Can you add to this
NEW LIST OF QUASI-RELIGIOUS TERMS WHOSE USAGE HAS RECENTLY BECOME PROBLEMATIC:
Church
Religion
Worship
Pray
Communion
Law
Circumcision
Grace
Pastor
Evangelist
Obedience
Repentance
Devil
Demon
Satan
Sanctification
Follow
Separate
“But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, what no human “mind” has ever conceived…the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
Not only had I transcended the concept or idea of exactly what I had been taught, that “God” is…(which, as a former pastor, resulted in enormous criticism…”She doesn’t even believe in God anymore!)…but I found myself also beyond the limiting condition of “thought”…of the mind, if you will…as well. And I assure you…there is a place…Beyond mind.
I can tell you from my own experience, that most will not grasp what I am saying here, and even more, will not be interested in grasping at this point, as they are totally identified and submerged in an egoic state of consciousness. NO VACANCY…is the sign hung at the door of their hearts presently. But for those that are beginning to rub the sleep from their eyes, and with each one who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness of humanity grows, and it becomes easier for others.
This is what I came to know. Not until it becomes clear to you to “let go” of trying to understand, of grasping and seeking, and instead “relax” (and I emphasize…RELAX) “back into” the very ground and effortless being that you are… will you suddenly realize…YOU ARE…what you were seeking the whole time. But not the mind-made idea who you are, the true essence and reality is what is being spoken of. After all my own grasping, reaching and seeking for decades for the very core of truth and reality, this is what suddenly and effortlessly opened-up and flowered, what Jesus and ancient sages of old pointed to…the Kingdom is Within. What I came to understand.
An understanding that has nothing to do with comprehension. A knowing that has nothing to do with knowledge. And yet admittingly and ironically, seeking has it’s place…until…it no longer does.
Everybody has “eyes to see and ears to hear”…but readiness must be present. It is to those I share. ❤️
Sharon Palmer Tucker
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.”
~ Albert Einstein
Dear Chuck,
I keep wanting to respond to a comment you wrote weeks ago which I, like any other red-blooded coward would do, deleted. The main thing I want to convey is my heartfelt thanks coz I totally trust your integrity.
It was about Herb Fitch. I always thought it would be premature for you to check him out coz without going deep into his teachings, one cannot know his message. People who have a very strong motivation to get his full message wind up enamored.
I can’t understand why it’s so important to me that you know why I’m smittened except that I believe we (you&me) share the same negative feeling about his use of biblical terminology. But I think he does a pretty good job (for a 20th cent mystic) of REMOVING ALL TRACES OF RELIGION from his teaching. (If not, my Fitch-itis is over!)
But there’s something else that I find spellbinding about his teaching: it’s how he wends his way effortlessly, unapologetically, between very precious ancient wisdoms from sages all over the world and the inspired teaching of the bible (which, being of a mystical nature, doesn’t require physical validation).
I wrote this as a Private Message but decided to put my neck on the chopping block (as I am wont to do!). I’m sure I don’t need to say this but I will anyway: this has absolutely nothing to do with credit (he is long gone, you know). I guess that above all else I see tremendous healing potential in his teaching.
W.A.M.L., Robin
Twenty Eight Reasons I am Not A Christian.
This is not a polemic against you. It is not an attack on your faith. It is a list of MY personal reasons why I am not a christian anymore. In addition there isn’t room to give detailed explanation of each point, but know there is a whole story behind every point. What may be a surprise to you is that I do believe in a divine being, just not a christian version.
LGBTQ. In spite of the fact that the 10 commandments nor Jesus ever spoke against homosexuality it is raised to a level of seriousness and sin equivalent to apostasy. The “sin” of Sodom for instance was the way they treated the poor according to Ezekiel yet today it is a test of true christianity.
Listening to 20-25 years of people’s stories and how they are treated in churches showed me that christian leadership (including mine sometimes) was frequently more concerned with image than it is with love. The adage that christianity is the only “army that shoots its own wounded” is based on reality as I’ve seen churches ruin marriages, judge the weak, practice real hatred and shun the very ones that the character of Jesus would have loved. That isn’t an isolated story but a pattern of corporate behavior signaling a defective system. Nor is it a problem of making an idol of leaders and misplacing trust away from Jesus.
There are 42k denominations that can’t agree on even the most basic ideas and no there is not even agreement on the divinity of christ, how we are saved, etc. leaving a picture of a confusing religion. How is it that it takes a doctorate to sift through the mess to try to find answers when the truth is there has never been a consistent set of answers, hence the diversity. A god who is supposed to be omniscient knowing each of us intimately isn’t able to communicate in a way with a bible that is simple enough for everyone to understand cannot know how to influence people to truth after all.
