The Secret of the Lord – Reblog

It seems I’ve been doing a lot of reblogging lately – republishing pieces that I wrote some time ago – and this piece is one of those, first published in June, 2018.

Every so often, it is prudent to bring to the fore ideas, concepts and wisdom from the past, in order to make it visible again. I have recently been so blessed by this piece that I just had to share it once more[1].

And so, here is the piece ‘The Secret of the Lord’, previously published here. I trust it will bless you as much as it just blessed me!


I think it’s fair to say that God knows everything. He knows how everything is put together, how it all works, how it all began and how it all ends. And yet, in the midst of all that wonder, He chooses to let us ‘in’ on His secrets.

Now, everyone loves a secret that they are privy to. You’ll remember the delicious feeling, when we were kids, of being ‘in the know’; maybe being part of a secret club or ‘gang’ (not a ‘gang’ in its modern sense!); a group of kids who all identified with each other and who were all ‘in’. Great fun, wasn’t it? šŸ˜€

And I think that this is a precursor to knowing the secrets of God. That same desire to ‘know stuff’, which manifests itself differently in different people. For some it might be a desire to indulge in gossip about others’ private lives; for others it’s a desire to work things out in great detail; for still others it may be something else entirely. So I do believe it’s part of every human’s makeup in one form or another.

But for me there is no more fascinating quest than that of the pursuit of the secret things of God. To see in increasing measure what His purpose is; to see His attitudes; to know His love; to know many, many other things, maybe not even necessarily things directly about Him, that I can’t even begin to describe. Even the beginning of the knowledge of the answers to the deep questions of life is to be found in this quest.

As a medical research scientist, many years ago, I discovered how many things worked in a medical sense. That’s what we did. We were finding out these previously unknown things – secrets, if you will – that, up until we had made the discovery, nobody knew about.

And yet that’s nothing compared with knowing God and knowing about His ways. Consider also, there are Life’s Big Questions too, which I have touched on previously – why do bad things happen; why does God allow suffering and death – yes, I have those questions too.

So in this piece, then, I will attempt to explore something of what this ‘The Secret of the Lord’ is all about. The Psalmist said, “The secret of the Lord [is] with them that fear Him; And He will shew [archaic: show – Ed] them His covenant” – Ps 25:14 (KJV) – and that’s what we’re going to be looking at today.

But first, let’s just deal with that word ‘Fear’, shall we? The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him? As I have said in a previous article, the word ‘Fear’, when seen in the Bible in the context of the ‘Fear of God’, does not mean what people in this day and age understand as ‘fear’.Ā The word ‘fear’ has been retained in modern translations, despite its archaic use (and hence my use of the King James Version quotations to illustrate this), but it meant a different thing then from what it does now. The cynic in me says that this has been done for control purposes, but then that’s just my opinion. I’m not going to go into more detail here, but if you would like some more background on the common misuse of this word in the Bible, please take a look at this article. Suffice it to say for now that it’s a very rich word with connotations far exceeding simple ‘terror’; that the word can mean concepts more like ‘respect’, ‘awe’ or even ‘worship’ too, and given that perfect Love has no room for ‘fear’ as we understand the meaning of the word today, we would expect that the context is less to do with terror than it has to do with love. So, when we talk about people who ‘fear’ the Lord, we are talking about those who love Him, who worship Him, and who think He’s just pretty amazing. That’s what we’re talking about here.

So, to paraphrase Ps 25:14, ‘The secret of the Lord is with those who think He’s amazing’. Ok? But I am going to carry on using the word ‘fear’ in this article because it is the form of the Scripture passage that most believers will be familiar with. Just remember what the word really means, right?! šŸ™‚

So, then, using our knowledge of Hebrew parallelism, we can at least see that the two concepts in Ps 25:14 are linked, in that to those who fear the Lord and know His secrets, He will show His covenant. In other words, the very idea of God showing His secrets to those who fear Him means that He makes His covenant – the ways in which He has promised to relate to us – known to us in increasing measure. And while that’s absolutely wonderful, there’s a lot more that He makes known to us as well.

And this is to be expected. God’s dealings with His faithful have always involved Him telling us stuff that we wouldn’t previously have known. Even as far back as Genesis, God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17). As St. Paul wrote, “…The natural man [that is, one not walking in the Spirit] does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. ā€œFor who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?ā€ But we have the mind of Christ” – (1Cor2:14-16) If we are living a supernatural life, then it is to be expected that God will reveal new and surprising things to us through His Spirit; things we were not expecting, things we did not ask for, and certainly things that we didn’t know before and would have no way of knowing without the Spirit of God showing us these things.

Linked with this is the idea that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” – (Prov 9:10). Do you see the connection there; the common root? If we begin by approaching the Lord in ‘fear’ – worship, adoration, awe and just generally being gobsmacked – then we begin and continue our walk along the path to wisdom, which is part of the ‘Secret of the Lord’. If you’ve been a believer for some time, then you will know what I am talking about. You will be able to point to various things that God has shown you over the years that you couldn’t have known yourself; things He has shared with you, in terms of both wisdom and knowledge. If you’ve not been walking with Jesus all that long, then I rejoice in saying that you have all this to look forward to!

Much of the wisdom I have been able to share which I have learned in my grief journey since losing my wife to cancer nineteen months ago, this wisdom I have been taught in the silences of simply sitting at Jesus’s feet; in the agonies of grief; in deep, healing worship; and in the times where I have felt His tangible Presence like a warm cloak of divine Love wrapped around my shoulders. And some of this knowledge is ‘secret’ because it relates only to me; it’s personal for my circumstances – these are ‘my secrets’, if you will. But other things have been revealed that I have indeed shared. In particular, the profound realisation that death is not the end is extremely important, and had to be shared with my readers here.

He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him – Dan 2:22 (KJV)

He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. – Dan 2:22 (NIV)

‘Deep and secret things’. That sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And it is. We are privy to an immense storehouse of God’s wisdom and knowledge that He is willing to pass on to us, albeit in chunks that we can cope with. The ancient Hebrew King, David, wrote this: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” – (Psalm 139:6). Jesus Himself said several times that even once He’d gone, not only would He not leave us ‘as orphans’ (Jn 14:18), and that He would come to us and that He would send us His Spirit “…to be with you for ever” (Jn 14:16)

And He also said that, ā€œI have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.Ā But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.Ā He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.Ā All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.ā€ – (Jn 16:12-15)[Emphasis mine]

I also love the bit in Matthew 11:25-27 where Jesus said,Ā ā€œI praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children [in the context, He was referring to His disciples here – Ed].Ā Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, the key to all this is Jesus. Knowing Jesus is foundational. In order to sit at His feet and learn from Him, you need to come to Him. Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” – (John 17:3). If you like, the wisdom and knowledge of the ways of God, including the ‘Secret of the Lord’, is part of the ‘Eternal Life’ package; the life of the age to come being projected into the here and now. Parallel to this idea, Proverbs 8:35 says, “For he who finds me [wisdom] finds life, and obtains favour from the Lord” – Prov 8:35 (NASB)

