Category Archives: A Question for Discussion

The Practice of Exclusion…

Posted on by RJ

I have been thinking lately about the words of Jesus and how he interacted with those he came across. Except for some of those in the religious establishment I couldn’t find any instance where he chose to automatically exclude from his saving grace or the wisdom of his teachings. He treated men and women pretty much the same; he welcomed all to his ministry. The poor and marginalized seemed to be special targets for him to reach out. He just wasn’t one to exclude anyone, even tax collectors and Roman soldiers. The sick and the lame were often the center of his attention.

Fast forward to today and there seems to be a common thread in almost all the religious establishments who call themselves Christian. They in one form or another seem to be more inclined to exclude people from membership in their organizations as they are to include them.  If you can manage to jump through all the many hoops that they require and keep your mouth shut in regards to questions you might have of their doctrine and practices then you are welcome as a member. Just don’t ever step over the line.

This is especially true for those who have chosen to be ministers in their organizations.  Tow the line or else be called a heretic. Almost all of these groups  seem to be convinced that if they allow any level of dissent they are opening themselves up to falling down a slippery slope into Satan’s domain.  They, for the most part, view the world as completely dominated by the evil one and therefore everything and everyone outside their personal groups are to be viewed with skepticism at the least and evil at the worst.

I know from personal experience of perhaps the most moving Christian minister I have ever encountered who was personally chastised for joining those outside his denomination in a prayer situation. He was stripped of his preaching duties for a year; his sermons were by far his most dominant God-given ability.

I know from personal experiences that when I questioned the claim that the Bible was 100% literally true and without error a process was started where I was to lose my membership of almost ten years and thousands of hours of volunteer work for the group. When I professed that I believed that the earth is more than 7,000 years old the process was begun to exclude me. I am no longer part of that organization.

Jesus was all about inclusion. He went out of his way to bring in all those around him. Sadly today’s churches, almost all 39,000 versions of them, are  constantly looking for ways to exclude people.  I am greatly saddened by this ever-present practice and I’m sure Jesus is devastated by it.  What happened to his church of the first two hundred years? I will have some thoughts about that in a future post here.

Fire Insurance???

Posted on by RJ

Here is an extended quote from the second chapter of James for our discussion today:

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless ? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?  As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

For the matter of discussion I also want to bring up a quote for Paul in Ephesians 2:

For it is by grace  you have been saved,  through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works,  so that no one can boast. 

The first quote obviously shows that faith and deeds (works) are inevitably linked. As James says a body without a spirit is dead and faith without works is equally dead.  Can dead faith save you? James answers that in a very emphatic way. The second quote seems to directly contradict the first.  Unfortunately most current day Christian evangelical denominations latch onto the second quote as a means to treat Christianity as a fire insurance. To them just by saying you have faith you are therefore saved from any consequences of your actions, or maybe more appropriately lack of action. This is what saddened me more than anything else during my extensive three year study of current day Christianity.

So, let’s not deceive ourselves into believing that Christianity is a “something for nothing” religion. When you sign on to be a Christian you also sign on to the duties of showing that you are a Christian. Words without action just don’t hack it. Don’t treat your Christianity as a fire insurance; do what Jesus says….

Today’s Church Building, What Would Jesus Do……

Posted on by RJ

I got to thinking recently about what did Jesus teach us about where we were supposed to come together to worship God. As I have mentioned before there is actually almost nothing in the Bible about this topic. But I can take the many other words of Jesus and postulate what he would likely say if he had addressed this area.  Here is what I think Jesus would say.

The ideal church building would be in someone’s home. If the group is too large for that then it would be in a rented facility that is used for other purposes the other six days of the week.  Things like a dance studio, a movie theater, or other similar places would be ideal.  When Jesus told the rich man that in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ he should sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then come and follow him he was pointing us in this direction. When we spend such large amount of money building giant cathedrals aren’t we actually repeating what the rich man was doing?  Aren’t we putting ourselves and our comfort before God’s commands?

Jesus clearly told us that the church is not the building, it is the people themselves. As long as there are people in need, and as he said there will always be people in need, we should spend our collections in meeting those needs and not on lavish, or even not so lavish, buildings. If we did that then we might not have to rely on our government to do it in our place. The early Christians did meet in homes but somewhere along the line the Catholic church turned their attention to brick and mortar and became distracted from people’s needs.

So, in my mind Jesus would be pleased if we just stopped all these massive building projects in his name. Why do we spend so much money on buildings that are basically only used on Sunday mornings?  Are we actually just building comfortable club houses for ourselves?  God does not intend us to build monuments, some would say idols, to Him but instead to build loving relationships with each other including the least of these.

Putting God in a Box….