The incontrovertible fact is that christianity has been a violent religion from the beginning when christians burned other religions documents, killed their adherents and destroyed their places of worship in the first few hundred years of its growth. The pattern of violence can be found to continue throughout history and even today, even if that violence is with words.
In the face of facts, adherents revert to the argument that christianity is a “faith” religion, which means they start with a presupposition that the bible is true and then ignore any evidence to the contrary in a blind cult like way. It would be like me saying Superman is real because I have a magazine with his story in it therefore it must be true. Plus the refusal to see even basic science as true when it contradicts the presupposition holds back the world at large.
In over 30k different verses in the Bible there isn’t one that actually says that one is to believe in Jesus in order to go to heaven when they die. It is assumed the word “saved” means “go to heaven” when it can be shown that in most instances it was a physical salvation from the coming destruction of Jerusalem.
Many times when the NT Greek uses the word “sin” or “faith” it is actually a noun and not a verb, meaning it was not something to “do” but a concept of something already done by Jesus or Adam. In most instances believing in Jesus meant trusting him because he was a messenger to Israel about the coming destruction of by Rome in AD 70. The epistles shift the idea of faith to something altogether different.
Christianity claims exclusivity yet a substantial portion of the themes of the NT are found in the religions that existed for thousands of years prior to it such as virgin birth,12 disciples, communion with wine and bread, miracles, death, burial and resurrection. In fact Mithraism was a major competitor to christianity in its early years having very little difference between the two religions and many of its elements are found in early christianity. The Jesus character has many admirable traits and belief in that picture of love has set many free but those characteristics are not unique but amalgamations of universal truths that were found in other religions.
It is surprising to most people that there is practically no evidence that Jesus ever existed as a flesh and blood person. A person whose “fame spread far and wide” and whose resurrection caused the “saints of old to rise from the dead and walk the city” yet did not get noticed by a single historian or writer during that time is further proof. There was a “christ” cult that emerged from the mixture of Judaism and ancient mythicism though.
The Gospel of John wasn’t written by the disciple John described in other gospels. It is written in a form of classical educated Greek that a rough and tumble uneducated Galilean fisherman would not have been capable. There is evidence that suggests it was written in Egypt.
The Gospel writers themselves were not eye-witnesses either. It has been long known that they are adaptations of what appears to be a central document from which word for word copies were made and then “personalized” to each writer. In other words, the “synoptic” gospels were written from a primary source and then adapted. An eye witness isn’t going to say the exact same words as even a person standing right next to him seeing the same event. The Gospels were written most likely in the second century.
It has been shown very clearly that the exact order and type of stories found in the Gospels were also found in the same order and type and theme as in Josephus’ works. So much so that it lends to the theory that it was the same author(s), especially since the Gospels would have been written down after or around the same time Josephus wrote his works on the history of the Jews.
The earliest coinage in that era related to christianity reveals that the symbols used for christianity were pagan symbols attributed to some of the mythic gods of Rome further proof of a syncretism of mythic religions to create christianity. In addition they did not use a cross as a symbol at all in the early centuries.
Christianity claims that miracles or the miracles of Jesus prove its truth. But we find miracle stories in every religion to prove its founder was sent from God. In addition even today miracle stories and answers to prayers have been documented from all religions. In other words, miracles aren’t the exclusive domain of christians. Or to say another way, God appears to work miracles and answers to prayer for everyone regardless of belief system. So miracles, healing, answers to prayer etc are not proof of one religion, but proof of some universal truths, quantum physics and some divine being who cares the same for all.
Paul posits that the fruit of the Spirit of God is evidence of “having” the Spirit and is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Yet there are many people in many religions as well as atheists who consistently demonstrate those characteristics thereby proving that that God is not exclusive but resides in all.
The mental gymnastics of how the god of the OT and the god of the NT are the same have been going on since the early church. Marcion, for instance ( AD 144) created his own bible version because even then the god who killed innocent women and children, endorsed slavery, endorsed taking the “virgin” women for sex as spoils of war, etc did not square with the god Jesus demonstrated. The simple and clearest solution is that the earliest forms of christianity were attempts to place and fit an idea into an exiting theological Jewish framework unsuccessfully. Nor does Jesus coming to “clear things up” solve it which means the OT wasn’t inspired or inerrant as he quotes sometimes and then rejects it others.
