God is One, timeless, and inclusive of all.

The True Sacred, which is what you are seeking in prayer and silence, always reveals that:

God is above any national or group ownership or personal manipulation.

God is available as a free gift and not through sacrificing things.

God needs no victims and creates no victims. Jesus ends religion as sacrifice “once and for all’ by revealing the tragic effects of scapegoating through what happened to him on the cross (Hebrews 7:27, 10:10).

Jesus personifies this type of God and speaks defiantly in defense of such a God. Nowhere is he more succinct than when he quotes the prophet Hosea, “Go and learn the meaning of the words: ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifices” (Matthew 9:13).

+Adapted from Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 5.