I am going to state right off the bat, that all of you and I are going to heaven and there is nothing we can do about God’s unrelenting, unconditional love.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray for my soul to keep, Angels, watch me through the night, and wake me with the morning light. Amen”.
There’s nothing in there about hell, eternal damnation, the rapture, gnashing of teeth, or anything else like that. At least the children get it.
Many of you may have grown up in church reciting the Sinners’ Prayer right? It went like this:
“Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior”.
So now, all of a sudden we are sinners? Did you know that this prayer does not exist in the Bible? It’ doesn’t. Don’t believe me, take a look for yourself, I can wait…….
So now, to get into heaven you have to just recite this prayer and you’re in. That’s all there is to it. This seems easy right? Wrong. And furthermore, it’s totally unnecessary.
Now most everyone has recited the Lords Prayer which “is in the Bible”, in the New Testament (Matt 6: 9-13).
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever”. Amen.
Once again nothing here about hell, eternal damnation, the rapture, gnashing of teeth, eternal fire, Etc. Nothing, Nada, Nyet, Nope, well you get the idea.
We need to sort these issues out one by one, then you can easily research them for yourselves.
Prayer.
As we’ve already seen, the Children’s prayer, and the sinners prayer, are not even the Bible or holy scriptures. The Lords Prayer as noted in Matthew was more of a suggestion when people asked how do we pray?
The first and most obvious question is; When we pray, is that for us? or is it for God? Think about that?
This is actually a very serious question. You see, right before the verse with the Lords Prayer in Matthew, it says in Matt 6: 8 – “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him”.
So, in essence, God knows what you need even before you ask for it. This makes perfect sense as if God is all-powerful, and all-knowing, as we have been lead to believe that God already knows what we need, and want, even before we form the thought. I would propose that prayer is for us, and not God. For me, my prayers are more of a stream of consciousness, and even then is mostly a prayer of thanks, as the old song goes, “Thank you Lord for thinking about me, I’m alive and doing fine”.
The Rapture
The entire idea of “The Rapture” was developed by John Darby in 1830, who heard it from a young girl’s dream. Darby did not get any traction with his ideas in the UK where he was from, but he found fertile ground for his ideas in America several years later.
We went over 1,500 years in Christianity without this ridiculous notion, and everything was just fine. Once again this idea is an artificial construct of organized/institutionalized religion, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist branches of Christianity.
Nobody is going to suddenly disappear or “be raptured” now or ever, as once again,
this entire concept was “not” born from biblical scriptures.
Hell and Eternal Torment
This is another biggie. This entire concept actually came about during the early 1500’s. Although, The Christian church has always held three different views of hell. Eternal suffering (Eternal hell and suffering), Annihilation (those that die without Christ are doomed to a period of suffering in hell until their sins Are atoned for), and Universal Reconciliation (God saved all mankind, even non-believers).
For the first several hundred years of Christianity, the “Universal Reconciliation” was the dominant view. But, evidently, this was too easy, so organized religion had to invent something that had more means of control. Evidently by this measure if you don’t believe in the right thing, whatever that might be then you are damned for all eternity to hell.
Wow! This view certainly doe’s not seem like a kind, and loving, God does it. But on an even deeper level, the obvious question is why? What would be the purpose of creating people, giving them “free will” and then damning them to an eternity in hell, when God knew that you were going to be this way? Seriously why? Did you know that there are over two hundred Christian denominations in the United States alone, how are we supposed to know which is the right way and which is the wrong way? Virtually all of them state something to the fact that, “theirs” is the right path, and all the others are not.
This of course brings up the really, really, thorny paradox of what happened to all the billions who lived and died before the time of Jesus? Or all the people in other parts of the world who never heard of Jesus or Christianity. Also, let’s not forget all the religions that existed, and still exist today, that was around before Jesus or Christianity? Are all those untold billions also doomed to eternal suffering as well? Personally, I think not. As on the face of this entire argument or concept, this is just absurd.
Organized Religion makes stuff up that is not backed by scripture.
There is a lot of stuff that was just plain made up by organized religion that doe’s not match up to any scripture. This is part of the dogma, or rituals, of a particular organized religion. This is especially true with evangelical and fundamentalist branches of the Christian religion.
