Becoming Paula

Lately I have come to accept that I am not intended for marriage. This is not a sad reality. I think that marriage is sometimes over glorified. Marriage has benefits,yes, all sorts, physical, spiritual and emotional. As the Bible says something about a stone sharpening a stone so we can grow putting up with the annoyances of another person. When we look at this we seem to forget Paul recommending not marrying. He did great things for God. With no wife.

Why am I talking about this? Was I not exceedingly happy while I was marrieds? Yes, and no. It was the best I had ever known. The reality is that I have always felt that marriage was not for me. As a child I really wanted to be an old maid. Even as a a teen I did not think I would marry. This was in big contrast to the fact that I had a really strong sex drive. My sex drive was not the kind that was okay with just sleeping around. All my fantasies, then and now include committed loving relationships with love. My body and spirit had contrasting desires.

Did I marry my ex-husband for sex? Yes and no. I also married him because I loved him and had intensely committed to him and up on marriage I was willing and able to love him until one of us died and that was the case until the divorce.

There is another reason I married. I was profoundly mentally ill. What I needed was therapy and medication and a reliance up on God, not marriage, or relationship of any kind. When I am in a relationship my spiritual growth becomes profoundly retarded. I give too much of what is God's to my partner. I love intensely all consumingly and committedly. My love is the stuff of romances. It is also suffocating and unhealthy.

Sometimes what we most want is the least good for us. I never grew up nor figured what I wanted because I was so intensely committed to my husband. Now I am thriving and scared that I will jeopardize all the wonderful things I have accomplished by falling into another relationship. Also it is quite clear that I have terrible taste in men. My standards are fall too low. Clearly the common factor in my dismal romantic history is me and I have to accept the blame and that God's blessing has not been up on any of it.

In contrast I am blessed and productive and growing and happy with myself alone. Unless God finds me the perfect man, I am not interested and perfection does not appear in reality, so I think I am safe. Just call me Paula, the female apostle preaching the gospel of Jesus and remaining unmarried. : P

Gifts of the Spirit

Some of you might be wondering if this blog is changing direction, I really don’t know but you could be. Let me assure you it is not. This blog has been about the same thing the whole way through: My spiritual journey and the questions I ask and the problems I have. This new direction on the same journey is me asking is the leading of the Holy Spirit real and useful? What does it look like and what would it look like? Will I speak in tongues and make a complete fool of myself and appear to be a fraud? Will I just gain direction in my life? Perhaps what I will find out is that the whole experiment was useless and nothing came from it. I don’t know, you don’t know but I am hoping me you, my <10 readers, will find out.

So I was thinking what are the gifts of the spirit again, I really cannot remember. I think there is prophecy and praying/speaking in tongues, the others I cannot remember. Up on looking up the possible gifts I could expect, if this whole thing pans out, there are nine. They are located in 1 Corinthians Ch. 12: 

1) Word of Wisdom

2) Word of Knowledge

3) Faith

4) Gifts of Healing

5) Working of Miracles

6) Prophecy

7) Discerning of Spirits

8) Divers (or different) kinds of Tongues

9) Interpretation of (different) Tongues

I think I know what some of them are but I have never seen a convincing case of any of them. I have been going to a Pentecostal church of one sort or another majority of my life. I have heard tongues but I have never been convinced about them (read my post on tongues to find out more). I was wanting to write a post on prophecy called: ”Prophecy: The Most Useless Gift” I think that sums up my attitude on that point. I still may write it as a part of my experiment series of posts.

I do know what some of the others are due to my very Pentecostal background. Word of wisdom is getting an insight about a person and giving them good advice without prior knowledge of the problem. That in my opinion would be an awesome gift to have. I always wanted to be a wise guru or something. Wisdom is actually one of top five qualities I ask for when I pray.

Word of knowledge is similar. It is getting information about a person or a situation without prior knowledge. Like if your dog got hit by a car and I came up to you just hours after not having heard about it and said to you: “I am sorry that your dog died.” that would be an example of word of knowledge.

Faith, hmm, I mean I know what faith is but I am not sure what it means as a gift of the spirit. This confuses me.

The gift of healing is the biggest Christian fool-them-and-take-their-money industry in my opinion. I have never encountered a person who had the ability to heal others. If those people who hold big crusades claim to have it why are they holding big crusades and raking in the money instead going to the children’s cancer ward and touching and healing children until they get kicked out for it?

Working of miracles, I don’t know. I have seen what I deem to be miracles in my own life but none of them were worked by anyone. I have never seen anyone work a miracle. I have always just seen things happen like running out of money and not knowing where the food/money came from, well usually I knew exactly where it came from but it always came. Thank our friends, thank God or thank random chance.

Prophecy, never seen it. I mean I have seen people “prophesy” but it was in distinguishable from them making stuff up. I will continue to be skeptical of this until I hear a specific prophecy and it come true specifically. Not a vague Nostradamus like mess and then try to cobble it to mean a hundred different things it could fit due to its vagueness.

Discerning of spirits basically means the ability to see demons. Like the old monk in The Brothers Karamazov by Tolstoy you see demonic influences everywhere. It could also be paranoia or schizophrenia but I really should not judge.

Divers tongues, well, I suppose that maybe speaking/praying in tongues but from what I have heard they are not diverse at all and all sound the same, not at all like what the Bible describes in Acts. My father says that he has heard non-Italian speaking Finns speak perfect Italian during services and say real coherent things that were relevant, but I have no personal experience with this sort of speaking/ praying in tongues.

Interpretation of tongues is the yin to the speaking in tongues yang. It is the supernatural interpretation of the speaking. I have heard it many times, I do not get it.

