It's safer being a sinner than a Good Religious Person

That sinner, the Queen of Sheba, getting God-wisdom

We're continuing today through the (chronological) Gospels – taking a good look at who Jesus really was and is, outside of the way He's always been portrayed by what most loudly calls itself "Christianity".

Last week, we started a look at (among other things) demons in the New Testament. Today, we'll look at a few more, and talk about the demonic in relation to Good Religious People.

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the human-translation version on this scripture page as suits you. I default to the NASB to get the more literal translation, but do use the one that works for you. Note also that I have no theological or other tie to the bible site I list above – it's just one that lists the NASB, KJV, and The Message, and most folks I've corresponded with seem to use one of those. However, another brother says you can also get the NRSV human translation at bible.oremus.org. If you prefer yet another human-translation that isn't on one of these other pages, do send it to me. I will also list it here).

Today we see that "demon-possessed" people were brought to Jesus. What does that mean, "demon-possessed"? Does the Bible or science tell us the real truth about demons? Or is there perhaps truth in both – or neither?

To modern human philosophies, which discount everything that doesn't fit within a certain narrow way of testing and thinking about the biological and psychological world, demons just don't exist. The modern cultures with the most power in the western world today teach us that "demons" are only psychological or mythological mind-creations of "backward", or psychologically disturbed, or "overly-religious" people (who are often presumed by the most insistent believers in modern philosophies to be "backward" and "psychologically disturbed", as well).

Problem is, being made of fallible human beings just like religion is made up of fallible human beings, what most loudly calls itself "Science" has degenerated in the last century into a mess no more logical than "Religion". In fact (and to my great sorrow, since I have a lifelong love of real science), "Good Science People" today are really no different from "Good Religious People". Both:

• Either don't make a study, or make a poor one, of those parts of their base wisdom-materials (world or Bible) they accept as "reality", and then
• Either consciously or unconsciously decide what they will find, and then
• Use their base wisdom materials to "prove" what they decided was the truth, and then
• Refuse to think outside the tiny box they've invented for their minds.

This is true all over, in physics, biological sciences (including medicine), geology, and more – just as it's true in fundamentalist Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and the "tweeners" like denominational Protestantism, emerging/emergent "churches", and so on. Why is it true? Because human beings are human beings, and without a lot of self-reflection and being willing to give up our self-focused crap, we naturally gravitate to ways of thinking and understanding that back up and "prove" our crap. There are people, both among those interested in science and in religion, who truly work to find the real thing beyond their own garbage – but they are few and far between, and in science just as in religion, they are ignored and trashed and even punished by the science/religion majority.

So what we’ve ended up with – in both "science" and "religion" realms – is a lot of exceptionally educated people who know crap. They're "educated idiots", heads full of years of documented study the majority conformity-culture says is "reality" – but what they've really done is just memorize a particular human philosophy, and then gone out into the world to help coat and re-coat reality with their philosophy.

So, what does all this have to do with demons? Well, the truth of the matter is, the Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about demons, and almost all of what passes for religious "knowledge" about demons is simply human philosophy about demons – not demon-reality. Unfortunately, what most loudly calls itself "Science" today has nothing more to offer in helping us understand demons than "Religion" does, because in the slap-fight it started with its sibling "Religion" several centuries back, it decided that anything that Religion even talks about is automatically NOT REAL.

So we have two large, self-focused, domineering human philosophies, neither of them doing any real work to figure demons out based on the evidence that's there or might be there, telling us what to believe about demons. What a mess.

So all we "non-experts" can do is do our own work and decide for ourselves what we believe. And hopefully we do that in a way that isn't as full of our own crap! Several years ago I did discover a book that goes more specifically and only into what the Bible actually says and doesn't say about demons. Check it out if you're interested!

• Have you made an actual study of what the Bible itself actually says and doesn't say about demons? Where do you get your understanding of who they are (or aren't) and what they can do (or can't do)? Does your understanding need updating or refining? 
• If you decide demons don't really exist, or decide that they do exist, how does that change or set your understanding of the various forces at work in the world today? 

In our scriptures today we see that when Jesus healed someone who was demon-possessed and also had a physical ailment (like blindness), the physical ailment went away when the demon did. One of the important things to see here is the strong reaction this caused among those who were witnesses to it. The miracle-healing and throwing out of demons made them think, made them debate within and among themselves as individuals and as a collective people:

Is this God or God's power standing right here among us? Or is there something evil going on?

As we talked about last week, of course, Jesus reminds them that if evil was using evil to remove evil power, then evil would fall – and evil isn't that stupid. So here again is God visibly and powerfully using supernatural power in the world so that the people He told to look for these kinds of supernatural events to prove it was Him (and not some huckster pretending to be Him) with them would be able to recognize Him. We know, of course, that in the end very few of His Chosen People were even willing to recognize Him, even as He stood right there in front of them doing things no human or demonic power could ever do. Remember what John (the disciple/Gospel writer, not the Baptist) said? 

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [John 1:9-13]

Almost all of the Jews of the day believed that simply being Jewish made them one of God's people, as if nothing more was required of them than religious rituals and attendance. And believing so, their hearts and minds weren't willing to see the greatest miracle of all: God standing right in their midst. In the end, nearly all the Jews of that day rejected God, and so they made a mockery of believing they were "God's People". And who ended up really being God's People? John tells us: those Jews and non-Jews whose hearts and minds were willing to see and accept God as He lived among them. Suddenly, being one of God's People didn't require anything from the Old Testament Mosaic Law, and didn't require being of a certain people – it just required being willing.

• We also have to ask today when we see miraculous or big spiritual things happening, "Is this God's power at work here, or is something evil going on?" Jesus and others in the Bible tell us to always question and test to make sure what we're following or seeing is truly from God, and not some evil fake. So the question itself is good. The Good Religious People back then just made it a reason to reject the real God because their fake-"God" suited them better. When in your life have you questioned whether something's really about God or not, for the right reasons? When in your life have you questioned like a Good Religious Person, and therefore done it for the wrong reasons? 
• "Churches" and "denominations" today are rank with the insistence that we have to join up with them to be saved or one of God's People. It wasn't too long ago, in fact, when Good Religious People even had the power to torture and murder people who refused to submit to their version of "God" and being "God's People". Yet by filling their hearts and minds with their own version of "God" in the same way the Good Religious People 2,000 years ago did, they can't even recognize and accept the real One. Have you been guilty of this in the past? (I have!) Have you since recognized the error and sought healing and the true Jesus? 
• The institutions and philosophies that Good Religious People create can be intensely addicting and absorbing, so that it can seem impossible to be free from the fear, guilt, and/or shame that keep us attached to them (physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually) even long after we've otherwise rejected them. One could even say that their complete possession of especially (but not only) those of us who were raised in their "reality" seems demonic, because of the dominating power they can have over us. Does Jesus need to heal you of any Good Religious Demons? Are you fully aware of the physical, psychological, and/or spiritual ailments you will also be free of, when Jesus drives the demon of religion out of you?

When Jesus confronted the Good Religious People in today's scripture, He told them something else very interesting – something He'd warned them about several times before, and would warn them about again, in other ways:

It's safer to be a repentant God-rejecter, than a Good Religious Person.

Why safer? Because the sincere repentance of even the evil pagans of Ninevah, and the sincere search for true-God-wisdom made by the idol-worshipping queen of the South, actually produced people able to recognize the true God and the need to live in His ways. This so much so that those who had been God-rejecters now had enough God-understanding to recognize and condemn the kind of false-God-connection the Good Religious People lived.

