175 How Acceptable Is Workaholism?

Worshiping the Works of our Hands: Defining Ourselves by Numbers

I’ve said before that if time is money, then most people I know are dead poor.
A lot of them don’t have time for God, their wives, their children, much less their friends because the one thing they love above them all is their work.
They say they do their work “with love,” but in reality, it is just that they love their work more than anything else.
If they would love God, their families and friends more, believe me, they would make time for them, because we always manage to find time for whatever we deem most important.
But since our work is what defines us, and “us” is what we love most, no matter how Christian we claim and pretend to be, the thing we love second best – right after “us” – is our work.
Or work is what makes us proud of us, recognized and established members of society (aka “the System”) and day by day, stone by stone, through our work, we build an image of ourselves that we can proudly fall down before and worship: a god we don’t have to be ashamed of, because we know where it’s coming from: we have erected it with our own blood, sweat and tears.

No wonder the one thing this type of people hate most is a bunch of hippies who come along to tell them that Jesus said that you cannot serve God and Mammon, “Look at the lilies of the field, and the birds, etc…” “Grrrr!!! Enough of that!!! Shut up already, or I’ll kill you!!!”

Of course, we do it, because we want to look “responsible.”
“It’s your duty as head of a family, to make sure that you provide for your family!”
Sure, but that’s the same gospel the heathen preach, Jesus said.
Anyone can do that!
You don’t have to call yourself a Christian in order to do that!
But, of course, you want to get the best of both worlds, the here and now, the worship of the flesh and ego, and a big fat crown and reward in Heaven for everyone to see just what a good, responsible worker you were…

After all, “What if everybody would preach the Gospel?” – “We can’t all live like you!” “We can’t all forsake all and go into the world and follow Jesus…” “Our whole beautiful System would collapse!” – “Everybody would laugh at us! – Especially the Devil!”

Well, I don’t think so. In fact, I think there’s nothing that Satan could possibly be more scared of than just 5 people on this globe pausing from their money-raking frenzy long enough to find out what God earnestly would want them to do instead.
As long as everyone is feverishly puffing away the one thing they’ve been given in this life – their time – in the ceaseless pursuit of little colored papers, he doesn’t have the faintest worry.
After all, as long as we do that, it’s certainly not his Enemy we’re worshiping, much less serving. In fact, chances are, we might not even really know Him. And with a little bit of bad luck, we might even hear Him tell us just that, some day.

174 Spirituality Pushers

What if Jesus' intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen?

(Intro: Okay, so I tried. And managed for nearly a week… But I couldn’t.
You can tell I was still trying to keep up the politically correct style all the way through the first two paragraphs of the following post, but… guess I just don’t have it in me…

Now I know what some of those stars must feel like when they announce their umpteenth retirement from the public eye, only to celebrate a glorious comeback little later…
Well, at least I got a half-way politically correct blog out of it, that folks will be referred to from my website without my having to worry about their getting the shock of their lives.
This blog will remain my dirty little secret between me and the “insiders” from now on…

Long live political correctness and conformity! — Perhaps some other time.)

One of the factors that causes an increasing amount of people to shun organized religion of all shapes and sizes is the same reason that causes some people to run away from relationships: Certain kinds of people (and religiously organized folks have a strong tendency to fall into that category) seem to be driven by an incessant urge to improve their fellow humans. No matter how happy you may be in your present situation, if your life-style differs too strongly from theirs, they simply can’t live with it, but will endlessly persuade you to join them in the way they’re doing things.

Their tolerance level towards people who do things differently than they is very low.

While on one hand their strong conviction about their beliefs and methods is commendable, on the other one would wish for the moment that it might dawn on them that some people might actually be called to do things differently.

It has been my observation that God is into awesome variety. – A variety that would probably strike some people as outrageous. Yet, as Christians, it’s something we need to learn, if we plan to follow the Man Who didn’t care what the established members of society said or thought about Him when He associated with fallen women, the outcasts of society and constantly availed Himself of methods that had never ever been heard of before.

Most of us act as if Jesus, when He said, “I will build My church (ecclesia),” was talking about a box, and everyone who belonged in that box was supposed to act and look exactly the same. Probably we do that because of the “boxiness” of our own finite minds. But let’s expand our horizons a little bit: What if He wasn’t talking about identical cubicles when He said, “In My Father’s House there are many mansions”?

What if Jesus’ intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen? What if He would much rather have us delight in those green pastures beside the still waters where He would lead us, instead of amassed together in a squashy fold, just waiting to be stripped of our wool?

We all look down upon – and rightly so, perhaps – drug dealers, who sell their drugs to people, even children, that get them addicted and dependent on their merchandise.