So, I am praying to receive some of these gifts now. Maybe I will receive them and then understand them. Never had a single one of them, or seen others have them in a way I could believe that they would be real, so I have no idea if they are real or not and how they feel and work. Let’s see what happens. I believe in God, it is his people that I don’t believe.

How can you believe that and call yourself a Christian?

How can you believe that and call yourself a Christian?

That is a question I have heard a few times. Most recently I heard this in regards with me expressing approval for the term of the previous president and her leadership while proceeding with hope for the new president’s term. Well, I think I have mentioned, and you can probably guess, some Christians have a problem with a woman having been the president.

The answer to this largely rhetorical question is: Because Jesus died on the cross for my sins and by that method gave me the gift of salvation and eternal life saving me from Hell and I accepted it. That is how I can call myself a Christian. That is the method of becoming a Christian my church believes in. There is no other step. Some people approach it a bit differently but nowhere in the scriptures does it say you must accept this gift and then firmly believe that women are not to be in leadership.

Also, I hate rhetorical questions. They seem to stay in the air begging for an answer regardless of the speaker not wanting one. They are like a story that has no denouement after the climax: Infuriating, in other words.

There is also another important bit to know about how I work, if you ever ask me that question, or a variant of it, there is writing off that happens on both of our parts. You write me off as a Christian and I write you off as a potential associate and begin to avoid you at all costs. This is the most toxic question I can think of. It is judgmental and the most uninquisitive inquiry I have ever heard. You come across as a nitpicky legalist. Jesus is the one who told us how to attain salvation, not Paul, not Peter and not the Old Testament. The Old Testament told us how sinful we are and how short of the glory we fall every time we try. Paul and Peter tell the early church in general, or some churches in particular, now to proceed after salvation but none of these rules, regulations and suggestions have anything to do with getting saved, becoming a Christian.

Love

Many times we forget the concept of love. It is a central principle of our faith but it seems like it is talked about very little at church. We Christians seem to skip over it as a kids lesson. It is alright for the little ones at children's church but not for us mature Christians. We like to deal in mature stuff like financial stewardship or church growth. Those topics maybe mature, and boring, but very much not important compared to love. ”And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

I see Christianity like the game of Othello. Easy to learn lifetime to master. Just like the game after we learn how Christianity works we just want to play, have fun and start mastering the game. Any player of any game like Othello and chess would tell you practicing the basics is key. Terrible is the chess player who does not have the basics down but knows the most complicated moves. We should still remember while reading my clever analogy that Christianity is not a game it is our lives and who we are. We don't need to win. It is not a game of who can be more holy. In fact one upping others in the Bible is frowned up on. It is said to be Pharisee like behavior of showing off.

Sometimes the holiest people know the value of simplicity the best. It is no secret that my husband is a Quaker and I, while not sure what I should label myself as, have definite Quaker sentiments. I love their adherence to peace, tolerance and the traditional value of simplicity. Love is simple, love is clear, love is joy, love is sacrifice when necessary. Love is the love of Jesus. I have confined my studies mostly, due to time constraints and possible ADD, to the life of Jesus. It has really taught me what is important. Love is important. Faith is important. Looking at the world through the lens of love makes knowing what would Jesus do way easier. What would Jesus do? Jesus would love.

I pray to love more and to act in love. It is something God has given to my heart to do. I could never love too much. I think Christians could use genuine non-self seeking love a whole lot more.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corintheans 13)

What I don't like about Christianity Part 3: Sexism

This post hits home for me a little more than parts 1 and 2 because it is personal. As a result the tone is different. I still attempt to be rational and fair.

I don't really like being a woman. It is a topic I have explored more in another post in a rather graphic way. It is not really that being a woman is so bad, it is more like the societal pressures as one are. The stereotype of a typical woman has nothing to do with me. I have also posted before about how I identify more as a human being than a woman, call it androgyny if you want but that does not really fit. What it really is is being an individual but that is kinda vague and people don't like vague. As in the post about not being happy with being a woman and how awful it was things in society have gotten a lot better and I am really grateful about that. One place where it has not gotten better is the Bible. My favorite verse is Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (emphasis mine) I belonged to a Quaker fellowship when I was in the United States and they believed in that firmly. In the church and in God's work we were all equals. A woman was the same as a man in the service of Christ all was looked at was merit. I really enjoyed that and when I become really depressed thinking about being a woman and all the roles, tendencies, talents and weaknesses people try to impose on my that have nothing to do with me as a real complete person I think about this verse. It comforts me a great deal.

What about the rest of the Bible it was written by a bunch of men in a patriarchal culture that permeates the language, counting, examples etc. If you have read the Bible all the generic examples independent of gender use he. For example my favourite Psalm states (emphasis again mine):

Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

(Psalm 1)

So, the good guy is a guy and unless I ignore that it has nothing to do with me, when read in the English language (in Finnish it is not so bad because we only have one word covering both he and she). I chose this passage because it is my favourite and it, like any generic excerpt is a good example of this. Women are only mentioned in verses specifically referring to women and the roles of women and I want nothing to do with these verses because I cannot relate with them. I would like to emphasize that over all this is not a big deal, neither is calling “manned spaceflight” manned spaceflight, that is because “peopled spaceflight” sounds retarded and is not a real thing.

As for counting, only men are counted, women like slaves, children and donkeys are not mentioned except in passing like, there were 1,000 men and some women and children in addition. That is because we women were property. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Ex. 20:17) So, I am property. This is fracking depressing. As a wife I am property of my husband, just like his slaves (servants), oxen ,donkeys and other belongings. It did not say husband in there so men are not property of their wives.

