Several well-known preachers in the United States today attract phenomenal crowds to their weekly services. The main attraction? Telling the congregation God wants them to be rich.

This line of thought is certainly a very welcome change from the old hellfire and brimstone message. It is also a major relief from so much emphasis on suffering and guilt in many mainline Christian Churches. However, is it really true that God will or will not be pleased with us, depending on whether our actions align with God’s plan in life for us? Before we traipse off once a week to joyfully affirm God wants us to be rich, we should pause long enough to ask ourselves some serious questions.

That God is perfect has always been a central belief of the major religious traditions. Simply put, that means God lacks nothing or God would not be God. However it’s rather curious to notice that speeches affirming God’s need for us to do this or that denies God’s perfection. For if God needs anything from me, or is disappointed by anything I do, most assuredly God could not be perfect, but must instead be needy, insecure and probably despotic.

The opposite pole which says that God doesn’t give a hoot what I do and has no place in my life is equally untrue. To figure out where the truth lies, we need to take a long hard look at what our image of God is like.

Is there really room any more for a picture of God that comes uncomfortably close to that of an exasperating senior family member who justifies his interference in our lives on the grounds that it’s for our own good? If quantum theory gives us a look into the nature of reality, it must also give us a clue to the nature of the being who set it into place. As long as we insist on thinking of God as some sort of human being enlarged, who sits in judgment 24/7, plotting, planning, scheming, testing, and observing our performance, then we should realize that picture flies in the face of the evidence about how the universe functions.

In the quantum world what comes to us in life is magnetized by what we accept as true. The motive for accepting what constitutes “truth” can range from acute fear to the most profound love. It’s as simple as that. The nature of reality is not loaded one way or the other. It is neutral, awaiting our observation through the attitudes we accept.

Presumably this is also an indication of what God’s intention was for us. There is a sense in which we can truly speak about “God’s plan” for us, and there is a sense in which it would utterly miss the mark to do so. It seems clear that God wants us to explore the potentials of this material realm. But the “lessons” we learn doing so don’t come from God’s personal judgment. What we choose and express comes back to us magnified, guided by the natural process of magnetism. The consequences of our choices and what they magnetize to us demonstrates a seriousness of purpose much better than any prospect of hellfire could ever do!

God is certainly immersed in my life but not as someone who intervenes from the outside. Rather God works at the deepest possible level where the very fabric of what I do and think is construed. No human agency could ever do that, and it does no service to God, but the opposite, to conceive of God in human terms as pleased, displeased, sad, angry or happy at what I do. It may be comforting or frightening, but either way, we are only projecting images where they do not and cannot ever fit.

God wants us to explore the potentials of this material realm. “He” has no plan beyond that for us, and we will reap the harvest of what we sow. Does God want us to be rich? No. In this perspective it makes no more sense to say that than it does to say God wants us to be poor, or anything else in between. If it has been drummed into us that we were doing God some sort of favor by staying poor, then assuredly it comes as a distinct relief to be told God actually wants us to be rich. But no real advance in understanding has come. One belief is no more accurate than the other, and tragically we have come no nearer to understanding the mechanisms of manifestation.

We fear the power we really have because of the responsibility it brings. We by far prefer to believe we are going to be taken care of by the Great Parent in the Sky. The irony is that Great Parent actually is taking care of us and responding to our choices 24/7, but not from the skies. The care of the Great Parent is channeled precisely via the ways we direct life through our everyday choices and acceptance, and not according to any pre-determined plan by God.

For a longer version of this article, go to Miceal Ledwith's website at hamburgeruniverse.com

Dr. Miceal Ledwith, L.Ph., L.D., D.D., LL.D. (h.c.) has been a Professor of Theology and University President of Maynooth College in Ireland, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, and has lectured extensively throughout Europe and North America. He has been a long-time member of the Ramtha School of Ancient Wisdom.