But isn’t that in some ways exactly what a lot of religious people do who get people dependent on their system?

Instead of just being concerned about their flocks’ welfare and proving this by equipping them with the right tools and weapons that will make them fit for the battle of life, they purposely seem to keep them as weak as possible and dependent on their system, eternally insecure even about basic faith issues such as salvation, which they might easily lose anytime they might stay away from their congregation for too long, or commit comparable atrocious crimes…

Some people’s concept of love seems to be: “To love you love you means to try to make you just like me.”

But perhaps it’s supposed to be a lot more the way God – the One Who is Love, after all – did it: show that He accepted and loved us by having His Own Son become One of us. The sheer act of such love made us all – those of us who are into love at all, that is – flip so completely over Him, that we don’t have to be persuaded to become like Him. We gladly will strive to do all we can to achieve that, anyway. No persuasion needed. No constant, “Hey, Why don’t you do it this here way, the way we do it?” or “You really should join our church and become more like us!”

If whatever you do is the Real Thing, people will automatically copy you, you won’t even have to tell them much.

Otherwise it’s like the arrogant attitude of some high ranking US Navy Officer’s article I read on the Homepage of the Council on Foreign Relations about two years before the Iraq war began, way before the Bush administration ever invented the magic phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that got the rest of the Western World into the “Kill Saddam” frenzy.

The CFR members explained how it was the enlightened world’s duty to bring the “gap nations” such a Iraq “in” to the great big corporate family of Coca Cola and McDonalds’ fast food consuming better part of the World. Or the way Michael Moore put it in “Stupid White Men:” “We need to usher them into the New World Order” gently.

Well, “gently” remaining entirely a matter of definition, of course… (Since reducing a country’s population by 1.5 million might easily be questioned as, “Couldn’t we have done it a little more gently???”). But the gist of the attitude of arrogance is the same.

We think we made the Iraqis infinitely happier with our gifts of radio-active shrapnel and raping their daughters, but how do they see it?

Well, and that’s probably the same way a lot of people feel about organized religion… Especially since the vast majority of that organized “opium of the people” couldn’t jump on the Muslim killing band wagon fast enough. After all, the faster we get rid of those who are different, the quicker the job will be done to make everyone exactly like ourselves, and isn’t that the goal?

We’ve seen it before: with the American Natives, or virtually any distinct ethnic group that Christianity has sent their missionaries out to, often not so much to show them the love of Christ, but to assimilate and absorb them into our belief system at gun point.

“Well, if we hadn’t done it, they would have eaten us!” is the response of some.

True. We wouldn’t have wanted to wind up like martyrs, like Jesus, His apostles and the Early Church for 3 centuries before we moved from the arenas into the grandstands…

We wanted to follow Him our own way. After all, haven’t we always known better than Him?

173 What If II (Or: Shut Up Already!)

I know, the politically correct thing in more than one aspect, would be to shut up. And I could imagine that some of my brethren are praying that I would.
And I have a feeling that their prayers may soon be answered, and I’m just about through with what I’ve got to say. But before I do, just a few more thoughts I’d like to throw out there:

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that God is Love, and that He loves each one of His children beyond measure. But I also know, that part of that love includes a measure of His love that we do not always appreciate: the measure of correction. “For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Heb.12:6).
And judgment begins with the house of God.

All I’m saying (once again) is, “What if?” – What if – in spite of His never-ending mercy upon all of us (and He knows that I need it more desperately than anyone), there is just too much wrong about the way we do things, than He could allow us to get away with?

As loving and as merciful as He is, what if we, as Christians and thus His self-declared representatives, are making ourselves guilty of sins and crimes that would be a lack of love and justice on His part – toward the rest of the world, if He wouldn’t do anything about it?

What if we’re not really smarter at all than Adam and Eve? Let’s recall: What was their sin? The sin that got us all into this mess and got us the Devil as temporary ruler, master and “god of this world,” was that they believed a lie!
What if we haven’t learned anything from that incident, and haven’t gotten any smarter since?

What if we’re still allowing the serpent to tell us one fairy-tale after another, and we all go, “Yeah, let’s do that!” like they did back then?

I’m thinking of one famous fairy-tale in particular, of 19 bearded “bad guys” with carpet-knives defying the laws of physics and bringing down 3 buildings with 2 planes at free-fall speed, allegedly crashing into the Pentagon with another passenger plane, leaving a hole scarcely big enough for a glider to have hit it, much less any evidence or even so much as an actual photo of the aircraft…
A fairy-tale that has recently been repeated by every journalist with a job around the globe in their wrap-up of the first decade of the millennium and has sent tens of thousands of “Christian” troops off to foreign lands to kill millions, supported by the prayers of the brethren back home.

