Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought—you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself. Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you. Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there.
ACIM Lesson 93,7
Let us examine the implications of the thought—"you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself." Firstly, we must realize that God is the foundation of this thought; if we understand God’s nature to be perfection, then this thought will yield implications based on perfection. If we take God’s nature to be something other than perfect, then it will yield implications based on imperfection. Clearly the concept of perfection is absolute in nature; you cannot be a little bit perfect, or even mostly perfect; you are either completely perfect or imperfect. Furthermore perfection is a permanent state of being, for once having been achieved it cannot be lost, changed or altered in any way whatsoever, for if it could be changed then it was not perfect to begin with, for changeability implies that there is room for either improvement or loss, while unchangeability implies eternity for it is unaffected by time, space and form. Water (H2O) for example, has three common forms: liquid, solid, and vapor, but even though these forms change in accordance with the temperature, the essential nature of the elements Hydrogen and Oxygen remain constant, and therefore unchangeable relative to temperature. Similarly, God’s nature which is our essential nature is unchangeable with respect to all changes in time, space or causation.
If we take God’s nature to be imperfect, the implications are huge: our salvation becomes questionable, for there would be some chance for error, miscalculation, luck, or favor. If God is imperfect, it means that His love and His word holds no guarantee, and cannot be fully depended on—it may work out or it may not but we cannot be certain. If God be imperfect it means that God can fail to have things be as He wills it be; it means that ‘sin’ exists and sinners have an opportunity of entering Heaven, and the king of sin has a chance of “winning” against the “All-mighty” will of God, in which case we must then describe God’s will as “almost-mighty.”
Ask yourself honestly, can this be the true nature of God? Can this possibly be what we truly believe in our hearts about God? In our minds and senses when we feel alone, lost, or confused, perhaps, but not in our hearts, where God willed that we forget Him not. His is the only source of power that exists and if we have any power at all, it comes to us through Him and Him alone; this is the little light within our hearts, the small but insuperable voice through which He communicates to us; the one part of our dream that is real and perfect, and which cannot be covered over by the veil of ignorance and denial that blinds our mind and senses to His presence within us. Let the key to awakening to this truth be these words continually uttered from our lips so that we may always remember who we really are:
“Let me remember I am one with God.”
Yes, this is Truth eternal, and therefore the perfect Truth. God being Almighty, has the power to do His will and therefore cannot fail in what He wills. His will is not open to question, far less to chance, and is farther still from being an option. Being All-mighty means that there is no will that can oppose His, no seeming or potential error that cannot be anticipated and thereby corrected before it occurs, and nothing that is not in accord with His divine will can occur.
Yes, God is perfection, and as such He is unchangeable, and therefore eternal. All that He creates also must be perfect, otherwise He Himself would not be perfect. So to guarantee the perfection of His creations, He made them exactly like Himself and joined with them in eternal oneness. Just as every single piece of a holographic image contains the whole image, just so are we the little individual pieces that contain the hologram of God, and so the logic goes: If God be perfect and we, His creation, is an inseparable part of Him, then we too must be perfect, unalterable, and eternal. Just as we are able to dress up in various costumes and play certain character roles, just so, all that we may think and do does not change the essential nature of who we are--one with God. The implications of this truth is that ‘sin’ is unreal, like a nightmare or an illusion perceived by our senses, but has no reality and therefore no effect of its own. God is perfect, therefore sin cannot exist. God is perfect, therefore His will, His world, and His love are forever true, and therefore guaranteed! Accepting this truth is all we need for our salvation.