Good Religious People accused Jesus of being demon-possessed and demon-powered, yet who really was? Here again we see talk of demons – also called evil or unclean spirits – but this time in relationship to Good Religious People (go back and check today's scripture again, if you missed this context). Jesus says that giving ourselves a good spiritual housecleaning means nothing toward really making and keeping us spiritually clean. When we simply empty ourselves of evil (say, at a revival meeting, or during a church service, etc), but don't turn around and fill ourselves with God, then we stay religious – and Good Religious – but then end up even more evil than when we started.

Those of us not still trapped in this kind of Good Religious Trade-One-Devil-for-Seven Spirituality certainly can see this. We automatically curl our lip or step back defensively (physically, emotionally, financially, whatever) from those we find out are Big Christians or big churchgoers or big Bible-readers. Good Religious People like to pretend that people only reject them because they reject God, but in fact the Bible says that (many) people actually reject God because of Good Religious People.

Whether we are female, Gay, poor, a citizen of a weaker nation, or just an Average Joe on the street or in a workplace or family, we suffer under the huge amount of self-righteousness, self-centeredness, nation-worship, violence-worship, hate, condemnation, sexual and other kinds of abuse (of adults and children), Bible-twisting, clergy-elevation, and even just plain old lying, cheating, and stealing we see on a regular basis from Good Religious People (Christian and otherwise). And all of the evil ugliness we see in Good Religious People – whether 6,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago, or today – is all part of what Jesus is describing here: religiously cleaning out one demon, but then ending up with seven demons. Starting out as a Level 1 Jerko, and ending up a Level 7 Smiling Ass. When we go the Good Religious Route, instead of the real Jesus route, our condition does go from bad to worse. It truly would have been better had we never become Good Religious People in the first place, but just gone from simple sinner to simple repentant sinner.

• People decide to focus on a lot of different things in the Bible. For example, Good Religious Heterosexuals like to pretend that the Bible is mostly about God blessing and obsessing on what their sex organs can do. Good Religious Power Worshippers like to pretend the Bible is mostly about domination, violence, and acquisition at home, work, at war, etc. And so on. But one of the things that fills a good deal of the Bible, but is rarely talked about (or even seen) by Good Religious People, is the amount of effort God has put in to trying to get Good Religious People to be and do what they claim to be (His real followers, doing His real things) – and how nearly every time Good Religious People have absolutely refused to do anything but their own way. Oh, they turn around now and again, usually after a huge punishment takes away all their material goods and feel-good religious rituals. But then they go back – again, and again, and again – to doing things their own way. How has this happened within your own life? How much effort has God had to put into trying to get you to be His (real) follower, instead of a Good Religious Person? What can you do to stop getting in the way of His efforts?

See you next week, when we'll talk about who Jesus counts as His family, and who Jesus says "gets" His message and doesn't - and why.

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This article written by Lynne at http://NoJunkJustJesus.blogspot.com/. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Good Religious People still use training wheels. Do you?

Ok – Thursday again! Time for more time in the Gospels, learning what the REAL Jesus is all about. This week we're going to get into what's been called "The Sermon on the Mount" – Jesus' longest recorded teaching (done in one place, that is). It's really good stuff :)

As always, you can find all our previous posts in this series, going through the Gospels chronologically to find the real Jesus, here.

And as always you'll find the scriptures for today are here. (Note that you can change the translation version on this scripture page as suits you. I default to the NASB to get the more literal translation, but do use the one that works for you).

If you live on planet Earth you've no doubt heard "Christians" talk about being "different" from the rest of the world, because the Bible tells us God wants that of all His people. Unfortunately, there's something else the Bible tells us (in both Old and New Testaments):

Almost all of those who claim to be God's People don't and never will truly hold to and live His values – and therefore are not actually His People at all, but imposters He rejects today and will punish in the End (right alongside those who outright love evil). 

When we stop seeing what calls itself "Christianity" through Good Religious Eyes, it's incredibly easy to see how far from Jesus nearly all those who claim to be His followers actually are – and therefore how they actually serve in the anti-Christ, and not Christ-, camp. Good Religious People like to claim this is because they are simply sinners like the rest, and we do know that of course they can't be perfect – but that actually has nothing to do with someone's individual sins or sin nature. Instead, it has everything to do with not clearing one's own worldly-values from one's heart and mind, and holding to and living Jesus' (and therefore God's) values, instead.

Being and becoming a (real) Christian is about learning to see and live in the world the way God does – and not in the way other human beings (past and present, religious and secular) have taught us to see and live it.

Jesus gives us a huge introduction to God's way in the "Sermon on the Mount". (A great exercise, by the way, is to read all of it (including that part we're going to cover today) again and again and again, and ask yourself new each time: how is my life, my attitudes, my way of seeing myself and others, my expectations of success in my life, and my understanding of the future still more shaped by always-limited human ways, rather than God's ways and His greater perspective?)

Jesus begins His talk to the Jewish audience that day by listing those God blesses. As always, remember as you read through these scriptures (and indeed all of scripture) what religious and cultural filter His listeners that day would have heard Him through and how that would have affected how (or whether) they heard Him. The Jews Jesus was speaking to that day, of course, still lived through and under the "Mosaic Law" (the laws God gave Moses to give to the Jewish people to follow), as well as other similar religious rules their Good Religious Leaders had added to the Mosaic Law to make it even "better" than God's original law.

The Good Religious Culture of the Jews listening to Jesus that day had, for the last many-hundred years, taught them that God blesses and rewards those who follow all their Good Religious Rules to the letter. If you'd asked, they would have said:

"Want God to count you as one of His People? Then here are the thousand rules (more than 600 of them just from Moses) that you need to obsess on and worry over and make rituals out of, in your life. Do them right, and you can feel proud and sure of being one of God's People."

But Jesus (and therefore God) had an entirely different take on who God blesses and rewards.

Jesus said:

• It's those who feel least deserving of it who actually get into heaven (NOT those who feel most deserving because they "do" the Good Religious Rules really well).

• It's those who know the pain of deep loss that get God's healing attention (NOT those whose lives are "good times").

• It's those outside of power and position who will end up with everything (NOT those who use power and position to get what they want).

• It's those who crave God's way at work in the world who are going to be satisfied (NOT those who crave God rewarding human ways at work in the world).

• It's those who give compassionate forgiveness to those who don't deserve it who themselves receive God's compassionate forgiveness even though they don't deserve it (NOT those who apply human "justice" and punish those they know deserve it).

• It's those whose hearts are filled with God whose eyes will also see Him (NOT those whose hearts are filled with Good Religious Observance).

• It's those who wage peace who are God's children (NOT those who engage in or support war).

• It's those who are insulted, attacked, and/or slandered for doing things Jesus' (real) way who will receive the same heavenly reward God's Old Testament prophets earned (NOT those who go to seminary and pontificate to others in front of the "alter").

Truly, the biggest stumbling block to being a real follower of Jesus Christ is still being convinced (and even refusing to be un-convinced) that crappy and creepy human ways of seeing and being in the world, painted in Good Religious colors, are the same as God's ways of seeing and being in the world. Jesus tells us they are not!

But the word-picture Jesus paints of the kind of person that earns God's blessing sounds exactly like what God called on the Jewish people to be in the Old Testament (even though they failed miserably and nearly always on purpose), and sounds exactly like what God calls on Christian people to be since the New Testament (even though most also fail miserably and nearly always on purpose).

How far is your own life from being that person Jesus described as so blessed by God? Talk to God about it – not in any formal religious way, but in a way that speaks your real heart to and with Him. He's on your side – let Him be! He doesn't want your adherence to dead rules - He wants your sincere heart, in its current condition!

Jesus next gives us two images to help us picture our lives as His followers and whether we're actually, truly accomplishing His purpose:

• Are we salt that tastes like salt – or salt that tastes like dust and grit and dirt and so worthless?

• Are we light that actually illuminates the world around us – or "light" that's hidden away, leaving everywhere else in darkness?