What if our God just so happens to love the Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Palestinians, too, that have been killed on our behalf – and what if our reasons for killing them weren’t nearly as noble as we were told?
What if God is not just going to stand by and ignore our slaughter of the innocents, and say, “Tsk, tsk, how clumsy, My dears! Now take better care next time, okay?”

What if our God is slowly becoming sick and tired of being made the laughing stock of the rest of the world on our behalf, and there is really some actual modern relevance to that Scripture, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom.2:24)?

What if we really cannot serve God and Mammon as Jesus said?

What if all those Scriptures we don’t like are just as valid as the ones we always pick and constantly repeat because we like the way their sound tickles our ears?

What if all those dreadful Endtime scenarios of the Book of Revelation are going to be a well-deserved reality, not only for unbelievers, but – let’s just assume for a moment those Scriptures really mean what they say, the Antichrist is going to wage war on the saints – and obviously not talking about the Jews? What if we’re going to actually reap what we have sown, and the Antichrist is going to be our just dessert, for believing his father’s lies, just as it has been since the beginning?

What if we’re not anywhere as good as we think we are, just because we call ourselves Christians?

I know, God loves us, anyway, and He’ll forgive. But it also says that He chastens those He loves, and that those who knew His will and did it not were going to be beaten with more stripes than those who knew it not.
What if God actually means what He says? – Contrary to the dude whose lies we constantly swallow, which he tells only in order to get us into trouble with God?
What if God did actually expect us to use the brains He gave us?

I’m not trying to pretend to be some kind of teacher here. I’m just a nobody asking a couple of uncomfortable questions, because what I read in the Bible and what I see the supposed followers of that Book actually do does not jibe, and it actually makes me feel very uncomfortable…

What if it’s really true that as wonderfully sweet, and loving as Jesus is, there are still those types of Christians around that make Him so sick at His stomach that He fills like vomiting them out (see Rev.3:16)?
What if the Bible is actually right, and the world is not getting any better, but actually worse, including the general quality of Christians and believers?

What if the lies the Devil told in the beginning were actually fairly decent, artistic concoctions of half-truths, compared to the God-forsaken crap we swallow by the truck-loads nowadays?

Maybe we’re not nearly as ingenious as we think just because we know how to handle a remote control or play computer games, or kill people with super-sophisticated weapons…

What if, in reality – contrary to all that we honestly believe and think – we’ve become more stupid than ever?

I know that’s not exactly positive thinking here. I know I’ll never win the title, “The world’s greatest optimist.” But from where I stand, I see tiny shrinking islands of honesty floating on a vast, growing sea of lies, so my optimism is exclusively dedicated to my Savior and Maker, and not so much the bulk of my fellow humans, from whence mine help surely not cometh…

So, it’s probably true: the best thing in the world I can do is to finally shut up. I just hope and pray that you guys are right, and God is either totally tripping on acid, or blind and not anywhere near as pissed off about what He’s seeing as some of your fellow humans are…
Because if He is, and He already said that Sodom and Gomorrah were going to look better on J-Day than Jerusalem, I don’t want to know the fate of some of our present day Sodoms and Gomorrahs… If God is real at all, folks, He certainly couldn’t be the kind of a pussy some of us seem to want to make Him, and I’m afraid sooner or later He’s going to have to prove that to the world.

So, sorry, for having rocked your boat this one more time. I don’t know what else there is to say that could possibly get me into more trouble. I just hope you’re all right and I’m wrong, and we can all blissfully sleep on until our magic prince will awaken us in paradise. All I was saying is, “What if” not?

McDozer’s gone fishing and

rolling a new leaf over at

http://newleafover.blogspot.com/

172 The Gospel of Mammon

Jesus didn’t have to be a loser. He could have been a millionaire. If he would have just had enough sense, entrepreneurship, businessmanship, and a microscopical fraction of the greed that drives probably 99.9% percent of His professing modern followers, and would have charged a dime for each fish sandwich He so miraculously manufactured and doled out by the thousands, or if He would have had the brains to charge just a tiny percentage of the gain from the sales of the fishes He helped others to catch, or a small fee for His countless healing miracles.

But the Dude just didn’t have it in Him.

You wouldn’t call it ‘dumb,’ perhaps just a little ignorant.