There is a lot of misguided, just plain wrong, or toxic theology out there. “Snake handling” is one such belief. In the NT, in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 16:18 is says: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”.
Seriously, these misguided pastors get bit by rattlesnakes, and even die every so often because of this particular misreading of scripture Didn’t God also give us intelligence and wisdom to do the right things? Maybe the Disciple Mark was negligent in not stating “do not try this at home” or “only to be attempted by trained professionals”.
I saw an entire list from the evangelical world of stuff not to do which included: Selfishness, witchcraft, incest, drunkenness, false accuser, lust, stealing, swearing, unbelief, envy, lying, hating parents, filthy talk, gay, whisperer, back biter, hypocrisy, shacking, worshiping false Gods, cheating, hater of God, theft, whore mongering, having an affair, rock roll, heavy metal music, etc.
Wow! This is clearly a long list and only a fraction of them were mentioned in the scriptures. The only explanation for all of these things is a means of control by the church to its parishioners. There are clearly a lot more here than “The Ten Commandments” Who made up all the rest? We do know that is was certainly not God.
There are some branches of American Christianity where you have to ask your Pastor for permission to marry the person that you love and want to spend the rest of your life with. Seriously, Who is the Pastor to decide who should and should not marry? Isn’t this elevating Pastors to the level of God? I mean certainly, it’s perfectly OK, to have premarital counseling with your Pastor if that is what you think you may need, But for you to have to get his or her blessing? I think not.
Another thing to be really leery of is if someone approaches you, and says; “God told me to tell you_________? You can be sure that in a lot of cases they are full of shit, or misguided in their thinking, especially, if this is not what God is telling you. Always, trust that small still voice inside of you to provide the right answer to you when you need it the most.
God’s Wrath in the OT
We have all read or heard the stories of God’s wrath, genocide, and his killing off of entire towns of men, women, children, and babies.
Let’s set one thing clear right off the bat. The last chapter of the Old Testament (OT) was written roughly about 415 years before the birth of Jesus.
To be perfectly clear, the authors of the OT had never spoken to God, had never seen God, and as a conquered, and enslaved peoples they imagined a God that would come down and slay their enemies, and everyone else who had any part in enslaving them. They used a lot of hyperbole, which was common at the time to describe how they wanted God to perform the ultimate retribution on their collective enemies. Doe’s this sound like a kind and loving God? I think not. Jesus was born over 400 years later and set the record straight.
Weaponizing Scripture
Anytime anyone, Pastors, family, friends, etc. start quoting scripture by stringing together old and new testament scriptures in new and unique ways is not quoting scripture. They are creating their own unique theology, which frankly is dead wrong and not anything Jesus said or did.
The proper way to read scripture is to read the entire chapter from beginning to end. You also have to keep in mind, three things in particular:
Time: The time it was written and the author’s understanding of the world at the time it was written.
Context: What is the context in which it was written. An example of this is all the letters that Paul wrote where he was talking to “particular churches” in Corinth, Rome, Ephesians, etc., and was discussing problems and issues that were unique to them. This does not necessarily apply to us now.
Culture: What was the culture at the time and what did they believe?
By keeping these three things in mind we can gain a far better understanding of what the authors of the Bible were trying to tell us. Also, it is critically important to not try to place our 21st century way of thinking on first and second-century man. We certainly have a far greater understanding of things than 1st and 2nd-century man did so let’s try to keep that in mind.
Another example is tithing to the church. Unless you are part of the Priestly Tribe as one of the twelve tribes of Isreal, this doe’s not apply to you. Read the scriptures on tithing, and you will see what I mean.
Inerrancy in the Bible
Essentially there are a few different branches of Christianity that believe that the Bible was inspired by God, and is the perfect word and intent of God.
God di not write a single word of the Bible! The Bible was written by men who were inspired by God, several years after the fact, that is an entirely different thing. The Bible as we know it is full of contradictions and errors as man is not perfect, and can only write about what they know, or think they know about God. We already know that there are loads of errors in the Bible both intentional and unintentional.
How did I get here?
I went to a Methodist church when I was a teenager, and participated in the youth group. If truth be told, I was more interested in the girls than any sort of religion. I did all the usual stuff including testimonies, baptism, etc.