As I mentioned above, some parts of the Secrets of the Lord can be shared; some cannot. Some we can learn from each other; from those to whom God has revealed things. Some things are too far ingrained in the route by which we learned them such that they are not communicatable because the way we learned them is too deep to be expressed. But some things are in any case altogether too sacred to share, and indeed can be potentially harmful to share with people who do not have the maturity to hear those things (cf. Heb 5:11-14)[2]. Some of the stuff I get from God, I know full well would cause one helluva stir if I were to let it out into the public domain. And so, the wisdom that I receive from the Lord – which I always want to have at the same time as the knowledge I receive – is that which says what is good to share, and what is not. St. Paul, somewhat modestly, declared (in the third person) that he had received visions from God that he was not permitted to share. I love the passage where he writes about this:

“Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell“.Ā  – (2Cor12:1-4, emphasis mine)

Some of my readers will know what this is like. How many times have you had dreams where God has shared things with you that you cannot even express? I remember once (if ‘remember’ is the right word) having a dream about the things of God. I could not remember a thing about it when I woke up except that I knew that something really deep had happened. The fruits of that dream are with me to this day. I’m not talking about the ordinary kind of forgetting of dreams that always happens; I distinctly remember waking up fully from the dream that had just finished, knowing that something amazing had happened to me, but I didn’t know what it was. It seems that, on occasion, God even keeps secrets from us about His dealings with us! And talking of dreams, my late wife Fiona had a similar occurrence in her sleep in her early twenties, which was incredible but which is not my story to share.

Added to that, a few months before she died, Fiona was given a lucid vision of what Heaven was going to be like for her. And she kept that a secret from me until only a couple of weeks before her passing, because she knew that her telling me would greatly upset me, because then all my hope of not losing her would be lost. Now that’s wisdom! She was the most wise person I ever met, was my Fiona! šŸ™‚

Another idea along these lines is that sometimes someone isn’t ready for new knowledge just yet. Let me use the example of an article I read the other day, where the writer was working through some concepts of Scripture that were bothering them. This person had some excellent ideas, some that were not so good, and also expressed some concepts that I left behind years ago. But rather than wade in and point out ‘errors’ based on my ‘knowledge’ (which I appreciate is sketchy at best!), I recognised that the writer was at a point in their own walk that was a huge step forward from where they were previously, and for them, that was amazing. And so I kept my trap shut and didn’t say anything. I sometimes think that wisdom is knowing how and when to use the knowledge that we have been given!

I also read a comment, in reply to one of Christy Wood’s posts, where the commenter said this, “Here’s the thing: even as God does gently lead me into greater understanding, I cannot then turn around and push it down the throats of others. I have to allow God to be God, and do with them as he is doing with me. If I am a parent, I have to allow my adult children to learn their own lessons, make their own mistakes and choose their own flavor of relating to God“. We can use that illustration as part of the reason why God shares with us certain things, while not sharing others.

Sometimes, the stuff He shares with us is so historically magnificent that it would destabilise lives if we were to share it. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law“. – (Deut 29:29) This is true insofar as the secret things of God were being progressively revealed to the Israelites in the desert under Moses, and later through the prophets, but were revealed in their fulness in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fulfilment of that Law on our behalf. And so, ‘secret things’ were revealed, yes, but their true historical significance did not become apparent until Jesus Christ. They couldn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, have known what was to come, because the ramifications were so huge. In other words, God speaks His secrets to us at a level we are able to cope with, and not necessarily at a level that others could cope with. That’s pretty deep, I know.

[1Cor 2:10]

You will probably be raring to go, to seek after the ‘Secret of the Lord’. Remember it’s not one thing, but a whole magnificent plan and destiny of which He reveals only a small part at a time, and the hugeness of which cannot be understood by mere mortals like us. But even so, having the plans of God revealed to us carries an immense sense of privilege, and an immense responsibility, to hold and use that knowledge with the wisdom that He also gives freely.

How do we start? It’s nothing heavy. The knowledge and wisdom of God is given freely to those who simply ask. Just ask Him, and then expect Him to point things out to you as you go about your everyday life, walking in the Spirit. It will happen. You may suddenly realise that for the past week, God has been speaking these secrets to you and, you haven’t realised. Don’t worry. He will bring things back to you. This is something that takes some getting used to, and it improves with practice. It’s a ‘learning curve’! Cut yourself some slack and just enjoy the experience.

Oh, and one more thing: remember it’s a ‘secret’. Don’t share stuff with others unless you are absolutely sure they can deal with it. Don’t share it boastfully or with ‘attitude’. Remember there will be those who do not, indeed simply cannot, understand. So, most of the time, keep these nuggets to yourself, let them nourish you and teach you in the ways of God. The fruits and the benefits for others will emerge in due course.

To quote J. C. Philpot, from August 1844:

“It is a secret, because it is only known to a few. It is a secret, because it is carried on in private between God and the soul. It is a secret, because never known until God the Spirit unfolds the mystery.”[3]

For another angle on this, there is an interesting article that I read recently, which goes quite deeply into the ideas of sharing the ‘Secret of the Lord’ with others. “When the Lord knows that He can trust us with His secrets, He will reveal things to us which He cannot reveal to others”. Definitely worth a look[4].

As an addendum, I also recently had a little more insight on the wisdom of sharing the deep things of God.

Firstly, there is always the ‘pearls before swine’ analogy (Matt 7:6). Don’t give certain people precious knowledge, unless you know it will be treasured.

Secondly, I recently wrote this on a Facebook post, which I think adds to our present discussion:

The Secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. And sometimes these secrets are too deep to share with others, especially when those others do not yet have the spiritual maturity to deal with them. When we share with the objective of putting ourselves on a pedestal about how awesome our personal revelation is, that’s a sure sign that we are not sharing at the right time. Sharing of such deep wisdom generally needs to be done in the quiet, on-on-one place, not in a big meeting where the effects can be catastrophic. Deep wisdom can be a two-edged sword; it can build up those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see the truth, but it can also destroy those who do not have those ears and eyes. This is why knowledge of the things of God must go hand in hand with the wisdom of God. This may well be why there is such an emphasis on wisdom in the Scriptures.

So, The Secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. Enjoy this. Be fascinated by it, by your discoveries, by His revelations. Drink in the richness of His Creation, the depths of His wisdom, and the knowledge of His love, power, majesty and might.

Grace and Peace to you.


There we go. I have tweaked the article slightly in order to make it easier to navigate, and I have incorporated later edits into the text, but it still contains the required wisdom, and explains it properly.