In other words, are our hearts and lives actually, truly "Jesus-flavor"? Or are they so mixed in with other crap that we're of no real value to God?

Are we truly a tool God can use to illuminate the world around us, helping people to see the real Jesus? Or are we a "light" only to ourselves and our Good Religious Communities, so the world we can touch is still in darkness?

See, unlike what we're taught by Good Religious People and their human organizations ("denominations", "churches", etc) our purpose as Jesus-followers is not to demonstrate the "goodness" of our "godly" religion that claims to benefit God - and thereby get more people into our "church".

Rather, the good deeds Jesus says we are to do so others praise God aren't "good religious deeds" – they are the real-heart-for-God deeds that will naturally spill out of our lives once we are the blessed person Jesus spoke about just a moment ago.

How have you seen the difference between the "good deeds" of religion and "church" and such, and the good deeds that come from people with Jesus really in their heart? What's been the difference in your own life?

Finally for today, Jesus tells His Jewish listeners that He's not come "to abolish the Law or the Prophets", but to "fulfill" them. Good Religious People have kittens all over themselves trying to twist that to "prove" He means that some or part of the old Mosaic Law (or some other Good Religious Rules) apply to Christians. Don't be fooled! Other parts of the New Testament (Galatians and James, as just two examples of many) say otherwise (so this is yet another time when we're screwed if we listen uncritically to "Bible Experts" and other Good Religious People about what the Bible means).

So what was Jesus saying?

One of the biggest (real) messages of the Old Testament is that when God gave rules, He meant them to be applied from the heart-out (as in, what's the intended meaning or purpose or goal?) – but people inevitably apply them from the religion-in (as in, what's the literal interpretation I can apply to my own or others' lives, whether it actually accomplishes what God meant it to or not?).

Yes, God gave rules in the past – but they weren't given just so He could make us live by rules. Instead, their whole purpose was to teach His People about holiness, and righteousness, and goodness, and justice, and mercy, and so on. They were intended to mold people's hearts and minds, so they would grow into spiritual adults. In that way, they were just like the rules we give to little kids, rules like "Don't run near the swimming pool!"

When we're children, we understand such rules in black-or-white concrete (even when we aren't following them). But when we grow up, we understand, for example, that the rule wasn't really about not running near the swimming pool at all, but about being aware and safe around water and slippery surfaces. The adults in our kid-lives didn't tell us to not run near the pool just because they liked making us follow their rules. Instead, they hoped to keep us alive long enough that we could reach adulthood and then be old enough to understand the meaning and purpose of the rule (safety) so well we could even understand when it might actually be necessary to break the rule (like, if a little kid is drowning or someone's bleeding to death) in order to attain an even greater safety result (like, get them out of the water or put a tourniquet around someone's leg). When we grow up enough to "get" and apply the real meaning behind the rule, it's at that point that we've "fulfilled" the rule about not running near swimming pools, because we've accomplished its purpose.

And that's what Jesus is saying to the Jewish people here:

"When you were spiritual children, you were given a lot of rules – but you've not yet grown up enough to understand more than just the literal black-or-white concrete meaning / purpose. But with My arrival, that all changes. Now you need to start learning to be grown-ups.

In fact, we could even say that Jesus came to be the First Real Adult, spiritually. To be our model, out prompt, our teacher.

That's all why trying to make what Jesus said here mean "There are still old Mosaic Laws you still have to adhere to" doesn't work. It would be like going back to telling adults "Don't run near the pool! Never touch the car keys! You can't leave the table until you've eaten all your broccoli! Don't use your bike without your training wheels!" Ridiculous, because now it's completely out of context!

And Jesus let's us know this by His finish of this part, when He tells us that unless we do better than the people who follow the literal rules obsessively and perfectly, we will not please God and will not go to heaven.

But how can we do BETTER than the people who are already perfect at it? By learning to do what they can't or won't do: grow up spiritually and start applying the actual meaning and purpose of God's way to our lives.

Jesus says: Time to kick off those training wheels! Time to RIDE!

We usually think of "right-wing" legalists as being the childish literal-rule followers who miss God's meaning, but others are just as guilty. For example, ever been told you have to "tithe" to your "church" (part of the Old Covenant)? What are the ways religious rules were made part of your life? What ways have they blocked or hindered your understanding of the real Jesus?

What are the ways you still need to spiritually grow up?

See you next week, when we'll continue through the "Sermon on the Mount"!

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can always contact me (Lynne) at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Jesus will leave Good Religious People behind

Wow! Thursday again already! Time for more of Jesus' Gospels, in our chronological trek through the Good News that's REALLY good news!

As always, our past Gospel studies can be found here under the "Gospels" tag.

Our scriptures to read for this study are located here.

This week, we'll be starting to look at what Jesus thought of religious rules and religious lifestyles. The Good Religious People who worship in "Christian" "churches" and spend their spiritual energies creating and feeding religious human organizations have spent nearly 2,000 years telling us that being a follower of and loving Jesus Christ means rules (even those who claim to only be about "love" and not rules still have rules like "you owe us coming to our 'church' and putting money in our till/collection plate"). But does Jesus go along with that? How or how not?

I had intended to cover several stories, but the first one here has a lot of info that's very foundational to understanding the real Jesus. So I will just do this one today, and the others next week.

So - First, we get to read what happened when Jesus called a man named Matthew (also called Levi) to follow him, and Matthew responded. Lots going on in this story!

The most obvious thing is that Matthew made his living by tax collecting. That meant he was a Jew who made other Jews cough up not only what big taxes their Roman occupiers required, but also what he decided to add on top of that for his "fee" (all of which was perfectly legal and standard practice in conquered nations under the Roman Empire). And he did get to decide to add whatever he liked on top. It's not hard to figure out why such tax collectors were always well off financially (something our culture, which says anything that's profitable is good, and anything highly profitable is better, even when it hurts others or causes damage).

But the Gospels tell us that Matthew walked away from all of that. Did he do so because he had a new political awakening or through Jesus now understood the oppressive nature of The System? Nope. He did so because his heart sensed something incredibly awesome in the man who simply said "Follow Me" – and Matthew followed his heart. Now, the Gospels don't say, but it's a good guess that Matthew was already at least somewhat unhappy in his current life. He was making good money, yes, and enjoying all the material goodies that always come from that, yes. But even today those of us who've made good money in our lives, but whose hearts have still (perhaps only secretly) sensed something big still missing, find an easier time responding to Jesus' call than those who are happy with what the world has to offer. We'll see Jesus comment on that more than once, in future studies.

If you're reading this blog, it's likely that your own heart isn't really happy with what the world (which includes the religious world) has to offer. Your heart may pretend to be satisfied to everyone else, but inside? Ugh! Not so good. Or it might even pretend to be satisfied to you too, but then you find you're never finally happy with things. Always have to have or try something new. New car. New house. New phone. New 'church'. New religion. Even new people. And on and on and on. And those things do seem to "work" for a time, don't they? But then that "unfilled" feeling comes back again. What a pain!

Thing is, all those things (including all those religious things) are just more creations of human hands. Even when they are "religious" they are still external to your heart. When those like Matthew sense God, though, that's finally the internal answer to their internal yearning.

In what ways have you worked in your life to fill your internal heart yearning with external things? What are ways you pay attention to or ignore your heart that would help you hear or block you from hearing Jesus' call to follow Him?

But what else is going on in this story? Well, we see more accusations and judgment against Jesus by Good Religious People. Why this time? Because Jesus was breaking one of the first big religious rules Good Religious People ever created (and have always loved to live by):

"Don't tarnish yourself (or your daily living or your family or your 'church' or whatever) with sinners and other people you're superior to (which includes anyone you hate)."

