Thank you for this post! This reply is just me working this out.
I know before coming to Plainfield, I would have read “The LORD hath made all things for Himself” and thought it was a selfish thing. Learning here the impersonal nature of God, and also that He constitutes all of reality, I can see now that there was no one else for Him to make anything for. Also, the fact that God made it show how unselfish He is!
From this new understanding, it is easy to see why I should look to Him alone for guidance: What else can help me live rightly? Certainly not my own limited understanding (I already proved what a disaster that is!). Only God has the perspective and the right to guide all of us, as we are all His ideas, expressing Him, in His creation. It gives me great joy to know that I don’t need to work out the variables and the pros and cons of each imagined possibility, because God is the only determiner of what is truly possible, and in Him there “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James 1: 17)
Therefore, since God is all (All-in-all), and God is impersonal, then the only way for me to live unselfishly is to express Him as He directs. Go where He has me go; do as He has me do; say what He has me say; work on the projects He has me work on, etc. (Also, to do it all with joy and gratitude, because even the difficult tasks end up a great blessing!)
Since God made all for Himself, then each of God’s ideas the world over are already worthy of Love, Truth, Life, goodness, and perfection. To think otherwise is to say that God’s work is flawed! This helps me see that much more why Christ Jesus had such compassion on all who seemed set upon by error, while having no patience for the error itself. As Mary wrote, he certainly didn’t “accept anything less” than God’s goodness and perfection.
And there is no reason I should either.
What a blessing this church has been, and continues to be! Thank you!