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Sometimes, I look at a piece from the past and think like, ‘Crumbs, this is superb; did I really write that??’ šŸ˜‰
2 “We have much to say about this [theological idea], but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” – Heb 5:11-14
3 https://www.gracegems.org/Philpot/secret_of_the_lord.htm
Much of what Philpot says in that sermon is stuff I don’t agree with, and it reflects the prevalent thinking of the period. But some of it is real gold. I leave it to the reader to sift it for the nuggets šŸ™‚

[Edit]: I have copied the text, of that sermon linked to, into a page here on my own website. This is because sometimes web pages disappear, and the links I have given no longer work because of that. This in fact happened to another web page I linked to in this present article, which you will see in the footnotes below. Here is the link to Philpot’s sermon page on my blog in case this happens!

4 From ‘Love Notes’, by Mary Love Eyster: http://www.iprayprayer.com/secret-lord-fear-psalm-2514-keeping-gods-secrets/

[Edit: The original article has indeed disappeared since I wrote the original article; I’m so glad I saved it! – See next paragraph]

I have reproduced Mary’s article linked to above, in a Page here on my blog. There is so much good stuff in it, and websites disappear all the time, so I wanted to make sure that it is preserved for posterity. Here is the link.

Some Thoughts on Deconstruction, by Don Francisco

This entry is part 12 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

One of my favourite quotes from the famous[1] Christian artist, Don Francisco, is this:

“If all you know of God is from books, you are walking in deep darkness…”

In the context of this series, on the Problems of Evangelicalism, it is particularly apt 🤣 So I though I’d elaborate or, more accurately, let Don elaborate!

Here, then, is the full piece, written a good few years ago now[2], in which he wrote that important little quote. I will add no more; Don’s essay needs no commentary![3]


I’ve had several supernatural revelations in my seventy-plus years. They first showed me, and then re-confirmed, the reality of Jesus/God and His love; they have become the foundations of my life.

Making an all-too-common error, however, I interpreted those undeniable experiences with God according to modern evangelical dogma, having no other context. It didn’t take long for those interpretations to mix with the revelations themselves, and together they hardened into intellectual barriers… I began to confuse defending those composite walls with defending the revelations themselves– which needed no defense. It took years for me to realize this had occurred…

Religious dogma would assert that such a realization is actually a spiritual attack that requires resistance – and the building of a higher, more extensive, and more impenetrable mental wall. Experience is deemed invalid (being identified with ā€œthe sinful fleshā€), and doctrine is elevated to the place of prime importance.

Recently, I found myself surveying the damage after the wrecking ball of reason had swung full-force into those dogmatic walls. To continue the metaphor: All that I knew experientially of God was now buried under tons of intellectual rubble. (This is a place people find themselves after escaping from religious cults– doubting everything they’ve believed, not just the cults’ lies and half-truths.)

Removing the rubble and reclaiming my violated experiences was the task before me– all the more difficult because I still lacked a context: Evangelical doctrine was the only one I’d ever known for interpreting those revelations, and I needed a fresh perspective. I eventually found one that works for me; I realize it’s sort of cobbled together…

My interpretive wall had been built of the following common evangelical principles. (The list is not exhaustive, but nearly so…)

1) At the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the human race became evil at its core, and every child born since contains and is predisposed to express that evil. All of us were born separated from God by this misdeed of our ancestors.

2) God could not associate with humanity after the Fall because of His holiness and righteous anger toward our sins and sinful nature. His anger had to be satisfied, and our nature needed to be changed.

3) In the evangelical view, the Old Testament describes how God made a covenant with the nation of Israel via Moses; Israel continually failed to keep their part of the bargain, incurring God’s wrath and judgment. It’s presented as a model of God’s dealings with humanity outside of Jesus…

4) God sent His only, beloved, and perfect Son to become the human known as Jesus on earth so that He could die to pay the debt for our sins and to change our inner nature– if we ask him. When we do, we are included in the New Covenant, living forever in harmony with God.

5) Three days after His crucifixion and death, Jesus rose bodily from the dead, ascending back to God some time later. Pentecost occurred, followed by centuries of arguments about what it means…

6) Everyone who does not believe in Jesus’ deity and resurrection, repenting of their sins and asking Him to be their Lord and Savior, will be consigned by God to an eternal fiery torment.

7) All believers therefore have a duty to convince non-believers of the above, so that they, too, will receive natures acceptable to God and no longer be destined for hell-fire.

8) The Bible is the Word of God, a God-breathed, inerrant and infallible guide to understanding all these things. It is the sole authority in spiritual matters.

I can no longer believe that most of these things are true. Here are my beliefs today; you should work out your own, but feel free to cherry-pick from mine…

1) The Genesis story of the Fall was not intended by its writer(s) as a factual account of the first man and woman. It’s a metaphor meant to describe humanity when we decide that we know how to live without God. We are not born evil, but in the image of God– we’re like him. Some of us choose evil, but most just blunder through life on our own…

2) God never stopped associating with us– because of our ā€˜sins’ or for any other reason. Jesus, for one, proved it, preferring the company of practically anyone over that of religious leaders. (The Israelites’ idea of an angry god who needed appeasement by blood had been assimilated from neighboring cultures; to their credit, they usually used animal rather than human sacrifices.)

3) The Old Covenant scriptures are a human record of a nation groping after God but ultimately failing to understand Him. Some of the OT (Old Testament – Ed) writers heard Him better than others, but it’s a mixed bag. Trying to build a theology from the OT won’t work.

4) Jesus did come because of God’s great love for us; he didn’t come to die as payment for our sins. He came to show us what God is really like because we had it all wrong: He’s not angry– He is Love, a love that understands and forgives, even when we murder Him; His love is also independent of our response to it. The Spirit of God is real, has always been present and has never turned from anyone. He would dearly love for you to welcome him into your life; he’s always felt that way… Jesus also came to show us what it looks like to be truly and fully human…

5) I believe Jesus rose bodily from the dead, proving his deity, his love for us, and God’s eternal identification with the human race. When He said, ā€œIt is finishedā€ on the cross, He meant it: There is nothing left for us to do but live in the reality of His accomplishment. (The Spirit of God helps us to do that, but the assertion in Acts that he had not yet been ā€œgivenā€ makes little sense to me; he is, and always has been omnipresent. Perhaps humanity’s previous lack of comprehension kept him out…) My own initial experience of being filled with him occurred without any ā€œlaying on of handsā€. What is described as Jesus’ ā€œascensionā€ was simply a dimensional relocation…

6) For various reasons, the idea of eternal conscious torment for unbelievers has been inserted into Jesus’ teachings and other places in the NT (New Testament – Ed). Assigning anyone to such a place is completely incompatible with Jesus’/God’s character– even the OT writers didn’t threaten people with it… and there really is no such thing as ā€œhellā€ in the NT.

7) Most of humanity’s hurtful, destructive, and evil actions are motivated by fear. By telling others of God’s love in Jesus– and demonstrating it by how we live– we can introduce them to Him and to reality– a universe governed by love. We can show them that God has always loved them, never condemned them, and not to fear death: It’s not the end, and there is no hell to be avoided by kissing up to an angry god.