There has not been a unified agreed upon understanding of salvation (soteriology) ever in history. Interpretations change over the years depending on the group. Something as important as whether a person goes to “heaven or hell” isn’t clear enough in the Bible for everyone reveals either a god who doesn’t know how to communicate or an invention of religion from human origin. If a child that dies at 4 years old goes to heaven without believing in Jesus, but a person who is at the “age of accountability” (which isn’t found in the bible) must be a believer, then there are actually two gospels: one for those who don’t understand or don’t hear (like mentally disabled people or those who die in remote places) and one for those who do hear the gospel and are now accountable. Wouldn’t it be the most loving thing possible to kill our children before the age of accountability to guarantee they go to heaven?
The word “hell” and its meaning today as a place of eternal torment for sinners is not found in the Bible, nor was ever even preached by the apostles according to the gospels and epistles. The concept itself is a misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Greek and Hebrew, taken out of context and turned into a fundamental doctrine that is designed as leverage to manipulate people into following a religion. This can be proven but can’t be accepted because it will cause the entire system to crumble.
The early church “fathers” were as diverse in beliefs as leaders today. Their views were all over the place. Yet, shouldn’t it be that the closer we get to the beginning the more agreement there should have been. As any early church scholar will tell you the closer we get to the beginning the more diverse the views actually were. In fact, practically nothing the modern church believes is in line with what they believed, except for the fact that there was so much diversity.
We have NO original copies of any book of the Bible. Not one. So no one will ever know what the bible “really” says. The argument that we have “many” copies compared to other ancient documents actually makes it worse not better as there are as many differences in the NT between copies as there are words in the NT itself and yes many really are significant doctrinal differences. In fact, there is evidence that during the reign of the first “christian” emperor of Rome, as many copies of christ writings as possible were gathered and then burned as to standardize the text.
Which books of the bible were “inspired” and qualified to be the “cannon” were debated and changed back and forth over time. Some church father’s writings were considered “scripture” and some books like Song of Songs and Revelation were doubted. Others became part of the Catholic Bible and only later Protestants threw out a number of them. So if you are a Protestant then you are saying those people in the 16th century were more insightful about the Bible than those who lived 500 years after the supposed life of Christ? And what makes people 500 years later experts in determining what is “cannon”? A vote? What do any of us know about our ancestors 500 years ago?
It took hundreds of years to decide if Jesus was fully god fully man. Why would that not arise as the clearest doctrine from the start if it were true? It is a test of faith/salvation now but for a few hundred years those people who were unsure or never even heard of the problem went to hell, were unsaved?
Many of the words of Jesus aren’t unique. We are accustomed to the idea that the red letters are special. But the concepts and even exact ideas preceded his time period. The golden rule for instance was taught prior to Jesus and even today within nearly every religion.
Religion was often co opted or created by governments as a part of state-craft in order to standardize or universalize a form of peace in that Empire. There is evidence that suggests Rome did just that with christianity in order to bring the various mythic religions together under one and to create a fulfilled Jewish Messiah story to neutralize the radical Jewish messianic movement that was plaguing the Roman Empire. Even today christians are duped into believing that their candidate is more endorsed by God than the other “side”.
Discoveries in archeology show us that many of the Bible stories were copied from older traditions/religions (ex, the flood story from Babylon). It also revealed that many of the stories were propaganda pieces to promote an origin story of Israel probably created during the Babylonian captivity. Approximately a million people, walking in the desert 40 years and a generation dying there with all manner of animals, and yet no evidence has been found in that entire area to support that it ever happened? Stories of a sprawling Davidic/Solomonic kingdom have never been excavated either.
There are real contradictions in the Bible. Differences in numbers, places, order of events, etc that demonstrate it really isn’t innerrent.
Systemic Catholic church pedifilia and Protestant sexual abuse. Need I say more?
After 2000 years there has never been a satisfactory solution to “the problem of evil” from a christian point of view. The greatest christian scholars agree that there isn’t a real solution. Either God is the cause of evil, or allows it when it could be stopped. Yet this god was the catalyst for it by creating angels who he knew would “fall” and people would suffer and then eternally burn in hell. The free will idea doesn’t cut it when God knew ahead of time he would be allowing the suffering and could have avoided it by not creating anything.
No these are not “the devil” getting in my heart, nor are they superficial study. I’m not “butt” hurt. Each idea was thoroughly studied and as I said there is a LOT behind each one. Yes, I have heard all the arguments from apologetics to try to fix those ideas. Yes I was a real “Christian”, “born again” follower of Jesus who prayed, fasted, taught, did missions, pastored, etc and had a “relationship” with Jesus. I also have three theological degrees so please don’t give me the whole “you need to study the Bible” or “you need a relationship with Jesus”.
