. And even if you think that you're giving them grace and you think that you're holding neutrality or like praying for them or whatever it is that you're doing, if you inherently believe that you're a sinner and you're doing everything in your power to not be a sinner, and you think that they're not doing everything in their power to not be sinners in the way that you've decided they're sinning, it is very difficult to give someone grace or to love them or to be in a space of unconditional love, which is of course the primary teacher, the primary teaching of Jesus in the Christian worldview. It's very hard, if not impossible, to actually access those concepts and feelings and maybe even model them if you are holding the worldview that God doesn't like you. Because if God doesn't like you, there's a reason why God doesn't like you, and there are maybe some things that you could do to try to make God like you. And if you do those things really, really, really well, and everybody else does those things really, really, really well, then maybe just maybe God will like us. And if we hitch our wagon to other people in this way, and a lot of people do, because this is what religion does, then we all together need to be liked by God in these exact ways, and then if one person fucks it up, then the whole ship sinks. And that's really scary, and it's a lot of pressure, and it's a it's a breeding ground for us to not give each other grace, and for us to not unconditionally love each other, and for us to not have compassion for each other, and it's essentially setting us up for failure. So I can't tell you whether. Whether or not it's in your highest and best interest to believe that God doesn't like you. That's really up to you. Perhaps you are living a lifetime where it's very important for you to be afraid of divinity. Maybe you need those guardrails for you and your spiritual walk so that you don't die. I'm not sure. That is a deeply personal inquiry that you have to come to on your own. What I can say is what I believe, which is I believe that God likes us. I believe that God loves us. I believe that God is in awe of us, in awe of his creation. And by his I mean like in the Judeo-Christian, like let us not double click too much on the I don't think God has a gender, but his grammatically is correct in English because that's how English is. Okay. So I believe that God loves us actually, and by loves I mean also likes. Like does not look at us as sinners, is not mad at us, does not expect us to make animal sacrifices to him so that we can be in the right relationship and instead just actually simply thinks we're great. Even when we fuck up, I think when we fuck up, God giggles. And I think when we fuck up really badly, God cries. But I don't think that God has this moral connection to, oh God, my creation is fucked up. I must smite them all, sin the flood, sin the plague, so that we can start over. And the Old Testament mythology has a lot of that. And because the Old Testament was a different astrological age than the New Testament, we were being guided by different planets at that time and their influence on the world and their influence on nature and their influence on our philosophy. The Old Testament God is in a relationship to Saturn. And the New Testament God is in a relationship to Neptune. Whether you see these beings as the same being or not, it's a different frequency. Saturn is about rules and boundaries and time in a more linear way. It's about the circle that we draw around ourselves in the sand, and what does it mean if we were to choose to step outside of that circle or not? Saturn is a different relationship to life than Neptune. Neptune is about unconditional love and the sacred and the holy in beauty, but it's less boundaried. It's a more boundless relationship, which is which is not easy. And so neither is right or wrong. It's just about understanding the philosophical worldview that we come from. And just to be super, super mega clear, this is not me saying Judaism is wrong and Christianity is right at all. In fact, this is the it's the same book, right? Like we can have a conversation about why the Jewish faith doesn't believe that Jesus was the savior. That's great conversation, but I'm speaking to it in the acknowledgement of the different philosophical worldviews that these mythologies at the moment in time that they came into our consciousness are steeped from. And I believe the Old Testament needed to create these particular boundaries, the sacrifices and the commandments and the plagues, and like all of that there was a part of our spiritual evolution as we get to know ourselves and we understand our relationship to the natural world. Like the reason astronomy came about was because pattern making served our ancestors, because they looked to the sky and somewhere, somehow, sometime recognized that when certain celestial objects in the sky moved, then certain things happened on the planet. Like, oh wow, the moon moves and it impacts the water. Interesting. Oh, when this particular star, sparkly thing in the sky, whatever they called it, I don't know. I'm speaking to like when it started. When this thing in the sky does this, I'm noticing this occurs here in this planet, right? So like pattern making served our ancestors to develop things like agriculture. And we are naturally going to meaning make the world and the cosmos. Again, I believe that this is a deep longing to know and understand God, which is also another way to say we want to know and understand the sacred within ourselves and without ourselves, right? And so astrology comes from that, right? It's born from this understanding that pattern making served our ancestors, and over time we've made meaning out of celestial movement. And if you were to ask someone, like, where is God? Most people would point to the sky. And so I personally believe there's a lot of value in what is happening up there in the celestial objects. And so when I say the Old Testament is held by Saturn and the New Testament is held by Neptune, what I mean is at that time of our human development, like physically on the earth plane at that time when these moments were happening, we were being heavily influenced by those planetary bodies. So in the time of the Old Testament, Saturn was a really big teacher for us. And so we're naturally going to respond to Saturn's lessons and meaning make them in the way that we did. And Saturn has that kind of texture of sacrifice and punishment and time and rules and boundaries, like part of Saturn's thing. And so just as Judaism is older than Christianity, and at that time in history, we didn't have the same access to technology and knowledge of the way things work that we did when the New Testament moment's happening, because the Old Testament is older, right? Judaism is older. Some would say the oldest, right? And