8) Idolizing the Bible is foundational to the cult of evangelicalism; human interpretations of a book are thereby elevated to a place of authority above even the audible voice of God Himself. For me, what God says to me in my heart is always held above everything written or spoken by another human.

The Bible exists to lead us to Jesus: He is the Word of God. Hear Him.

This last point (#8), of necessity, affects all the others. If all you know of God is from
books, you are walking in deep darkness…

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 But now retired!
2 And I have actually shared it before, here – interestingly as part of my series on spiritual growth – but I feel it needs restating in the current context!
3 I will also add that I find it interesting how so many people who have walked with Jesus for so long, and are honest and free enough to realise and express it, come to the same or very similar conclusions. I found myself nodding with Don on just about every point on re-reading this, and this from my own independent thinking, study and conclusions.

A Relationship With a Book?? – Reblog

This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

In this series so far, I have written about the religious and spiritual abuses that go on within the Evangelical branch of the Christian faith. And I have written about the biggest evil, where God is presented in a literally dreadful light in the doctrine of Hell.

Well, there is another evil in Evangelicalism, which is not universal by any means, but is at least tacit in a lot of Evangelicals’ thinking, if not all. And it’s the idea that you can only have a Relationship with God through the Bible.

Oh, I know that a common Evangelical Christianese catchphrase is that ‘it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship’. Trying to claim, of course, that it’s a relationship with God. And many people in Evangelicalism do indeed have a direct and first-hand Relationship[1] with God. I know this because I had one, when I was in Evangelicalism, and I rejoice that I still walk with God in that Relationship right now[2]. But there are also those who steal this concept of ‘relationship’, making their religion sound attractive by advertising it as being able to actually know God personally, as they have heard that others claim, and then they twist this concept into the idea that the Bible must be, and is, the only way in which humans can have a relationship with God, and vice versa. This is the classic bait-and-switch of Evangelicalism: Join us! We know how to access God, ok welcome aboard, now here’s a Bible[3]; read it and you’ll know God in that way[4].

I mean, for mere humans to decide unilaterally that God – the Creator of everything[5] is restricted to just the thousand or so pages of a book, when it comes to Him speaking and walking with humans, is simply preposterous. And those ideas are, almost by definition, espoused and promoted by those people in Evangelicalism that do not themselves have a real, living Relationship with God. It’s ‘by definition’ because, if they did so have that Relationship, then they would know that the Relationship is not bound – and simplyĀ cannot be bound – just by the pages of the Bible, and they’d also know that, again by definition, the Relationship transcends the Bible.

The reason this is an evil is twofold.

First, it tells those who haveĀ a relationship with God only through the Bible alone – an ‘indirect’ relationship, one might call it – that this is all there is. Yes, you may hunger for more, but sorry mate, the Bible is all you get. Whatever you want from God, it’s all in there and you can forget about meeting Him in any other way.

Second, and leading on from that, it also implies – either tacitly or, as in the article quoted in the main piece below – that anything beyond the Bible is from the Enemy, the ‘devil’. That’s what they think; you’ll see this in the main piece. This means that anyone who believes that the Bible is the best you can get, in terms of relationship with God, and that anything else comes from the evil one, is essentially discouraged from seeking God for themselves. It means, although this is not generally realised, that things that most believers would heartily agree bring you closer to God – like a walk out in Nature, a glorious sunset, a deep loving friendship, a good single malt whisky[6], or even any piece of music that moves you to your heart in some indescribable way[7] – whatever, if it’s not the Bible, it’s banned. Of course, not even the Religious actually practice that sort of prohibition (well, maybe the whisky and the music they do 🤣), but still the logical conclusion is the same. Anyway, I digress. These points mean that these Religious people – the blind leading the blind (Mt 15:14, Lk 6:39) – who believe that the Bible is the only means of getting to know God, are not only lying to their victims[8] – that there is nothing better than the Bible[9], but they also establish in the minds of their victims the fear-based, and what is essentially superstitious, prohibition/deterrence on seeking God further, thereby denying their victims the fullness of a true Relationship with God through Jesus[10].

And that, my friends, is evil. There’s simply no other word for it.

Here’s the main piece, then, first published in April, 2017:


A Relationship With a Book??

This post, after my two recent posts (here and here), completes what is almost a mini-series on the dogged insistence of some believers on following Scripture to the letter and even placing it above Jesus, and thus misusing it completely.

The other day, I read a terrible piece criticising the book (and the new movie) The Shack. The book and movie have brought a lot of people into wide-open freedom already, and I have no doubt that many more will be touched by its message. Personally, I love the book and I can’t wait to see the movie (which comes out in June here in the UK). But it should come as no surprise that ‘religious’ people find that sort of thing difficult – the idea of people finding complete freedom – and so the article was critical, dogmatic and judgemental. The article is here if you want to try to stomach it. I don’t recommend reading it unless you have a bucket handy, it’s so negative.

But the thing that I found most disturbing was that the author of that article wrote this (and I hate to contaminate my blog with this sort of thing):

“In The Shack, Mack (the main character) finds true relationship with God in contrast to those who have traditional Christian beliefs based on the Bible.Ā This subtle message qualifies as a wind of doctrine as mentioned in Ephesians 4.

“There is an undertone within The Shack, that relationship with God is something independent of the written word of God, and nothingĀ could be further from the truth.

“There is no sweeter, no more assuring, no more real and living relationship with God than knowing him through his Word, especially when the Word is mixed with a prayerful heart. Earnest and heartfelt time in the Word of God, is time spent with God.

“Relationship with ā€œthe god ofĀ The Shackā€Ā is not true relationship with the Living God, because it is relationship with someone other than the true God we fellowship with in the scriptures.

“It is through the knowledge of God revealed in his holy written word that we grow in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and as we grow in the Lord we embrace sound doctrine and good biblical theology which makes us spiritually healthy.”[11]

I have to say that I actually feel physically sick from reading this, even if only for the purposes of debunking it. (And I don’t have a bucket to hand…) He’s saying that the only true ‘relationship’ one can have with Jesus is only and entirely through the Bible.

And this is what I am most concerned about. Sure, some people may well have experienced only that ‘Bible relationship’ with Jesus, but for him to say that anyone who has a personal relationship with Him, which transcends that of the Bible, to say that that person is wrong, is plain disrespectful and ignorant. In fact, ‘Ignorant’, in its true sense – lacking knowledge – is exactly what it is. These people know not that of which they speak.

I know what it’s like; when God speaks through the Bible, you do indeed ‘hear’ His voice inside you. I do understand that for any believer reading the Bible, there is indeed a sweetness when God is speaking through the Bible in that way. I fully agree with that. I have experienced that. And that sweetness is sweet indeed. It’s the witness of our spirit and the Holy Spirit within us.

