WWANAD?

During my christian days, one method of resolving moral/ethical conundrums was to apply the WWJD method. (For the dim and slow-witted amongst my readership, this stands for What Would Jesus Do). Or even better (but I digress), the classic variant “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”. Anyway, this leads me to wondering what answers we would come up with to similar questions with WWANAD. (What Would A New Ager Do?)

Thus here some questions I propose for our next discussion group (which will be Wednesday 27th at my house, 7:30pm)

“Is abortion OK? If not, why not?”

“Is watching porn OK?’ (you would simply not believe how many search hits this blog gets each day with poor christians tying themselves up in knots over porn and masturbation)

“Should marriage be abolished?” (Stats show that marriages are busting up faster than ever, and that many that are married are just going through the motions. Is there a better way of doing this?)

For these, and whatever similar questions arise out of the discussion, the underlying question of course is “on what basis do you make your answer?” For christians, the appeal is to the bible of course. But New Agers don’t have a bible, so who says which answer is right? How do we decide? How do we know? Hmmm.

From Age to Age

I had always thought that the reason the Jews stopped with their sacrificial system was because of the arrival of Jesus and the ushering in of the new covenant, rendering the temple obsolete.

Turns out to be nothing of the sort.

The reason the Jewish sacrificial system halted was because Jerusalem was flattened by the Roman army in 70 AD, 2 million Jews were slaughtered, and the Jewish nation brutally decimated. Then the Romans renamed Jerusalem, and forbade any Hebrew speakers to re-enter! So complete was the holocaust that the Jewish nation all but disappeared.

However it is true that Jesus correctly predicted this event, and spoke of the end of the age of the Jews, and the coming of a new age, the age of the Gentiles.

If you were going to put a date on a major turning point of history, 70AD would be hard to beat.

I would love to love Jesus …

I would love to love Jesus … but who is He?

Some say He is a warrior, bringing not peace but a sword
Some say He is a lover, showing us what Love looks like
Some say He is a saviour, saving us from the wrath of a just God
Some say He is a teacher, telling us in parables how to live
Some say He is a prophet, speaking on God’s behalf
Some say He is a leader, the head of the church
Some say He is a man, made into something more than He ever was by other voices
Some say He is a myth, a creation of political expediency
Some say He is a martyr, but who died for what cause?

Some would say He is all of these parts, others,
that He was just a good man,
perhaps not even good
perhaps not.

We have all created our own Jesus, every one of us.

I would love to love Jesus … but who is He?

Sebastian’s question

Last week my 10 year old son Sebastian went to play at a friend’s house. Afterwards, Sebastian came home to report that when he had questioned his young friend Tim over whether or not hell existed (apparently this is something that 10 year old boys discuss when playing together) the friend had assured him that indeed it did. Sebastian challenged this (not sure where he gets that from), to which the boy replied that it was most certainly true because it was written so in the bible. When Sebastian challenged how Tim knew the bible was actually telling the truth, young Tim quickly settled this by going and asking his mother, who assured her young son that indeed the bible was true.

Sebastian came home most dissatisfied with the reasoning of these assertions, and looked to me to provide a more convincing response.

What would you say to him?

A sorry observation indeed

Here is a sample of what I get almost every day in the search text that people have typed in and got to my blog:

masturbation is wrong
sin masturbation
divorce masturbation sin
church says masturbation is sin
masturbation hell evil
bible masturbation right wrong 

Following an earlier post, I only hope each of these poor people will wake up to the plain and simple fact that there is nothing wrong whatsoever with masturbation, that the bible says nothing at all about masturbation, and that the christian church has twisted and bent this simple gift into a grotesque and unrecognisable act of shame. The only reason so many people are struggling with this otherwise very simple issue is because what they have been told by other people is in conflict with what their own feelings are telling them.

To everyone who has ever taught that masturbation is a sin, I tell you that you are a false teacher and a liar, that you have heaped unecessary guilt of those who have trusted your words, and that you should apologise to each and every person that you have deceived.

To everyone who has ever been taught that masturbation is a sin, I tell you that your sexuality is given to you by God and is very good. You are free to discover and enjoy this aspect of your sexuality in the full knowledge that you do this with God’s full blessing and that you have nothing to fear.

The Muddle of Models

Look at the picture below, and tell me what you see. (Now I’m really hoping that everyone is going to get this right)

Yes, its a TABLE.

That was easy wasn’t it?

Now have a look at this picture below and tell me what you see:

Not quite so easy is it?

It could be a “table with 3 legs”, or “a 3-legged table with a square top”, or “a flat rectangular piece of wood with uprights on all but one corner”, and so the list goes on.

But which of these descriptions is correct? We just don’t have a word that fully describes this particular object.

It’s no wonder we are all having so much trouble talking to each other about “God”

The right and wrong that is not

“There are no should’s and shouldn’ts, no right and wrong”

When I first read this idea in “Conversations with God” I couldn’t decide if the author was actually mad, just having a good joke, or if almost the entire view of God and Man I had inherited from christianity was completely and utterly wrong.