What does the Bible say about women? They are usually seen as bringers of food, bearers of children. Sisters, mothers, daughters. Pretty standard stuff. In Titus 2:4-5: “Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” In Timothy 3:6-7 “They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.” In 1 Peter 3:5-6 “For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.”

What are these verses saying, let me summarize. Or at least tell you what I personally hear. I am supposed to love my family and be self-controlled. That sounds great, that would work for men too, but I am also supposed to be submissive to my husband because I am liable to malign the word of God otherwise. WTF Titus? What do you think I am? Timothy assumes I am weak-willed. If he did not he would have said weak-willed men, or people. Remember, men first and by default women only when specifically speaking of them. Peter says to be holy as a woman I am supposed to be submissive to my husband.

These can all be justified, explained away and if these were the only parts of the Bible that did this is would be fine but this is just a handful of examples. Paul says that women are not supposed to speak in the church and frequently that is justified as something to do with the times. Women who were temple priestesses in pagan temples were also prostitutes and therefore a decent woman would not want to be mistaken for a prostitute. I have also heard that women gossip and gossip is bad and in order to keep it out of God's house we should make the women STFU.

Justifying these away is like getting called stupid and then having someone explain to me that, while what they said was all true, but only applicable under certain circumstances. Still I am being called stupid, childlike and less than human and over time it starts to get to me. I start to wonder. Reading too much of Paul makes me want to book a sex change ASAP or convert to some other religion. I don't want to be that which those verses describe.

What about the good things of the Bible that are said about women? What about Proverbs 31? The passage about the perfect woman often used in modern churches to make the Bible seem feminist. It is a fine passage, equally applicable to a man. Being a hard worker, respected and loved and valued by your family is a great thing. I have nothing really negative about it. My favourite part is: “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.” Little passages like this are all too rare and a drop in the bucket compared to all the other crap women get heaped on them.

Many people say that Jesus is a very feminist character in the Bible. I suppose that is true. He never says anything truly demeaning to any woman, in my opinion. His conversations with his female friends are not recorded. I would love to know what words he and Mary Magdalene and sisters Martha and Mary exchanged since he was around them a lot of the time. It was women who found out about his resurrection first before others. What good things he might have said to women were not recorded because the recorders were men and that did not matter to them. Women may have mattered to Jesus and been valuable friends and companions to him but they were not to the men who wrote the gospels (this may not have been more than a cultural trait, I am sure they were fine men otherwise).

How do I deal with this? The homosexuality topic is easier to think through and get past and conclude because I am not homosexual it is not personal. This is and every time I read the Bible it is there and especially in the letters of the New Testament. It is very blatant and when ever I read the letters I become angry all over again. I feel less than human. I feel like there is this exclusive club of true Christians that a penis is the passport to, just like circumcision was the passport to Judaism that also was something not possible to women. I feel like I am on the outside. I cannot use my true talents. I will always be less than. So I am still working on this. This reconciling myself with being told by the Bible that I am something I am not. I am not a Biblical woman and, barring a miracle, will never be. God just did not create me like that. It is harder still when Christians remind me of this. That is something I will explore in another post very soon.

What I don't like about Christianity Part 2: Homosexuality

In my ongoing series about what I don't like about Christianity I present homosexuality. Let me make it clear, I am a Christian I love the Lord and Jesus lives in my heart. Now that that is out of the way I have thought that some Christians focus on the gays a little too much. It is almost creepy, heck, it is creepy. Let me tell you a story.

When I was in college I went to a wonderful little international church. I loved the people there. I loved the diversity. I loved the sermons that were so simple, clear and to the point. I even liked the music and I am super picky about music. The only thing that leaves a sort of bad taste in my mouth is the memory of a Korean man. In general I hear that Koreans act as if there are no gay Koreans and as a result there is no homophobia. (Also I have never met another Korean like him.) This man certainly did not fit that stereotype. I never asked him about his views of homosexuals in Korea probably because I did not want to encourage him. I cannot remember a single conversation I had with this man that did not disintegrate to talking about homosexuals and the evils of those people. As a result the only thing I remember about this man is ignorance and homosexuality, but mostly homosexuality. I am sure he would love to know that is what I think about him. Only once I tried to debate him on a false statement he made, it was that AIDS was a gay disease and that most people with AIDS were gay men. Actually at the time black straight women were the ones with most HIV cases. I told him so and he asked me who I had heard that from. Had I heard it from a gay person? So what if I had? That did not make it untrue, I really cannot remember whether my source was gay or not. I confess I hated him.

He is not the only one with that attitude that I have met among Christians, just the only one so obsessed, makes me wonder... Anyway, when I was like 12 I bought into that homosexuals are evil thing, but once I got older and a midge of sense I saw the truth. Homosexuals are people just like me and therefore not a strawman of stereotypes and lies. They are not “other” their hearts and minds are not different except in this one little way. I also met gay people and realized they were a lot more loving and accepting than my fellow Christians usually were toward me. When I had other Christians asking me loaded questions about my faith and practice of it so they could judge me, my gay friends were enthusiastically welcoming me to hang out with them and joking with me and making me feel really accepted. What ever left over stereotypes of gays I had fell down. They had no foundation in truth they were build on sand and the wind of truth blew and the rain fell and the misconception was swept away.

What am I saying? Could I possibly be saying homosexuality is not a sin? I can't make that statement. I cannot judge others. I have read all the parts in the Bible, that you have, about how homosexual acts are wrong. Please do not quote them. I just know that there is an awful lot of stuff in this world I do not understand. While everything may be black and white to God but for me to see the world that way makes me judgmental and that is a sin, at least for me. Only God can look into the hearts of men and see the truth about them. I cannot do that, I can barely understand my own.

