Nothing to sell

This afternoon we visited a school function and I found myself chatting with a couple I had never met before. After discussing one thing and another the subject of the church came up and they asked me if i was a member. I offered a brief answer that I had been a member of the church for a good number of years, but was now no longer involved.

However, the observation that interested me most was that not only did I feel neither a need nor desire to justify or explain why I had left Christianity, but also that I felt neither a need nor desire to justify or explain my new “New Age” beliefs. I was content to simply let it be.

Its a wonderful freedom to simply be, to allow others to be, to bless that which you do not choose, and to have nothing to sell.

Beliefs and Values

Yesterday we all went along to the opening ceremony of the new church building extensions at my parents church, a small presbyterian community of mostly older people.

The building is to be used not just for chuch meetings, but also for a variety of community activities like indoor bowls, girl guides and the like.

I liked the idea they had embraced that the building was open to use by any group that “shared our values, not necessarily our beliefs.”

I wonder how diffferent the world would look if world leaders were smart enough to make the same distinction.

Before you become a christian …

Before you decide to “become a christian” there’s a few things you might like to think about:

There are lots of religions in the world – what makes you think christianity is the only right one?

There are lots of holy books in the world – what makes you think the bible is the only right one?

Your teachers tell you that God gives us free will – but what kind of free will is it when choosing one thing over another brings condemnation?

Your teachers tell you that Jesus prayed for unity, yet over the years there have been hundreds of different “denominations” that cannot agree on the most basic common ideas and – worse still – fight amongst themselves.

Your teachers use fear – the antithesis of all they say that God is – to gain your assent to their petty teachings. “Believe as we say or Perish!”

Over the ages, the christian church – both protestant and catholic – has been responsible for the murder of countless thousands of people (witch hunts, crusades, inquisitions, hugenots)

Believe what you like, but think it through!

A schoolgirl lesson

I decided to meet up with my wife for lunch in town today, and on the way there we drove past a girls high school, where they were all outside in the field having lunch. What struck me about this sight was the fact that they were all sitting in little “clusters” in this field with lots of empty grass between the groups, rather than being evenly spread out across the field.

This all seemed very pertinent to a comment a few days ago made by Glenn on an earlier post:

“Hi Jon,
The phenomena you are talking about is Ekklesia, and that happens in all social groupings and where there is a sense of community. Society, is birthed out of this intrinsic need to belong to a group. In christianity we have coined it a church. But truth be told it happens everywhere where people meet. Christian or not. CoffeeShops are more effective “churches” than what happens and expresses itself on Sunday mornings. The discord you have experienced is also not necessarily a Christian flaw but rather a human characteristic. You will find it everywhere. Even the athiests are competing against each other to be more athiestic. weird. either you believe or not.

I know I bleat on and on about this, but I really do think that churches are nothing more than clubs or groups that reflect human natures’ “intrinsic need to belong to a group.”

I’ll shut up now.

The problem with …

The problem with evangelical fundumentalists is they’re too narrow-minded

The problem with liberals is they’re too broad minded

The problem with a limited-atonement gospel is it is too exclusive

The problem with a full-atonement gospel is it is too inclusive

The problem with a literal bible interpretation is it is too objective

The problem with a symbolic bible interpretation is it is too subjective

The man who says there is no god is a …

Watch and weep.

My imaginary friend

Hi. I’d like to tell you about my imaginary friend. He’s very nice, very caring and very loving. When I feel lonely or scared I talk to him and I can feel him warming my insides and hugging me. When I feel small and weak he gives me strength. Sometimes I do things he doesn’t really like, but when I’m sorry he just says it’s all better and not to worry. What a lovely friend I have. He especially likes it when I sing songs to him. My imaginary friend is so nice that I just want everyone else to know him the way I do.

I learnt all about my imaginary friend from this very old book I read. Some of the bits in this book are not very nice and don’t sound like my friend at all, so I just skip over those bits. But the nice bits really are very, very nice. All that love! Love here, love there, love everywhere! Lovely!

Some people get angry because they don’t know my imaginary friend the way I do. Some of them even say he’s just a “transference of my ideal” whatever that silly term might mean. Of course the real reason is their hearts are hard and unbelieving. But never mind, I’ll ask my imaginary friend to help them so that one day they will be happy and loving like me.

Some people say that the very old book I read says that my imaginary friend will do some very nasty things to people that don’t love him like I do, but my imaginary friend is just too big for my little mind to understand, so I’m sure he will sort it all out. When I talk to others about my imaginary friend, I don’t really mention the nasty side of my friend too much – no point in scaring people needlessly I say.

Amazingly, I know other people who have an imaginary friend very similar to mine, so we meet together and “collectively reinforce our model”. Not sure what that means, but I’m sure it’s good. When we meet, we all make sure that we have the same ideas about our imaginary friend. It just upsets everyone if someone starts talking about something different so we really discourage that sort of thing. Cloneliness is next to godliness.

Oh how I love my imaginary friend. He’s everything I could ever wish or dream for!

One way

A diode is a small electronic device that exhibits the rather remarkable property of allowing electrical current to pass through it in one direction, but not in the other. Amazing!

Rites of initiation into the church club range from a conversion experience to baptism to public declarations to speaking in tongues to simply becoming a member. There’s a variety of ways one can enter into the kingdom of church.

But it strikes me that while churches offer a variety of ways to get in, there are no ways of getting out (not gracefully at least). While the church community has many ways to rejoice when someone “becomes a christian”, it has no mechanism for dealing with someone who decides to “un-become a christian” and move on to another stage of their journey where other models and metaphors are more helpful.

Now why is that I wonder?

The truth about absolute truth

I think I’ve figured out why the church-goers are so hot on trying to convince everyone else that absolute truth exists.

It’s so they can then tell us that they are absolutely right and we are absolutely wrong.

Exclusive Bigotry, and an eyeful of logs

I was doing some ironing this morning and my thoughts wandered to the group called the ‘Exclusive Brethren’. I have to be quite frank here and admit that I have never liked them very much. They have their own rather weird buildings with no signs outside (which only breeds more suspicion) and they tend to keep to themselves an awful lot, forming a very tight-knit bunch that is pretty impervious to the rest of us heathens.

Up until recently, I was struck at the remarkably obvious point (to me anyway) that Jesus was accused by the religious of the day of being a friend of sinners and mingling way too much with dirty sinners. It seem therefore astounding to me that a group like the Exclusive Brethren could read the same gospels as everyone else, and yet somehow come to the conclusion that the most Christ-like thing they can do is stay as far away from everyday sinners like you and me as possible!

But then something far greater than this struck me. Struck me quite hard actually. During all my years as a church-goer, I believed that christians like me were right, and everyone else was wrong. How is that any less exclusive than the Exclusive Brethren? My oh my how religion blinds us to the most obvious of truths.