After all, His kind – way back 2000 years ago hadn’t evolved yet into the highly sophisticated specimen that know how to make a buck out of anything – even diminishing the population, instead of being so foolish as to heal anyone and thus slow down the process of eliminating one more superfluous eater and breather…

Talking about the Evolution of Christendom: Jesus didn’t have a clue about the fact that you need a car you paid at least a five digit amount in dollars, Euros or Swiss Francs for, in order to be a half-way decent “sample” of His religion, or in order to be able to just stand to live with yourself, for that matter.

His policy of “freely ye have received, also freely give” was typically blue-eyed (and sickeningly idealistic) for His slightly post-Neanderthal stage in the Evolution of mankind.
He may have gotten the stone of Christianity rolling, but certainly His 21st century followers are smarter than to avail themselves of any of His suicidal tactics that just showed you were that sort of loser-streak lands you: up on a hill of shame with the outcasts and the doom of financial and social bankruptcy.

In fact, it’s petty good He’s not around anymore, since His antics of the sort like kicking out the decent folks with brains trying to properly market their religion from the temple would not really get us very far with the spreading of our type of gospel, in the 21st century.

Let’s face it: Jesus didn’t know anything about PR, and when it comes down to market assessment, His credentials equal near zero. I mean, the guy hung out with losers, when everybody knows that the rich are the most Gospel-neglected stratum of society. Well, they were, up until about 4 decades ago, when we stopped preaching to the poor and instead made it our vocation to bend over backwards to shove the gospel of prosperity for the umpteenth time down the throats of those who are perhaps not wildly willing, but at least able to pay for it what we demand in order to finance our 21st century Christian life-style.

Why preach to millions of strangers and foreigners who really need Jesus, when you can just drone on and on to the same old neighborhood forever that you can be sure have what you need, right?

The parable of the lost sheep in the 21st century sounds a little bit like this:

Forget about the 99 who don’t have any money anyway and look for the one super rich dude who can really help you spread our gospel the proper way: with the proper kind of cars, the proper kind of laptops and all the ado that goes with preaching the gospel of our times, the gospel of the only true god the majority of Westerners ever served.

No wonder God is a jealous God. Because pretty much all His chicks are totally gaga about this other dude: the guy with the flashy Rolex, the perfect teeth and sparkling red Porsche, the sole and one true conqueror of all the hearts of what has the audacity to call itself Christendom far and wide: all hail, glory, honor and praise to our conquering hero, our one true lord and most sovereign ruler, Mammon!

How I can tell that that’s your dude? Very simply, because Jesus said, “Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh,” and since just about everything in your life seems to be revolving around little colored papers with numbers on’em, and the acquisition of those little colored papers with numbers on’em, and all that you would and could do if only you had more of those little colored papers with numbers on’em, why, then you’d finally have the time to tell anybody about Jesus…

Maybe I’m exaggerating. But it should cause you to pause long enough to think if there’s even the remote possibility that that’s the impression one of your fellow humans gets of you from hearing you talk.
It’s not that I mind you pursuing your passion. I used to be on the same trip for decades and wonder, whenever I met anyone, “How can this person be of service to me? How can they help me advance and further our ‘good cause’?” – imagining plush villas and mansions with swimming pools we would all live happily ever after in until Jesus comes.

It’s just that I do mind your treating me as less than human for having betrayed our former common goals, and for simply having stopped drooling at the sound of the word “Money!”
Hey, I can live with it, if that’s your big kick. The big question is, can you live with it, that it’s not mine?

I know I’m an embarrassment to you for driving onto your driveway in a 20 year old car that I scarcely had to eke out a four digit amount for, and if there’s one thing in the world you don’t understand it’s how on earth I can have the audacity to even survive in a crummy little house like ours.
And what weirds you out the most is: how come we actually have friends that like to come over and be with us in that crummy little house?

Well, the secret is that same old five-letter name that you seem to have so grossly distorted in your mind: Jesus.

I mean, the real Jesus, not the, “C’mon and I’ll show you how to get rich quick” Jesus made in Hollywood.

The One Who didn’t charge anyone for His sermons, His healings, not even His fish sandwiches.
The One who didn’t care about prestige or what the heck the rich, the fat and the pompous said.
The One Who was so real, so raw, so naked, that He didn’t even mind being nailed to a cross for you, full-well knowing that You’d screw the other guy a million times behind His back.
The One Who was not ashamed of calling the poor, the outcasts, the little ones, the weirdos and losers His friends, because He couldn’t have cared less about what the fancy hypocrites thought of Him…
The One Who can’t wait for you to come back to your senses and love Him and see Him for Who He really is and has always been.
The One Who said, “In as much as you have done it unto the least (not the richest, fanciest, shiniest and most prestigious) of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” And of Whom it is written that He is not a respecter of persons.
When He looks at you, He looks at who you really are, and not that hollow shell you’re artificially trying to beef up like a Christmas tree.

