Cross Roads by William P. Young Page A

hasn’t told me.”
    “But if you are God, don’t you know everything?”
    “I do.”
    “But you just said you didn’t—”
    “Tony,” Jesus interrupted, “you don’t think in terms of relationship. You see everything through the grid of an isolated independence. There are answers to your questions that will absolutely bewilder you, make no sense whatsoever, because you don’t even have a frame of reference that would allow them.”
    Tony was nodding, appearing as bewildered as Jesus had suggested.
    “Part of the wonder of me, always God, joining the human race, is that I was not some actor added to the cast of characters, but literally became fully human as a forever reality. I never stopped being fully God, fully the creator. It is true now and has been since the beginning of time that the entire cosmos exists inside me and that I hold it all together, sustaining it, even now, right this moment, and that would include you along with every created thing. Death could never say that. Death holds nothing together.”
    Tony was shaking his head, trying to understand yet at the same time resisting internally.
    Jesus continued, “So, yes, I could draw upon my knowledge as God to know why you are here, but I am in relationship with my Father, and he hasn’t told me, and I trust him to let me know if it becomes important for me to know. Until then, I will walk this out in real time and space with you, in faith and trust, and see what surprises Papa has in store for us.”
    “You are absolutely blowing my mind!” Tony raised his hands and shook his head. “I am so confused.”
    “That was the easiest answer I could give you,” Jesus said, chuckling, “that might even begin to make some sense.”
    “Well, thank you for that!” Tony retorted. “So, bottom line, if I understand you correctly, you are God, but you don’t know why I’m here.”
    “Exactly, but my Dad and the Holy Spirit know and if I need to, I will also.”
    Tony was still shaking his head as he stood up and brushed himself off. How could this be a projection of his internal subconscious? They were talking about things hehad never even considered. It was all so baffling. Slowly they turned and began again working their way up the hill.
    “So let me get this right,” Tony began. “There is Father, that’s your Dad, and you would be the Son?”
    “And the Holy Spirit,” offered Jesus.
    “So, who is the Holy Spirit?”
    “God.”
    “This is a Christian thing, right? So you are telling me that anyone who believes in you believes in three gods? Christians are polytheists?”
    “There are lots of folks besides Christians who believe in me. ‘Believer’ is an activity, not a category. Christians have only been around a couple thousand years. As for the question about them being polytheists? Not at all.”
    Jesus stopped and turned once again to face Tony, indicating that what he was about to say was significant and important.
    “Listen carefully, Tony. There is only… hear me carefully: there is only one God. The darkness of the choice for independence has blinded humanity to the simplicity of the truth. So first things first—one God. As much as they disagree about the details, and the details and disagreements are significant and important; but the Jews with their sects, the Christians of every stripe and color, the Muslims with their internal diversity, all are in agreement about this: there is only one God, not two, not three, not more, just one.”
    “Wait, but you just said…,” Tony interjected, but Jesus held up a hand, stopping him from finishing.
    “The Jews were the first to put it best in their Shema: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord!” But the Jewish Scriptures speak of this ‘one’ God as a plurality. ‘Let ‘us’ make Man in ‘our’ image.’ That was never intended as a contradiction about God being only one, but an expansionof what the nature of the ‘one’ was like. Rooted in the Jewish