Posted on by RJ

When we insist that our version of God is the only true one are we putting God in a Box?  That is are we limiting him to how we currently perceive him or maybe just want him to be? I think that is the case with many Christians today. Here are some examples of putting God in a restrictive box:

  • The Bible contains everything we need to know about God — Jesus clearly told us that we are not, nor in my opinion will we ever be, ready to know everything about God; he will wait until the appropriate time to give us additional information as we need it.  When we block out that new information we are blocking out God himself and limiting him to what we currently know about him.
  • When Jesus said xxx he was definitely talking about yyy — This is the practice of taking something that Jesus has said and turning it around to mean something else. This seems to be too common in some of today’s religious institutions.  When Jesus told us the story about doing for the “least of these” he concluded it by saying if you don’t do this then our father in heaven will not recognize you on judgment day.  Those are direct words from Jesus that seem to have been totally changed into something else today, particularly by those who deem “works” to be a totally unnecessary aspect of Christianity.
  • All we need to know about God is he saved us wretched beings from eternal damnation — Several Christian denominations today put all of Jesus’ messages to be centered around his coming to save mankind from themselves.  They fixate on our sinfulness instead of our potential.  In that regard they make God into our savior and for the most part ignore the he is also, and maybe more importantly, our Lord. They turn Jesus into a life insurance policy and ignore the other 90% of his messages to us.
  • God is only going to save people who believe as we do. Everyone else is damned to eternal agony. — If this is not putting God in a box I don’t know what is. The people who fixate on “everyone is going to hell except us” have made God into their own personal savior. They totally discount the possibility that God just may, as he said through Jesus, desire that all men come to know him. They don’t give God the power to do what he says.
The above examples are just a few that are around today where people fashion a god to meet their personal needs and then limit him to that task. It is ludicrous for us to limit God to what we want him to be based our current understanding. When we do that we are saying that we know the heart of God and there is nothing else to be learned about him.  When we say we know everything about God and what he wants us to know isn’t that to one degree or another  putting ourselves in God’s place.
God is who he is and that is something that none of us can ever totally fathom.  To try to keep God contained in your personal or even denominational vision of him is almost as detrimental as not believing in God at all. God cannot be contained in your versions of him nor can he be totally contained in a small compilation of words written by men about him.

The Nature of God….

Posted on by RJ

Trying to determine the nature of God is something many who are much smarter than I am have been doing since our very existence. I don’t pretend to have any answers that they have not considered.  But, I have been looking at a different understanding of God at least from a personal perspective. This new approach came from a comment on a previous post here on RLL.  In that post I was lamenting how I have  trouble reconciling the God of the Old Testament to Jesus Christ in the New.  To me these two faces of God have always seemed to be in stark contract to each other.

The comment I received on this post was to the effect that maybe differences between the Old and New Testament Gods is the difference in men and not in God? I have been living in the “literal and inerrant bible” world for so long that I never really considered this a possibility.

  • Could it be that the Old Testament writers just didn’t understand the true nature of what God was telling them?
  • Could many of the words that they recorded have contained some well-intentioned words of man and were not words from God?
  • Many of today’s evangelist, mostly of the TV variety it seems, say they have direct contact with God but then they say things that are contrary to God’s nature. Could this be the case with some of the Old Testament writers as well?

I cling to the idea that God is God and therefore infinitely more wise than any of his creations could possibly be. When we see differences in our written text of God those difference just might have occurred due to man’s inability to understand God and his messages to us. Are we are making God into our image of what we want him to be by believing everything the biblical writers thought (or maybe wanted) him to be?

To my “literal and inerrant” friend this idea goes against everything he believes God to be. As he often says that if the Bible contains even one error then the whole thing must the thrown out as we therefore cannot believe anything in it. This type of logic, which primarily has come in to prominence in the last century or so, has put a tight straight jacket on their versions of Christianity. To say that if somethings is not 100% pure then it is worthless certainly prevents them from gaining new insights of God.

So, here I am contemplating the idea that the God of the Old Testament is very much the same God as Jesus Christ portrayed Him in the New Testament. The only difference is that in the beginning man’s understanding of God was very hazy at best but has evolved over time. Do I cling to this concept the same way my “literal and inerrant” friend clings to the total purity of absolutely ALL Biblical words? Certainly not!  I only think of this as another  possibility.  As God permits me to understand him more thoroughly this concept may end up in the trash alongside the totally inerrant and literal Bible.   The Bible is absolutely the greatest document ever written by man but the total understanding of God is just too big for even those pages. As man evolves, God continues to give us increasing understanding  into his true nature.

So it turns out that this intended study of the nature of God is actually a continuation of the study of man. God is unchanging; our study and understanding of him is not.

The Duality of Jesus??

Posted on by RJ

I’m sure according to the theologians I have the wrong word in the title  but in this post I want to spend some time pondering the duality of Jesus. That is Jesus the man and Jesus the God.

Here are some words of a Quaker friend of mine:

It is not that Jesus is God more than he is human, or human more than he is God, but that the nonduality of human and divine is encapsulated in his life….                     http://www.quakerquaker.org/profiles/blogs/jesus-christ-a-integral

While I don’t by any means agree with all of this post this sentence got me to seriously think about Jesus being human  It is hard to conceive that Jesus being God could ever think and have emotional responses as we humans do!  I remember bringing this up as a young boy in Catholic grade school. I believe a nun’s, or maybe it was a priest’s , explanation made me more confused than before I blurted out the question. The answer basically, as a twelve-year-old remembers it, was that Jesus did not really understand his divinity until he was baptized by John the Baptist. The thirty years of his life up until that time he lived pretty much as a human, that is with human understandings and emotions. I don’t know how the responder to my question would have handled the gospel story about the young Jesus in the temple as I did not know enough to bring it up at the time.  I am not saying that this answer is according to Catholic teachings or even if I remember it correctly.  But this was the first encounter with my questions about Jesus being human.

