Religion

Posted on May 30th, 2010 | 0 comments

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An open letter to all preachers and teachers everywhere:

I get so weary of what comprises most sermons and teachings in most churches today. It is of no practical benefit to me whatsoever to sit and listen to someone preach for an hour about all that is wrong with religion, or anything ELSE for that matter. I already KNOW what is wrong with religion…probably better than most preachers who are preaching against it. It serves no practical purpose for me to go to church and listen to someone drone on and on about what is WRONG with ANYthing. I dare say that there is very few, if ANY of us, who aren’t quite clear about what is WRONG…with ourselves, our families, our friends, our circumstances, our jobs, our churches, our lives and this present world in general. Tell us something we aren’t already quite painfully aware of. Instead, give us some PRACTICAL information that we can actually USE to cope with and/or possibly even CHANGE, all that’s “wrong.”

It seems that “religion” has become the new satan. BTW, the word satan is not, nor has it ever been a proper name for one individual. It means simply…ADVERSARY. Your “adversary” could be anything or anyone, including your own SELF. The adversary is neither he nor she. It has no burnt red skin nor horns in its head. It doesn’t cause little girls to vomit green muck nor spin their heads round and round. But as usual, I digress…

Religion does today, and always has, served a very valid purpose, however lowly. It is a but stepping block in the progressive spiritual evolution of the individual and of mankind as a whole. It was never intended to be an end in itself. And this is where it has become demonized…where man has MADE it to be an end in itself…similarly, just as christianity has made the term “salvation” an end in ITSelf. To understand salvation as an end in itself is to effectively bring the whole PROCESS of salvation to a screeching halt, because it is NOT an end in itself. The word translated from ancient texts as “salvation,” almost always denotes in actuality, a living, moving, breathing CONTINUOUS state of progression toward an ultimate state of wholeness (HOLYness). I absolutely CRINGE when I hear someone ask another person, “Are you saved?” Of COURSE they’re not “saved.” Newsflash: neither are YOU. If you were, you would not be clothed in mortal flesh and subject to illness, injury and death. You would not require sleep nor food for sustenance, nor would you have any need to eliminate whatever sustenance is not utilized by the organism in which you live. You, like the resurrected Christ, would be able to appear and disappear at will (wouldn’t THAT come in handy?!). You COULD share a meal with your friends, but would not have NEED to. You could move quite freely between the unseen world AND the seen, and everywhere in between. I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t know anyone who has yet achieved such a state of being. And again, as usual, I digress…

Religion is not the enemy. Friends, family and co-workers that use you, lie about you, lie to you, and stab you in the back at every opportunity, are not your enemy. The lightning that runs in on your heat pump and sets it on fire, is not your enemy…nor is the wind that blows down giant trees on your pasture fence nor the beavers that build damns that cause your pasture to flood. Your enemy is not your liberal black, Democratic President, nor is it the conservative white Republican President that he replaced. It’s not even some ayatollah, caliph, imam, mullah or sheik who hides in the desert and extols hatred and death to all who differ from him as being the ultimate solution to all the world’s problems. The enemy is not the religion that preaches your present belief system, nor is it the religion that preaches everything that is OPPOSITE of your current belief system…not the race of mankind whose skin color differs from yours, or the peculiar individual who lives in a culture that’s different than yours…and one that you don’t understand.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, because to all appearances, we still aren’t “getting it.” “Our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12) The most powerful, fearsome and destructive of these aforementioned rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world reside quite comfortably in the “heavenly realms” of your own soul, and in your own thought processes…yours AND mine. And their greatest power is in our PERCEPTIONS of what they are, where they come from, what their purpose is and how they work to accomplish it.

GOD’s solution to all that is “WRONG” is so simple, it defies comprehension: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with GOOD.” (Romans 12:21). THIS is the gap that all preaching and teaching needs to be bridging… the gap between all that is WRONG, and HOW we might EFFECTIVELY and PRACTICALLY walk out the command to “overcome evil with good” in each of our own everyday lives, thereby making what is WRONG, right. Now THAT would make RELEVANT subject matter for a sermon.

May he who has ears to hear…HEAR…what the Spirit is saying.

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