Furthermore, superiority taken too far KILLS as well. True spirituality will rise above DUALITY. One can embrace whatever religion their environment or culture offers them without needing to label “all others” as cults or being oppossed to all other religions. The Twin Towers destruction cannot be followed by the kind of responses we were lured into. Our efforts have only killed tens of thousands more and created millions of enemies. The true gospel is anit-war! Continue reading ‘Superiority Stinks’
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
Talk about two interesting and probably little understood or misinterpreted words! There you have it! Salvation is something that I thought happened to me when I was seventeen at the First Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas many moons ago. Redux is an adjective meaning “brought back or restored”, from the Latin word reducere, meaning to “bring back”. But, let me give you my salvistic take here in 2009. Continue reading ‘Salvation Redux’
Let me start off by using a New Testament Scripture that might bring some ease to the Christian community that lives life primarily from the OUTSIDE. We all live from “outside-in” initially, but to remain there, is greatly limiting. Living “outside-in” is akin to only living by our five senses. I feel I need to keep saying that I love the Bible, and that it is SACRED to me because I spend so much of my life in the INTERNAL HEARING realm. Continue reading ‘The Internal Hearing!’
Since the Bible was written from an Eastern, oriental paradigm, much of the meaning is lost when one takes only a Western, occidental approach to unraveling its meaning. One must go beyond the brain, beyond reason, beyond strongs concordance, and “beyond the mind” (which is the real meaning of repentance). Furthermore, making the argument that “God can do anything” response to justify irrational arguments doesn’t really fly. It doesn’t even get off the ground. Continue reading ‘Into The Mystery: Beyond The Ego!’
How is it that you can believe something for decades and then suddenly awaken to the realization that something that you have believed really doesn’t make any sense? I don’t know exactly how it happens, but I am glad it has, and I am sure it will continue as well. How could I have said that God is omnipresent and then CONFINE God to a book, a box, called the Bible? Continue reading ‘The Bible Box’
If there is anything the church is good at doing, as history has shown, it is at being conservative and resisting change even in light of contradicting it’s very own Scriptures. The contradiction is one primarily of wearing glasses that Jesus said one should not wear. Therefore, blame the leadership that keeps promoting “sameness”. Continue reading ‘Resisting Church Changes’
Every now and then the “light bulb” goes on in our thinking and we have an “AH-HA” moments. Then there are those long stretches of time wherein those ‘awakening moments’ seem to all run together. One day you realize it has ALL changed! This is my story from the last four years.
If a CHOICE does not have consequences, there was no choice. If the proverbial fork in the road leads to the same destination, there was no CHOICE. Every moment we take a breath there are at least two options for us. As painful as those choices may be they are critical to our development of self-awareness and the sense of who we are- our identity. Continue reading ‘Free Will Isn’t Free!’
Most who believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible also embrace the paradigm that nothing NEW can be added especially nothing that seems to contradict that which was spoken 2-3,500 years ago. God SAID (past tense) and that settles it. I’ll not go into the issue of the “interpretation” of what WAS SAID (by which text. manuscript, codex, papyrus, translation, etc.). Continue reading ‘The ‘Final Word’ Fallacy’
Ignorance Does As “Belief” Dictates
Forrest Gump made the adage, “Stupid is as stupid does“, popular; however, it came from an old adage that says, “Handsome is as handsome does.” This saying appears in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and in Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,”. It can be traced as far back as the 14th Century. However, that ignorance does as “belief dictates”, has been with a man throughout history. Continue reading ‘Ignorance Does As “Belief” Dictates’