May God have mercy and call us all back to the reality of Who He really is!

171 In the Beginning, the Word. — In the End???

According to this article from England, alas, it is looking bleak for the future of the English language, or perhaps, language per se…

If “in the beginning was the Word (Logos),” in other words, as the German Creation Scientist Werner Gitt put it, “…Information,” then it looks as if once again, the theory of Evolution is turning out to be the biggest pile of goose dump ever sold to humanity as fact, since what is actually happening is evidently the opposite : the decline of communication and the very stuff that was necessary to get the ball of Creation rolling: information.

It’s not that there isn’t any exchange of words happening, and to some degree, what one might still call information of sorts, it’s just that the actual amount of valid information in what’s being said is rapidly racing toward the zero mark, and the quality, as we have observed with so many other things in our times, such as even our fruits and vegetables, and even the dirt in which they’re grown, is decreasing with shocking speed.

No wonder scientists think they’re gods. Compared to the average IQ of the media-fabricated zombies all around them, it must be frighteningly easy to fall for the temptation of deeming oneself omniscient…

I’m not denying that there are folks who don’t follow the trend and decline, but, ladies and gentlemen, tell me, please, what’s it all worth if you’re as smart as Einstein, but the System has it all rigged up to create blank minds in the future citizens of this globe?

And while we’re all so infatuated with our own cleverness, we idly stand by as our kids are being turned into intellectual zeros…

After all, we kid ourselves, “Evolution’s going to take care of it!” It’s the undefeatable law of, “We’re all going to get smarter, no matter what, because we’re all evolving, see?” (I wish Ricky Gervais would have the guts and brains to take the piss out of his fellow evolutionists someday, the way he does with creationists and believers of any type – it would sound magnificent to hear him say a phrase like that last one before the parenthesis…)

I guess the Devil really must hate the concept of useful information being transferred from one place (like a brain) to another, and so his goal must be the total stupification of mankind. I know I already addressed that topic, but it never struck me like that:

Perhaps the end of the world will look like this: billions of morons staring skywards, unable to utter anything remotely more sensible than “Awwwwwwww….” as the last few remaining folks still capable of articulating entire phrases escape from this world in the only direction left to go…

It’s not that some people aren’t diabolically clever. It’s just that their diabolical cleverness isn’t doing anybody any good. The fruits of it are becoming plain: absolute, total, terrifying, devastating and global stupidity.

I know that may sound a bit mean, but you see, I have to take advantage of the golden opportunity to spell out these words before the majority of our population are going to be left clueless as to their meaning…

I’m not saying that one has to be smart in order to be good. Not necessarily. One can be wise by being simple. But they have to be wise enough to adhere to the proper type of input. And while everybody’s feeding on input that’s supposed to make them believe that they’re smarter than anybody else who ever walked this earth, their offspring and younger peers are slowly being transformed into beings that – if the trend continues – will not be able to communicate properly with the oh-so-smart but unceasingly aging rest of us. So, something has got to be wrong about our way of thinking: that fable of the ever-mutating super-monkey.

Some say it’s all religion’s fault that folks are becoming so dumb. I agree. But it’s more likely the religion of Evolution that is causing the problem. Because even the most devout Christian has been affected to some degree by that bug of “automatic superiority” because of the underlying dogma that we’re supposedly developing into something better, higher and smarter all the time.

You’ve got to be outrageously insane to actually take notice of the opposite happening.

We’re being constantly told and drilled to believe that the exact opposite is happening of what is actually and in reality taking place, and the illusion is made perfect by ever increasing special effects in the movies, ever fancier technological gimmicks, and an ever increasing perfection of the outward shell of our System, along with the perfectly styled and surgically altered appearances of each individual.

When all the while something is rotting inside.

No wonder people are so much into horror movies these days. There’s some real bad voodoo going on, and it’s turning everything into ever more beautiful somethings on the outside, while the inside is becoming uglier by the minute, somewhat like Oscar Wilde’s character Dorian Gray.

Maybe Oscar was onto something…

170 No Sympathy for the Devil

Some – or even most people, perhaps, are having a hard time believing that the Devil could be real. They may even believe in God, or a god or some sort of divinity, but the Devil? – Naah!

With me, it’s the other way around. As far as I’m concerned, the existence of the Devil is so overwhelmingly evident in his workings in the minds of mankind and the resulting actions, I cannot help but believe in God and the biblical account of history, because it’s the only explanation of the senselessness all around us that makes sense.

In order to understand what’s going on all around us, one needs to have an understanding of how the Devil operates, and as Paul admonishes us, not be “ignorant of his devices.”