After contemplating this dichotomy for the next fifty-some years I still have problems dealing with the human side of Jesus. Jesus being human would almost be like me morphing into the body of an ant and still maintaining my human intellect. Would any of my fellow ants really understand if I tried to tell them about that “other world” of human beings? Could I really understand and live my life as an ant? It seems my human side would drown out that possibility. To me the divinity of Jesus would also surely drown out his human nature. How can the two co-exist?

Jesus several times in the Bible said he did not know the answers that God the Father knew. This goes to the understanding of the trinity more than the human side of Jesus but maybe in that response Jesus was displaying his human nature. If as the theologians conceived several centuries after Jesus left the earth that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three in one (the Trinity) then how could one know something that the other didn’t? I’m sure if I dug into this deeper I could find a myriad of different explanations from scores of different theologians. But, that is not what I am about at this point in my life. I guess I am just ready to continue to ponder this type of thing and let it ride as such. It is small stuff when it come to my faith. But as usual I have questions. That is just who I am.

An Act of God???

Posted on by RJ

Given the large loss of life due to the Goplin Missouri tornadoes recently I got to thinking about why we call tornadoes and other such events an act of God? Isn’t it really just an occurrence in nature? Did God really conger up these weather events to kill so many people in that city?  Many search throughout the Bible for the answers to these types of questions and they seem to come up with an amazing variety of answers depending on which segments of the Bible they choose to use.

I tend to believe that events in nature are just that; events in nature. I would certainly not take that power away from God  but at the same time I would ask why he would need to kill people in that way? Being a scientist of sorts I can understand the factual reasons for weather events. I understand that when weather fronts collide they produce powerful updrafts that become tornadoes.

I am just not one to believe that God finds it necessary to kill people for whatever reasons in natural disasters anymore than he finds it necessary to kill people by making them slip in the tub. So, to conclude this story yes tornadoes are an act of God in as much as God set down the original laws of nature that sometimes combine to make it happen.

Some believe that absolutely everything that happens in the universe is directed by the hands of God and is his will.  They go on to say that we can’t possibly understand the reasons for instance why God makes a drunk driver to kill an innocent person but they say he does it for a purpose.  The God that I pray to and adore is a God of agape love; who has an immense love for each and every one of us.  He grieves for every life lost in Goplin this last week. It was not his will that it happen but yes he set the law of nature in place that came together to create the event.

Christian Spending on Massive Churches???

Posted on by RJ

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42769004/ns/travel-destination_travel/

The above article is about the ten most beautiful churches in the world. Since I take my life lessons from Jesus I went to his words to find his opinion about building monoliths to God. I did not see anything that remotely suggested that God wants us to spend massive amounts of our resources in monuments to Him. Quite the opposite appears to be true.

Building massive churches is probably in reality much more of a human power type thing. The Popes, various affluent Christian, and even very popular Evangelists in todays word,  wanted to leave a legacy of their time on earth. To do that they spent church funds that could have been spent for much more Christ centered purposes. If Jesus was about anything he was about

  • Preaching  good news to the poor.
  • Proclaiming freedom for the prisoners
  • Recovery of sight for the blind
  • Releasing the oppressed
  • Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

Luke 4:16-20.

I don’t see anywhere in His words about building monuments to God. To me this is a very misguided concept that started very early in church history and continues through today. If we stuck to the words of Jesus we would all likely be having our Sunday services in abandoned warehouses, parks, foreclosed houses,  or at least co-rented spaces shared with others that used them throughout the week.  Some say if we don’t build lavish facilities then there will be those that won’t come. If we get people to come for the creature comforts are we really giving them the true message of Jesus? I think not….

About The Bible — Part 1… What I believe

Posted on by RJ

It has been a while since I have done any “deep” posts so this post will start a series on how I view the Bible and how that might differ from some mainline denominations today.  The first two post are about how I personally view the Bible and other related Christian text. The third post is about how some of these belief are contrary to how others, mainly evangelicals, view the Bible. I will finish up with some of the things related to the Bible that I feel are the most misguided and in some ways harmful to bringing other to Jesus.

I apologize in advance for the length of some of these posts. I try to keep all my blog posts below five hundred words or so.  I have failed to do that in this series. Before I begin I want to again tell you that I am not trying to prove anyone wrong by this series. I am simply reiterating what I believe.  But, I do think I have a slight understanding of what Luther might have felt when he went against the Pope and the Catholic Church.  I am just one very small insignificant person who happens to disagree with some pretty big Christian denominations today.

One of the things I have heard frequently from the comments on this blog is that others are relieved to see that they are not the only ones to believe things about current day Christianity. I hope this round  of discussions helps some in that regard.

