My Contention with Christianity

I like Jesus. I have been and am inspired by Jesus. As a young man when I came to my midlife crisis I was inspired by Jesus to seek a way out of my feelings of being trapped in a meaningless world. I realized I wanted what Jesus had. I did not know what that was at the time, I just knew that I wanted whatever it was that he had had.

I also knew from previous experience that I could not go to Christians for help in this regard. I say this because my experience of Christians and Christianity was perfectly reflected by Gandhi when he said, “I like your Christ but I don’t care for your Christians; for your Christians are so unlike their Christ.”

Here is the crux, Christians don’t follow Jesus’ way, truth or life, they follow the apostles, particularly Paul. In the bible Paul admits that when he started out his mission was to turn people away from Jesus’ way and, as he puts it, bring that back to sound doctrine.

I sought to find what Jesus found and found it. I did not follow the Christian way; I pretty much followed Jesus’ way. When I went to share this with the Christians all I got was resistance and rejection. As I looked into why Christians resisted my way (and Jesus’ way) I found several particular points that Christianity teaches AGAINST Jesus’ way.

First, Jesus did not think of himself as a sinner and taught that neither should we (Matt 5:48, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”) Being perfect means to be whole and complete, lacking nothing, without flaw. Perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If we actually try to do what the bible tells us then we will NOT take of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; in other words, we will not think we know what is good and what is evil, what is righteous and what is sinful. Or, to put it as Jesus did, we would be innocent as children to enter the kingdom of heaven. I also feel he was saying the same thing when he said, “Great is the God that reveals the truth unto babes but hides it from the wise and learned one (Mt 11:25).” The learned ones are those who think they know what is righteous and what is sinful.

The one who called himself the Apostle Paul taught that “all have sinned.” Christians who follow Paul’s faithless doctrine think that no one can perfect as Jesus was perfect. This is NOT true. Paul’s statement is obviously false (to me) for if ALL have sinned then that all must include Jesus. Yet most, if not all Christians than confess that Jesus was without sin. Therefore that proves that ALL have not sinned. But because Christians have been taught to treasure scriptures as inerrant they get trapped in a bind when shown that this is not true, so they cannot talk about it further.

Jesus started his ministry by telling people to “repent” or completely change their ways of thinking. It is in our ways of thinking that effects the quality of our life experience. If we think like Jesus thought and how he suggested we think than we can experience that Kingdom of Heaven that is AT HAND, here, now, today.

I will try to point out more examples of the differences between Jesus' way and the apostles way (Christian way) in the future.

Unholy Religion

From a web page titled “All Have Sinned” (http://www.santacruzbible.org/findingGod/allHaveSinned.php)

Man is SINFUL and SEPARATED from God, so we cannot know Him personally or experience His love

Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Romans 6:23 "The wages of sin is death" [spiritual separation from God].

Romans 8:6-8 "The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

A great gulf separates man from God. Man is continually trying to reach God and establish a personal relationship with Him through human efforts, such as living a good life, philosophy, attending church or religion. But he inevitably fails.

I find this as a sick attitude or should I say, following a sick doctrine from a sick individual. The apostle Paul who wrote the above mentioned doctrine admitted that he did not get it (Philippians 3:12) so he was what Jesus called the “blind leading the blind” who “neither enters the kingdom of heaven nor allows others to”. (Matthew 15:14, 23:13)

From a more intelligent perspective, to tell people that they are ‘fallen’ or separate from God or failures or sinners or anything like that is to destroy any faith they might find in themselves to be good and healthy beings.

This doctrine is “of the sick, by the sick, for the sick” and adds nothing to humanity. It does not come from a place of love (God), but instead comes from a place of fear (Satan) and judgment.

This is NOT Jesus’ teachings but the teachings of one who used to identify with those that diabolically opposed Jesus in his time (the Pharisees). Pharisees like Saul of Tarsus (the one called the apostle Paul) wanted to rout out any who would actually follow Jesus’ suggestion and came instead to bring them back to “sound doctrine”. But Paul’s doctrine is not sound or health, at least not today by today’s standards. It might have been better for people then what they had back in his day, but today only the sickest would consider it healthy doctrine.

And yet, it is taught here in an educated society as ‘sound doctrine’. I find that this is possible only because we have a taboo about questioning people’s “faith”, even if that is not faith but faithlessness. The only reason somebody would believe Paul’s faithless doctrine is because they DO NOT have faith in Jesus’ more faithful doctrine or ways of thinking. Where Jesus advocated that people “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), which means they NOT think of themselves as sinners, Paul encourages people to think of themselves as sinner. These are diabolically opposed positions and any church that follows Paul’s way is following the way of the antichrist, or what we call today Christ-anti; Christianity.

To the Christian mind this is ridiculous because they have been programmed all their lives to see themselves and everybody as sinners. But to a healthy mind this is obvious.

Of course, Jesus came to save the sinners, for they were the ones who are still gullible enough to believe they are sinners. Those of us who are righteous do not need to be saved, for we can see that we were never imperiled.

Atheists

I find that atheist tend to “throw the baby out with the bath water” in that they reject the god concept while missing the underlining REASON for creating the concept of god. The etymology of the title “Holy Bible” shows that it means Health Book; meaning that it was a primitive attempt by primitive people to share what they had learned that was healthy for the mind, body and society. Atheists tend to miss this all together.

But one of the unhealthy aspects of religion is the belief in a personal creator god that rules the universe, for this belief in that leads to wars, torture, murder, terrorism and all kinds of suffering in the person, in society and for the planet itself.

So I feel that the idea is to get people to focus on a healthy DISCUSSION of OUR ways of thinking and our lifestyle choices and away from the superstition of theism.

Unfortunately, theists do not seem healthy enough to look at deep issues like this, so how do we get their attention, or how do we circumvent their unhealthy efforts to reach the youth of the world or those who would be open to it?

I want to raise the level of debate in the world but I am not sure how to do that, short of writing a book about it and going on the speaking trail.

Fear of Self

Today I am struck by how people are so afraid of themselves. Everywhere I go I see people afraid. At first they seem afraid of me if they know anything about me, and sometimes even if they do not know anything about me.

I see this as a “problem” within society but here in lies the rub; maybe this ‘problem’ is only in MY mind. When I speak about this ‘problem’ with other people they only run from the discussion, so I speak about it more saying that people’s running from discussions is a symptom of the ‘problem’. The more I speak about it the more people seem to be afraid of me.

On the other hand, I recognize that I have had this same ‘problem’ myself and I found a solution to that problem: meditation or practicing relaxing around words, thoughts and ideas. I have found that what I make important I create tension around, so to relax I let go of making anything important. In order to share my insights with people I have to make them important, which creates tension or fear.

This is all a vicious cycle or a Catch-22 type situation.

I suppose that I just have to play with the dilemma; talk about it and then let it go.