God

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
Rabindranath Tagore

I always have a very hard time listening to people talk about Jesus, Lord and Master. Jesus isn't any Lord and Master. Jesus would have seen himself more as a servant. Lord and Master was a phrase that cam from a time when people (even the Lords) were ignorant, a kind of Dark Ages in which most people lived like slaves with total obedience to their Lord's will. God isn't about living in the Dark Ages or about total obedience. It is the Devil that seeks slaves and claims obedience.

God seeks comrades. After all, he did create us in his own image, or so the Bible says. God is more of a leader, developing a team of comrades to accomplish the mission of creating a better world. And like any good leader, God delegates, telling us what God wants done and leaving us to figure out the best way of doing it. God does not give us explicit instructions for what to do which we are to obey unquestioningly. God gave us free will for a reason. We get to choose the way to fulfill God's mission that works best for us, given our unique set of strengths and weaknesses and desires.

The Devil seeks slaves. Actually I don't beleive in the devil as such but think it may be possible to subsitute the ego here. The ego seeks slaves. It is human ego and the need to seek power over other men that has dominated the church throughout its history. It is human ego that demands obedience from other men; not God. It is human ego that seperates others, makes them seem worse, and needs to tell them what must be done because it doesn't beleive that these others have the intelligence or resources to decide for themselves what should be done. Never confuse God with human ego. Claim allegience to God and not to human ego. Be a comrade of God's and work in the service of love. And exersise your free will to do what is best for you in that mission.