Just For The Gehenna of it!

I have been on a journey the last two years and evaluating my personal core beliefs and asking God to filter out what is really not of Him. In doing this, I am trusting that He is faithful and quite capable of keeping me where He wants me to be as I am HIS. With that in mind, those things that I absorbed while sitting in the( institutional church pews for 35+ years )and never questioned became fair game for questioning without fear, blame , guilt, or shame. After all, if it is really taboo or dangerous to challenge the christian group think and it does not stand up to the scrutiny, then that sacred cow needed to be tipped over anyway. Think of it this way. How small would our God really be if we came to Him questioning the "status Quo" and He became easily offended or angry? Believe me, many have reduced Him to that level (and we all do), because they do not have a clear picture of who God really is. And how could they? The institutional church has reduced God's relationship to man by a combination of right decisions, choices and outward behaviours or characteristics that help identify and measure their personal relationship with HIM> Even coming to a point of knowing this the aforementioned, I still invision traces of baggage and cultural group think that limits me. I know this because of the trained responses that I have towards different people, situations, and conversations. One of those trained responses is dismisal...(some of you may even be doing it now) In dismissing a thought or conversation I make the other person (less than) in my mind, while making myself (more than) in the interaction. Sometimes we do it outwardly sometimes inwardly. As time passes, what a man thinks in his heart will be shown outwardly, so it can never be hidden for long. Another way to dismiss is to ignore or have no interaction at all thus avoiding potential conflict. This one is easy to do as it requires no interaction and allows the other person to suffer in silence. This one is proactively bad and malicious if the other person really desires to be heard. It is one of the strongest forms of invalidating a person.

A while back I posted an article that referenced christian double talk I have been reflecting in my business and personal life, how that has affected my relatiobnships with people. Here is the link to the short list if you missed it..... http://urstation.net/double_talk.html

I believe that Jesus was very concerned about relationships. That is why He really came to die, so that we could have it more fully with HIM and be able to love our neighbor as ourself. You cannot love someone as He intended if you have a skewed view of how He relates to you personally. You will treat others at best the same way you see God treating people. If you see a God that is disapointed, judgemental, angry or whatever else?? that will give you permission to do the same. Do we really have a God that says "Do as I say, but not as I do?" We do in many cases see it this way because we read the OT with a distorted lense of God destroying entire cultures steeped in a paticular pagan practice.....so we do the same. We actually do it for Him in most cases, the crusades, witch and heretic burnings, christian movements against ....whatever cause, like abortion, homosexuality, or any other christian heritage atack that comes down the pipeline etc...Only now the group, (under subtle manipulation by the top X-ian leaders of the country) take an offensive stance under the disguise of playing defense, pushing what amounts to pagan practices that have been adapted to the christian culture all the way back to Greco Roman times. For more information on this you can see a good book on tracing these pagan practices at http://www.paganchristianity.org/

This book was an eye opener for sure and I highly recomend it. How could anyone continue in a practice or tradition knowing it has its roots or foundation in paganism? It is like our modern day Christmas or Easter...Christians named it and claimed it as their own, and if you tell a lie long enough it eventually sticks.. I still celebrate both by the way so please do not put me in a box of any kind and label it as most christians do...We tend to label what we do not understand completely. like gnostic, humanistic,universalist, calvanist, etc... I know I still tend to do the same at times. Only now I reference it only to those who desire it to be their label of choice for identity and explanation of where they are coming from. That is one of the reasons I no longer identify with the christian label. I do this as I see that Jesus never came to set up the religion of christianity. That label was used as a deragatiory term in it's beginnings. Really it should be offensive to be called one today and should be placed in an inflamatory category like those names given to blacks, hispanic or asian people. I know that many will claim that it is a relationship not a religion, but you really cannot claim it if you do the research. Here is how to start a religion link. http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Start_a_Religion I know this is being a little sarcastic, but life is more than just chewing gravel for fun and I am sure it steps on some toes, but the shoe fits pretty well in places and I think I have lived within a religion long enough to identify the difference of my relationship against the religion of the institutional church mindset.