But to name that sweetness as the ‘ceiling of sweetness’, as it were, that it doesn’t get any better than that, only means to me that that writer has never experienced anything better than that himself. I’m not saying that my spiritual walk is superior in any way, just that there is more, much more, than that fellow has yet plumbed. It is suggesting that they haveĀ only experienced God through the Bible; that they have never experienced the powerful reality of God actually walking and talking with them in their daily lives; they have never experienced anything other than just reading about Him in their Bibles and the sweetness that brings. I have. I can testify to that personally, and my regular readers will be aware of just how much He has brought me through over the last few months in the strength and love of that relationship, since the loss of my beloved wife, Fiona, to cancer last October. The Presence of God is an almost constant, bubbling-up wellspring of joy, power and freedom deep within. (Jesus spoke about this in John 4:14 and John 7:38).

Of course, that writer has it all covered, by asserting that the “…relationship [is] with someone other than the true God”, thus passively-aggressively hinting that it’s the Enemy with whom I fellowship[12]. Well, there’s a simple test, isn’t there? By their fruits you shall know them. (Mt 7:16) If my life shows the fruits of the Spirit, then it’s a life lived by the Spirit of God, and not by any other shady spirit, thank you very much. And they’re a cheeky so-and-so for trying to intimate that I’m not ‘in Christ’ šŸ˜‰ Which I am, and I know it for sure. It can happen that people realise that God speaks through the Bible, and the sound of that Voice they make synonymous with the Bible rather than God. I liken it to an iPod. With an iPod, what comes through is the music but the iPod is not the artist that did the music. Similarly, the Bible is (one of the) means by which God speaks, but it is not God and some people make the mistake of deifying the Bible for that reason.

Does this not demonstrate a classic example of people like those Jesus was talking to in John 5:39-40?:

ā€œYou have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you wantā€ (Jn 5:39-40 Message).

And so, I want to share with you today a little analogy I wrote some time ago, illustrating this relationship with Scripture against a Relationship with Jesus Himself. Here it is.

It’s like a sad middle-aged man still living with his parents, even though he’s met the girl of his dreams. The Bible leads us to Christ; once we have the relationship with Christ, it should ideally become the main relationship, not completely superseding the Bible relationship – which still exists – but still it is the main relationship. The sad man moves out of his parents’ house and marries the girl. He still has a warm, loving (and somewhat relieved!) relationship with his parents, but now his main focus is his wife. And so it is with Jesus. He is now the main focus and the Bible has done one of its main jobs which is to direct us to Him.

I understand that trusting a living person rather than a book is far harder; with a book you know where you stand; it’s all written down (but even then it’s open to misinterpretation!). The thing is that you stand, and you stand, and you continue to stand. There is no moving forward as God is not allowed to say anything that is not either ā€˜in’ the Book, or at least closely related to it, in that you hear evangelicals all the time saying that the Spirit will not go against anything that is in the Bible. That is neither Scriptural nor true. He will definitely go against things like hamstringing donkeys and battering children, killing all the inhabitants of a city – and even against the stuff in Job where the ā€˜friends’ are supposedly proclaiming God’s word but in fact they are doing nothing of the sort. Jesus said’ ā€œThere is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it nowā€ (Jn 16:12) and this sort of thing – the Relationship with the Real and Living Person of Jesus – is precisely (but not exclusively) what He was talking about.

Far be it from me to denigrate someone else’s experience of God – for that is indeed what they get through reading their Bibles, as we have already seen. If someone wants to have a relationship with God through the tight limitations of a Book, that’s all well and good, and good luck to him – although if he stops there, with the Bible, then he’s missing out on so much more. But to criticise the true and real relationship of another believer in Christ by essentially saying that that relationship isn’t allowed, because that relationship not only exceeds but indeedĀ transcends the words in the Bible – that’s just not on.

And to condemn someone else’s real and living relationship with Jesus and claim it is Satanic (which is what they are passively aggressively claiming) just because it doesn’t jive with their interpretation of Scripture – now that is reprehensible.

So, I would say for these people: it’s time for them to trust Jesus, both with their own lives, and with others’ too – which are in any case none of their business (Jn 21:22). It’s time to stop criticising and judging others’ relationship with the Lord. Jesus is more than capable of looking after His Church; His people, and drawing near to each of them as He sees fit.

It’s strange, really. My header picture was originally intended to show somewhat cynically that a relationship with a Book is no replacement for a Relationship with a Person, specifically the Person of Jesus by His Holy Spirit. But, you know, the primary function of the Bible is to lead us to Jesus; in some ways, then, we can indeed meet Him in its pages, thus enabling us figuratively to ‘hug’ Him like the picture shows. But the thing is that Jesus exists outside the Book, far more so than He does inside the Book. And that’s the message I’m trying to get across. You can’t limit the Creator of the universe to a book, no matter how special that book might be. There is far, far more to knowing God than simply what we find in the Bible. The Bible is, in fact only our starting point – it introduces us to Jesus, it introduces us to the loving Heavenly Father, and it instructs us in God’s ways. But it must be read with Jesus in mind – remember the Scripture’s primary purpose is to lead us to Christ!


I will finish with these short thoughts:

1) You can read all you like about God but unless you actually encounter Him you’re wasting your time.

2) It’s like reading about board games instead of playing them, or reading about a movie but not actually seeing it yourself. Or, and this is closer to the point, reading a book about someone, then claiming you know them and have a relationship with them, even though you’ve never actually met them.

3) As Don Francisco says, ‘If all you know about God is from books, then you are living in deep darkness’.

Grace and Peace to you all.

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 I tend to capitalise the actual, personal Relationship with God, as opposed to a claimed relationship that is actually nothing of the sort and does not deserve capitalisation!🤣
2 Since leaving Evangelicalism, that Relationship has indeed deepened, broadened and become so much more real to me. But I still appreciate the time I spent within Evangelicalism for the foundations it laid; not in terms of rules and doctrine, but in terms of the chance to develop that Relationship as far as it could before I outgrew the denomination itself.
3 Although actually churches are generally so tight-fisted that many of them would expect you to go out and buy your own!
4 You know, like how reading a book about Sir Winston Churchill means that you will know Sir Winston Churchill!
5 Remember that these people do believe that (as do I, but that’s irrelevant to my point), and so they should really form their ideas with this in mind.
6 My current personal favourite is the Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve.
7 And, yes, despite what the Religious would claim, this can also be heavy rock music if that’s your thang!
8 Although it could also be said that they are victims themselves; victims of these devilish teachings having been passed on to them by preceding generations.
9 Nor is there anything that can be known about God from ‘beyond’ the Bible, nor is there any ‘advanced’ faith level, if you like, where a believer can progress and grow through personal experience as well as through what is written in the Bible
10 It also denies several basic Scriptural ‘anti-fear’ principles, like that God protects His children from enemy activity – for example in 1Jn 4:4 “…for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world”, and that if we seek God for anything (including a greater knowledge of Him, by whatever means), He will not let us down, for example Mt 7:9-11, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” These are not quoted here as proof-texts, but simply to show that these people will conveniently ignore these verses, which they claim to believe, when it suits them in promoting their fear-based agenda.
11 This comment/footnote was added for the reblog – but can’t you almost hear the oily, unctuous and slimy voice and intonation of the creep saying these words? šŸ˜‚ You’ve all heard people like this, I’m sure!
12 I know he’s not writing to/about me specifically, but as one who agrees with all the theology in The Shack, it’s as good as him writing about me.

