A Danger to God Himself

A blog about living a great life without God—because, really, isn’t that where we all find ourselves? What does it even mean to “have” God in your life?

Who lays claim to the true gospel?

By 1 Comment

gospel
Everyone says they bear the true gospel. Mormons say it. (They call it the Restored Gospel.) Pentecostals say it. (They call it the Full Gospel.) Holy Rollers say it. (They call it The Foursquare Gospel.)

And so on.

What they’re all saying when they make this claim is “We believe in the gospel that the first apostles believed in!” (For example, Mormons claim that after the last apostle died, there was a Great Apostasy—the gospel was lost and the priesthood power withdrawn from the faithful.)

Everyone wants to be like The First Christians.

The whole effort’s wrongheaded, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not even sure the First Christians were Christians. I think they thought they were Jews—Torah-observant Jews. The only difference between them and their fellow Jews was their devotion to Jesus, who was very adamant about observing the Torah. The early church was based in Jerusalem and headed up by James, the brother of Jesus, who wouldn’t let you in the club unless you got circumcised. Without anesthesia. Ouch. How’s that for being born again?

I believe that what is promoted as apostolic doctrine by most churches is not what the apostles taught. For example, what mainline Christians believe as “gospel” is the dogma introduced by Paul, which he called “my gospel”—I think to distinguish it from the pro-Torah “gospel” pushed by James and the apostles in Jerusalem.

Paul was the one who invented the whole “salvation by grace through faith” idea, not Jesus.

The First Christians weren’t about grace. They were about strict observance.

Problem is, strict observance sucks as a Rule of Life. Whether or not you believe in God, it’s best to give yourself grace. Allow screw ups. Have a fried egg sandwich now and then—with bacon. Realize that when you try to learn something new, you’re going to suck at it at first. Stop being your worst critic. Rules—enough with all the rules! Everyone who has found peace by following rules, raise your hand. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Stop trying to be like the first-century church. They were just as lost as we are. If you want to have religion in your life, let your religion evolve—improve. Stop looking backward. Let’s keep learning and growing, throwing away the rules that don’t get us anywhere.

That’s my gospel.

 Photo: Prepare for the end of this world by Stephen McCulloch  CC BY 2.0

*****

If you liked this blog post, why not subscribe to my blog? It’s free and in return I’ll send you the first two chapters of my novel, A Danger to God Himself, for free. Click here to subscribe. Meanwhile, feel free to use the little share buttons below to share this post with your friends

All Christians will accept homosexuals — and soon

By 3 Comments

Fag nation

Well, maybe not all Christians. Probably not the Westboro Baptist types and the snake handlers. But other than that, yes, I think everyone who believes, in some fashion, in Jesus and the Bible will come to embrace homosexuals. Oh, yeah, and the Mormons—they’ll probably never budge on homosexuality either. (Don’t be so sure, though. The LDS church is infamous for flip-flops on doctrine.)

Right now, it’s pretty much only progressive Christians who accept homosexuals. In my experience, they back up their acceptance with faulty interpretations of the Six Killer Verses About Homosexuality in the Bible—for example, “abomination” didn’t mean, well, “abomination;” it meant “taboo.”

More about biblical interpretation later, but first let me explain why I think all Christians will soon embrace homosexuals.

I think that eventually The Church will come to accept homosexuality, but it won’t be because they adopt progressive Christianity’s’ unorthodox biblical interpretations I mention above. Rather, it’s going to happen because, more and more, believers are encountering gays at work and elsewhere and they’re learning that they’re just normal people. They’re coming to find out that gays aren’t “wicked” or some such thing. They are moral and they just want what straight people want: happiness, healthy marriages, security, etc. It’s a Virtuous Circle, I think: As society becomes more accepting of gays, gays are emboldened to “come out” at work and in their neighborhoods. And as gays come out, their straight peers are finding that they are actually likable, which results in more societal acceptance, which results in gays being more emboldened to come out. You get the idea.

And that Virtuous Circle is going to force Christians to adopt a new attitude toward scripture. What do I mean? I mean the progressive Christians don’t go far enough. We don’t need new interpretations of scripture. We need a new understanding of what we mean when we call scripture “inspired.” The Bible—or the Koran or the book of Mormon or any “holy” book—isn’t the Word of God. It’s the word of humans, and, as such, it’s prone to all the limitations of the human authors.

The truth is the Bible is an adamantly heterosexual book. It assumes heterosexuality. That’s because it was written by ancient people—mainly men—who weren’t particularly enlightened. When the Westboro Baptist types insist that the Bible condemns homosexuality, they are right.

Let me be more plain. The Bible was wrong about homosexuality. Paul was wrong about homosexuality. Jesus was wrong about homosexuality.

In this coming gay-friendly Christianity, believers will still read the Bible but they’ll do so more cautiously. They’ll pick out the wisdom and disregard the nonsense. They’ll realize that all truth is God’s truth.

Or maybe they won’t. Who’s to say? But if the Church doesn’t change its stance on homosexuals and on scripture, it will die.

Photo: Westboro Baptist Church in Madison by Cometstarmoon CC BY 2.0

*****

If you liked this blog post, why not subscribe to my blog? It’s free and in return I’ll send you the first two chapters of my novel, A Danger to God Himself, for free. Click here to subscribe. Meanwhile, feel free to use the little share buttons below to share this post with your friends