My current point? Going back to the old mindset I stated above ,I was thinking about how all this influenced the relationships around me and what the old christian mindset does in a subconscience way. We see our self as evil but saved, and the rest of the unbelieving world as more evil and doomed to an endless torture under the loving eyes of a merciful God. Scripture says, "His mercy endures forever." "His love is never ending." So what happens at the subconscience level when we believe that with "caveats or limitations?" We discipline ourselves to make it fit within the limitations of what we know and believe and rationalize the difference, ultimately showing through in our behaviour and thoughts. We can even do this with contradicting scripture with additional scriptures. That in itself is a flaw if we use the same translations that were put together with man's agenda in mind. This is traced all the way back to the councils that voted in the books of the bible and what early believers regarded as important reading ,vs. what the church leaders wanted. Makes you wonder if they would have done a better job if gallop was around back then? You could say that God weighed in on the split decisions to give one side the majority with His divine influence making the outcome what it is today. I would have to say that if you are one of those who have put God in that box of limited understanding then you might as well take the outcome of the ROE V. WADE vote to be of the same box of God's design. Does not "all things work together for good?"

You can take that thought a step further and say that the traditional christian teaching of hell actually supports abortion at the highest level. After all, if millions and the majority are ultimately bound for eternal torment as the IC (institutional church) teaches then abortion is doing them a huge favor and saving them. And further more when we read stories of mothers killing their children before the traditional age of accountability, the church would secretly rejoice while mourning the loss in an oxy-moron of confusion. It is never an outward expression, but it is an inward conflict nonetheless if they are truthful to their hearts. But most will be satisfied with lying to their feelings towards it as they have the learned response of suppressing and moving on in their race to the end of life. Of course there are many a sweet christian that never allows their mind to go down that path of questioning because of the told "dangers" of doing so.



Then we come to the blame, guilt, and shame message that the gospel has turned into today. Who is at fault, how to fix it and the consequences for not doing so. now we have turned our self into human doings instead of human beings. We have misread Paul's message of the race, and deny ourself until the finish line. Hoping for that day when we can finally....(INSERT FAVORITE HEAVENLY HOPE HERE). What a bunch of crap! I know people who are just waiting patiently for the end of days to come and have no relationship or impact with anyone. Scripture says the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND! That means live , question, interact, dare to fail, act as if salvation is not something you did and that it was a done deal so you can move on! If Christ was slain before the foundations of the world, then it was His plan to do so and His plan for us to sin and miss the mark or ERR as scripture says. Do you think God condemns those He planned to ERR? FOOD FOR THOUGHT. Christian culture takes the pre-destined stance. I do too but in a different way. I see Him as ultimately reconciling everything and everyone to Himself as He is in everything and nothing exists without Him. What could give God more glory than to save the unsavable?(from a human perspective) Here is another food for thought: Adam sin condemns millions upon millions and Christ work only saves some? Do you see something wrong with this picture? Our traditions created a select elect and the roadmap to get into the club??? When did wrong choice and Adam become more powerful than what Christ set out to do? Scripture says, "He wills that all men be saved" Now we have made our will more capable than God's will...l.

This thinking was not even mainstream in the early church. Only one school even taught this and they are the forefathers of the Catholic church, which became the pre-dominent religion throughout the entire dark ages? And we have since embraced it...

I have spent the last two years digging into church history and what they believed and understood, scripture current and past and what has been changed. There is enough evidence to suggest that we have lived blindly, hurt others in the process, and never realized the relationship that our Creator intended to have with Him. I can see Him saying that you got ME all wrong and you make the next generation worse in their behaviour and understanding of me. And the worst part is you worry about it in the process, making my life through you of no effect and a confusion to those around you. I see Him saying to me...

Let him who has ears, to hear and

Be still and know that I am God.



I understand that this could be ignored or wrongly recieved or dismissed as I explained above and I have no idea what prompted me to even type all this out. Even negative feedback is ok as it helps me understand where another is coming from in their beliefs. This is where I am today.

I will put all that on God's shoulders and there really is no point -except to say that God is showing me new things, some that can be expressed and some that really cannot. Rest assured I did not come up with this stuff on my own or without influence. I will post it on my blog and my wisefire where I am documenting my research and conclusions to it. (I have to catch up there) http://wisefire.ning.com/profile/Patrick as I am way behind in posting things.

My blog I will keep private for now, and allow the "select elect"(pun intended) to view, as that will be more personal and intimate in nature. And I believe that type of honesty is based on trust that has been established for me at a spiritual level. Honestly, most of you would not miss much anyhow and what I wrote above is already (TIM) To information much. (ROR) In Japanese that means, "Raugh out Roud"

Patrick