I became really disillusioned after that. Especially, trying to understand how God allowed all that suffering and did absolutely nothing about it. This is how I was taught and was pretty mainstream thinking at the time… I could not accept a cruel God like that. After all, if God was an asshole like that and killed innocent women, children, and babies, and would sentence you to hell for eternity just for believing or not believing the right thing then I wanted no part of God. After all, what did I have to lose right? Nobody could or would answer my questions.
I became really disgusted and became a seriously intense Atheist after that for the next 45 years, or so. The funny thing is I was really happy being an Atheist. Until I met my current wife.
My wife Patria, is an ordained Minister (I was not aware of it at the time when we met) She never, ever, tried to convert me which for me is the ultimate in belief and Christian values, but I digress. Both of my wife’s parents were Pastors, as are her brother, and sisters, kind of a family affair. You get the idea.
The only thing that my wife used to tell me all the time was, God, is love. That’s it. Period, Full Stop! I thought about this for quite some time. If God was only “unconditional love” why did all this stuff keep happening? And what kind of God would kill babies, women and children, and the like. I could not, and would not, accept this as reality. I mean what did I have to lose by not believing, as I would end up in hell either way. So, to make a long story short, I was fairly content being where I was at.
So, as any good husband, I used to buy these books on theology for my wife, and I still do. One day I bought this book by Keith Giles, titled; “Jesus Unbound, Liberating the word of God from the Bible”. I started flipping through it and found I couldn’t put it down. That book literally changed my life!
I never even considered the fact that you could separate religion from the Bible, and follow Jesus in a Christ-concentric relationship and belief system. Without the confines of religion. This was a game-changer for me.
Who would have ever thought that you can follow Jesus without the confines of religion, and actually commune with God directly without the filter of religion?
I’ve never looked back since that day when I mostly read the book Jesus Unbound in a little over one afternoon. Wow! This is amazing, and really heady stuff. I soon found other authors/theologians who helped me solidify my beliefs in God. And all that all means.
I found out right away that organized religion did not have the answer for me. The answer I was looking for was right there all along, I just had never considered it before. I did not need or want religion, I only needed a “direct” relationship with Christ without the filter of religion and I found it at last.
Sure, there are a lot of people that do not, and will not agree with me. You know what, that’s OK too. We all need to find our own way and I believe that God considers intent, so when we fail, we can just pick ourselves back up and try, try again. Personally, I find it liberating to be free of the bonds of religion in my relationship with God.
The Many Pathways To God
I have come to believe that there are many, many pathways leading to God. God does not care what religion you subscribe to, or no religion, or belief at all. These pathways all represent a different path to the divine understanding of God. Some paths are fairly straight and narrow, some pathways meander around and back again before continuing on again. It’s our choice which path we choose.
Remember, God does not judge us! We judge ourselves. All God’s children go to heaven, and there is nothing in God’s unconditional love that can change that. Yes, you are going to heaven, as is your dog or cat as well. We have nothing to fear.
God made sure of that.
This song has always been very inspiring to me. I hope that you find it inspiring as well.
As Always,
I Am,
Tom Dye, The Safety Guy.
If you have any comments please feel to leave a comment below, Please be respectful to me and others. We are all seekers here..
References:
(Obviously, I need to give credit where credit is due to these brilliant scholars….
- Keith Giles; Jesus Unbound, Liberating the word of God from the Bible
- Keith Giles; Jesus Undefeated, Condemning the false doctrine of eternal torment
- Keith Giles; Jusus Unforsaken, Substituting Divine Wrath with Unrelenting Love
- Keith Giles; Jesus Unveiled, Forsaking Church as we know it for Ekklesia as God intended
- Jesus Unexpected, Ending the End Times to become the second coming
- Derek Flood; Disarming Scripture
- Barbara Brown Taylor – Holy Envy, Finding God in the faith of others
- Barbara Brown Taylor – Learning to walk in the dark
- Rachel Held Evens – Inspired
- A More ChristLike God – Brad Jersek
- How Jesus Became God – Bart D Ehrman
- I saw Satan fall like lightning – Rene Girard
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible
- The New Testament (a new translation) by David Bently Hart
- Aramaic to English translation of the New Testament
