LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

To the best of my “self-deceived” psyche, I have abandoned the lifestyle of fear based religion. I’ve found that while more and more are finding the joy and peace of such, there are few who have the courage or proclivity to go against the crowd of status quo maintainers. The church which is to represent God (who is love) manifest something quite the contrary when some major doctrine is even questioned, let alone challenged.

Fear based religion usually goes hand in glove with a heaven-earning religion.

At the core, but little understood is the Old Testament “works oriented” paradigm that has carried over into the New Testament. Faith without works is dead; however, such an over emphasis can lead one into leaving the courts of grace before knowing it. And the club that’s most often used to enforce church conformity and control is the threat of HELL! For way too long I believed in an eteranl hell. Now, hell is just a “cleansing gate” outside the confines of eternal life with our Creator (what most call heaven).

I simply believe that God’s grace does not end with the grave.

Man’s condemnation of other men is simply a egoic paradigm that has enormous control over us, justifies us, and leads us into areas unlike Jesus walked. When we reduce religion to an institution to control society (as Constantine did), we too often create people with little self control: the opposite of the intended goal.

James Mulholland put it this way, “The problem with controlling religion is that it is so convinced of the depravity of humanity that it cannot believe anyone could live a good life without manipulation or coercion.” Listen, whoever created this world is not going to give us a pass wherein we don’t have to experience life on our own terms and conditions. Without free will, there can be no love. As hard as that is to embrace, it’s still true and the longer we live and experience life, the more we begin to understand the incredible wisdom of God- and the folly of man’s ego: especially organized religion.

There is more to life outside the gates as Jesus said.

Be sheep only in regards to the Creator, not to the institutional church!