Getting started the statement that gets me in the most trouble with some current day Christian denominations is that I believe that the Bible was written by men for men.  I have frequently been verbally chastised for those words. Some seem to even believe that I am not a Christian if I believe these words!  But I think the reasoning behind these words have a very sound foundation backed up by the words of Jesus. So let’s start there.

  • By Men — The Bible was written by men. In other words the Bible is a human document and is therefore not 100% perfect. Some say that God controlled every word written by the various writers of the contained text.  They believe that the writers could not possibly have written even a single word that God did not want them to write. If that is the case then why didn’t God just write the book himself and drop it from heaven. Of course this is what the Mormons believe about the Book of Mormans.  I don’t know of a single Christian denomination, outside of them if you consider them Christians, that does not adamantly think that belief is a very false statement.  By the same logic I believe that to say that God controlled absolutely every thought of the writers means that he took over their bodies and minds to accomplish that feat. God gave man free will to do and think as they desire; to me that includes even the biblical authors. So the Bible was written by men.
  • For Men -- The Bible was written for men. I don’t understand why this statement is controversial in some Christian circles. The Bible was certainly not written for God. He does not need a reminder of who he is. Jesus did not bother to write a book while he was on this earth; he evidently didn’t think that was the best use of his time. Instead he chose to spend his time “showing” us how to live.  With maybe the exception of Paul’s letters it was almost 40 years before the authors who ended up in the Bible even started putting down their thoughts. Part of the reason for this was because most of them thought that Jesus was coming back within their lifetimes so a written record of his work was not necessary. When they realized that they had misunderstood the time-frame they penned their various very personal versions of what they believed Jesus intended to teach us. I certainly thank them for not waiting too long to do this. Matthew, John, and Peter (through Mark) were among the select humans that actually lived with Jesus during the three years of his ministry. Their personal and very human insights into the nature of Jesus is invaluable to us today these many centuries later.
  • Inspired by God — After the shock is worn off from the first two things I always add but much of it was inspired by God. I’m sure that much of what the writer penned was inspired by God. But again, much of it was also personal words and views of the writers.  They might have been very heartfelt words but they were their words.  God did not totally control  their thought and minds. Having a human aspect to the Bible is one of the things that make it so interesting. To see these very different human views of God helps us to gain insight that just one author might not be able to provide.
Next time I will finish up my personal beliefs about the Bible. I will also be relaying some of the discussions I have had with others who oppose my views.

Earth As A Proving Ground???

Posted on by RJ

Why did God go to all the trouble to create the universe? By any standards that was a massive undertaking. I am one who believes in the day age interpretation of the Bible.  In the last century or so God has given us the scientific understanding to know that the creation of the universe took millions if not billions of years to complete. Why did he go through all that trouble?

One explanation for God creating the universe and an infinitely small corner of it called the Earth was that he intends it to be a proving ground for what kind of person we choose to be. We all start out on this earth in basically the same conditions; that is we come naked from our mother’s womb. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a caring family and someone who can give us a life that will allow us to live up to our full potential. Many unfortunately are also given a life of day-to-day desperation.  But it is up to each of us to decide via our actions just what type of human being we want to be.

One story in the Bible is that some of us become sheep and some of us become goats and in the end times Jesus will come back and separate us into those two categories. I don’t really understand the difference between sheep and goats; I kind of like them both but that is another story. :)  Anyway there are several other stories about how God will come in the end times for the “final” judgment.  How many of these stories are just allegory I don’t know but I know when I leave this earth, as all of us must, I will meet my Maker. When he judges me I am absolutely sure he will bring up the words of Jesus to compare what Jesus told me to do verses what I eventually did. Will that judgement make me a sheep or a goat? That seems to be totally up to me.  Will the judgment have an effect on whether I am with God or not from that time forward?  There are numerous places in the Bible where God seems to put conditions on that happening. There are also a few where St. Paul seems to say otherwise.  But in some ways it really doesn’t matter to me. I will spend my life studying Jesus’ words and trying to live my life by them. Whether that gets me in heaven or not is totally up to God; I will not spend much time fretting over that. I will spend the time I have on earth enjoying his creation and living my life by the words of Jesus. I do this because I must; I do this because he is my creator and told me what he expects of me and that is to be my brother’s keeper.

The Words We Choose….

Posted on by RJ

It is strange how we choose different words from the Bible to latch on to.  Yvonne and I just returned from a two-week vacation through West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia.  We visited some historical sites there and some mentioned the Appalachian Baptist who made the foundation of their faith handling poisonous snakes.  They centered their religious experiences on the Bible verse that goes “and they shall take up snakes and they will not be harmed” (or something like that).  The stories told of some who were bitten dozens of times and lived to tell about it. But there were also stories of those who were bitten and then died.  I guess to them that was an indication that their faith was not strong enough.

But in my mind this practice is not really that unusual. That is the practice of latching on to a particular verse, not the snake handling choice. :) Many of the current day denominations give extra special meaning to their “favorite” verse.  The one that I am most familiar with are Lutherans. They latch onto the verse “your salvation is a gift from God… so that no one can boast”.  They take these words to mean that nothing is required of them to call themselves Christians except to “live by faith”. And to them living by faith means waiting for the next life. Nothing is required during this one.