Matthew used his money and opened his home in celebration, welcoming Jesus into his life and introducing Him to a huge crowd of his friends and neighbors at a big dinner party – he invited and celebrated Jesus all within the realm of his every-day life. It's doubtful he knew it at the time, but Matthew was already spreading the Good News – being an evangelist – wasn't he?

What would the Good Religious People have done, though? Well, even if they had thought highly of Jesus (hah!), they would have hidden Him away in their own religious establishments and homes, "safe" from having the sin and nonconformity of those they were "superior" to rub itself in His / their lives. They would have "proved" how much respect and admiration they had for Him by making sure only people as "righteous" as they were had full access to Him – just like Good Religious People do even today, pretending they can lock up God's truth within their "churches" and denominations and magisteriums and elder councils, so God's truth is "safe" from other people (even other Good Religious People) who aren't like them. 

Should I even bother to ask which way of welcoming Jesus and caring for and about the Gospel is not only the way Jesus wants it, but also the way that actually works (meaning, it actually spreads Jesus' Good News and not just one or another brand of religious human ideas about Jesus' Good News?) Once again, despite the assertions and traditions of even highly educated and scholarly Good Religious People, the Bible itself tells us the real answer!

But I will ask this: what ways have you messed up, trying to keep Jesus and the Gospel "safe" from the taint of sinners and even your own every-day living? And if you thought yourself doing "better" than that in "your" street and related ministries because you don't use the traditional "church" doo-dads and words and such, how often do you check to make sure you aren't just pushing out old ways of keeping the Gospel your own until folks believe the way you do or understand "enough" for you, and so on? How do you make sure you aren't selling the same old religious crap with a pride-filled, modern "hipster" sheen on it, like the "Emergent", "House Church", and related "movements" of today? 

Ok – what else is there in this story? One more big thing – in fact, possibly the biggest thing on this story.

What's funny (but not in a ha-ha way) is that Good Religious People like to see this last thing as if it was a good thing for them – instead of a huge condemnation of them that should send them shuddering in tears, crashing to their knees, begging God to forgive this huge sin.

But that's actually Jesus' whole point, spoken (as if often was) straight to the people who would always refuse to hear it, for the benefit of the sinners and rejects who would realize and take comfort from what He was saying.

So let's look at it. All three Gospel writers tell it basically the same, though Matthew (yes, the same Matthew who had been a tax collector) remembered an extra line so I'll re-quote his here (see the scripturesfor today again, to see what little difference there really is between the three):

Jesus to the Good Religious People: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Now, to the standard religious ear – and to the ear of those who've been taught to interpret the Bible according to standard religious human ideas of the Bible – that's pretty straightforward. They think it means God sees righteous people (and that means Good Religious People, of course) as spiritually healthy and not needing fixing – but those sinner people (meaning everyone else) need to get their sick act together and start also being Good Religious People for God!

Is that right? Not on your life!

One thing to know about Jesus is that He often said things that force us to think outside the world and religious boxes to "get" His truth. Why? Because we all live in a huge fog of human ideas of all kinds (religious, but also scientific, cultural, family, etc etc etc) all around us all the time, from birth to death, and it's very rare that we ever realize these things are just human ideas unless something occurs that snaps us out of that brain-fog and into alertness and clarity of heart-vision. That's why simply taking the Bible literally (instead of taking the Bible's MEANING literally) is always a huge disaster (and a real treat to the devil). If we don't get His real meaning, we're like people who hear a joke but instead of "getting" it we take it seriously. Just to make the point, consider this example – if I tell this joke, which person actually "gets" my intended meaning?

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road halfway?
A: She wanted to lay it on the line.

• Person A: (laughter – or possibly laughing and booing :-) )
• Person B: "Well, it's very dangerous for any animal to be allowed to get into any road. If there was a lot of traffic she would lay her life on the line, for sure, but not for any good cause! Someone should make that chicken's owner be more responsible! And you know that chickens often just lay their eggs wherever they happen to be, so of course there's going to be a big egg mess if they're let out into the road like that. That also creates a health hazard, having that all food all over the road, rotting in the sun..." (and so on)

Obviously both people are processing the joke's information through their brains – but only Person A truly understood what was communicated. Person B might even be someone who's spent years getting several PhDs in chickology – but truly, Person B hasn't understood a darn thing.

That's exactly how it is with Good Religious People who sincerely believe they "get" His intended meaning better than anyone else – when actually they understand little to nothing (while even someone uneducated and illiterate could "get" it and laugh along with the Lord.)

So back to what Jesus said about the healthy and the sick and so on. The Good Religious People who were cranking on Him obviously imagined themselves the cream of God's crop and as the only people God had anything to do with or would call. But to their attitude Jesus answered:

• Those who are "healthy" like Good Religious People are don't have any sense of their need for God. Only "sick" sinners need God.
• Good Religious People need to spend their study time on a new lesson: God wants the good that comes from a heart, and not participation in religious rituals (even ones He previously said people should do).
• Jesus isn't for people who are already "righteous" like Good Religious People – they don't believe they need His cleaning up for heaven. But He is for "sinners" who do need and want a clean-up, making sure they're ready for heaven.

This is a message Jesus delivers to Good Religious People time and time again (sometimes even very bluntly) in the Gospels. So, what's Jesus' real meaning here? And is it likely the Good Religious People He spoke to "got" it?

Obviously everyone is actually a sinner - including Good Religious People. Most of the Bible is documented evidence of just how sinful everyone - often especially but still always Good Religious People - are. But even outside the Bible, to know this all we have to do is look at the likes of the so-called "Family Research Council" and Roman Church to see how hideously, painfully sinful Good Religious People are.

But Good Religious People have various ways of convincing themselves (if not us) that even though they are "technically" sinners they are actually really righteous. So the Good Religious People of 2,000 years ago would go make sacrifices at the temple to "prove" how "repentant" (but really "righteous") they were, and through the centuries other Good Religious People have done their own version of that. Today evangelicals, for example, like to feel secure in the idea that they are heaven-bound by the blood of Jesus no matter what they do, and roman catholics like to feel secure in the idea that if they kneel before another human being and repeat assigned rote prayers they are heaven-bound - even when both groups wrap their lives and hearts around slaughtering other "evil" people in war, spiritually abusing Gays and woman, protecting "clergy" even when they sexually assault children and deceive "their" flock, and twisting the Gospel to match their own spiritual wickedness. Even though Jesus and the Bible says it's only the heart that allows the real Holy Spirit (not the one the devil fakes so well) to shine through into one's every-day living that's going to heaven – and that Holy-Spirit heart only happens after a sincere (and repeated) desire to flush the selfish and materialistic and power-based crap from one's heart so there's room for Jesus' way, instead.

So, what happens if someone's so sick they think they don't need medicine, and they refuse the healer's help? And what happens if someone does that for so long the healer doesn't bother with them anymore, since there are others who need healing who do want to get well?

Jesus' point to the Good Religious People that day was basically this: "You think you don't need God, so you don't get God. You think you know what God wants, but you need to rethink your entire approach because you're totally off base. I'm not here for you who want that version of God or Messiah who fits within the human religion you've created - I'm only here for people who really want (real) Me and good even a trillionth as much as I want them."

And that's what should have staggered the Good Religious People that day: God so close – standing right there! – and yet walking away from them. And that, my friends, is called "hell".

So what about you? How have you missed Jesus' intended meaning in your life? When was that because you had been taught to miss it, and when was it because you just preferred to miss it (we all have lots of both!) What liberation and freedom comes to you and your life when you start to really "get" Jesus' message? Are you freed finally from being a Good Religious Person? Or freed from the ungodly mind- and heart-traps Good Religious People lay for everyone else? Perhaps freed from both?