One thing we know about him is that he’s a liar, and if we don’t come to the realization that some of the things we’re being told are downright and blatant lies, nothing makes sense.

We also know that he’s the imitator of God. If God wants us to voluntarily learn to acknowledge that we depend on Him (just for trivial little things such as the air we breathe, every bite of food and sip of water, etc.), then the Devil demands that we adhere to his system of dependence on him and his cronies, which is manifested in his delightful theme of, “work, work, work, so you can pay bills, bills, bills.” (Who else but the Devil could have ever cooked up such a stinking, boring little game?)

Everything God does, the Devil tries too, except that the way he does it sucks. Which is probably precisely the reason why God will finally have to intervene after only 3 1/2 years of the Devil’s ultimate kingdom on earth in order to save His creation from total destruction. The Devil is the absolute champion when it comes to making a mess out of everything.

Accordingly, it is no wonder that the same happens visibly in areas of our daily life, such as the economy or the environment, if you take a look at the bloaks who are in charge of it: They follow in their master’s footsteps, in which lie and deceit are the primary order, and the result is the ever-present fruit of Satan’s efforts since the beginning of time: hoodlum.

You can tell I’m no big friend of the Devil, nor do I manage to eke out an awful lot of sympathy for him.

As far as I’m concerned, the sooner he gets his long-needed kick in the behind, the better off we’re all going to be.

But I’m afraid we’re going to have to wait a little longer in order to see the worst of him yet, because only then will the lesson be completed that we’re supposed to draw from this act entitled “Ye shall be as gods.”

You can never appreciate the Real Thing until you’ve had a dose of the big fake, along with the billions of little fakelets running around…

169 The God Journey

I think it’s about time for a post about the “God Journey,” in my opinion one of the hottest moves of God on earth right now.
The way we got wind of it was in such a way that you just know that it couldn’t possibly have been coincidence.
Geographically speaking, we’re pretty much situated right in the middle of the boonies. And the chances that some American speaker on spirituality should seriously arouse our interest and at the same time visit our neighborhood aren’t exactly high.

Yet about 2 years ago, some very close Christian friends of ours invited us to tug along to hear somebody named Wayne Jacobsen speak, whom we had never heard of, but who was supposed to have written a book that was going quite well.
I couldn’t go, but my better half did, and when she came back, she was pleasantly surprised about the fact that this guy (Wayne) had actually been talking about getting out of the churches.

Curious, we checked out his website, downloaded his book and you can find the download link to that book – one of the best I ever read – in the sidebar of this blog ever since.

Every now and then I check out TheGodJourney.com, a website on which Wayne Jacobsen presents regular podcasts along with his friend Brad Cummings, and I listen to some of their stuff, and every time I go, “awesome!”

Last week I listened to their podcast entitled, “It’s About Jesus” and once again, I thought “awesome!” and I felt more inspired about what I had just heard than I had been for a while, so I decided to listen to some more. In fact, I started downloading the whole caboodle of podcasts and to listen to them from the beginning.

It’s not that I was looking for any new source of spirituality of soul food, but I felt as if God was drawing me toward this.
Strangely enough, He had been doing similar things in my life previously and drawing my attention toward comparatively awkward sources of inspiration, such as the Franciscan writer Richard Rohr (Can anything good come out of the Catholic church?), or, as I mentioned recently, Malcolm Muggeridge, among others.

The neat thing is when you find truths that God has shown you confirmed by different sources: brothers and sisters around the world; and you find that He’s doing and showing the very same things in the lives of others that He’s doing in your own.
And one of the truths I find reflected in Wayne and Brad’s talks, for instance, is that it is Jesus building His church, His Ecclesia, His living body of called-out ones from among all sorts of different areas and walks of life, and not we ourselves. In other words, God’s part of the action is not only far greater than what we sometimes give Him credit for, or than what some people would grant Him the permission for, not only greater than anything we could ever possibly imagine, but it is, in fact, lo and behold, also greater than the supposedly so important part that we are doing.

And that may come as quite a shock to some of us who perceive themselves as the greater doers.

It’s an old truth that in theory I’ve grown up with: “Let go and let God;” but which has taken me decades to actually start putting into practice.