I am not a person to latch on to one favorite verse and then leave the others orphaned. I believe that Jesus had numerous very strong messages through his ministry about living on this earth. It is too bad that many today seem to find it necessary to find one thing and almost  forget the rest. That is not what being a Christian means to me. Latching one to only once thing does make practicing their religion much easier but Jesus also made it clear that being his disciples was not intended to be an easy thing.

Are We All Praying to the Same God???

Posted on by RJ

canstockphoto2614821A question came up during a Bible class I attended some time ago about the differences between the different main religions of the world. Those include Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Hindu,and Buddhism. Looking at Wikipedia there seems to be about a dozen other large ones but let’s concentrate on the five largest. The question was:

“Are we all praying to the same God?”

I mentioned that I thought we were and was very surprised to learn that the clergyman who was leading the study had a very different answer. His answer was he definitely knows that all the other religions besides Christianity are praying to pagan gods! But he did hedge on Judaism. I guess I should not have been surprised by this statement but I was.  I personally think we are all looking for the same creator. Some of us lean toward one version of Him and some to another but in the end we are all at least trying to find the “true” God.

I really don’t know if all Christian denominations feel the same as this clergyman let alone if other religions also believe that Christians are praying to a pagan god. But I guess I would not be surprise to learn even that. It saddens me that we so disrespect others who don’t toe the same line as we do. I guess this same certainty also applies to the question of who gets into heaven. Everyone wants to believe their version of God is the ONLY true one. I know that when I was a child in Catholic grade school I was taught that only us Catholics would be in heaven. Although I have not been a Catholic for many years that message still clings to me.  With these types of beliefs it is no wonder that the world’s history is literally filled with different religious wars. I think this truly saddens God!!

Being Estranged From Others….

Posted on by RJ

It is, I have learned, far easier to ask forgiveness of a god we can’t see than from a person we can see. Perhaps this is why many religions are vertical in nature, focused on pleasing and placating God. That orientation has usually entailed sacrifice, the notion of giving God something—our time, our attention, our praise, our skill, our money—and, in extreme instances, our children, our virgins, an animal, our lives, or someone else’s life. But early in his public ministry, Jesus articulated a different understanding of sacrifice—the surrender of pride, the surrender of ego, the surrender of the privilege of being right, the surrender of everything that keeps us estranged from others, so we can be reconciled.

From a book entitle “If the Church Were Christian” by Philip Gulley

I make no apologies about quoting Philip Gulley so frequently on this blog. In my mind he seems to be one of the few Christian clergymen to have it more right than others now days. In my sixty odd years on being on the earth I have come across a myriad of different approaches to God. As Mr. Gulley says many seem to be in the business of either striking the fear of God in our hearts or asking forgiveness of sins we have committed or will commit in the future. Some also seem to be totally fixated on looking to our lives in heaven to almost the exclusion of what we do on this earth.  As was mentioned in the above quote I think Jesus had very different ideas. He meant for us to take care of each other as he showed us by his examples.

Jesus’ idea of sacrifice was not the same as the Old Testament of Abraham or today’s of giving up things for Lent. Jesus meant us to humble ourselves by giving up our pride, our inflated egos, and our insistence on only us being right. We must be reconciled with all of God’s children to be one of Jesus’ followers.  Pride and ego are very powerful parts of many of our lives.  They are also the most dreadful parts of our lives!

As Jesus said many times, if you want to be the best then you must humble yourselves into being the least.  That means taking care of your brothers. Even those smelly homeless ones we so increasingly see now days.

Why Didn’t Jesus Write a Book??

Posted on by RJ

A fellow blogger who happens to be a Quaker asked an interesting question recently. It was

“Why didn’t Jesus write a book while he was on earth and settle this thing once and for all?”

I know Jesus, like most of the twelve apostles was probably illiterate but I’m sure he could have written a book if he thought it was important.  Why didn’t he choose to do that? As my friend said a book directly from Jesus would, or at least should, have settled all the many  many current day differences among us Christians. I have wondered about this many times.

We currently rely on a book finally assembled four hundred years after the fact that was written mostly by the apostles or their representatives to tell us the things of Jesus. Of course there were also those like St. Paul who had no direct relationship with Jesus but was instead inspired by a miraculous act to write what he did.  Many of the early church fathers, meaning those in the first one hundred years, also recorded their opinions, inspired or otherwise, of what they thought Jesus meant for us to do. But most of those writing were not chosen by the council who put together our Bible to be included. It seems we have many second or third hand words about Jesus in the Bible and other documents but none directly from Jesus himself. Why didn’t Jesus write something himself?

My Quaker friend imagined God’s answer to his question to be this:

“I desire a direct spiritual relationship with all men… if my son had written a book… then all men would have a relationship with a book  and not God”

I can’t imagine a more apt response from God than what my friend proposed!  Jesus wants us to have a direct relationship with God. How much simpler could that be! It seems that today many put the book called the Bible above their relationship with God himself. While the book does give us valuable information about Jesus and God it should never be thought of on the same level as God. To do so would be to treat the book as an idol. And of course most of us know what God thinks of idolatry.  Enough said..