But there it stands as SOME of the reasons I am not a christian.
I will add that if you are a believer, I am not against you. I support your journey. Just want to encourage you to stay open hearted. There are no experts on God.
Chuck Crisco
In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.
The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It’s funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination … End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
Christianity led me out of Christianity.
At the risk of sounding like I’m talking down or judging others (which I am not), Christianity CAN be a great conveyor belt. It was there that I learned from educators how to interpret the Bible using context, history, intention of the author, Greek and Hebrew, etc. But it was those exact tools that led me to discover that practically everything I ever heard in church wasn’t even in the Bible.
I was part of a charismatic stream that believed in healing, gifts, and the power of God, so I learned to flow in “the Spirit” in ministry by staying in tune with my heart. But it was that very presence of energy that I found that Qigong and healing energy practitioners participated successfully in.
While I learned to listen to God’s voice as a still small voice and in dreams and visions from the spontaneous non brain generated heart centered source, I eventually realized that it wasn’t an outside person speaking to me, but my own heart. That intuition that comes from our spirit/heart is connected to a universal field of awareness that everyone can tap into. Law of Attraction folks and even studies find everyone does this. We just had it repackaged for us as God speaking. But starting in church started the journey.
The emphasis that we placed on love as Jesus modeled, ie unconditional non-judgmental value of others without the need to control, became the very context to be able to explore truth beyond the boundaries of religion itself. This is why religion is afraid of love… it creates an environment where religious leadership loses its grip on individual’s and their journey. And the definition of a cult includes the fear motivation created to keep people from any ideas outside their own.
Eventually I saw that the christianity that claims to follow Jesus has been the source of wars, hatred and limitations for advancement in science etc from the start. Having a transgender child showed me that there really is more love in the world than in the church (though a lot of our christian friends were supportive). You should hear the horror stories in LGBT support groups.
By pastoring people of all ages and races I learned about community and stewarding relationships. Most people have their family as the group which challenges their rough edges, but imagine being “responsible” for a couple hundred people! That world helped me to grow and to learn leadership, but that also caused me to see that one cannot really lead an organization financially without playing the church game of nickels and noses. You have to stay within the lines where its not about truth, its about regurgitating in fresh ways what is already believed. In other words it gave me a first hand experience of learning the church will never, imo, be a context for truth seeking. Politics and expectations and money will always stifle it.
So I am thankful that the journey itself was indeed like a conveyor belt carrying me one moment at a time further. Does that mean that someone in church today is stupid? Not any more than I am right now compared to my future self. It is just a place and I dont think I could have made it here without being there first.
Some family and friends will not understand because they don’t yet have the framework to understand and that is not my problem. I can’t import into another the thousands of books I’ve read, the experiences I’ve had, the meanings I’ve seen and the conclusions I’ve come to. Every counseling session I did for others was really a learning experience for myself. So it is an impossibility for anyone to ever literally “understand” and that’s ok.
All these people now are asking me if I still believe in Jesus, like I have to fit into a category. Or assume I am an atheist if my beliefs about Jesus don’t fit theirs. I’m not really interested in being categorized, lol. My mission here on FB is just to get people to think/see something they may have missed before, and in so doing maybe they will go on their own journey of self and truth discovery because no one goes looking for answers to questions they aren’t asking. My goal isn’t to threaten your faith, but to clarify it by getting you to ask your own questions.
Blessings on your journey. Stay sincere. Enjoy the ride.
Chuck Crisco
Before there was an Internet, people who wanted to get together with other seekers of spiritual Truth got together in abodes called churches under the rubric of religion, sharing in the cost of doing so. That is non-malevolent history. Things have changed. Why do we keep looking back, looking back, looking back and cursing our roots? Let’s just move on.
Damn That’s Good!
Religion will teach you to believe.
Truth will cause you to see
Religion will have you read a book.
Truth will have you read your heart.
Religion will try to convince you of God.
Truth will introduce you to divinity.
Religion will point you to historical figures.
Truth will point you to the timeless, formless spirit within.
Religion requires a ritual.
Truth requires attention.
Religion is dualistic and divides
Truth is universal and sets free.
Religion tries to control and uses guilt from the past or the threat of punishment tomorrow.
Truth changes us by being a present tense experience.
I’m done wasting life energy on religion. Know what I mean?
Chuck Crisco