What is the point? The point is: Why are Christians so judgmental of homosexuals? Could it be a greater sin than premarital sex? Having lustful thoughts? Stealing office supplies? Speeding on the way to work? Lying to your spouse about how much money you spent on something you really wanted that they thought was an unnecessary purchase? No, it is not and could not be a greater sin. All sins are the same in the eyes of God. They all lead to death according to the Bible and they can all be forgiven just the same. Really, whose opinion should we care about God's or man's? Man can set degrees of sin, God does not. I am not also going to sit here and arbitrate and list all the sins someone else commits, I am not God. It is none of my business. I have hard enough time with my own, mostly heterosexual lustful thoughts. After all, having a lustful thought about someone other than my husband is the same as having committed adultery, yikes! I know I am committing sin because I know my own heart. I better fix this and the thousands of other sins I have a problem with before tackling the sins of others, or even commenting weather something is a sin or not. Regardless of all my habitual sinning I am still going to Heaven because I have a promise in my heart. I just can't see how I am better than a gay person. Maybe homosexuality is a sin but Christ said nothing about it so I am not going to worry about it and he knows best about what is important to God.

Also, scientific evidence shows therapies are rather unsuccessful at reversing it.

What I don't like about Christianity Part 1: The Old Testament

I have been feeling rather angry, depressed and disappointed lately so I have decided to vent some of that by writing about all the things I do not like about Christianity. Yes my disappointment has to do with Christianity and Christians but instead of getting into that I want to discuss the Old Testament.

I really do not like the Old Testament. I don't like it in the same way that I do not like brussels sprouts. They are one of the few vegetables I hate. I mean I like the idea of them they are like tiny cabbages and I want to eat them by peeling off the little leafs one by one. The only thing stopping me is the taste. It is really horrible. My brother actually loves brussels sprouts so I know this dislike is not universal by any means. It is merely my opinion. No reading weird stuff into this and saying I am implying no one should eat brussels sprouts or they are a bad thing, no one should infer anything like that about the Old Testament either.

I was not always a disliker of the writings of the Old Testament. I used to enjoy the fun stories a lot as a kid. I did have some trouble reconciling it with the New Testament but I compartmentalized it in my head and no problem. As I got older I started to understand the Old Testament better and being able to reconcile it with the New Testament in my own way. Also as I did this my dislike of it grew. I have no idea why this is. I have no real reason to dislike the book just people's interpretations of it and the way they try to defend it.

What do I think the old testament is? This would be a good question to answer at this point. It is the chronicle of the Jewish people. It is their story. Christianity was an outgrowth or Judaism and therefore the main influence on the New Testament. It was heavily cited by Jesus and others in it. That is the simple answer that I can articulate with no problem. The long answer that I have a harder time putting into words is: What does it mean to me? Part of my acceptance of the apparent contradictions of the book and understanding them was phasing the Old Testament out in importance. Just like the New Covenant is greater than the Old, the New Testament is greater. I see the Old Testament as incomplete. It is attempting to state the same thing as the New Testament without Jesus and failing at it. Instead of Jesus it uses the law and gets tangled up in it and spans twice the pages of the New and fails to make the point. The New Testament, however, has Jesus and makes the point already in the Gospel of Mathew.

What I mean is I find references to salvation, or hints of it all over the Psalms. They are the one book of the Old Testament that lets its hair down and forgets about the rules and merely revels on the greatness of God. Rest of the time it is all about the rules, how we should follow the rules and stories about people trying to follow the rules and usually failing at it.

There was one story that bothered me as a child. I cannot find the exact location because I cannot figure out what words to use exactly. It took place while Moses was leading the people of Israel to the promised land. They attacked a town and no one was supposed to keep any loot for themselves. God told Moses someone had kept some loot so they threw lots to determine the tribe then on down until they got down to the nuclear family unit and the culprit. He confesses and gives back the item he had taken. Then in true Old Testament style he gets killed and so does his entire family unit, his kids wife and, if I remember, pack animals.

This was really hard to swallow. When my mother read it to me as a child out of her grown up Bible I really shocked and confused me but I tried not to think about it. As a little child it seemed so wrong, so contradictory of the God I believed in. With the faith of a child I shut the entire story out off my mind and separated that cruel petty unforgiving God from the one I believed in. Still it stayed with me and as I got older until I had to think about it and wonder at it. I had to either accept it as a story of my God or reject it.

It was at this time I considered the Old Testament as a whole and I considered weather or not to reject the whole thing because it seemed to me this was not the God I wanted to believe in. I have always had very well defined ideas of right and wrong, sure they have evolved over time and have incorporated a lot more gray area but they are still very well defined. The God of the Old Testament seemed to me to be so cruel, petty and xenophobic. This God did not seem to give a hoot about the rest of the people he created just his chosen people. F those pagans. Lets not even try to make them one of the Chosen people He loves. They can just go die in a fire set by the Chosen.

So you can see what a dilemma I had. The image of the Old Testament god contradicted so fiercely with the truth God had set in my heart from birth about what I saw as my God. What to do? I was able to reason away the problems I had with bits of the New Testament a lot easier. In the end I realized something. The Old Testament was given to us to show what a world with out grace was like. I personally think they could have done it in a fewer pages but it seems to make the point very well. Only a very few people are capable of even being good enough to communicate with God personally and no one is perfect and transgressors get destroyed instead of forgiven. As the Psalms hint, salvation was still there but much harder to find and not available to everyone. When Jesus came he fulfilled the law and swept it aside and we no longer had to be tangled up in it to attain salvation. We can just go to Him and be forgiven. The message of salvation is so clear when seen through the lens of Jesus and an impossible jungle of confusion and fear when seen through the lens of the law. The law can only show us our sin it cannot save us. Jesus can save us and remove the sin that the law showed us.