Be Careful What You Pray For…

…you just might get it!

Several times in my writings, I have expressed the idea that the ‘Revival’, that has been prayed for/prophesied about since at least the 1980’s, is actually happening now, and has been for the last couple of decades at least.

It seems to be a characteristic of religious people that they don’t recognise the great things that God is doing until much later; if indeed they ever do. Even though the religious of Jesus’s time were expecting a Messiah, they didn’t recognise Him when He arrived in the Person Of Jesus, because He wasn’t at all what they expected He would be like, and didn’t do the things they thought He would: He didn’t drive out the Romans; He didn’t take up the Throne of David (John 6:14-15); and so on.

He also did things that their Scriptures of their time supposedly forbade under their interpretation, and that Jesus did all kinds of things that were considered forbidden under the religious society’s rules. He associated with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. Jesus’s creative interpretation of the Scriptures meant that His disciples rubbed and ate corn ears on the Sabbath. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath. He called God His ‘Father’, which drove them nuts.

This phenomenon of the religious being the last to ‘get it’ leads to Jesus saying things like, ‘Father, I thank You that you have not revealed this to the wise, but instead to little children’ (Mt 11:25). It explains passages like those parables in which Jesus shows that those who should have known better (i.e. those who supposedly had a religious mindset) got it horrifically wrong. An example would be the Parable of the Tenants, as described in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matt 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; and Luke 20:9-19.

Ultimately, it even explains how the religious experts of the day – the Scribes, Pharisees and Teachers of the Law [of God] eventually set Jesus up for an illegal kangaroo ‘trial’ and also incited the people in Jerusalem to demand Jesus’s execution. They simply didn’t see Who He was. ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’ has many layers of meaning, of which this is one: that they were crucifying their long-awaited Messiah because they didn’t realise Who they had there, present right in their midst.

I would say that it’s often – in fact in my experience it’s usually – the case that God’s answers to prayers and expectations don’t look anything like what we were praying for, and therefore look nothing like what we expected.

Since the 1990s, I remember people in my church at the time praying for revival. I remember them praying for the ‘next new thing’, citing of course the Scripture passage in Isaiah 43:19, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”[1]

Usually, this was accompanied by the idea that God’s people were not ‘doing enough’; were not ‘worthy enough’; were somehow ‘bad’ in their dealings with Him. So they also trotted out the other verse in 2 Chron 7:14 – “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2Chron 7:14 (KJV)). Well, we can’t have something for nothing, can we, and the thing that is usually required, say the Religious, is a good healthy dose of self-recrimination and a ‘need for repentance’, lol. Because ‘we’ are all ‘wicked’ – also lol.

Well, for at least the last 25-30 years, God has been working quietly in the hearts and minds of people who truly seek Him, in all faiths and in all denominations. It’s happening quietly, and where it’s happening, those who are the Gatekeepers of Heaven are running scared, because all they can do is to vilify the ‘movement’ (although in reality it’s nowhere near as well-organised as a real ‘movement’, nor should it be) and try to scare people off from it.

Key to that current work of God is the phenomenon calledĀ ‘deconstruction’[2], a term that of course has already been misunderstood, misinterpreted and of course pirated by Christian groups all over the place. It’s even become a term used in everyday church parlance; to me, that’s never a good sign.

So here’s my dear friend, Lisa-Anne Valentine Wooldridge, with her take on how to view ‘deconstruction’. Lisa-Anne is, in my opinion, a modern-day prophet who very often sees right to the heart of a problem and gives God’s take on it; I have seen her do this time and again.

Enjoy:


I would like to gently suggest that the process of deconstruction is not something to be feared, whether it be something you find yourself in the midst of or something that is happening to those around you.

For many years, some have prayed for revival. If you peer deeply enough into the mysteries of God, you will see that deconstruction is His answer.

Think of the church as an extra fancy Caesar salad where all kinds of extra ingredients have been added, to the point it’s barely recognizable to the creator of Caesar salad. Deconstruction is merely the process of sorting the salad out, rinsing off the residue of the “wrong” ingredients, and then, hopefully over time, rebuilding the salad to actually be Caesar salad and not a “franken-salad” with weird things like bananas and gummy bears. Trust the process. Trust the One who leads us into all Truth. Trust the One who promised to grow the Body up to match the Head.

If you can’t wrap your head around Church Salad, think of it this way. Deconstruction is a much needed spa treatment for Christians, even if the salt scrub stings a little sometimes, and the heat and pressure of the hot stones is a little bit intense, and even if you think you’ll never be clean again after a total mudbath. When you exit deconstruction (and yes, there is an end to it) you will be free from a lot of the toxins and harmful effects of religion that you’ve carried with you over the years. You’ll then be able to live the simple, honest life of someone unencumbered by hollow religion but full of the confidence and joy that comes from unfettered Union with a God who is even better than anyone ever told you.

I have experienced Deconstruction, down to the very Foundation, and while it may look and feel scary, I can assure you there is no need to be afraid. You can count on this: “I will never leave you nor forsake you….” He’s as good as His word. I’ve watched and helped thousands of others going through this process over the last decade or so. Only a very few walk away from God altogether, and my belief is that they don’t walk alone, no matter how it seems.

Love carries us all. LOVE carries us all.

– Lisa-Anne Valentine Wooldridge
Shared with her kind permission


Excellent, thanks Lisa-Anne šŸ™‚

I would like to suggest that, just as how with individual people, God brings us through stages of belief, so too in faith communities as a whole God is also bringing them through similar stages of belief. The ways in which people’s faiths are being expressed and practised are changing.

For Christianity, in the 70’s and 80’s there was a real resurgence in the practice of the actual, tangible presence of God, so far advanced from the dry and dusty liturgy-only services that were the norm before that time. People were finding a reality in God’s Presence that they just weren’t finding in the ‘old wineskins’ of dead and dusty religion. Now, decades later, the next stages of faith are maturing: people are emerging from their ‘dark nights of the soul’ and into the light of deeper faith, Stage 5 of ‘Fowler’s Stages of Faith’, the ‘Conjunctive Faith‘ stage.[3] And this is happening via Deconstruction.

This is the answer that they’ve been praying for! And, tragically, just like the Religious of Jesus’s time, they are missing it, ignoring it, and even reviling it as a deception of the enemy. Remember that Jesus defined the only ‘unforgivable sin[4] as being when people attribute the works of the Spirit to the enemy. And in denigrating deconstruction and, in some cases, attributing it to ‘satan’ or, at best, as a ‘work of the flesh’, they are, once again, missing the point.