If this is true, that there are “no should’s and shouldn’ts, no right and wrong”, then the implications for how christianity is to be viewed are huge … just huge.

If there is no right and wrong then there is no sin; We cannot do anything wrong and therefore have no need of forgiveness or atonement. No sin means there is no seperation between us and God, and the work of Jesus on the cross becomes meaningless (at least in the “normal” christian understanding). No payment for our sins was required!

If there is no right and wrong then there is no notion of obedience to God, no notion that we should seek or even strive to do God’s will. 

If there is no right and wrong then we are neither born sinful nor become sinful, nor can ever be anything other than just as God has intended for us to be.

If there is no right and wrong then God does not “command” us to do anything, for to Him everything we do is within the bounds of natural law, and thus acceptable to Him. Indeed we cannot “not do” His will, any more than an apple can fall upwards.

If there is no right and wrong, God will never reward or punish any of us, no heaven and no hell, because we have done no right or wrong. There is no basis upon which we may be judged.

If there is no right and wrong, the entire message of the Bible is wrong, as it speaks of this distinction on almost every page.

For me, this is the crunch point where the roads diverge between the christian model of God and Man, and the “Conversations with God” model of God and Man. There is simply no way these two models can be harmonised – it’s one or the other.

The simple math of One-ness: 1+1=1

To help out, a few days ago I picked up the young 7 year-old daughter of a friend from school – a Catholic school. We went and had afternoon tea together and she chatted away to me about her day, this teacher who was a “growly”, another who was really nice but sometimes got angry with the boys, and how they all got dressed up at lunchtime for the annual school disco and she got a cut of hot chocolate.

She then went on to tell me about how they learn about “God and Jesus”, and have prayer times together in class. When I asked her about this, she said “Oh yes, we pray together before lunch, and if we do good prayers we get to go early.”

Whaaaaaat?

What the hell is a “good prayer?”

This child is only 7 and already the christian church is filling her head with the nonsense of the christian religion:  that we are somehow separated from God (because of our sin of course – especially all the sins a 7 year girl has committed! duh) and so we pray to Him (“God and Jesus”) who is “out there somewhere” (the worst dualism of the christian religion – the ultimate Two-Ness! which gives birth to the second worst dualism of the christian religion, that there are “christians” and “non-christians”. Not happy to just tear us apart from God, they are also determined to tear us apart from each other!), and that our prayers can somehow be displeasing or “not good.” (The christian God seems to be quite fussy about protocol and how things get done)

To all the 7 year old girls reading this, let me tell you something:

“God lives in you and you live in God. You are One, not only with God, but also with everyone else. You are made in God’s image – the most magnificent creature ever made! Choose to live your life as a reflection of Who You Really Are, and if you should choose something less than your highest, simply choose again. “

Like a ship without an anchor …

I have been feeling quite down (read “very annoyed” to “fucking angry”) these past few days. My last post has stirred up (yet again) deep feelings of anger that I still carry from my teenage years against the church.

Over the past few months I have ranted and raved and jumped up and down about the church and christianity, and seen the title of my blog change from “Jon’s Post Church Rant” to “Jon’s Post-Church Journey” and now “Jon’s Post Christian Journey.” All of this has been part of a drawn out grief process as I try to come to terms with the difficult fact that after 25 years in the church, I no longer wish to call myself a christian or be associated with the christian church.

That, along with all the very very new ideas and models I have now been reading in the New Age book “Conversations with God” has left me not sure where I am at all. I really do feel like a ship without an anchor. I don’t want to go back into the church, and although I can see a new way forward the transition is painful. Sure, I am enjoying my new “Conversations with God” reading, but it is still painful letting go of all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever thought was the only truth. I imagine it must be a little like a divorce. You try and try to make it work, there are the bitter arguments and then moments of deep emotion, you remember all the good times,  you reconnect and want to believe so badly that it could work again. Then the decision is finally made, the split occurs, and even though on one hand it is a relief, still you grieve and hurt and feel a sense of dreadful loss.

Yes, I am moving forward, de-converting, and seeking new answers to the nature of God and Man. But don’t think for one moment that it is easy.

Christianity, the evils of masturbation, and other such nonsense.

When I was 16 I converted to christianity with a dramatic experience of joy and freedom. I was then told that masturbation was a sin, and since back then in those days I believed that what christian leaders said was true, I spent the next 8 years (I married at 24) battling and struggling and weeping and confessing and repenting against my own sexuality. Looking back I see now what a misguided and un-necessary waste of my energy and time! I am still angry at the church for having robbed me of so much of the joy of my teenage years because of this simple but stupid lie. The christian religion has done more to twist, contort and generally ruin the beauty of human sexuality than all of “Satan’s demons” put together.