This is my opinion on the subject and I guess I don't like the Old Testament because to me it is a scary vision on a world where grace is so rare and the Law so abundant. I know I am incapable of being good. Even with grace I fail daily, no hourly, and the thought of not having forgiveness and understanding for this fills me with dread. This is why I hate it when people quote the Old Testament or try to defend the law so profusely as to make it seem like it is a good thing instead of a failed method only conceived to show us how woefully deficient we are. In my opinion, if you cannot make you point using the New Testament you are making the wrong point. If there are no relevant scripture in the New Testament it is simply irrelevant. Also if Jesus did not speak about it it obviously was not the point. The rest of the New testament after Jesus's death was written to answer questions people of the time had and they were written by biased flawed men about their biased flawed opinions. I am not saying they are not worthwhile and useful, I merely am saying I do not hold them nearly in the same esteem as the words of Jesus. If I can understand all that Jesus said, or nearly all, and attempt to live based on that I think I am in good shape. I have decided to focus on Jesus and his words because they are more than adequate. They are perfect and the rest is just periphery.

Jehovah's Witnesses Revisited

In my post What to do About those Jehovah’s Witnesses I expressed a sentiment that the name of God is not all that important to me. It happens to be very important to the Witnesses so it was the first thing they asked: Does God have a name? What is it? You know, I knew what they meant. They showed me passages in the Bible etc. I mean they are Jehovah's Witnesses.

I had an anonymous commenter disagree and point to some parts of the Bible where this matter was discussed (Lords prayer and the ten commandments). I felt like he assumed that I did not know the Bible very well, I am sure that is not what he meant but I had not missed these passages. I said as much in my reply. In light of this I feel like I need to explain that point.

It is not that I do not believe in a specific God with specific attributes. It is very clear to me what my God is like and if I were to call him a proper name I would rather use the name Jesus than Yahweh. Three in one trinity and all that jazz.

Why is it that I don't see it as important, unlike the missionaries and the commenter. Well, let's use an analogy the ladies who came to my door used. What they said was: If there was a group of men and one of them was her husband if she just called out “man!” they would all turn, but if she called her husband by name only he would turn (well, perhaps another would turn too if there was more than one man with the same name but she did not include this in her analogy). My version of this is: My husband is not only a man he is my husband by virtue of our relationship and if I see a group of men and my husband is in it and I call out “Husband, get over here and get me my dinner!” ('cause I am a jerk). All the men that are husbands might turn around but only my husband would trot on over because we have a special relationship that requires him to do that. The other husbands would not recognize me as their wife so they would get back to what they were doing.

I see calling out to God in prayer to be the same way. Only my God would recognize me and come to me. My husband would not be offended if I were never to call him by his proper name again. I could just call him sweetie or honey or other saccharine things. He knows I mean him.

Also there is the assumption that there are other gods. The Jehovah's Witnesses are monotheistic but this analogy does kind of assume more than one entity listening to the prayer. I do not personally believe there are other entities out there to listen to my prayer and only the God I believe in.

So I am a little confused as to why it is a big deal especially since most translations of the Bible do not say Yahveh on these instances. My New Jerusalem Bible does. It is not usually used by evangelicals. We usually use the NIV. The Lords prayer does not use the name Yahveh even in the NJB. It just says “Father in heaven”. How ever His name is to be kept holy but does not mention what that name is so it is not really any proof for the Yahveh side of the argument. Hope that clears up my personal position on the point.

Some assorted stories from my life with a theme

I never remember truly believing in Santa Clause. I am sure I must have at some point. I also never recall losing my faith in him. I am sure I had lost my belief in this by the time I was five, if I ever really believed. I know I no longer believed by the time I was five because I started giving presents to my family because I figured out how this worked. This did not make me lose the fun of Christmas nor did it stop me from pretending I believed in the mythos, it just made it all more fun.

When we moved to the United States my parents became avid watchers of TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network). TBN had a lot of Biblical prophets and especially faith healers. They were good at making the money roll in. Benny Hinn was one of the most prominent faith healers in the station. He held huge crusades where people were healed of their infirmities by their faith.

When I was in middle school he came to my town and we got tickets to it. We came in a little late so we were sent to the row right in front of the wheel chairs. Awesome! We had an “in front of the row seats” to the whole event when they would get healed, right? No. None of them were healed. Did I lose my faith, no, this was periphery to what I truly believed. It was a fringe phenomena. Still, I cannot say it did not make me look at the claims of Christians a little more critically.

Also at the time there was a car dealership with a Christian fish symbol on it and we passed it every time in our drive to church. One day my father said “You know they cheat everyone as much as they can.” Every Sunday after that I looked at that place on the way to church and thought about it and it made me realize that you cannot trust someone anymore because they claim that they are a Christian than if they are not. Shortly after that we were judged out of our church because of the prosperity doctrine.

We moved to another church and another state and I started to put a few things together like how every time someone spoke in tongues it sounded the same and I was able to imitate it perfectly. Did the Bible not say that speaking in tongues sounds like your native language when the person speaking does not speak it? Also the translation, which my Sunday school teacher said was essential to verify that it was from God, never stuck in my mind. I thought to myself, as I listened intently trying to gain some insight, that if it was really a direct message from God should it not be a little more memorable, instead of completely forgetable.