You watch: just wait and see; in 20 years’ time, the phenomenon will be accepted into Church (and other religions’) structure and acceptable practice. People will wonder what all the fuss is about. There will be churches who have learned to expect deconstruction, and to carry and support their membership in their individual journey, should they need it (not all do by any means), and all without judging or condemning them for ‘backsliding’.

And, of course, it will have been pirated, imitated and counterfeited. Make no mistake: deconstruction is not a choice; it’s not something you wake up one morning and decide to just do. It’s not something you can effectively pretend, although there will be Christians who will claim that they have been through it, but actually they haven’t[5]. Nor is it something that leads once again back to a legalism of rules from the Bible, in the bait-and-switch move so well-beloved of Evangelical Christianity. It’s something that God leads a person into, each of us in a different way. Attitudes are lost, found, revised and owned by us personally. The character of Christ shines through effortlessly. We walk in Grace, unencumbered by the expectations of humans.

But it has to be real. Only genuine deconstruction leads us away from legalism and into the glorious freedom of the Children of God in Christ[6].

Grace and Peace to you.

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Oh, the irony – that God has indeed been doing a New Thing for the past couple of decades and, to answer His question in that Scripture: No; they do not perceive it!
2 In my case, my deconstruction took the form of a fifteen-year ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, which I describe here, and fill out the concept here.
3 This Stage has different designations in different descriptive models of the Stages of Faith, but Fowler’s are the ones I am most familiar with
4 Please do visit the link to my original article so that you understand what this means; there is no ‘sin’ for which people cannot be forgiven.
5 I am not saying here, even for one moment, that anyone’s deconstruction will not be completely unique to them, nor am I suggesting that anyone else should ‘police’ the ‘genuineness’ of deconstruction. Those who actually have gone through it will be able to see it in those others who have anyway; there will ne a kinship of spirit that will be readily apparent. It’s not something that can really be faked by those trying to appear ‘spiritual’.
6 Unless, of course, a person didn’t need to deconstruct in the first place; I know a very few people in that fortunate position. They had nothing to unlearn; they just came straight in at the ‘Grace’ doorway.

The Relentless Logic of the Evangelical Hell Doctrine – Reblog

This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Following on from the last post in this series, where I described the Hell doctrine as being the ‘Great Evil’ of the Evangelical gospel, I thought I would add more detail by reblogging this piece.

Back in 2018, I published this pivotal essay about Hell, and about just how terrible the doctrine really is – and indeed how terrible reality would be if indeed it were true. Here is the essay once again in all its terrible, dreadful, painful detail; I apologise that reading this may cost you some of your peace, and I would not blame you if you cried off reading it for that reason. That’s why I’m warning you. But if you can stomach it, it will be at least an education and, unless the reader’s heart is already set on believing in this doctrine come-what-may, it might even shed light on why the doctrine is completely antithetical to the teaching, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I haven’t added anything to the essay or taken anything away, nor have I edited or modified it except for tidying up the footnotes into properly-referenced notes rather than simply using asterisks. The words I wrote in 2018 are just as relevant, and just as valid, today, as much as they were back then, because the logic is the same. Even the premises and assumptions on which I have based my arguments are still the same. Church ideas change veeeerrrry slowly.


Be warned: this is a very dark essay, mitigated only by the fact that I am describing what I consider to be wholly incorrect doctrines.

Today I’m going to look at the terrifying and indeed relentless ‘logic’ of the Evangelical doctrine of Hell, and the fate of everyone who ever lived[1]. But first I need to make some points clear.

Firstly, please remember that I am writing this from the point of view of Evangelical doctrine, as I used to believe it, 20 years ago, and which is still believed by most Christians of that persuasion today. I do know what I am talking about, because I was schooled in this horrific doctrine.

Secondly, I now reject the doctrine utterly, as completely false. Humans do not suffer endless torment in this Hell place once they die. I consider it to be a man-made invention, inspired by mediaeval interpretations of Scripture towards a public even more ignorant than they are now (ignorant in its proper sense of ‘not knowing’), mediaeval literature such as Dante’s Inferno, Islamic theology from the Koran, Greek mythology and many Pagan ideas as well as Babylonian mythology too. If the Christian Scriptures are interpreted through such ‘filters’, then it is no wonder that such a terrible concoction, as the Hell doctrine actually is, exists. That, and its promotion from the desire of crooked people from time immemorial who desire control over others. But that doesn’t mean it’s true; far from it.

Most gentle Christians, if asked about this doctrine, will usually say that they do believe in Hell, but that they have not really thought about it all that much. They are just believing – loosely – what they have been taught.

In this article, therefore, I am writing almost entirely about the ‘nasty’ churches and harsh Christians who aggressively and overtly espouse doctrines that damage the idea of a God of Love; I am not talking about the majority of decent churches who simply live their Christian lives for Jesus, doing good in a quiet way (1Thess 4:11)

To digress for a minute, I would bring up the subject of ‘cherry-picking’. That is, selecting Scripture verses or other evidence that supports your own point of view, while ignoring or otherwise disregarding other evidence that contradicts that point of view. This is nothing new, of course, and many Bible characters, including Jesus, did it regularly. This is actually because of the style of debate that Rabbinic scholars used, and unless one is familiar with that, it can be quite bewildering and confusing.

There are those in the Church who, for whatever reasons, like to major on the ‘bad news’. I am working on an essay on this idea at the moment, and I will publish it in due course. And so, I have noticed recently that the bad-news mongers only cherry-pick the bad verses, while at the same time accusing people like Universalists (those who believe everyone will be ‘saved’), for example, of only cherry-picking the ‘good’ verses.

It seems to me that these kinds of Christians, who, incredibly, consider themselves ‘joyful’; the bad-news mongers who nevertheless believe they are purveying a ‘loving God’ and ‘good news’, would rather assume that everything about their god is bad. He sends people to Hell. He punishes people for their sins. He’s wrathful. He likes people dashing babies against rocks because it says so in the Psalms (Ps 137:9, in fact, if you’ve never realised that Scripture exists). It seems that for a religion that purports to be joyful, it’s actually not. They have a facade of ‘good’, and many if not most churches do indeed do a lot of good in the world, but actually their ‘good news’ underlying everything is actually very, very bad news indeed. In fact it is actually the worst news there could possibly be. The most horrible nightmare you ever had does not compare with this stuff.

Let’s take a look.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14 that ‘narrow is the way, and few are those that find it’. I know from personal experience that most Evangelicals infer from this that those who do not find that ‘way’ are toast in eternal punishment, because the verse also says that the ‘broad’ way leads to destruction. This is always interpreted by Evangelical Christians as meaning that this ‘destruction’ is in the eternal, everlasting torment of Hell. There is, however, actually no direct link between this passage and the classic ‘Hell’ passages, for example Luke 16:19-31; the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. This conceptual link between the ‘broad road’ and its ‘destruction’, and that this ‘destruction’ happens in Hell, is actually an assumption made by humans when trying to support the doctrine of Hell.

