We Are God And God Is Us

We tend to think of our homes and our cities as being one thing, and nature as being outside or apart from our man-made structures. Like, we’re in here, and nature is out there. But that’s not true. Nature is everywhere and everything. Humans are a part of nature, and anything we make is made from and built upon nature and remains part of nature still. A high-rise penthouse on the eightieth floor in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by a sea of glass and concrete and steel is as much a part of nature as some pristine little glade in the heart of the Amazon that has never once been entered by humans. We can’t actually escape or separate ourselves from nature. Weeds burst through cracks in the pavement. Cockroaches skitter across linoleum floors. Rats invade sewers. Mold makes it past lead-lined refrigerators and through cling-wrap seals and onto the surface of our foods. We never got away from or outside of nature. In the same way, we will never be able to escape or wall ourselves off from God, not completely. We are made from and out of and for God. He is in every fiber of our being and every last corner of our souls. We can try to pave over Him, but like a weed, He will find cracks to break through. We can send exterminators to try to flush Him out, but He is more stubbornly unkillable than a cockroach. Like a rat through the sewer, He will crawl past all of our most disgusting and shameful thoughts and acts of rebellions to be with us. We can shove our souls in the coldest, darkest part of our minds and wrap ourselves in layer after layer of self-loathing and spiteful pride, but like mold on cheese, He will find His way there as well. This is why the fear that surrendering our will to God is so wrong-headed. Submitting ourselves to our Heavenly Father is not about scooping out our own identity to make room for His. It’s not about snuffing out our own light so He can kick aside our candle and light His own. It’s not about yanking out our plant and putting His own plant in. Submitting to God’s will means acknowledging that the separation between us and God is an illusion, just like the separation between the human and the natural world is an illusion. We’ve only ever been separated from God in our own head. We don’t have to make some conscious effort of will to let God in. We just have to acknowledge that He never left. That He’s been not just outside but inside with us the whole time. Just as humans are nature and nature is humans, we are God and God is us. Submitting to God means submitting to our realest, truest selves and strengthening and deepening and heightening our identity, not abandoning or destroying it. We can try to shut God out just like we’ve been trying to shut nature out, but it won’t work. Or we can recognize that no matter what we do, we have been and will always be a part of God, just as God has been and will always be a part of us.