Some of the stuff they’re saying I’ve been taught for decades. But I guess it’s one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit to bring “all these things to our remembrance” even if it is via unexpected sources sometimes…

“Coincidentally,” (if there ever was such a thing), the podcast I was listening to today was all about the emotional hype that can be produced during religious happenings (in this case it was about the death of Pope John Paul II a few years ago), and how that can sometimes be a good thing in some people’s lives, but it can also be quite misleading, all of which sort of goes hand in hand with my recent lessons I learned from my brush with Mormonism…

You’ll find a lot of similarities between some of the thoughts expressed in this blog over the years, and those shared on the God Journey, like the idea of taking God out of the box we sometimes like to stick Him in: our church, our group, our self-made confines for Him and His capabilities that we make up in our own minds… As long as we think our box is IT, we actually fail to see Him, and we forget that all we really are is little diamonds of dust, and that He is the light that makes us shine.

How long has it been since you’ve seen sunshine in your brother’s eyes?

Well, I’m afraid the only way we’re going to get back that shine is by focusing on the light, not by feverishly trying to shine in our own strength.

For passing on a bit of their shine and light of the experience of what they’ve learned in their own lives and on their jorney with God, I would like to thank Wayne and Brad…

Thanks guys, for being (part of) the Real Thing!

168 Big Fakes Vs. The Real Thing

During the last few weeks I’ve been confronted extensively with the issue of Mormonism, since we’ve had a frequent visitor who, although excommunicated from the official Mormon church, still considers himself a Mormon.

It’s usually not my thing to blast any cults other than the big established ones, but all I’ve learned in the past few days about Mormonism puts established Christianity in a different light for me, as I’ve had to realize that there are apparently yet far greater evils and deceptions than the mainstream of organized religion.

Thus far I had considered Mormons to be fellow Christians with slightly different views and doctrines, but after hours of research and investigation it turns out that it’s one big fake and counterfeit concoction of true Christian beliefs, to the extent where I doubt that being a Mormon actually does not necessarily resemble a true believer at all.

It’s sad when you realize that over 2 millions brothers and sisters you thought you had don’t belong to the same family, after all, but then there’s a lot of sad things happening in the world as it is…

It’s always unbelievable to what lengths the Devil goes in order to deceive the children of men. It’s like that infamous Hitler quote that has sometimes been used in connection with Evolution: “If you are going to tell a lie, make it such a big one that people won’t dare to think you would have such a nerve…” or to that extent, but it is, after all, what the Devil is best at: telling lies and concocting illusions.

Usually I try to look at the things I have in common with believers from other denominations or groups, but in this case I’m finding out that there are opposing foundations, and that while I consider myself a definite seeker of truth, Mormonism turns out to fall into the category of big time deception.

What’s interesting is that Mormons seem to have extraordinarily well working family lives to speak in favor of their religion, while the Jesus of the Gospels prophesied that true followers of His would be “at variance” with their Family members, and that “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household,” that children would betray their parents to the authorities, and that His true Family were not necessarily His own flesh and blood relatives…

The properly functioning world of the Mormons does not coincide with the often trying life of true Christian disciples.

One might ask: Why should Christians or true believers have more troubles than those who have the god of this temporal world on their side? Well, perhaps precisely because they don’t have the blessings of that very “god” who offered Jesus all the riches and power in the world when he tempted him, but instead, have him as their enemy, just like Jesus.

Where Satan would normally seek to cause division among true believers, he simply leaves those alone that he knows secretly belong to him already.

A large part of the faith Mormons have in their religion seems to stem from the emotional, supernatural (spiritual) experiences they have during their ceremonies, such as our friend also testifies of, being certain that they could not just have been illusions.

But if one delves into the topic of mind control and has experienced how just about any well-made Hollywood movie can bring about deep emotional experiences, and then peeks into the history of Mormonism and finds the same organizations at their basis that finance the global mass deception and manipulation that simply has been going on for the past century and a half, it becomes evident that the greatest liar of all times just happens to have won a lot of recruits for his cause…

And if you can get prosperity and family peace along with it, then Mormonism seems to be just a good religion to get for 10% of your income… unless, what you’re looking for, after all, is the real thing.

Now, I’m not going to try to sell anybody any church, organization or group of people living on this earth right now as the sole, total and absolute real thing, but if you know the real Jesus from the New Testament, and you know your Bible, then you know you’ve got the Real Thing.

And I’m afraid one way of finding out what the real things is, for many people involves finding out what it ain’t, and when it comes to Mormonism, I agree with the colored lady who was asked by her preacher how in the world she thought she could tell what the “unction” was and replied, “I may not know when it am, but I sure know when it ain’t…”

The same applies to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by the way, according to whose official teachings, Jesus is merely the incarnation of the archangel Michael, and there is no life after death.

In Mormon mythology (theology would probably be the wrong term), Jesus is the brother of Lucifer, not the “Beginning of the creation of God,” much less His “only begotten Son,” nor the One by Whom all things were created.

