The journey

It takes 26,000 years for our solar system to pass through 13 constellations which we call the zodiac. How do we know? Well the calculations can be done and have been done using observation and extrapolation. But if one clings too tightly to calendars of a more recent creation, such calculations are seen as the stuff of fancy. For if everything is only 6-7000 years old, how can the solar system have been around for 26 millennia? The schools of thought that gave us the 6000 year paradigm also gave us an Earth-centered universe, an immutable sky and a flat Earth. If those people were wrong about those three things how do we know they’re right about the age of the Earth? Maybe we know that the solar system takes that long in its travels because we’ve lived it?

The selfishness of salvation

This doesn’t get examined much by the church, especially western churches in the US.

Salvation, specifically the “acceptance” or “reception” of salvation, as it is taught in most churches in the west, is not a selfless or altruistic act. The individual undergoing this process of conversion is totally focused on the self and not others. The person doesn’t want to go to “hell.” On occasion the person converts because they want to be with G-d. But the focus is mostly in the other direction. It’s a response to the fire and brimstone sermons and the altar calls. It’s also a response to arm-twisting tactics employed by proselytizing teams sent out sent out to malls and neighborhoods to “witness.” Whether the person has been worked into a fearful frenzy by the “or else” preaching or has been asked a question that begins “…if you died tonight…” the reaction is most times the same. I have also heard this called “fire insurance” salvation and looked down upon by certain self-righteous individuals. What I never did was ask them what they expected or how they expected someone to respond to negative preaching and manipulated “sharing” or strong-arm proselytizing. This is because at the time I believed that the preaching and proselytizing were the right way to go even though I didn’t practice them much. I know that my own focus, when I was 19, was on my own spiritual condition and I had no concern for anyone else. I suspect…I know that I am not alone.

Once the conversion process is complete and the believer is “saved” their focus is expected to reverse directions. You thought about yourself in getting “saved” now think only of others. This is not logical. The selfish person tends to stay selfish. This remains their guiding principle and attitude. It will govern their performance of any seemingly selfless acts.

Am I saying don’t convert or have religion in your life? No. I am not. What I am saying is that western churches need to come up with some other way of presenting their arguments for conversion. No good comes from selling someone fire insurance publicly and then damning in private the fact that they bought fire insurance. You scared them. You told them they were going to burn in hell and needed Jesus to save them. They didn’t want to burn in hell and asked Jesus to save them. It’s as simple as that. If you’re honest with yourself and think back, you did the same. Hypocrisy and the human process of memory revisionism are what are making you think your conversion was any different.

The Heresy of Self Condemnation

I have put up with this crap since 1983. That’s 25 years. That’s over half my life at this point. All the time when I was attending certain churches the message was that part of me has to go to hell so the rest can go to heaven. The church is full, front to back, with counter-intuitive psychology that is euphemistically called wisdom. If you question those in charge, they’ll tell you the holy spirit said it, which serves as a further coercion for you to obey. And people will quote verses like “…God has confounded the wisdom of the wise…” This stuff comes in the ears one way and filters through the subconscious as something quite different and much worse.

You don’t hear this every Sunday in every sermon. But. At some point you’re subjected to what amounts to encouragement to curse your self. I am splitting the word up because for this essay “self” is not part of any pronoun. Now you won’t hear the clergy or the other members of the congregation saying curse your self. Nobody says that, at least not out loud. I doubt many are thinking that. It might actually get their conscious attention and we can’t have that. What is said by many people around you is humble your self, deny your self, yield your self, surrender your self, give of your self, be selfless, die to your self, there is no such thing as self-worth. I wish I could say all this stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Unfortunately it goes in at least one ear, gets processed by the subconscious and comes back as self-criminalization. According to these doctrines the self is at war with God. And to put that in our pop culture lingo, spiritually we’re all terrorists.

For this essay I have split the word self from whatever associated pronouns it occurs with in the sentences. When people are saying it to others, they don’t. It gets read in by the subconscious as mostly “yourself.” If you don’t “robot” easily and since things aren’t explained well in the church, you tend to walk around with ideas in the back of your mind that you’re worthless, you’re nothing, you don’t matter and you have no value. Then to confound matters further, there is a separate message of self love. People will ask, “if you don’t love yourself then how can you love anyone else?” Right. Exactly. And how can you love your self if everywhere you turn it is being assaulted by religion? And not only is your self being assaulted constantly by religion, you’re being asked to participate in this psychological Gangbanger’s jumping in. Being worthless, nothing and not mattering are certainly not things I want to feel affection for.

