The New Jesus Paradigm

From A Course in Miracles:
"My mind gives the world meaning." "What keeps the world in chains but my beliefs?"

I am a Roman Catholic, formerly spent 4 years in a monastery, attended Catholic seminary, and am deeply conditioned by standard Catholic beliefs. The standard Christian teaching on atonement is the one I was originally taught: Jesus died for my sins. ACIM changes the meaning of this word, atonement, and how we are saved. Today, I put the ACIM concept of Atonement in my own words (which may or may not be accurate).

Most people blithely say Atonement according to ACIM means undoing; and it does. But here is more: Atonement is not a sacrificial offering of Jesus to God; but a joining with the living Christ (NOW) and sacrificing the ego belief system. The ego belief system is symbolized by the crucifixion story; a story of God needing an offering of His murdered Son before He will see us as sinless. The ego belief system summed up: anything that is not love or peace is ego. Sacrifice, meaning give up, means give up anything not love or peace. Because God is love, all I need to do is give up (sacrifice) my ego belief system in order to enter Heaven. Killing anyone or paying for anything has nothing to do with it.

I subscribe to ACIM because a) I get to keep the personal relationship to Jesus, the living Christ, that I have always had, and b) ACIM makes more sense to me if God is love instead of anger and punishment. I am willing to go through the process and the work of changing my beliefs in order to give the world a meaning of love and peace.