Good Religious People tell us constantly how in danger of hell-fire the rest of us are. I still remember seeing a Good Religious Man standing outside a Gay Pride event in downtown Portland in 1980, carrying a huge sign that said, "Turn or burn!". Now, truly, I'm sure there were many Gay people there that day who needed to turn their hearts away from evil and towards God – just as there were many straight people in the big outdoor market next door who needed to do the same (in other words, their sexual orientation had nothing to do with it). But according to the Bible who was truly most in jeopardy of hell-fire that day – the Gay "sinners" who still might hear the real Jesus (if they only stopped listening to Good Religious People), or the "righteous" man who screamed judgment at them?

Jesus already knew the Good Religious People there that day weren't really going to listen to Him (only a tiny few ever did), but the "sinners" and other "rejects" around Him also got to hear what Jesus (and therefore God, once they later realized Jesus was God) actually thought about the so-called "righteousness" of the Good Religious People. They got to see how completely unimpressed He was with them, and how small He considered the chances of the "righteous" to get God, while He obviously believed wholeheartedly in how spiritually productive "sinners" could be. What does it mean to your life to know that Jesus not only spends nearly all His time with "sinners" and "rejects", but also makes sure they can see He's not part of the Good Religious People crowd or their way of thinking?

Just how far is the real Jesus of the Bible from the human-created religious "Jesus" you were taught or perhaps even hear about from Good Religious People today? Do you have (or begin to get) the idea of just how far apart those two really are? Can you sense yet just how much the real Jesus wants to be part of your every-day life, celebrating with you as much as He cries with you, without needing or even wanting any taint of the "religious" to be part of your relationship with Him? What would make that even better or easier for you to see and "get", and what can you do to open yourself up to Jesus' gift that way?

Until next week!

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can always contact me (Lynne) at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Those &*%#@ Christians!

I'm continuing to get daily to prayer and information requests, as well as to direct emails from folks wanting to chat about things, even though I've not gotten back full time to (any of my) blogs (though, if things work out in the next few weeks, I hope to change that then).

Still, I got an email today from a strong-in-the-Lord brother who has been confronting people who use the Bible and religion to misrepresent Jesus and hurt other people. He requested prayer and healing over that little bit of nagging resentment we all struggle against whenever we've been confronted by someone else's insistence upon being evil, low, divisive, hurtful, etc. And for all of us, of course, sometimes that "little bit of nagging resentment" turns into an ocean of return-hate. What do we do about any of that?

Here's part of my answer to our brother (the parts that aren't personal in any way), listing my thoughts this morning. What are your thoughts on this issue? What are some other ways you deal with these kinds of things?

We ALL have to struggle with these things now and again, and it gets easier as we get more practice seeing these things Jesus' way. Here are my suggestions of things to consider when struggling with this temptation to be angry, resentful, or bitter towards someone who truly does deserve our anger, resentment, and bitterness according to the world and our flesh!

* Corrie ten Boom: she went thru a Nazi death camp and lost almost her entire family (including a sister who was with her in the camp), and had to struggle a lot to over come anger and hate during and after the war. Her books and MP3s of her talks can be very inspiring and healing, and always point us to the fact that even when dealing with evil it's only through Jesus that we can forgive and see things His way.

* Paul of Tarsus: consider who Paul was, and the incredible damage he did to people's lives, before he was confronted by Jesus. Consider that many others just like him moved among God's people in those days, and that most never turned from their evil - but that any Jesus-followers who turned away from hope that Paul and those like him could still also repent of their religiousity and surrender their hearts to Jesus were just wrong. Consider also that no follower of Jesus EVER did or could turn Paul's heart to repentance and hope in the true Lord - Jesus Christ Himself alone could do that. Such matters require our humility, our willingness to admit that only the Lord heals and calls - not us. So we do what we're called to do, and leave the results to the Lord.

* The best use of your efforts: I used to debate "Christians" all the time who had religious demons of hate and division in their hearts, thinking perhaps I could help them see a better light -- that is, until once when God told me, "If they don't listen to Me, why would they listen to you?" Truly, if God isn't at work on and in their hearts, there's no hope whatsoever that anything you can say or do will accomplish what they won't let God do. So what's the better perspective? This: what about all those people on the site (or in your local life) that are silently reading (or seeing/hearing) what you're saying? Never forget that for every person who's wanting to debate just to exercise their own demons and wear you out and get you into their world of anger and evil - there may be another person, or 100 other people, or a thousand, or more, whose hearts just might be hungry for a more true way of seeing Jesus and understanding God's way. For myself, I speak or deal publicly with evil-choosers only when doing so might be of some benefit to those who may currently be within the realm of evil but wanting out (in a small or large way). And in those times, even as I "speak" to the evil-chooser, I actually direct all my attention and efforts and words to the rest of the crowd. We're called to be wise stewards, not casting our pearls of Jesus-wisdom before spiritual-swine or spending our Holy-Spirit-energy on evil-choosing-dogs.

* What the New Testament tells us: what does the NT tell us to do with "Christians" who cause hurt, bad feelings, and teach wrong things? It tells us to try a few times to explain how they're wrong, but if they persist, we are told to remove our attention and lives from the dark cloud of their attention and lives. We forgive them, again and again - yes. But according to the NT we also recognize the truth of the damage they can and do cause, and we do not get caught up in their spiritual ugliness by trying to get them out of it (which requires God to open their hearts and minds).

* God's plan: Finally, ponder things like this in God's Bigger Picture. Jesus told us that God doesn't let His angels just go out and destroy the evil people we see around us, because if He did some good people would be destroyed, as well - and all of the Bible tells us that God's not willing to lose even one person who will turn from world-evil to Jesus-good. That person in your life who's being so wrong today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and so on) MIGHT just eventually find the real Jesus, confronting him/her on the road to doing even more wrong, and be set right. Without that willingness to understand what's happening in the world from God's perspective, it's just too easy to end up bitter or angry, but also hopeless, out of faith, and so on. 

Where does the Holy Spirit lead your thoughts, today?

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

2 maze lessons that work us, even if we don't work them

Not the route I took...

More than a few people have asked me in the last few days about various parts of my spiritual journey. Guess it's been awhile since I made that thing some Christians call a "testimony". ...ok, it's been years.

But the really important thing -- I think -- is not telling about my life so you can be oh-so-impressed with how spiritual my path has been or how wise or strong or faithful I am (because truly, there's no reason you should).

No, the only really important things to pass on are the two lessons I've learned (nearly always the hard way) in my getting-close-to-50-years. The kind of lesson-things hardest to learn, hardest to accept, and hardest to appreciate -- until you finally start to reap some benefits from them.

The first lesson is:

Human beings (especially, but not only, educated ones) can always-always-always be counted on to make healthy things hurt, simple things complicated, inclusive things cliquish, loving things hatefilled, and easy things hard.

 The second lesson follows the first:

...But, if in the deepest recesses of our deepest heart (where maybe even we can't see it yet), if we are even the slightest bit willing, God is always at work behind the scenes to get us where we need to go, anyway.

Let me share briefly how that worked out in my life, just to show an example.

Maze Turn # 1 - I was introduced to God through a fundamentalist church of the 1960s.

That was how I spent my childhood. So, yeah. Do I even need to detail the mess of ungodly, unbiblical, and anti-Christ ideas I absorbed from the truly very well-meaning and intensely (false)-Bible educated people in that church? Most of you will say "No. I get it." But for those who don't, let me just sum it up this way: By the time I was eight years old, I was convinced I had already been such a sinner that I deserved hell so bad even Jesus couldn't save me.

