We’d Rather Masturbate To Pictures Of Living Instead Of Actually Living

Everyone loves a good success story or sports team or fictional hero. This is because we can identify with the elevation just enough to feel that it could actually be ourselves in that role. We can also conveniently avoid the hard work or suffering it took to achieve that status of success. But the essential reality of it, as far as we’re concerned, only takes place in our genius of a mind.

I think it’s perfectly human to dream and it can be healthy too. My kids used to role play when they were younger and it often involved doing something their undeveloped selves were incapable of yet doing. My daughter would walk around the house pretending to clean it while animatedly talking to a pretend friend with a toy phone. (Kids can be an entertaining reflection of their parents.)

My own daydreams can give me a glimpse into the desires of my deepest soul. They often thankfully point the way to the direction I’d like to go. Gurus teach us to discover those soul dreams and manipulate the mind so that positive actions will naturally follow….

But I’ve also noticed that my hopes and dreams can be entirely misleading.

God Hates Me, This I Know… For The Bible Tells Me So

According to Bible legend, the first humans were created in goodness and dwelt in a garden of goodness. The interesting factor about this goodness is that in the middle of it, there was an evil tree. There was also an evil snake. Apparently, what God called good also included evil.

Fast forward about four millenia and a prophesied Jewish messiah explains to humanity that God so loved the world. All of the human tragedies of the past which had included a flood, slavery and wars and captivities hadn’t meant that God was angry with anyone. Behind every tragedy, God still loved the world.

For God so loved the world…. God loved the world before the Christ was sent just as much as God loved the world after the Savior died and rose again. But if God always loved the world, why did the world need a Savior in order to restore us to God?

It would appear that humanity misunderstood a few things about God – uhhhh, as if that is any kind of a surprise. Somehow God’s people, the nation of Israel, believed that God was a punisher and not a lover. The majority of the Bible seems to be written from this point of view. And this punisher God mentality seems to be carried on today through God’s other people who call themselves the church.

Christian Fundamentals Have One Purpose: To Separate You From God

The title of this post is something that has been slowly coming into view for me as I’ve been attempting to understand God apart from the Christian religion. By wrestling through many faith issues which I address in previous blog posts, I’ve currently concluded that Christianity doesn’t lead people to God. Its general nature actually steers people away from God.

So here I am. It feels kind of like going to the doctor for the majority of your life and then realizing the doctor is what has been making you sick. I think I would be so much healthier (have a better understanding of God) had I not seen the doctor at all.

This is a pretty unconventional viewpoint. I mean, just like everybody “knows” you go to the doctor when you need to stay alive, everybody “knows” you go to church in order to grow in eternal life. After three decades of  living this kind of eternal life, however, I have to say that this supposed new life is intended to kill.

I was instantly fooled by institutional Christianity’s claim to Christ. Jesus seemed like a wonderful man, no matter who he was, so how could a church go wrong there? Yet it’s surprising to me just how much the love of a man could be twisted to portray not love but hate. Allow me to explain.

Ultimate Reconciliation and/or Free Will?

The ultimate reconciliation/free will dilemma has kept me awake many a night. This is currently how I come to terms with it in my mind, personally:

If God created humanity, then we will each and all naturally have an inclination toward our creator according to the universal law of, “If you make something, it has your hand on it. It speaks of you and is part of you….”

But since a love relationship requires a free choice, whether through creation or evolution or both, this world seems to be set up in a way to give us just that – free choices (within limitations, that is. As a human, we can’t become a tree, etc.)

The question then becomes, what is our greatest human inclination? Will we all eventually learn who we really are, which is the offspring of God, according to the Bible? Or do we have so much free will that some or many have the ability to forever turn away from our creator, ending in our ultimate destruction?

I think the character of God  as seen through the natural world answers this question.

If we observe the way this world works, we see that everything grows, even through pain and death. I think that the silent and behind-the-scenes mystery God uses tangible life to open people’s eyes.