There is a difference in this, between what is meant, what is said, and how it is received. If the message is don’t indulge your self to excess, that would be okay. But that’s not what is said. What is said is that self-indulgence of any kind is evil. If they limited the talk to things that cause harm to others, like engaging in some favored activity at the expense of one’s children’s needs that would be okay. If they’d take the time to describe these cases and why this sort of selfishness is bad, that would be okay. People could process it. People could understand it. But these speeches aren’t fleshed out enough to do that. Most sermons consist of how much can we pack into a 15-45 minute talk to get some message across. Whenever the self is being discussed in these speeches, prepare to get the ice packs out because you’re about to take a beating.

The self is just what it is, it’s you. It’s not evil. It’s not worthless. It’s not nothing. Evil is coming from the abusive authority figures who are telling you that nonsense. Overcoming this, and believe me I am just starting, is a subjective process. It’s internal. You’ve got to value your self enough to take the time to do it. You have to decide to do it for your self. Try picking out something you do well and taking credit for it. Try to think of something to love about your self. Start with something small. Light a match. Turn on a flashlight. As you continue to do that, the darkness will retreat.

I have to come up with other solutions because what I have been trying to do and what others have been encouraging me to do ain’t workin’. I am putting it up here for others to read because I know I am not alone.

The Coming Attrition

If you’re part of one of those Googleplex Gigachurches. You know, stadium seating, myriad people and all that. Look for a marked rise in small group attendance while seats in the auditorium stay the same or have less people occupying them. This will also accompany apologetic sermons on behalf of King Saul.

Curious Conversions

Evidently shortly after leaving office Fmr. PM Tony Blair converted to Roman Catholicism. I don’t know much about his religion before that. Now I’m reading that there is a chance that George W. Bush may convert to Roman Catholicism. Now the smoke screen in the article about Bush says something about his recent visit with the Pope and the strong right to life contingent in the Catholic Church. To take a look behind the dressing screen which is whatever is going as the official story, we have these two acting in concert again. That usually means something is up. We may be looking at some sort of religious false flag event. It’s just speculation now. The next LED to come on will be seeing these two together at a Catholic ceremony.

Ancient Injustice

To arrive at a place and then pronounce as evil the means by which you got there curses your followers and will eventually have you cursing your successors.

That’s all I have time for right now. If you want to know what I am talking about, look up “Astro Theology.”

Bible & Human Potential

This is an idea that may get called new-agey or heretical or something like that. I’m fully aware of that and I no longer care. A heretic is someone with a question other people are afraid to ask or hear the answer to. The world is changing and we have an opportunity to be a part of that or be changed by it and not in a good way.

With the success of the Left Behind series of novels and the ongoing study that many in Christendom engage in concerning the final chapters of Biblical history, the anticipatory furor over the coming of Antichrist and the one world government takes up a lot of the consciousness of people, especially here in the United States. The subject I am about to get into here has nothing to do with Antichrist or where he will pop up or the rapture or when any of that will take place. My only answer to those questions is I don’t know and it’s not my place to know. Over the years I have noticed some curiosities in the Bible and have never gotten a straight answer from Christians about them. I have found many events talked about in the Bible to be interesting and have wanted to know more than just the brief sketch given in the text. I once asked a former pastor what he thought happened at the Tower of Babel and his response was “What difference does it make?” He said this because the only thing that concerns him is “salvation,” wading people through the baptismal pool and filling pews. Sorry. No one told me I was supposed to walk around holding bibles upside my head like blinders on a horse and only looking “straight ahead.” I don’t run everything I read through the filter of does that get anyone “saved.” I leave that word in quotes because the understanding in the Orthodox church is that salvation belongs to G-d.

I’m going to be connecting a few dots to support my position that one may not be used to seeing connected. I believe that though many say they don’t believe the literal reading of the creation chapters, the way they conduct themselves and the way whole societies operate on the surface shows that people believe quite a lot of it, if only subconsciously, exactly as it is written.  I wasn’t raised in church and many might say that is the reason I question things more than many people. That could be true. I can’t do anything about that. I’m just used to things making sense and these clipped, allegorical skits raise a lot of questions for me.

For this study I’m looking at chapters 2, 3 and 11 of Genesis as they pertain to who we really are. When I was scribbling notes about this the other day my notes came off rather snarkily. I will try to keep that tone out of this post.