I had a very progressive sort of a Sunday school teacher. He wanted to teach us to think for ourselves, especially if it led us to the same conclusions as it was accepted in the church. By this time I was already taking everything with a grain of salt, I was in high school, and I found several things in the doctrine of my church that they treated as essential that I could not reconcile with my conscience and the Bible. There was their stance on the death penalty, war, a Christians involvement in politics to name a few. My Sunday school teacher taught us about different religions other than Christianity. I thought this was some great perspective, well I thought that when he started. I asked, as he was in the middle of teaching about Mormonism, weather this is what the Mormons claimed to believe or this was the interpretation of a non-Mormon. You can guess what the answer was.

One day my teacher made a mistake and taught me an important lesson without meaning to. We were studying Paul and specifically his experience on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). He divided us into two groups. One was to argue how this was the best thing that ever happened to Paul and one was to play the devil's advocate. I was randomly selected to be in the opposing group. I, of course, believed that this was the best thing that ever happened to Paul but as I started to think about it the ideas to the contrary just started to flow out. Arguing against what I believed in was fascinating. I loved exploring the opposing point of view. The other kids in my group came up with no ideas at all, I came up with plenty of really good ones. When we presented our arguments, mine were better than the opposing groups. I could see on the teachers face the mistake he realized he had made. He thought none of us could come up with good reasons and therefore discrediting opposing point of views from the church’s in our minds. I just did a too good of a job. He carried on as before. I was super pleased with myself and had a lot of fun.

That taught me that other people are incapable of holding two opposing points of view in their minds at the same time. They are too scared to face two opposing realities. That is the thing I am trying to do with this blog. I am trying to get people to stop being scared of seeing their opposer's point of view in anything but a mocking context. We cannot truly understand what we believe in until we comprehend its opposite. If you are afraid of losing your faith, it is not strong enough and hardly worth keeping if a simple mental exercise will destroy it. A faith unquestioned is a faith not worth having. A child may believe unquestioningly, but when I was little I asked questions like who were Gods parents? If little kids can ask that why are you too scared? You are a grown up, grow a pair and start thinking for yourself.

I love Muslims

I am serious, I really do love Muslims. Do I love them more than say Atheists, Buddhist, Satanists, Christians or Secular Humanists. No, not really but lately there has been a lot of talk about Muslims in my neck of the woods.

It has been a while since there was a major terrorist attack and we have had plenty of time to connect with our fellow humans and get to know those affiliating with the Muslim faith. Still people are unduly afraid of Muslims. Why is that? I have known plenty of Muslims in my life and really cannot say that any of them were anything other than harmless regular people, some I would even categorize as really great loveable people. You know, same as with any random sampling of humanity.

I see Muslims everyday on the bus. Well, I see Muslim women. I am sure I see men too but they are not as noticeable because they dress just like everyone else. I feel no fear, or nervousness with these women. I have classes with them. They are quiet, some not so quiet, but they seem like regular people. They stick to their own kind, just like the representatives of most minority groups because they are probably a little scared.

I remember 9/11. I was in the University of Oklahoma at the time. People started saying crazy things like, don't go in the Towers (12 story residential buildings) someone will fly a plane in them. I remember laughing and thinking they were crazy, I lived on the 12th floor of one. What was going to happen? Someone was going to fly a crop duster in one? I also remember being scared for my brown friends. Not only my Muslim friends but all my brown friends. Any one perpetrating a racially motivated attack is not going to wait to find out that they guy is actually Sikh, or Mexican.

I take all the words of Jesus literally. I may leave some room for interpretation in some parts of the Bible, but I must say that the words of Jesus I listen to with out interpretation. I have never felt the need to expand up on them. I try to expand the sphere of my love as far as it will humanly go. I try to love people no matter how exotic their culture is or how strange their ideas are because they are people just like me. I also believe in loving my enemy and as a result I am supposed to have no enemies. I can honestly say I love all Muslims from the nice Afgani family that runs the pizzeria down the block to even the villainous late Osama bin Laden. My literal neighbours in this case may deserve my love and it is easy to love them, the latter is universally hated for the things he has done and deserves no love but he is still a human being and the words of Jesus apply to him too. So, if you start from the stand point that we must love our enemies, if we are to be good Christians, and the late Mr. Laden is our enemy, how much easier is it to love that person down the street who is merely different.

Worst Ways to Evangelize

1. Yelling at random people on a street corner calling them whores and whore mongers.

2. Trying to outsmart them by using clever turns of phrase which really do not make your case, just make your opponent unable to answer.

3. Quoting scripture. What is scripture to someone who does not believe in the Bible? Also scripture quoting is usually employed in a barrage to show off and to try and remove any possible personal discussion from the witnessing.

4. Using "Science". God cannot be proven via the scientific method, the other good news is that he cannot be disproven either. Here you think: Wait, I am sure she meant to say "but the good news is". No I believe that not being able to prove the existance of God is a good thing because the second we prove him belief is no longer neccesary defeating the whole point of seeking Him.

5. Handing out tracks. If a person is supposed to be brought to a personal knowledge of Christ you need something personal there. Come on, would be Apostles, get your hands dirty. Get down there with the sinners like Jesus did. Open up. Give of yourself in order to give God.

Witnessing is a personal act that requires you to care about the person on a personal individual level. I mean, you must care about him as a person, not just as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God. When people figure out it is just about winning souls they will became jaded with Christians and what a person thinks about Christians they start thinking about Christ.

Edit: I noticed a typing error which changed the meaning of what I was trying to say. Originally I had said "I mean, you must care about him as a person, as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God." What I had intended to say was, "I mean, you must care about him as a person, not just as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God." It has been corrected in the post to reflect my sentiments. 09:46, 25.8.11

Militant Stay at Home Motherhood

When I was growing up my mother worked part time. No one ever told me, until I was a teenager that I could not do something because I was a girl. My mother unintentionally raised a feminist. I really hate the word feminist. It seems to imply female superiority. I do understand that basically it just seeks female equality and was coined in a time when women were the down trodden masses while being simultaneously put on a pedestal and told they had the minds of kids with nice tits. Still I dislike the word.