And it just didn't matter that these church people adored me (and they truly did -- all the way up to when I was an adult and they discovered I'm Gay.) They all belonged to a faith culture that takes the Good News of Jesus Christ and turns it inside out, remaking it into something fearful, painful, violent, self-centered, hypocritical -- just like their unhealed hearts. Even though I left their church when I was eleven years old (they couldn't answer my questions, and that bothered me) their false and twisted and self-serving Christianity damaged me in ways I wouldn't even begin to understand until forty years later, when I finally encountered and was healed by the true Jesus Christ.

Yet what was God doing behind the scenes with all that? He was instilling in me a love for the Bible, for one thing. Unlike my fundamentalist forebears, I use and study the Bible correctly now -- but like them, I also cling to it, and refuse to be parted from knowing its truth. 

Maze Turn # 2 - Trying to push the filth of fundamentalism out of my head, I became a tenacious, even vicious atheist by my 20th birthday.

I'd always been a huge science geek (even when I was a teeny little kid, my birthday presents were things like biology and geology books). But while before I'd understood science as just a way to study what God had created, now I started using science and logic to attack and level any and all religious belief -- including Christianity.

I meant well. I truly did. Like all my atheist buddies and mentors, I truly believed that any idea of "god" was nonsense and evil. I really believed that the only way to make the world a safe and healthy place was to eliminate all religions, and run things by logic and science, only. 

Yet what was God doing behind the scenes with all that? He was using all that atheistic insistence on logic, and that hot flame of bullheaded atheistic arrogance, to scorch the fundamentalism from my heart. It took a number of years, but when He was done? Gone. All gone. Nothing ever even tempted me to believe fundamentalism, ever again.   

Maze Turn # 3 - Once my heart no longer had to keep a door slammed against God to keep out the devil of fundamentalism, a tiny part of my heart slowly began to want God again. But the rest of me fled.

I had really done a great job convincing myself during my atheist years that God didn't exist. I now really had NO belief in Him any longer. So imagine my confusion to now all of a sudden have a sort of secret longing for God -- a God I was convinced was nothing more than a neurotic superstition. What was wrong with me??? The only conclusion I could come to for some time was that I had a mental illness of some sort. Nothing else made sense to me -- but nothing made my longing go away, either. In fact, it just got worse and worse.  

And what was God doing behind the scenes with all that? If you're a Christian, you know exactly what God was doing: He was calling me back. He'd let me fall into the flea dip of atheism to rid me of fundamentalism cooties, and now it was time to dry me off and comb me out. Was I going for that? Of course not. I'm much too bull headed for that!

Maze Turn # 4 - So I started (reluctantly) checking out other religions. At least I wouldn't fall to the disgusting depths of Christianity! (or so I swore).

Pagan stuff is big in certain areas, as you no doubt know. I tried to get in to some of that, but I kept coming back to the same thing: "If I can't go with a God, why the heck would I go with a goddess, or multiple gods, or fairies, or wood spirits, or whatever!" It just seemed a put on.

I did check out some other religions, too. But same problem: if I'm not believing it works here, why would I believe it works over there?

What was God doing behind the scenes with all that? I'm sure He was shaking His head at how stubborn I can be, and how I continued to torture myself. Here I was trying to patch my longing for Him like He was a computer virus, but at least He kept me from falling into another vat of flea dip I didn't need. His hand was there.

Maze Turn # 5 - Then, since I hated the whole idea of "God" but couldn't make myself stop wanting God, I decided maybe I could soothe my longing by getting into a religion that didn't even have a god. That was my Zen Buddhist period. And I did pretty good at it. Got real good at being able to sit and do nothing for a very long time. Even decided at one point that I would become a Zen priest. THAT would fix that nagging God-longing, I was sure! I was starting to feel good about all this, finally.

But what was God doing behind the scenes with all that? Well, He seems to have let me go for a time. Just as I did get some healing from my atheism time (but couldn't stay there), I also got some healing from my Zen time -- but couldn't stay there, either. So one day a Zen priest that I admired more than anyone else in the world told me that because of who I was I belonged back in the Christian world. I was devastated.

The Zen priest's reasons were very Zen-like, and came right out of his Asian culture and beliefs in reincarnation (etc) -- so they had nothing to do with Christianity or God. But I'd gotten the healing I could get from my time there, and God knew it was time for me to go -- or I'd probably never leave. So, mad as a wet cat, out I went.

Maze Turn # 6 - Try as I might, I found myself still just too damaged by fundamentalism to go back to anything Protestant. So I became a Roman Catholic. Getting back to Christianity of any kind was still not easy for me -- in fact, it was more painful than anything I'd ever done before, with a LOT of stops and starts, before I could finally let God start to heal the damage false Christianity had done to me. In the end it took me three times and several years to complete the Roman Catholic mumbos you have to go through to join up, but then let me tell you -- I was full bore. I've never done anything spiritual halfway, I guess, so after finally getting baptized and so on, I was one intense Pope follower. I even let the priests abuse me for being Gay (one yelled at me so loud the whole church turned to see), and I just knelt there and took it. But dang it -- I'd decided to be a Christian, and I was going to stick it out!

What was God doing behind the scenes with all that? Continuing to heal me. Teaching me. And then turning my head ever so slightly so I started seeing a new angle. So I started seeing the (really BIG) false Christianity of the Roman Church, too. Since the "newness" was no longer covering for the fact that this wasn't a place to satisfy my longing for God either, after a number of years, I started thinking maybe it was time to go "home".

Maze Turn # 7 - Except I thought "home" meant a Protestant church. In fact, I thought that through several of them over several more years. But it didn't matter: Gay churches, straight churches, mixed / "welcoming" churches, and conservative, liberal, medium churches -- all. All just inevitably got me all excited thinking this was finally going to be the place I could be whole with God. I even became a pastor and church leader, myself (would have made my grandmother proud, and maybe healed her horror of my previous Roman Catholicism). And yet every single church / denomination / fellowship was a big #)^%*@ pile of human beings, along with all the cultural "church" poo they'd decided to pack on top of God as if that made God "better" or "more accessible". True, some where more poo-filled, some less. But since all that poo covered up the fact that Jesus is supposed to just be there, in your heart, without all the human poo (even your own), nearly all these folks were just as happy to sit around making more poo and calling for new revivals or campaigns to fill in the Holy Spirit gap even they sense on some level in their churches.They were so happy-tranced on what they could do with their religious doo-dads and titles and organizations and good works that they just assumed that must be Jesus in there, making their hearts swim. I still couldn't fill my longing for God. Plus, it was all just starting to gross me out. 

And what was God doing behind the scenes with all that? Quite simply, He was doing exactly what He's been doing my whole entire life: trying to get me to let go of all the nonsense people (including me) make up about Him, and instead just sit with Him and do what He says! Doesn't mean I don't hang out with church people any longer -- I just no longer buy that they corner the market on Jesus, any longer.

CHEESE!

It's taken me nearly every decade of my life to figure out that ideas like "God is about relationship, and not (even Protestant pretend-its-not-ritual) ritual", and "Jesus was serious" are true far, far beyond the self-congratulatory platitudes we make of them when we're twisting His meanings so we still get to do what we want to do, but now feel God-approved in doing it.

I guess if my life would have a "testimony", it would be that God moves even when we're in His way. He can see even when we're blocking His light. And He can work even when we're sleeping on the job. And my ridiculous maze of a life is good proof of that. 

Thanks for taking care of all that for me God. 

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

If Christians were Christian - 004 (An Unreal Dream)`

Billy Graham (Wikipedia)

[This is a continuation of my series "If Christians were Christian (an Unreal Dream)". You can find the rest of the series here]. 

The Ugly Reality:

My grandparents took me to see Billy Graham once, when I was a little kid. In the fundamentalist church they were raising me in, Billy Graham was one of the Really Good Guys, an ee-VANNNN-gelist above all others. And I have to say that every once in awhile, forty five years later, I'll still watch one of his now-ancient "Crusades". His most basic message is indeed sound (plus it's fun to shake my head at what we fundamentalists were wearing and doing to our hair way back then).