According to Fritz Springmeier and David Icke, both (JW & LDS) were funded in their beginnings by Illuminati families, and it seems as if the intention was to artificially create counterfeit versions of Christianity in which the deity and thus divine authority of Jesus was undermined: hollow shells of some resemblance of Christian spirituality without its real power.

In one, the letter of the law is prevalent, and spiritual experience totally rejected, in the other, the “proof” of its “authenticity” is based on spiritual experiences of – such is the sad conclusion to which I’ve come personally – deceptive, demonic origin.

Without the divinity of Jesus, there is no valid blood atonement, and thus, no salvation from sin (which is the reason why multiple additional rules need to be kept in these self-made religions in order to ensure the attainment of any hopes for the afterlife).

The result is, lo, another works religion in the fashion of Cain’s example, as opposed to the gift and grace and love of God that in my opinion is the only faith worthy of passing on to anybody else: the relief of burdens, instead of yet another burden in itself.

Man-made works-religions are not a solution, but merely part of the problem; and it’s good and important to know which is which.

More video documentation on the topic

167 The Carpet Cutters that Killed Capitalism

Where would we be without the press to tell us (and remind us over and over again of) what we are to believe?

In the Spiegel article What the World Can Learn from 10 Years of Excesses three diligent journalists worked hard to save us all from the effort of using our own overcapacitated brains and wrapped up the past decade for us in a nutshell, joining many other writers from probably every other major newspaper around the world.

I suppose that in order to keep their job, a journalist in the 21st century must simply stick to the one great commandment: “Thou shalt uphold the official version of 9/11,” since that is obviously what each of those wrap-ups of the decade portray.

Only the Spiegel has given it a special little twist by saying that the carpet-cutter-wielding “radical Islamists” who allegedly pulled 9/11 also brought down Capitalism per se.

Not only that, but the great 19th century German Jewish prophet Karl Marx even prophesied their heroic deed.

I guess we’re really going to have to spank those naughty Muslim’s butts now that it’s becoming known that not only did their envoys bring down the Twin Towers, but also the sacred cow of Capitalism herself.

Other people make resolutions for the new year on December 31st, we pick a specific Bible verse as a guiding motif for the coming twelve months. Mine for 2010 will be Mark 12:2. “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”

It just thrills me, that the Creator of Heaven and earth should have given us a Promise that some day – whether near or far – we’re going to be told the truth for a change after all this never-ending hogwash from an army of fairy-tale makers.

Since I don’t believe in coincidence, I’m beginning to wonder about a deeper significance to the name “Spiegel” (=mirror) this reflector of “truth” has chosen as its trademark, and am immediately reminded of Don Quixote’s battle with the knight of mirrors, who finally brought Quixote “back to his senses” with his version of “reality,” heralding the sad ending of the story.

What’s the lesson to be learned from this? Don’t listen to the tales of the “Knight of Mirrors” if you want to live a happy life, because what he may sell you as reality may turn out to be another – howbeit extremely well written – fairytale spun on behalf of the darker powers that be.

166 Supernaturally Spiritual

“God is a Spirit,” Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well. That is something a lot of people have a problem with: spirits. Just because it isn’t visible, it must be inferior (or scary). We only allow things we can see to impress us, even if they’re totally unreal, like most of the special effects we see in the movies.

As long as it can be seen, it impresses us. Anything that’s not seen immediately receives the label “inferior,” if not “irrelevant.”

Perhaps if we exchange the word “spirit” for “supernatural,” though, we might get a little bit more attention.

Pretty much everyone is somewhat interested in the supernatural, even if they have no interest whatsoever in spirits. Spirits are stuff for stories they used to scare kids with in the olden days. Supernatural is more like “now you’re talking,” because the stuff they watch on TV deals a lot with those things.

In reality, “spiritual” and “supernatural” is one and the same thing. Everything that cannot be explained in natural, physical terms stems from a realm that is beyond our natural realm we have thus far been able to observe, which is the spirit realm, and everything supernatural stems from the spirit world – of course, both sides, good and evil.

It’s just that by avoiding the term “spirits” we can avoid the biblical and conventional aspect of the supernatural.

Just as he did with sex, astrology and a bunch of other things, the devil would like to claim the domain of the supernatural exclusively for himself, which he unfortunately manages to a large extent because of people’s (and particularly Christians’) fear of the supernatural.

C. S. Lewis wrote in his book “Miracles,” the following:

“Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see…”

That’s in essence the point I’m trying to make with my ongoing eBook project “The Deeper Meaning of Everything:” that there is something more to see in nature than meets the eye, the handwriting and footprint of the supernatural, (that which we dare not call spiritual) … of God.