When I was in college I was having a conversation with a girl in a campus Christian group called Ki Alpha. She was engaged to be married, I think. I was talking about my family and chose my words incorrectly. I said: "My mother is just a stay at home mother." (At the time she was not being licensed for dentistry in the US). The girl became very upset with me and felt like I was belittling stay at home mother hood. She explained to me, in a way I recall as hostile that she was intending to be a stay at home mother and how that was in her opinion the greatest job a woman could have. I explained to her that I meant no disrespect and my mother was a great stay at home mother and all that. That it was a perfectly respectable life choice. I never spoke to her personally again.

Since then I have been a stay at home mother for many years by default. For her it was a choice. Raising kids was going to be her career, her goal in life. She got a college education to raise her kids, that is fine. For me it was not a choice. I never dreamed of being a stay at home mom. In fact I was never really was sure I wanted kids.

I have thought since my conversation what got her so upset with the little, miss chosen word just. Many stay at home moms are always on the defensive about it. I wonder if it was that she had been criticizes for her plan before, maybe she thought having job instead of staying at home with the kids was unforgivably selfish for a woman or that she was not entirely confident in her choice. I will never know the answer to that.

I guess I understand her upsetness in a way because once after a Sunday school class in a Baptist church that dealt in successful marriages. It was taught by a couple who had been married a mere nine years and the husband acted like he needed to convince himself that he was the boss of his wife by saying "Christ, church, Christ, church" all the time (when he said Christ he pointed to himself and when he said church he pointed to his wife). If one is the true leader of something one does not need to posture like that, mmmkay. Their basic message was that after marriage a woman should never work and the man should be the primary, and only breadwinner and their way was the only Biblical way to do it. Needless to say I was extremely upset after this class. A girl asked me what I had thought about the class and stupidly I told her the truth. She told me that I had a problem with submission and I was too prideful. I did not reply to her.

I firmly believe in a parent's right to stay at home and care for their kids and not working. I also believe in my right to want to have a dang job. Maybe all those dear mommies and working women need to get the chips off their shoulders so I can talk about my lack of a career freely with the words I choose with out getting a tongue lashing from someone more righteous. It is so hard to trust Christians sometimes.

The Holy Spirit

"Same river different parts." Is what my husband says when talking about the way his Quaker beliefs see the holy spirit and the way my Pentecostal back ground sees it. Pentecostals focus on the strong events of encountering of the holy spirit, and from what I have seen the Quakers focus more on the quiet gentle, still small voice of daily guidance the holy spirit offers. We are swimming in the gently quiet shallows of the spiritual river basking in the love of God. The Pentecostals are in the rapids in their canoes wearing crash helmets and seem to be having a whole lot of crazy fun, WOOHOO!

I like the rapids, I do. I like strong tearing up shaking encounters with the spirit, I just cannot be sustained from day to day on them. I had a few good encounters like that as a child with God, when I was saved and when I received the holy spirit a different time some years later. These were wonderful experiences of closeness with God that probably resembled, in a small way what Moses felt when he saw the Lord pass by.

The danger of these experiences is sometimes you wish to "feel the presence of God" and forget that he is always present. He never leaves, you can always feel him, talk to him and listen to him with out crying screaming and begging for that next strong hit of the holy spirit, like a heroin addict begging for credit from his dealer. Christians, at least in America, often like to compare God to drugs. There is a song by a Christian alternative group, either Skillet or Thousand Foot Crutch, I forget which that is called "Better than Drugs". This is a cute, if over played metaphor many American Christians like to use but when Christians start acting like drug addicts it is no longer cute, it is alarming. It is alarming when a Christian cannot get by with out having a "profound spiritual experience" complete with crying, gnashing of teeth, writhing on the floor, passing out and spewing nonsense. I am not saying these things are somehow not true manifestations of the baptism in the holy spirit but what I am saying is that they are darn exhausting and alarming to the uninitiated, and even those who know what is going on and often indistinguishable from a classically demon possessed person. There is so much wrong when that high is all you are chasing and attaining it is about begging and pleading with God, like you are still a sinner, to come to you. What is wrong with shutting the frack up and listening for a change?

It works for me and when I stopped chasing that high and just listened and relaxed I started to feel and appreciate the daily presence of God more and I no longer felt unworthy because I had no apparent gifts. What God taught me in the silence is that I am good enough for him to love the way I am and there is no need to worry about any special gifts, just living my life for him is good enough. If I fail to enjoy his presence today, I can still do it tomorrow. He is always there for me and more like a warm cup of tea, a blanket and a hug from a loved one than a syringe full of whatever or a noseful of cocaine. Maybe I am just getting old and just no fun spiritually.

Heaven and Hell

I was just thinking about the concepts of Heaven and Hell and life after death. It is remarkable how differently people see it. I personally know people who believe in reincarnation, ghosts, Heaven, but not Hell. I also know Atheists that believe in no after life at all except in the one in the memories of our loved ones or in progeny. I also have a pagan friend who believes that if he lives a good and honorable life, he will go to Valhalla. I respect all their beliefs and believe they feel the same way about them as do I. I laugh at none of the concepts, except the ghost one, but I am working on that. As I have said before, you can not believe just because you want to just like you cannot stop believing just because you want to.