In chapter 2 of Genesis G-d creates the woman out of the man’s rib. The man calls her Eve or Khava. And G-d tells them not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden or they’ll die. So we zip ahead to the serpent in chapter 3:

4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Gen 3:4-5 NKJV

For anyone who feels their knee jerking and is about to shout, after a fierce intake of air, “That’s the big lie!” Hold that thought so we can qualify a couple of things. What I am about to say is not to defend the serpent but to clarify our understanding of the text. It is also not to give anyone delusions of pending godhood or anything like that. The popular reading of this passage takes all that the serpent says and calls it “the big lie.” There is a lie here. Perceptions of size do not matter. The lie or contradiction of what G-d says is only the statement “You will not surely die.” In chapter 2 verses 16 and 17 we see that G-d tells Adam that he’s not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or he’ll die. The formation of Eve doesn’t begin until verse 18.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Gen 2:16-17 NKJV

As we’ll see shortly in chapter 3, the serpent is not lying when it says to Eve that they’d be like gods knowing good and evil. So that’s not the “big lie.” Now to hit the fast-forward button again. Eve looks at the tree and the fruit and reasons that it’s good for knowledge and she eats and hands the fruit to Adam and he eats. Then God finds out about it all, curses the serpent, curses the woman, curses the ground and we arrive at verse 22:

22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Gen 3:22-24, NKJV

The question I have starts here. Verse 22 reads like the writer of Genesis was eavesdropping on a conversation between G-d and one or more other beings. It’s almost like G-d had been on the phone with the writer of Genesis and forgot to hit the speaker button again after they were done talking. The popular explanation is that it is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Some say G-d and the angels. I say, we don’t know. What it does look like here is that G-d is dealing with something he was not expecting from Adam and Eve. Whatever these two were they had transformed into something that lacked immortality but was sufficiently god-like that they had to be evicted and the way to the tree of life guarded. By the way I always wanted Lucas to do Indiana Jones and the Tree of Life. I wanted to see some more Nazis go up against the cherubs and get fried and have Harrison Ford get to the Tree of Life, but anyway…

Moving ahead to chapter 11 and the Tower of Babel, everyone spoke the same language and they were all in the one spot and decided to build a tower. G-d says something I found curious which relates to the nature of humans.

4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
Gen 11:4-7, NKJV

What I find curious is the phrase in verse 6: “…now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” This and the discussion earlier in chapter 3 tell me that there is a lot more to humankind as far as potential is concerned than we’ve been able to achieve. In saying that I am not talking about cracking the genetic code or any of our pop-culture intellectual or technological pursuits. I think we need to explore it but I am not entirely sure how to go about that. Some might say that yes we have the potential but it has to be channeled through our current church structure. Some others might say we have the potential but it is a sin to do anything with it at all. Whatever it is we’re not going to find out anything from within the confines of religious compartmentalization. Our perception was transformed when realized that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Like it or not, we’re overdue for more transformation.

An Evil Notion

Thirty years ago when I started having dealings with Evangelicals I was at a stripmall talking with a man who had been “witnessing” to me. I don’t remember what he was talking about at that moment. What I do recall is that at some point I asked him what he meant by one of the things he said. Sorry. I’m one of those ornery people who has to understand what’s being said to me. There was a girl present who was maybe six years older than me. When I asked “…what does that mean,” she said, “You’re being dumb. Don’t question it. Just accept it.”

I converted to Christianity when I was 20. I tried as best I could to go along with/follow everything people were telling me, and I encountered lots of different ideas and takes on things. There was one thing that I was never able to make any sense of. That was the idea among some that it is necessary to sacrifice my brain to G-d. I really don’t think I ever even tried to do it. That idea was something I thought was just plain nuts. The person who said it might have tried to twist in the living sacrifice verse in Romans Ch. 12. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It’s a fool’s doctrine and the people who were supposedly able to do that never seem to have much to give over to G-d.

Then about twenty years ago a former pastor of mine asked me if I thought we should teach children what to think or how to think. I said “How, I guess. What do you think?” He said, “You can teach them how to think. But if you teach them what to think then they won’t be questioning all these things.” By all these things he meant life, G-d, the nature of the world, why we’re here, is the Bible the word of G-d…you know, the hardball questions.

I’ve had a few years to consider these kinds of things and I’ve come to the conclusion that everything needs to be questioned. If you don’t understand, question. If you doubt, question. Do that first. Do that regardless of ridicule or frustration on the part of those incapable of answering. Never accept anything out of fiat (blindly, without any examination). Anyone who asks you to do that is serving evil, regardless of how well-meaning they might be.