so at that time, we didn't know. We didn't know if the sun would rise or not if we didn't make a sacrifice, right? Like we, and this is metaphorical, right? We didn't know how the world worked. And do we know how the world works now? Probably not. Do we have more technology now to study certain patterns and meaning make patterns from, let's say, like bringing some of scientific study into it? Yeah, we do. We have this. And the scientific conversation is also deeply philosophical and spiritual, but ultimately, the point I want to make here, because it's sensitive, is not that the New Testament is right and the Old Testament is wrong, or that like Islam is more correct than Judaism, or Judaism is more correct than Islam. Like, no, it's simply what was happening from an anthropological standpoint at that moment in time as we developed as a species, what astrological bodies were really deeply influencing us in the transits as they impact the natural world, just like the moon impacts the tides here. And how did we respond to that at that time of our human development? And this is what I mean with what I said at the very beginning of this episode, which is we are steeped in the mindset of the Judeo-Christian mythos. And with that, now at this moment in time, we have more technology, we have more understanding in some ways of the natural world and how things operate here, right? Like we have spooky particle theory. We didn't have spooky particle theory, probably in Genesis. We probably didn't have a concept of quantum physics when Genesis was happening and when Genesis was written. Now we have a concept of quantum physics. Quantum physics, I believe, is a way to explain, like, we're trying to define the sacred, right? Like we will always be meaning-making the sacred. It's not gonna go away. But now in this moment, we have more, we have more knowledge of how things work in the natural world, and we probably have less knowledge about what makes that spiritual, because I think the more the more technology we bring in, it's not that technology is wrong, but if we are not careful with our use of technology, it can separate us from God. It can separate us from like our humanity and our divinity. Because if we go through life with gloves on, we we simply can't feel, right? And so I believe using technology is beautiful if we're using it to connect more. But if we're using technology, like this is an example, right? Like I'm using a microphone on a computer to speak to you about the most ancient longings that we have. I think this is a great use of technology. But if we use technology to separate us from each other and to separate ourselves from the world, and to separate ourselves from our inherent humanity, the divinity within us, and our connection to life, we're spiritually bypassing. And so, yeah, that's a conversation for another time. So, my point for now is wherever we are looking at a religion, we have to look at the anthropology of it too. And we have to say, what technology did these people have access to? And what was their concept for God or the sacred at the time that this was being experienced and that this was written? Because we're always responding to what we're taught, we're responding to what we know to be true and real. And so until we deconstruct that, we are building upon that foundation. And so you yourself, whether you realize it or not, are building upon a foundation in the West of the Judeo-Christian mythos. And whether or not you want to continue that is up to you. What it means to you is up to you. And so I will land this conversation again asking you this question Does God like you or does God not like you? How sure can you be about that answer? And are you open to having an experience of your faith and your spirituality that makes you feel more loved and more connected and more safe and more encouraged and ultimately liberated from existential guilt. Because when we walk through life with this deep existential guilt that we've done something wrong that we need to fix, and we don't know how to fix it, and we don't know if we fixed it well enough, and we know that other people around us are not helping and they're not fixing it, and let me hyperfixate on what they're doing wrong to avoid feeling the existential guilt of myself doing something wrong, which then translates or delineates into fear. I'm afraid that God hates me. And if I'm afraid that God hates me, then what is the point of life? And what am I supposed to do while I'm here? And can I enjoy it at all? Is there space for joy, or is joy also a sin? Because if God hates me, if God doesn't like me, if God doesn't approve of me, if I need to fix my relationship with God, then there isn't time to do anything but that. We need to just walk around feeling guilty and feeling scared and doing our best to pick up the pieces of the tower that we knocked down. We have to do our best to go back to that moment and choose not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Never ask the question and forsake our humanity and shy away from our curiosity. Or we could forgive ourselves for that moment and really believe that we did the best that we could with what we knew. And that moment has led us to hear. That moment has led us to now. And it's very possible that God designed it exactly like that, and that there's something there for you, there's something there for all of us in accepting that and being with that and integrating that into our life. This week's episode is sponsored by Untamed Worship, the Substack publication. Here you can go deeper into the themes that we explored in this episode and in other episodes. Inside you'll find articles, personal essays, tips, tools, and practices to support you in your spiritual quest and your relationship to life, love, culture, and the world around you. You'll find a virtual tea temple for those of you who long to connect in with community in an accessible, down-to-earth, grounded way that meets you where you are right now, wherever you are in the world and whatever season of life you're in. You'll also find astrological tips and support and practices to take you deeper into your relationship with the mystical cosmic realm that we exist within, as well as a space for more raw and intimate podcast style conversations that we get to have in that space together. Including the opportunity to ask me questions and have your questions answered and your spiritual quest, your metaphysical astrological journey, or your relationships with those who you love. So if you would like to go deeper beyond just the space of the podcast, I invite you to join us at Untamed Worship, the Substack publication where we expand on all of these concepts and connect in and another form of community here in this digital space that we share. You can find this at untamedworship.com. That's untamedworship.com.