What do I believe? Well, I like to use the Bible as a general guide for all my beliefs, that and my own conscience. I believe in Heaven and Hell, but not exactly as western cultural tradition portrays them. The Bible describes Hell as a separation from God and Heaven as a connection with him and other believers that have passed on. The Bible also describes them as realms beyond out imagining, where our existence is nothing like Earth. It does say that Hell is a place of fire and brimstone but if it is a non-physical realm that means very little and must be a metaphor. It also says that we have spiritual bodies in Heaven, but what are spiritual bodies? I have no idea, I am sure they would be something nice. I also believe that up on entering Heaven we will know what God knows. You know,answer to life, the universe and everything, and I bet it will not be 42.

Some people do not believe in Hell on the philosophical principle that it is unfair and that a loving God would never punish anyone. Well, I think the opposite, it would be unfair for God to force someone who wanted nothing to do with Him in life be be with constant communion in the here after. I think this would be a good time to answer the question of: Do I think Hell is a place of suffering? Yes, I don't know, maybe. Is the short answer. The long answer would be: Yes, it would be suffering for me to be separated from the presence of God forever. I don't know if it would be suffering for those who never knew him and since I do not know the extend which you can have contact with others sent to Hell, I guess it could be suffering for others too.

Now lets talk about the elephant on the page, well Elephant if you are an Evangelical Christian or someone who reads the Bible. Revelations. I believe that it has a really detailed account of how heaven looks with gold and gems and God being the source of light or something. I have read Revelations, it makes no sense to me and Bible scholars debated strongly weather it should be included in the Bible. Is it legitimately inspired by God or just the hallucinations of a man? I do not know, not until I go to Heaven and get all the answers. I have had no special revelation on Revelations from God. It just does not fit in with the rest of new testament and makes precious little sense to me. I honestly do not care what overly elaborate metaphorical, ope to interpretation way the world as we know it will come to an end. Even if it is legitimate it does next to no good in the way I live my life. It is a fear mongering book the skews the way people live their life. It (or rather its popular interpretation) makes people think they will be raptured any moment or it males them waste time looking for the signs of the end times which have been here since the resurrection because we have been living in the "end times" since then. Well, my views on Revelations would best be explored in another post.

I think there is a Heaven and a Hell. I also think that the boundaries between Heaven and Hell and the world of living are immutable so, sorry, I do not believe in ghosts. Neither do I believe that we linger in the world of the living after death. As soon as the brain dies, we are off to Heaven, or Hell and no turning back. That is what I believe about this. You are welcome to share what you think.

Sunday's Coming

On the other end of this link is an enjoyable video about made up words and deep manufactured emotions that will change your life.

http://vimeo.com/11501569

Backsliding

I was reading http://blog.beliefnet.com/stuffchristianculturelikes/2010/05/154-the-word-backsliding.html

It reminded me of my teenage years. When we moved to the US we started attending an Assembly of God church. This was the worst thing that happened to me. I am not saying Assemblies of God churches are bad or that any churches we attended were bad either but for me and my development as a Christian and a person it was terrible. As a teenager I was just starting to define the specifics of my faith. I slowly started to realize that what I believed and knew to be true did not match up with what my church believed and this opened me up to some criticism. I did not understand why their opinion could be so different in these matters. That was because my brain was not completely developed yet. There was also something else wrong with my brain; I started to think. I had trouble spending time reading the Bible and concentrating on prayer. I knew that is what I had to do in order to maintain a good relationship with God. This started to worry me to the point that backsliding became a worry to me. What I did not realize is that having trouble remembering to spend time reading the Bible and praying was not the reason for my feeling of disconnect with God. I believe what really caused me to perceive a distance was my dissatisfaction with my self, my disappointment with myself and the stress caused by this. I think some of the reason I had trouble concentrating might have been a manageable form of ADHD combined with unrealistic expectations of what spending time with God meant. This disconnect set me up with increasingly lower self-esteem that spiraled off to depression.

So I started to feel bad about myself right on time to start going to youth services at my very large church. The emphasis on very regimented disciplined time spent with God continued added to it was the pressure to witness. It is not that you had to earn your salvation or anything, it was just that if one was truly saved one would naturally and eagerly do these thing. Having low self-esteem was also a sin but I was not able to love myself or even accept the love of God because I did not think I deserved it because I was not a good Christian. I asked God to help me be better, to change me, make me something else because I was not good. I felt flawed somehow, defective and even that I must have been the only mistake God ever made. God did not answer these prayers because there was nothing wrong with me. I was the way I was supposed to be. No one told me this. They just said I had to give my sins up, to nail them on the cross. I had to relinquish my sins to God, give up my low self-esteem and lustful thoughts. Did I say lustful thoughts? Girls don't have those, right, only boys. Wrong, I did and felt like no other girl did. This made me feel even worse. My pastor told us to take our sinful thoughts and pluck them out of our heads. We were told to imagine that it was a mouse or a rat and pluck it up right by the tail and toss it out of our minds. I tried it (never pluck up a real rodent by the tail) and it did not work. It was useless, stupid and ineffective. Still I kept on doing it because it was the only thing I knew to do.

Soon I began to believe I was constantly backsliding. I would spent countless teary hours crying out to God believing I had lost my salvation and was going to hell. Every worship experience was an agonizing climb up to God, I knew God could never leave me so it had been me who left so I climbed and climbed. I did not know that all this self hatred and stress had build a wall that I could never climb. We were told to seek God and become cleansed like the newly fallen snow but we were never told that we were good enough for Him just as we were. We had to do nothing but accept the love and quit stressing. It was always an effort toward holiness. My Christian walk as a teenager was hell.

It has been a slow progress but now I know that while I am far from perfect God loves and understands me. I am exactly as he intended me to be and I no longer worry about it. That is so strange that something so seemingly good as a Christian community can be something so hurtful.