Divorce–A Christian Perspective

Posted on by RJ

Divorce is one of those things that gets very different treatment in different Christian denominations. The red letters are pretty clear as to what Jesus thought of it.

Matt 5:31-32

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’  But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matt 19:8-9

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Most Protestant denominations don’t put much weight behind these words of Jesus. Many seem to be almost flippant about this sin. Statistics show us that the rate of divorce among Christians is actually a little higher than the non-religious population so maybe there is a reason for minimizing these particular red letters.  Jesus made it pretty clear that for the most part once you are married you are married until death do you part. What Jesus said doesn’t mean you have to stay in a marriage no matter the conditions. But if you leave a marriage you can’t then go on to another one without committing the grievous sin of adultery.

Many say that Homosexuality is a grievous sin and if you stay in a homosexual relationship you are non-repentant and therefore your sin is not forgiven.  I question whether by those same standards remarrying after a divorce should also be  treated as a non-repentant and therefore a sin that is also not forgiven!  Is it up to us to pick and choose which sins are not forgiven?  But let’s stay on topic here.  I think only Catholics and maybe some of the Anabaptist denominations actually treat divorce in a serious manner.

But even Catholics “sneak” around this rule when it is convenient. I am very personally a witness to this fact. My mother’s eleven year marriage in a Catholic church to my father which resulted in the births of me and my younger brother was later voided by the the Catholic Church when she wanted to marry another Catholic twenty years later!  Declaring me and my brother bastards because the marriage “officially” didn’t happen was one of the reasons I left the Catholic church so many years ago. So in some ways the Catholic church is worse than its Protestant brothers in that they only appear to take Jesus’ word to heart.

It grieves me that this is by no means the only place where the current day Christians organizations don’t treat Jesus’ words  as “gospel” (pun intended). We seem to pick and choose where sins are forgiven or where they are not. I have more personal thoughts about that but will hold them for another post.

The Father, The Son, and the Holy Bible

Posted on by RJ

The concept of the Trinity was something that was invented many years after Christ’s ascension. It did not originate from Jesus but was invented more than one hundred years after is resurrection. It has, however, become a bedrock item in  much of the Christian church. But it seems many church denominations have now replaced the Holy Spirit with the Bible. From my studies on this substitution seems to have significantly grown about 100 years ago but its actual inception was probably during the Protestant Reformation.

During some recent discussion with a Christian clergy I was told that I should not put too much credence in any messages I thought were coming from the Holy Spirit as they could just as easily be coming from Satan.  Jesus clearly told us that he would be sending the Holy Spirit to guide us in areas  that we were not yet able to understand.  For anyone to discount personal revelations is going against those words.  To say that we can’t tell if the message is Satan or God is almost saying that  God is NOT capable of getting his messages through to us!  I personally give God more power than that. If he wants me to know something  he can deliver it to me and I will know it is from him.  I personally have had a few of those revelations in my life.

Many who discount the power of the Holy Spirit then go on to say that everything God wants us to know is in the Bible and therefore any additional revelations from the Holy Spirit are totally unnecessary. This brings about the title of this post. In many ways the Bible has replaced the Holy Spirit to them! Yes, I do believe that the Bible contains words from God but it is not the total and final word of God.  The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is active even today in teaching us, among many other things,  how to live as followers of Jesus Christ.  I welcome those revelations whenever they come.

Is the Church Christian?

Posted on by RJ

Here is an excerpt from a book entitled “If the Church were2-13-2011 10-08-10 AM Christian” by Philip Gulley.

Several years ago I visited a museum and saw the skeleton of a dinosaur. As I read the plaque, I learned only a handful of the bones were original, that the remainder had been fabricated based on a paleontologist’s extrapolation from the authentic bones. In many ways, this is similar to what the church has done. There are only two passages in one gospel (Matthew 16:18 and 18:17) where Jesus mentions the church, and even those references are dubious. Many scholars suspect the Matthean verses were not original to Jesus but were written back into the text by persons hoping to bolster their theological and ecclesial positions by placing them in the mouth of Jesus. From those two verses, we have built a vast institution based on these “hints” Jesus gave us. But we should never delude ourselves into thinking that today’s church sprang directly from the mind and witness of Jesus. All we have is extrapolation, a few bones upon which have been erected a larger organism. If Jesus intended to create the church, he did a questionable job. He left no clear directions about its structure or purpose.

Mr. Gulley seems to come down in the camp that today’s Christian church was fabricated by Jesus’ followers (ie. Paul and a few others) and not Jesus himself. By his actions and not his words, Jesus set in place the cornerstone and left it up to us to build the structure.  I’m not sure I really buy into this entirely but it is interesting speculation.

Jesus and Paul Comparisons – Harder than it looks..

Posted on by RJ

I am having trouble with my project of comparing what Jesus said to what Paul said.  There are several reasons for this difficulty.