Neocon Insanity

You’re a funny guy, Sully. I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commando, 1985

We’re turning into a bunch of catty little children on the playground, pinching and punching and biting and tattling on one another. And those in the role of the teacher are doing just what teachers did when I was in school, making the child guilty until proven innocent, then being unwilling to listen to the proof. I held nothing but contempt for those kinds of teachers when I was a kid and I hold nothing but contempt for those kinds of people today.

So Rachael Ray wore a scarf in front of a camera and a few people who have a following began to draw attention to it and accuse her of being a terrorist sympathizer. Rachael, don’t try proving otherwise, you’re just wasting your time. Just know that there are more of us out there for you than against you. You are dealing with an aristocracy of the pathetic…people who are selling their souls one sound bite at a time.

It’s an overused formula: “We’ve labeled you X. Now prove that you’re not.” The shy boy in school gets called a “fag” or a “psycho” or whatever and because of a misguided feeling of needing acceptance he begins the impossible, trying to prove to the collectivist lynch mob that he’s one of them. The lynch mob of collectivism is a unique social construct. Everyone in it eventually gets labeled the outsider and hung. There’s no end to it. There are always more people who want to join the clique thinking they can gain popularity or celebrity or prominence. They climb to the top to stand on the tightrope looking down at the rest of us trying to balance themselves until they fall off. It’s a tool of our enemy. People are selling one another out for cheaper and cheaper rewards. The only good that comes of it is when they stop and start to realize what is happening to them.

It’s just worsening. If you get photographed in the wrong attire you get labeled a sympathizer. Next if you are photographed with an index finger raised you’ll get labeled a sympathizer. Then we won’t be able to eat at certain restaurants. What? Hummus? That’s terrorist food. Some idiot will be calling Crime Shoppers with a tip about someone seen with fava beans or chickpeas and wanting $52.57 in reward money to pay their cell phone bill. al-Qaeda, if it even exists, doesn’t need to attack the country. We’re doing that to ourselves quite well, thank you very much.

The thing that the neocon collectivist bloggers, talk show hosts and other people snatching a ray of spotlight here and there don’t realize is that while they’re busy piling up at-a-boys from their peers and hoping to be noticed by the elite, they’re doing this in vain. It’s not going to get them accepted or inducted into the elite. It is not going to happen. You are nothing but a tool. And when your gears and threads strip you will no longer be of use to your owner. The best that can be hoped for is to be the last one to die once the prison camps officially open. That’s your prize. And I hope that sometime during your last 24-48 hours of life whatever shred of humanity you still have in there, whatever part of you used to be human before the chip and the GMO gruel and the experiments finally took their toll, will come fully to the forefront. And that during those last hours you’ll see everyone you led to the stockyards and that all you’ve really done is make the job easier for your executioner.

Maybe we should

The southern TV preacher always starts the verse “…For we wrassle not aginst flesh ‘n blood…” I’m not even going to give you the book, chapter and verse because I don’t remember the book, chapter and verse and I don’t feel like looking it up. If you want to read it, it’s in the New Testament in one of St. Paul’s letters. The coordinates of the verse don’t matter. It’s our understanding of it and how we conduct ourselves as a result of that understanding that I am challenging.

The enemy we are dealing with isn’t the politicians and their millions of minions but is the demonic hierarchy working through them. The next step in the syllogism is that if we just pray and fast and bind the strongman eventually those politicians and minions will be set free of evil and will begin to do good and all the world’s problems will go away. Now that is a tongue-in-cheek, deliberate, oversimplification but it is essentially what happens in many people’s minds.

These are the kinds of conclusions people are led to when they looking through rose-colored stained glass windows at the life of Christ. Jesus was more than just the godly man who had humbled himself and submitted to an execution on trumpeted up charges. I really think people get Jesus confused with Ghandi or something. Yes he cast out demons from possessed people. He also braided a rope together and used it as a whip on the corrupt religious bankers who were running the world’s first vending machine, selling lambs and doves for sacrifice. In the first case he was wrestling against the demons in the second he was wrestling against flesh and blood.

While the Devil might be behind what’s going on in the world, he isn’t writing the legislation. He isn’t signing legislation. He isn’t issuing corrupt directives to police or excusing corruption when it happens. The Devil isn’t picking up the pen to write the software that miscounts votes in these overgrown PDAs around the country. We cannot engage in unilateral spiritual warfare and ignore the flesh. There are people who need to be restrained in addition to the “enemy.” And thinking that human beings can have no evil of their own separate from a demonic force is a mistaken and dangerous reading of scripture.