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INNER CIRCLE: The Food of God?

INNER CIRCLE: The Food of God?

Last updated on: August 22, 2025 at 4:05 pm by Keith Giles

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INNER CIRCLE: The Food of God? 2025-08-22T16:05:48+00:00 Keith Giles

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

IMAGE: Keith Giles

Humanity is the food of God; people offer human or animal sacrifices, but those to whom they sacrifice are not gods.

Glass and clay vessels are both made with the help of fire, but glass vessels can be restored because they are shaped by breath. Clay vessels are destroyed when they are broken because they are born without breath.

A donkey hitched to a grinding wheel can travel hundreds of miles but when you untie him, he is still in the same place. There are people who walk a great deal, but never get anywhere.

When evening falls, there is nothing to be seen on the horizon – no village, no creature, no higher power, no angel to be seen. Have these people suffered in vain?

The work of Y’shua is to render grace. In Syriac, his name is “the one who is spread out,” for Yeshua came, and the world opened in the four directions of the cross.

(The Gospel of Philip, vs. 50-53)

The first saying in this section is, at first, troublesome. It appears to suggest that God feasts on humans for nourishment, but that is not the intended meaning. Instead, the entire saying should be taken together to mean something like: God is nourished by living humanity and those who offer dead animals or dead people as a sacrifice do not understand the god they worship.

Orthodox Christianity wants us to believe that God does not need or desire anything; that God is complete in Himself and does not lack anything. Even as their theology affirms that God desires worship and demands obedience, they must also believe that this same God wants nothing. This is a contradiction that they are unwilling to address.

Here, Philip’s Gospel affirms that God actually does need, want, and desire something: love, community, and connection with those whom God has made in God’s own image. This is observably and experientially true. We can testify that this is so; our spirit communes with God’s Spirit, and we experience the love this connection enables within us.

Why does God create humanity if God does not, at the very least, desire us? Why are we created in God’s own image if God does not want us to see ourselves in God’s own face? Clearly, God does desire a connection with humanity. God does take pleasure in this relationship with us. So, when Philip’s Gospel says, “Humanity is the food of God” this is what he means: God takes pleasure in humanity. God is nourished by our existence. God lives symbiotically in connection with humanity.

In other words, God rejoices in a humanity that is fully alive. God’s food is not dead. God’s food is not burned on a sacrificial fire. God’s nourishment comes from a living connection with us, and ours comes from a living connection with God.

Think of it this way: if God is the one in whom we all live and move and have our being, as the Apostle Paul affirms to the idol-worshipping pagans in Athens, then it is also true that we are the ones in whom God lives and moves and has being.

We are “living sacrifices” to God. We are not consumed. We are not used up. Our lives give glory to God, and God “eats this up,” to turn a phrase.

God and humanity co-exist. God is not God without humanity, and humanity is not human without God. We are one. There is no separation.

Human religions confuse this relationship. They wrongly assume that God is pleased when we offer an animal or a human that has been killed as a symbol of worship. Nothing could be more wrong than this. To take the life of something God has created does not give God pleasure. It is an insult of the highest order possible to destroy something God has given life to and to call that “worship.”

Next, Philip says that, “Glass and clay vessels are both made with the help of fire, but glass vessels can be restored because they are shaped by breath. Clay vessels are destroyed when they are broken because they are born without breath.”

Again, we are given a contrast between the right way and the wrong way of relating to God. The glass vessels are made with fire and breath. This makes them immortal. They cannot be destroyed. They are vessels of resurrection. The glass both reflects the light and allows the light to shine through it. This is in contrast to clay vessels, which are made with fire but not with breath. These vessels do not reflect the light, nor do they allow light to pass through them, and when they are broken, they are useless and must be cast aside. This is a metaphor designed to stimulate our imagination. Are we vessels of glass or of clay? Do we reflect the light? Do we allow the light to shine through us? Or do we resist the light? Are we filled with darkness? The differences are significant. ‘

This section ends with a parable of sorts about a donkey that walks a hundred miles but never arrives anywhere. This animal is like a slave who is forced to work and kept chained to a wheel. Our minds can become a prison where we are unable to escape. Our days can be wasted toiling under a yoke that benefits our masters, but leads us nowhere.

The masters who keep us chained to the wheel are the same ones who teach us that God is angry and demands a sacrifice. These are the religious teachers who keep us enslaved to a false god who claims to need nothing from us, but takes everything that matters: life, freedom, joy, and peace. This false god gives us only fear, shame, and guilt as our wages. At the end of our life, we have slaved for this god and have nothing to show for it. The daylight is gone and all we have left is a darkness that hides the face of the One, true God, who loves us and takes delight in us.

However, if we can open our eyes and escape the religious grindstone, what we will realize is that Christ offers us true freedom. We are set free to roam the wide open spaces of God’s entire creation, “…for Yeshua came, and the world opened in the four directions of the cross.”

This verse echoes what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 5:1

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

And what Jesus says to his disciples in John 8:31-32; 36

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free…So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Humanity is created to nourish the Spirit of God. Animals are created to roam freely in the paradise that God created. We are vessels of light that reflect the light of Christ and allow this light to shine through us. We contain the breath of resurrection.

This is the food that brings life to everything. This is the living bread that we may eat and never die. This is the living water that flows from within us.

Taste and see how good it really is.

The new book, “The Quantum Gospel of Mary and the Lost Gospel of Truth” is now available on Amazon.

The book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>

Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has been interviewed on CNN with Anderson Cooper, Coast to Coast Radio with George Noory, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” He co-hosts The Heretic Happy Hour Podcast and his solo podcast, Second Cup With Keith which are both available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Podbean or wherever you find great podcasts.

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