  • They, for the most part, didn’t appear to address very many of the same issues.
  • There is so much baggage associated with this topic it is hard to not be prejudged by it all
  • It seems I must extrapolate the two men’s actions as well as words to make any comparison.

This leaves me with some basic questions.

  • Did Jesus leave it up to Paul to fill in his blanks?
  • Did Paul take it upon himself to create a religion around the person of Jesus?
  • Just how much did Paul really know about Jesus’ life and teachings?

In scanning the current theological thoughts about this topic there seems to be two completely opposite camps. I am trying to come to my own conclusions about this matter but it is hard to not get dragged into one of them. I’m not sure I am really ready to objectively even do this. It seems hard to compare Jesus’ “oranges” to Paul’s “apples”.  It seems to me that Paul has latched on to some of the parts of Jesus’ message and totally ignored others.  It find it strange that Jesus mentioned “the kingdom of heaven” hundreds of times in the Gospel accounts but that thought never occured once in Paul’s many letters?

Paul seems to be more locked onto the “poor miserable sinner” side of Christ than his side of love for even our enemies.  But maybe I am missing some of that? It seems where Paul is a rule maker where Jesus is about love. I can certainly understand Thomas Jefferson’s belief that Paul took Jesus’ simple message and complicated it.

Is the Christian church as it developed with Paul as a primary source really about Jesus Christ? What would Jesus say if he came back today and saw it’s current state? Would he recognize it as following his words or has it become fixated on man’s rules and traditions? I just don’t know.

What is the saddest thing in this world???

Posted on by RJ

That is a question that has been on my mind the last few days.  I have lived for more than six decades on this earth so I have been exposed to probably millions of different situations but what is the saddest? The list initially was quite large but the more I have thought about it the more it shrinks. I think I am finally down the one thing and that is lazy minds. I know, on first thought, that seems a strange answer.  After all there are things like world hunger, hatred, prejudice, homelessness, constant wars, and many other things that seem more serious.  But the more I have thought about it the more I am convinced that all of the above mentioned things are a result of lazy minds.

Our ability to think is perhaps the most significant thing that God gave us to separate us from everything else in this world. Being able to analyze our circumstance and then make knowledgeable decisions and then changes is something only man can do. God gave us our intellect so we could develop it and use it to further his kingdom on earth.  When we lay back and refuse to use our God given intellect I believe we are sinning against God at a most basic level. Lazy minds are not limited to any particular ethnic group, economic scale, or spiritual sphere. It is endemic across the entire spectrum of human condition.

Lazy minds allow us to just sit back and take on our parent’s prejudges as our own.  If our parents didn’t like Jews or Blacks or Hispanic or whatever then it is likely we don’t like them either. If only we exercised our minds and found that all these prejudges are without any merit  or reasoning whatsoever we could more easily purge them from reality.

Lazy minds allow others around us to control how we perceive almost everything in this world. It is just easier to have someone to show us one way of thinking and not even consider that there are other possibilities. It allows politician to tell us what to believe, marketers to tell us what to buy. It allows others to tell us what to believe about almost all aspects of life including our spiritual one.

Lazy minds prevent us from solving many of the otherwise solvable problems in the world.  We have the technical ability to eradicate most of today’s problems if only we got off our butts and did something about it. World hunger is definitely something that is fixable. The main thing that prevents us from doing that is we have not figured out how to interact with each other or how to choose leaders who could do that as our representatives. We allow our leaders to tell us what to think, who are enemies and friends are and almost everything else about our living in this world. We let them separate us into clans that they say must battle each other.

Lazy minds prevent us from knowing who God really is and what he expects of us.  We allow others to tell us  ”their” truth about God instead of us discovering who He really is. We allow others to selectively point us to the particular words in the Bible that “they” deem the most important instead of studying all the words ourselves. We allow others to tell us who to hate instead of following God’s command to love one another, even our enemies.

We allow one generation after another to take the easy way through this world.  All of us in one degree or another refuse to exercise our minds to even a small percentage of their capacity. It is just too easy to let others think for us.  That is the saddest thing in the world to me.

Why, God??

Posted on by RJ

Recently I seem to be asking questions that I was previously very reluctant to consider. I know I am not supposed to test God but I just can’t understand why he has not shown himself more directly in more than 2,000 years? Even according to biblical standards this is probably the longest period of time without a direct and powerful intervention from God.

  • Why are you keeping yourself hidden?
  • Why haven’t you shown yourself in more than 30 generations?
  • What are you waiting for?
  • Why must I rely on ancient accounts of you that have such scant documentation? None of the originals of even that documentation exist today!
  • Why am I forced to try and understand today’s world through a two thousand year old filter?

I know from my abundant studies in this area that these are questions often asked by people who have not yet come to know Christ. They make comments like “I know he was hung on a cross to die about 2,000 years ago and then came back to life, but what has he done lately?”. Many evangelicals say “he told us everything we need to know in the Bible.”