Problem is, Billy's Gospel stops short -- and that means, left to its own, it misses the mark. The Gospel he preached never went (or goes) far enough to proclaim people all the way to Jesus Christ. He's like someone who let's you see the first 3 minutes of a 2-hour movie, and then turns the projector off as if there's nothing more. Here's an example, from his friend George W. Bush's book:

“[Billy Graham] made it clear that the path to salvation is through the grace of God. And the way to find that grace is to embrace Christ as the risen Lord -- the Son of a God so powerful and loving that He gave His only Son to conquer death and defeat sin.”

Now see, on its face, combined with Billy's trumpet calls about sin, that's true Gospel. But that's only where a human heart first gets the message to veer off in a new direction. There's a lot more that still has to happen to change that human heart into a (truly) Christian one. Stuff like:

• Learning to give up the great things we get from the world's/devil's "wise" ways (like the fun of having more than others, of having wars or counting how blessed we are to be able to live in a "God-fearing" country, or of ignoring the pain and suffering of those who are weaker than we are), and learning to instead glory in God's foolish "the least of these" ways; and,
• Admitting in the actions of our lives and not just our mouths -- not how wonderfully loving, spiritual, and/or righteous we are -- but what smiling jerks-who-can't-be-trusted we are nearly every moment of every day; and,
• Letting the Holy Spirit start washing all the self-congratulatory, human-approval-seeking, and ever-please-my-senses poo out of our hearts so we can start shining with the Light of the World.

The fact that Billy Graham not only didn't preach that full message, but hasn't gotten it yet himself, shows in his public life and in the public lives of those he's always hung around with. Billy has always preferred to soothe the consciences and proclaim the glory of presidents and other big people of the world who willfully and repeatedly break not only national and international law, but also every speck of God's law, defending and ordering murder, lying, stealing, defaming the name of God, bearing false witness, oppressing others, and more -- all because they like how it feels, and because it brings great financial and political gains to them and their friends. And he's promoted and defended them, abusing his image as a "Man of God" to do so.

Billy Graham, like so many who have only tasted a tiny part of the real Gospel before veering off into something false and worldly, is a servant of Caesar and of Caiaphas. Much as I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him, I still have to recognize and say that he has proclaimed only that part of the Good News that doesn't question his loyalties or biases -- or those of his friends. He's simply been a very well-off, right-wing American who is a good speaker, has a religious bent, and likes to tell people Jesus is the same.

The Daydream not to hold your breath for:

If Billy Graham were a true Christian leader:

• He would never have been as popular and idolized as he has been and continues even now to be, because those who speak God's real truth are never well thought of in the world. However, he would have spent his humble preaching time leading people to not only believe in Jesus' salvation, and not only abhor superficial sin, but to also-also-also go to the Real-Deal and fully embrace the anti-world heart-change required to be a real follower of Christ. He would have judged how well he and others were doing according to Bible teachings, and not by how many false-seekers showed up each Crusade to pad his numbers.

• He wouldn't have been a "conservative" (or a "liberal"), or a republican (or a democrat or an independent or a socialist or an anarchist or...). He would have simply been a Jesus-based Christian, one whose answer to every problem was turning the other cheek, doing unto others as he'd like done to him, caring for enemies, standing up for the oppressed, ridding oneself of materialism, worshiping God for how different He is from our unholiness (instead of presuming He and we have so much in common politically and economically), and constantly telling people how different Jesus is from everything else they can imagine. 

• He would have gone to his friend George W. Bush's book signing and, broken-hearted, wept over how far George has wandered from Jesus, begging George to repent of his war crimes, destruction of whole nations, murder of millions, the bald-faced lies in his book, and so on, and to instead surrender to the real Jesus Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to make him into the man God really wants him to be, so that he could truly be saved.

• He would have come to repent himself of all the worldly ways he has not only formed his own life, but also put forward to others as a "valid" way to be a "Christian". For example, he would never have accepted the $200,000 US salary he's paid even today, and he would never have built up a "ministry" empire for his heirs to continue making a rich living from (his son Franklin, continuing in his father's only-partly-Gospel work, accepts $260,000 US a year from their religious corporation).Those things would have been about making and keeping a name in the world for oneself, and so Billy's real Christian heart would have dropped them like a rag full of mucus. 

• He would have publicly renounced the not-really-right teachings he's spent so much of his life putting out before, telling the world something like, "Being just another human being, like you all are, I really messed up. I overwrote Jesus' values with the values of my culture, and by doing so I taught a combination of myself and the devil to you, and called it Jesus. I'm REALLY sorry about that. And now, if you still have a heart to listen, I'd like to tell you about who Jesus Christ really is..."

There's still time to join the rest of us in real repentance, Billy (and George)! There's still time to seek out and find the REAL Jesus, and to accept the changes He wants to make to ALL our hearts. 

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This article written by Lynne at No Junk. Just Jesus. You can contact Lynne at NoJunkJustJesus@gmail.com.

Friday links 12/03/2010

Looking for a great place for Christmas gifts this year -- something that will also help those in need? Check out the Marketplace for the highly respected hunger organization Feed My Starving Children. Note that you can also make direct donations to feed children around the world -- your Christmas present to them! Just US $35 feeds six kids for a month, US $70 feeds one kid for a year. And, of course, your local food bank needs your help, as well!

This kind of hunger help will become more and more needed, as the ability of local people (including local farmers around the world) to feed themselves continues to fail. Many, of course, blame growing hunger on global warming. However, the root cause for hunger today is the still growing economic globalization and corporate domination that's made it more and more impossible (through "patenting" local plants and then charging huge amounts for them, rigging devastating loans that steal land, and depriving them of any water unless they can pay high prices for it, for example) for local people to do what they had done successfully without corporate or United Nations "help" for thousands of years.

Here, just in time for talk-time around the Christmas dinner table, is a list of 10 anti-Gay myths and the information that debunks them. It doesn't cover, though, whether the new TSA pat-downs are part of the 'homosexual agenda' (puhleeze...)

I've never had a problem being both a Christian and someone who loves science -- the two only conflict when people make a religion out of science. But discovering there are perhaps three times as many stars than we knew of before? And seeing just how big God can imagine even on a tiny little earth, and what creatures He can imagine (and imagine more and more)? What an awesome God who planned and loves each of us with even more power than He uses to create and maintain the universe!

The political game in the USA is to keep people on both the "right" and the "left" convinced that there is a substantial difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. And in small things, and in how they talk, there does seem to be some. However, when it comes to who they are and what they actually do and protect and push for, there seems to be very little difference any longer. See, for example, this story, now all over the news: "The Obama administration went to the mat to defend its predecessors from a torture prosecution in Spain last year, a leaked State Department cable shows." I truly believe the USA will play a serious role in the End Times, but not in a good way!

I myself have a wide variety of interests, but wanting to own even a famous person's old coffin? Eeeww! Not so much.But I would go see this new full scale replica of Noah's ark (anyone near Cincinnati?). And if I could knit, I'd make sweaters for bald chickens (they are just so cute!).

Please keep our brother Blake in your prayers this week -- that his parents and family will come to know the truth about what God thinks of Gay people, that Blake will continue to be strong, happy, and healthy as he deals with their unbiblical understandings, and that the Lord will use this to bring all the members of this family to a greater and more glorifying knowledge of Him!

This guy turned his camera so that on this steep hill in San Francisco it looked like the street was level -- but the building was not. Wow! I'd be afraid to park my car sideways on a slope like that!

