I was raised in a Christian home.   All my life I have been taught that God created all things.  I was also taught that Jesus Christ was His son, and it is through Christ alone that we are able to return to Heaven someday.

God, in all His wisdom, created not only the world, galaxy, and universe, and everything in and on them, but also the laws governing all these realms of existence.  If God created laws to govern the physical world, then it stands to reason that these laws are absolute, and cannot be broken.  We may have only given names to a few of these laws (Law of Gravity, Laws of Thermodynamics, Ideal Gas Law, etc.) but there are other laws God has set into motion such as natural law, as mentioned in the very astute posts “What I Believe,” and “So Called Gay Marriage.”

Another law I would consider to be a “natural law” would be mathematical law.  (1+1=2,  anything that opposes that goes against that natural law.)

I have also been taught, and fully believe that God cannot lie.  He tells the truth, regardless of how that makes us feel.  He tells us what is right.   Isaiah 65:16 tells us that God is a God of truth.

I also believe that because of the numerous references of God, as “Heavenly Father” that we are His  children.  1 John 3:10 tells us we are his children. And that He knows and loves each one of us as any loving father loves his children.  Completely and unconditionally.  And as a Father, God wants to teach us, and wants us to grow, and learn, and succeed.

So if God is our Father, and we are His children, and He only tells us truth, and as children He would want to explain things so we can understand them, and we have scriptures like Acts 7: 55 that describe prophets literally seeing God and Jesus Christ as two separate and distinct individuals, why does so much of Christianity tell us that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are one being in three bodies? In fact he even re-iterates himself in the very next verse 56 as if to say, “LOOK! This is what I saw, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying!”

Matthew 3:16 documents when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and even describes Jesus being in the water, the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and in verse 17 God speaking saying, “And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Three separate beings.

John 20:17, after Christ’s resurrection He tells Mary, “touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Why would Jesus talk in third person about “himself” if he is also God the Father?  furthermore why would he have to “ascend to” Him? If He is the being that He needed to visit, talk to, confer with, etc, why would He HAVE to leave in order to do what needed to be done?

When Jesus was a child and he was teaching the elders in the temple Luke 2:49 Jesus directly refers to God as “my Father,” when Mary asked his where he had been.

Why would there be so many references BY Christ himself, to “The Father,” if they were one person?  I know some of you may quote John 10:30  “I and my Father are one.” But I don’t think he meant this physically.   But if he meant that they were in fact ONE BEING, why didn’t he just say it?   Mark 10:8 states “And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”  But here Jesus is specifically talking about a husband and wife being “one flesh.”  So if he was able to articulate “one flesh” about a husband and a wife, but he only ever spoke about He and his Father as “one,” but constantly talked about the Father in the third person, then to me, that says they are two distinct, individual beings.  Like when my wife and I talk to our kids, if they ask one of us for something, it’s as good as asking both of us.  We are “one in purpose” and as Mark 10:8 says, even “one in flesh,” but that does not mean we are the same person.  I am my own person, just as my wife is her own person, so although we are two individuals, our marriage makes us “one.” Just as The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are “one” it is in purpose, not “one being.”

All this leads me back to Acts 7:55 & 56

“⁵⁵But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,

⁵⁶ And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”

From all this, I know that God is our Heavenly Father.  We are his children.  Jesus Christ is His son. Children from the same father are siblings, so I think it would be fair to conclude that Jesus is our brother.  What an AWESOME thought! And the Holy Spirit is God’s messenger, who speaks to us and gives us guidance.

And that’s what I believe.

-Joseph Forefathers