  • But aren’t our varied interpretations of just what the bible says the cause of us splitting into more than 35,000 versions of Christians?
  • When is enough enough for even God?
  • Why can’t he provide us with clearer answers to today’s problems?
  • Why can’t he give us clearer directions on what it really means to be his disciples?

Why, why, why…

Why Did You Tell Us?…

Posted on by RJ

Happy New Year’s everyone! God has given us another year to show the Lord’s love in our lives. Let’s not waste it!

This will just be a short post from something I have been reading this afternoon. It is an article in the January 2011 issue of Friends Journal – Quaker Thoughts and Life Today. The article is entitled The Meaning of Universalism by Phil H. Gulley. I will be discussing some of the issues he brings up about Universalism in future posts but I just wanted to give you one of the short stories in that article now. I found it comical and ironic at the same time:

It was about a church that decided someone needed to go preach to the Eskimos to go save them because they were lost. So they sent a missionary to the Eskimos, and he preached. When the missionary was done preaching, an Eskimo elder said to him, “Before you leave, let me ask you something. If we had never heard of Jesus and sin, would we have gone to hell when we died?” The missionary replied. “Well, no, of course not if you hadn’t heard.” And the Eskimo said, “Then why did you tell us?”

Are we condemning people who otherwise would not have gone to hell by our brief encounters with other cultures? That is something to think about. :)

Speaking up in church..

Posted on by RJ

Speaking up in church is something that varies widely in the Christian world. When my wife and I joined a small startup church eight years ago everyone there felt welcomed to speak up after the service. Since the church was a liturgical one speaking up during the service was a limited to chanting the required verses as they came up in the service text. But after the service anyone who had something to say could stand up and speak their mind. During those years we were renting space in a strip mall so our church was somewhat unconventional at least from an architectural standpoint. We were a small congregation so speaking up was a good way for everyone to get to know their fellow members.

Five years or so after the startup and with a new pastor we bought and remodeled a space that looked much more like a conventional church. Not long after the new facilities were completed a decision was made to restrict speaking up to only the pastor. If someone wanted to say something they are now required to give their written message to the pastor and he would recite it to the congregation after the service. I’m not really sure the purpose for this change but one of the results, at least from my viewpoint, was to take away much of the small church feel and personal fellowship. I was saddened to not hear those special, although sometimes long winded personal recitals. :)

I know when I was a member of a Catholic congregation many years ago speaking up was also limited to pretty much the pastor. The ability to stand up and speak varies greatly among different denominations. Some encourage speaking up with an occasional “Amen” during the service; some allow more personal utterances. But I think there is primarily only one who actually have “speaking up” as the primary means of worship and that is The Society of Friends known as Quakers. For those Quakers who use the unprogrammed worship format speaking up is what the service is all about. It is left up to the congregants to decide what is said during their worship time. Some meeting (services) go the whole period in silence; some are a constant messages as received by the members from the Holy Spirit.

I think God meant us to speak up during our worship time and not to just have everything set up to automatically speak for us.

Life in the Universe?

Posted on by RJ

This is a quick post with a question that popped into my head.  I see from an article I read a while ago that scientists think they are getting closer to being able to confirm that there is life elsewhere in the universe.  I wonder what the Christian beliefs are about this possibility? I suspect that as with almost everything else in Christianity it is across the board.

Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell

Posted on by RJ

Some people probably think that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy applies only in the military. In reality it applies in several places in our lives. One of those is our local church. That is if you are a member of one of the churches that demand a high level of compliance to their beliefs. I was up until recently a member of one of those churches. They dictated what I was allowed to believe. Any variation of those allowed beliefs sometimes had consequences.

That gets us to the title of this post. Most everyone is familiar with the term “Cafeteria Catholics”. This term is used to describe Roman Catholics who pick and choose which Catholic doctrine they want to believe. Most Cafeteria Catholics are pretty safe in this practice as long as they don’t actually admit that they are picking and choosing among church doctrine . If they don’t directly tell others of this fact then the church authorities usually don’t ask them about it.

Is this practice limited to Roman Catholics? I think it takes place in many of the other Christian denominations. As long as you appear to go along with all the doctrine you are safe. I believe many in a congregation either are ignorant of the purity rules or choose to just ignore them;  many more than their leadership could imagine.  But, if you publicly admit that you don’t believe something then your might be “asked” to leave or at least stripped of your membership status. I know this personally happened to me. I suffered the consequences of publicly stating that I believe the earth to be more than 6,000 years old and therefore the Bible is not totally inerrant.

Being expelled from membership in a local Christian church, or any other club type organization for that matter, has its consequences. I am pretty much like other Christians in that the vast majority of my social life was based on my church membership. When that membership ends the social fabric of my life suffered a severe tear. I regret that consequence more for my wife than I do for myself. She is collateral damage in this holy war. I deeply regret that. That tear in the fabric is mendable but it will take some time to do that. Since we are older it will be even harder to repair.

If I had it to do over again would I be a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” person? When it comes to Jesus Christ I believe I must follow where my heart and soul lead me no matter the consequences. But I do regret the collateral damage. That saddens my greatly. The morale of this story might be “Be careful what you say; your church authorities might be listening” :)