Thirty two years ago this week, Harvey Milk was assassinated by someone who believed God and the Bible made him a better person than Harvey. By someone who decided that the best way he could prove that was to murder Harvey and another (straight) man. But in 1978, Harvey Milk was about hope -- hope in a time that had almost nothing good to say to or about Gay people. Harvey Milk is one of our great heroes, because he took a stand, even when it was scary, to stand up for people who were hurting. Listen to a piece of one of Harvey's speeches, and see if you agree with him, that "You've got to give them hope."

Finally, Lord, you never let go, so lead us to the Cross!

See you next week!

5 reasons to be delivered from being Christian Right

["Three reasons to be delivered from being Christian Left", here] 

Are you identified with the so-called "Christian Right"?
Here are five reasons you need to pray that God will deliver you into real salvation:

1. The Christian Right ignores and rebels against God's authority and sovereignty. 

That's not what the Christian Right believes about itself, of course. In fact, the Christian Right believes itself to be the only one actually standing up for God's authority and sovereignty. But the Bible tells us again and again -- and in plain language anyone can understand -- that those who love and fear God do what He says . 

"But we do exactly what God says!" is the answer of the Christian Right. But even non-Christians and atheists can see that's so far from true as to be pathetic, if not maddening. And we can even pick simple examples to prove it, because it's just not hard to see the hypocritical rejection of God's command and authority -- not hard, that is, unless one is caught in the Christian Right web.

The most obvious example is the love, support, and glorification of war -- and the terror, rape, torture, hatred, and destruction that always comes with it. The Christian Right is absolutely perverse in its insistence on and involvement with war. Yet God commands Christians to never return evil for evil, and to instead pray for our enemies. God's Word tells us that those who belong to Him respond in love, not bullets, and care, not sexual assault and baby-killing, and like Jesus, not the devil. The Christian Right tells God to stuff it, regarding His command to not return evil for evil.

Another obvious example is what God says about human authority. God says that Christians are not to keep hierarchies amongst ourselves, or to give or take authoritarian titles for ourselves. But the Christian Right obsesses on human authority and hierarchy, and -- rather than interpreting Paul's words on authority within the commands of Jesus (in other words, not being satisfied until we understand Paul in ways that don't discount Jesus) -- the Christian Right has from the beginning created and worshiped levels of "specialness" in its churches, and made up rules saying people have to submit to sinful human authority or go to hell, and more. The Christian Right tells God to blow off, regarding His command to be simply servant-brothers and servant-sisters to one another.

One final example, related to the last. The Christian Right claims to be taking the Bible literally. That's why, it says, it says women have to dress like (insert dress code here), and Gay people are condemned, and so on. Yet the Christian Right picks and chooses, and explains away those of God's commands it doesn't like. Example? Regarding Jesus command that His followers not be hierarchical or give/take titles, as above? The Christian Right commentary in my Bible says that to actually do what Jesus says there is "unreasonable literalism". Meaning, because that command doesn't match what their sinful natures want to do, they ignore or reinterpret it. The Christian Right tells God to take a hike, regarding obeying and preaching all of what He says, and not just what it wants to obey and preach.

2. The Christian Right is suffering under the strong delusion God sends to those whose hearts reject the real God for the false god of their own creation. 

We wouldn't know it from listening to the pontifications and reinterpretations of the Christian Right, but the Bible actually spends most of its time condemning and warning against those who claim to be God's people but aren't -- and very little time condemning or warning against those who don't. It's part of the delusion the Christian Right suffers under, then: to continue to falsely believe itself not only God's people but the best of God's people, while believing God's warnings are for everyone but themselves. I remember years ago, for example, seeing a Gay-hating "Christian" holding up a sign outside a Gay event. The sign said:

"How will you escape the sentence of hell? Matthew 23:33"

I looked it up. Is that scripture truly a condemnation of Gay people, or even of immoral people? No! It's one sentence out of a long speech Jesus gave condemning legalists and religionists that wreak havok and insult God by claiming to be His people and doing His work while pleasing only their own disgusting sinful natures. 

The man was carrying a sign that condemned himself! Was he understanding that? Was he reading his own sign and falling on his knees to cry repentance before the Lord? No! He was suffering under a strong delusion - one that falls on those who prefer human religious wickedness instead of God's authority, who work on Satan's side, and fall for counterfeit religious power, signs, and wonders. Will this man be saved? Not unless he becomes better than the Pharisee that he is! 

3. The Christian Right is built and sustained entirely on mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Bible.  

We've already covered a bit of this above, in the example of "take God's Word literally when it pleases me, and allegorically/spiritually/whatever when it doesn't". But it bears a full mention of just how foundational the delusions of the Christian Right depend on mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Bible. How many of us have looked into our Christian-Right-translated Bibles and seen the word "homosexual" inserted into the text, when God didn't put anything even close to that there? How many poor people, women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and others have suffered under grossly sinful human oppression and been told falsely that "the Bible" says God likes it that way? Those who identify with the Christian Right memorize these false teachings, and then memorize the Christian Right defenses of these false teachings, and then go out into the world as "servants of righteousness", serving their prettied-up demonic master. 

4. The Christian Right today is the prideful descendant of all the God-rejecting God-pretenders of the last several thousand years. 

There's nothing new about today's Christian Right. It's simply the newest wrapper on the same old hypocritical religiousity that pridefully stands in God's spotlight while directing people away from the real God. Jesus named the sin of the Pharisees: hypocrisy. But the Bible also shows us the same sin in the "Jews" of the Old Testament who pretended to be God's people while mocking and offending Him with their evil hearts and religious pretense,  the Pharisee "Jews" of the New Testament who did the same, and the "Christians" who picked up that idolatrous torch to carry it into the future. History shows us the same gross sin, pretending to be about God while doing the devil's work, creating, defending, and living false teachings in the church even while the apostles still lived, and then continuing into the teachings of the so-called "Church Fathers" (who recreated the Bible so it better fit their pagan philosophies), the Roman and Orthodox churches (which whored the church to the world's political system), and finally into the various Protestant denominations and churches (which simply picks and chooses among the historical God-dethroning, human-elevation practices and beliefs it likes and doesn't like). Stink remains stink, no matter what food coloring one puts in it.

5. The Christian Right is building and supporting the False Prophet of the End Times. 

There's a lot of debate regarding who the "False Prophet" of the End Times will be. What we can know for certain even now is that the False Prophet will be a person or system who:

Seems to be part of God's real people, but is part of what only pretends to be God's (so it can't be something that isn't part of the JudeoChristian religion). 

• Is filled with unclean spirits (and so isn't filled with the Holy Spirit). 
• Deceives people about what's really God, and what isn't (and deceives itself, as well).
• Helps get people connected to and worshiping the Anti-Christ, instead of the real Christ (doing things the world's/devil's way, instead of God's way). 
• Will be punished forever for his/her/its sins against God (and not rewarded for its "service" in God's Name, as it expects). 

And that's all about the Christian Right. 

If you are part of the Christian Right, I fear for your salvation, and I hope that more and more of your brothers and sisters will, as well.We need to pray, as you need to pray, that you will:

• Repent of your God-rejection, dethroning the human / religious authority you've made higher than the Lord, and submitting to what God truly requires of you.
• Feel God unharden your heart and remove the strong delusion that's an early punishment of your preference for wickedness and unlawful religious living over Jesus.
• Study and then know God's real Word, His real Bible, in the contexts (historical, linguistic, and so on) that He decided they be in, and no longer under the false human veneer of pride, power, and greed that you've previously known it under. 
• Reject hypocrisy and religiousity like you'd drop hot slime. 
• Come out of Babylon, the false human system that God wants all His people to remove themselves from, being saved, then, from the punishments those who remain are promised to receive.

Choose Jesus, our Christian Right brothers and sisters! Many of us have been freed from the sin known today as "Christian Right". You can be freed as well -- if you choose to be free!