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.

According to Christianity, to “accept Jesus into your heart” implies forgiveness of sins. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Think again. In order to receive forgiveness of sins, one must first see their need for forgiveness. Before one can see their need for forgiveness, one must focus upon their sin and the fact that it separates us from God. Christian evangelism goes to great lengths to make sure that everyone knows we are sinners. The entire religion depends on this foundational concept of sin in order for the religion to even exist.

Being hooked on drugs, alcoholism, homosexuality, premarital sex, adultery and not going to church are the big sins. But I’ve heard evangelists of all kinds force people to think of their personal sins, such a time when they lied to someone, in order to see their need for God’s forgiveness.

While I have so much more to say about fundamental Christian doctrines, the ones that focus on the blood and atonement of Christ are, to me, the most detrimental. It’s nothing more than beating the crap out of someone in order to weaken them enough to manipulate their minds for the rest of their lives. And yeah, I am ticked off.

How many people are insecure, full of fear, ashamed, timid or defensive because that is how “their creator” views them unless they repent? That was me, and this is why I am so vocal during my healing process. According to Christianity there is very little, if any, worth of the human being. We are all sinners heading toward hell, my friends, unless we believe in the atonement of Christ for our sins…. which only enforces the fact that we are sinners in need of saving.

After evangelists show us our need for forgiveness, and we feel guilt over our wrongs, then and only then can they give us the good news. The good news centers on the fact that after Jesus died, he rose from the grave where he lives in glory for eternity. It really does sound like good news to the guilty slave of sin. The only problem? It doesn’t work.

At first Christians seem to overcome some of their sins – let’s say a smoking habit. If a new Christian adds to their life church attendance, church activities, Bible studies, new friends, new environments and a completely new lifestyle, then quitting a bad habit becomes obsolete. There is simply no room for it anymore in their lives because smoking might not be socially acceptable in their friend circle.

But if a Christian is willing to admit it, although their sins might have changed, they still fall into sin every now and then. Of course there are those pesky hidden sins as well. And sin still separates people from God. Where’s the new life promised to them in exchange for their “belief” (which meant becoming religious?)

I now see the whole salvation from sin idea completely ridiculous. We run into some serious problems when we teach that God created the world, and yet world is full of sin. Where did sin come from? Christians explain it away via the doctrine of free will. Apparently we have a choice to follow sin, or God. But the free will concept runs into problems in light of the belief that everyone sins.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8

Exactly where is the free will in that idea? But the hole of contradictions goes deeper. If we only confess our sin and repent, our pastor preaches, then God will forgive us, and then we can be assured of our salvation. No more worries, right? Even most Christians admit they are not sin-free – they are only forgiven. Ah, but they still sin. How can they be sure that they have believed enough and how do they know that they haven’t just modified their behavior? Or how is their growing in righteousness any different than a Non-christian’s growing in wisdom? Everybody learns and grows as we get older, religious or not.

What about the resurrection of Christ? Surely that is the good news that saves people – except that it is still dependent upon the sin concept, of which death is presumably a result. Sin would kill us if Christ didn’t die in our place.

Really? Don’t people still die after the death and resurrection of Christ? What did the resurrection change?

Belief in the resurrection of the Christ might make us feel really good and happy because through it we might see that death has no power over life, but death was never an issue for God in the first place.

Did God only love the world after Christ? As far as I understand, most Christians would say that God has always loved the world.  But if this is true, it changes any necessity for an atonement as well as a savior.

A savior was only needed for the Jews who mistakenly thought that suffering and death are indicators of God’s wrath and punishment of sin… and that God hates anyone who is not of his chosen race.

What about all of the Bible verses that say God sent his only begotten son in order to save the world… yaddity, yaddity…? The Bible was written by Jews from the Jewish perspective. The Jews were stuck in a religious mentality as the means to relate to God and the whole point of their story is not that they are released from sin, but they can now be released from their religion. The Apostle Paul began to realize this, but the Jewish grace idea had only begun to catch on by the end of the story.

The good news for those of Jewish descent is that you don’t have to be a part of a religion anymore in order to know God! You can just know God because God already dwells in and all around you. But somehow the Christian religion didn’t get the memo. Instead, Christianity has used the good news for the Jews to place the Gentiles back under the old covenant tabernacle system. And that is getting the message exactly backwards.

To continue preaching Christ’s resurrection is to continue preaching Christ’s death, which makes us all think we were separated from God and needed some kind of remedy. If we could only see how the entire belief system of Jesus, including his resurrection, is based on the premise of sin, we might understand its purpose of separating us from God – not reconciling us to God. This is what the Jewish good news was supposed to accomplish for them.

Is it even possible to be separated from God except in our own ignorant mind? Isn’t God omnipresent? Isn’t God the very source of any life that exists?

“for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’… ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’” ~ Acts 17:28

I now believe that salvation isn’t about being saved from sin. It’s about being saved from a religion that attempts to “fix” sin. Sin makes up a necessary part of the fuel of life. “Messing up” is how we learn and grow. God intended it, obviously. And it was never an issue to God who loves people whether we sin or not.

While sin and Jesus make up the basis of Christian fundamentals, what about other doctrines that are silently required for salvation?

The inerrancy of the Bible (or at least the original manuscripts) is another deceptive way to make people think we are distant from God but that problem can be remedied through Bible study. The imperative of the Bible separates humanity from God with a book. But if you know the book, you can know God. This basically excludes the illiterate from the kingdom of heaven.

The traditional theory of hell is the ultimate separation from God. The fear and threat of it is the primary motivator to keep people subjected to religion. In other words, it’s the spanking that gets the child to do the chores that somebody else wants her to do.

Concerning the virgin birth of Christ, this concept was used for the majority of church history to stress the necessity of abstinence from sex and marriage. Both were frowned upon until fairly recently when the importance of “family” sort of shadowed the evil of sex into the background. Ministries like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family not only continued the momentum of the acceptance of marriage but have exalted marriage and the family to practically another salvation requirement. This only perpetuates the continuing of evil sex ramifications outside of marriage. Sex before marriage and other sex sins supposedly separates one from God.

Even the doctrine of the trinity excludes humanity from God while it focuses on the unity of the Godhead. What about people? Aren’t we included in that unity?

Religious rituals such as prayer, communion, baptism, tithing, being anointed, ordination, child dedication, and church attendance are simply more remedies to the sin dilemma. Just as the Hebrews of old slaughtered animals and performed cleansing rites, so Christianity carries on its own appeasement traditions today. Most Christians have no idea why they do these things. They only think it draws them closer to God. How little we believe that we can’t get any closer to or further from God no matter what we do or don’t do – and even if we die.

And there you have it, my friends. If we seriously examine the origins, the essence and the inevitable effects of the major Christian doctrines, I think the purpose behind all of them is clear. The only way for the institutional church to maintain so much power over the world today is by usurping Bible truths to fit its own agenda. If God is everywhere, then we do not have to worry about being separated from God. Whether God’s representatives are the Hebrews or the Christians, religion only leads people away from God and toward itself.

Think about it.