Maybe you don’t believe this is standard Evangelical doctrine? May I suggest you take a look at the interpretation of the ‘Narrow Way’ passage’s entry on GotQuestions.org, a website explaining standard Evangelical doctrine. It even says there that ‘We are not to be concerned with the number who will or will not enter’ – how callous is that? Grr…. Also take a look at the gross assumptions layered over the Rich Man and Lazarus story – another ‘classic’ Hell passage as mentioned above – in the ‘explanation’ of that parable on GotQuestions. It says there that, “Jesus teaches here that heaven and hell are both real, literal places”, and actually the whole, horrific doctrine is laid out there as true, non-debatable and horrible in its harshness, although I must allow that at least they have come clean and said what they actually believe, honestly, in black-and-white.

Let’s summarise, then, by saying that the Evangelical belief is that a) Hell consists of real, conscious, everlasting torment after death for all those who do not believe in Jesus (death is of course seen as the final deadline for finding that belief); and alongside that, b) Very few people will find the way (Jesus) Who rescues them from that unimaginable fate. Let’s also add c) In order to ‘find’ Jesus, people must adhere to the Evangelical methods of doing so – saying the ‘sinner’s prayer’, for example, being baptised, obedience to leadership, tithing, belief in Scripture as inspired, inerrant, infallible and to be taken literally. That’ll do for now.

But let’s go back to Matthew 7:13-14. Let’s look at it again:

From this verse – few are those that find it – it follows that actually few people will be ‘saved’ – they will ‘find’ the narrow way that leads to life – and the corollary to this is that most will therefore go to Hell. My very conservative estimate would be that, if that doctrine is true as stated, about 99.9% of people will end up there, according to Evangelical doctrine and given the number of people ‘reached by the Gospel’, by the time they die, with the ‘correct’ Gospel message[2].

I would therefore pose this question: What kind of parent would bring a child into the world, knowing that there is a better than even chance that that child will eventually burn forever in Hell? Who would dream of bringing a child into that sort of situation? Why would you want to do such a thing? It would be sheer folly of the highest order and an abdication of responsible parenthood even before they become parents. It would be absolutely stupid to have children if you know that they will more than likely, statistically speaking, be amongst those who will burn forever. Who would want to do that? In order to try to justify the concept of children going to Hell, in many cases even before they are even conscious, they make up totally unbiblical ideas like the ‘age of responsibility’ and claptrap like that. This is an utterly man-made construct; it’s not Biblical at all, and furthermore, Jesus TOLD us that few will be those who find the way. Therefore, age of responsibility notwithstanding, most of your children will go to Hell according to those Evangelical doctrines.

Some would say Oh well, God is just, He’ll work something out. He’ll do the Right Thing. But if god is constrained by the rules that the Evangelicals say he is, there is no escape there either. There are no exceptions at all: children; the mentally ill; aborted fetuses. No. Evangelical doctrine holds that god is constrained by his ‘justice’; his rules of punishing sin, being unable to bear anything that is not holy, and his rules of justice which state that all sin must be punished or at least borne by someone, even an innocent victim. But even if that victim did his best – and Evangelicals believe that Jesus, that innocent victim, indeed ‘did it all’ – even then, most people will burn. Jesus effectively said so in Matthew 7:13, and there’s no getting away from it. Of course, it’s always ‘someone else’ that’s going to burn, not those who believe they are the ‘Elect’. But still, if there are people who, by accident of health, geography, family background or for any other of a host of reasons cannot say or understand the ‘sinner’s prayer’, then they are going to burn. No exceptions. And so that means that the sacrifice of Jesus was 99.9% worthless, or at least it will be worthless for 99.9% of people.

The ‘good news’, then, is that a very few people will find the ‘way’, and the rest will burn forever in unimaginable agony. Linked with my earlier paragraph, the ‘bad-news monger’ will say ‘Yes, god is loving, ah but, he’s also holy and wrathful and righteous and all sorts of other stuff’. They prefer the ‘bad’ verses over the ‘good’ verses.

The doctrine of Hell is the single most repulsive doctrine in all of Christendom. If it were true, the Bible would be full of warnings and references to it – but it’s not. Would it not be fair of God to make it absolutely crystal clear? But that there Bible is in fact not clear on many things, and it’s especially not clear on this.

Just to reiterate: the gospel that contains a Hell doctrine is NOT a gospel – it is not good news. It is the worst news that there could possibly be.

Let’s make it personal, shall we?: most of the people you know, love and/or have ever met will be toasting in Hell for all eternity.

There is no escape; there is no recourse other than to a 0.1% effective (at best) Saviour, if indeed 99.9% of all people who ever existed will end up in Hell. These are not good odds, I would say. I would also say that this Jesus, as depicted in this doctrine, is not all that effective a Saviour, is He? How can that be called ‘Good News’??

If you believe in the Narrow Way doctrine, and you believe in Hell for those (most people) who will not find that Narrow Way, then these terrible, terrible things are what you must believe.

All the Church socials, all the outreach, all the best coffee in the world and all your social projects designed to reach the poor or the Lost; they are all a waste of time and are simply papering over this most terrible news: that actually, no matter what you do or how hard you try, most of the people who ever lived – including most of your family, friends, colleagues and loved ones – will be tormented forever. These points are relentless, irrefutable, despair-inducing, inescapable and hopeless. There is no hope in this gospel.

This is the relentless, uncompromising logic of the Evangelical doctrine of Hell. This entire logical sequence is what you must believe, if you believe in the Hell doctrine.

Think about it.


I am sorry to finish this essay on such a low note, but this is intentional because I wanted to show that this darkness and despair is what the Hell doctrine actually represents. For more on this subject, and a little more light in the tunnel, please visit my Hell Resource Page which is somewhat more positive. The one gleam of light I can offer right here is that I believe that these doctrines are completely untrue. Remember I have written this all from the point of view of an hypothetical Evangelical who actually believes it’s all true.


Header image shows the gate of the concentration camp at Auschwitz I – Birkenau, Poland; the atrocities committed here pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of Hell as espoused in Evangelical doctrine.


 

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 I have to say that this essay has been written at a great personal cost. In looking at, and researching, the Evangelical doctrine of Hell, I have looked again at the most horrific doctrinal ideas I have ever seen, against which the Holocaust pales by comparison, and realised that this stuff is really and truly believed church-wide as standard doctrine. Even though not all churches are Evangelical, still one of the supposedly foundational beliefs in the Western Christian church at the moment is this Hell doctrine. It’s simply incredible. People like me, who reject the concept of Hell as a place of eternal conscious suffering, are usually ostracised in churches if we so much as mention that it might all be wrong. I see my wonderful God’s Name blackened beyond recognition; I see Jesus’s death as wasted (according to their doctrines anyway) and all this sort of stuff. I have felt my blood pressure rise; the whole concept has made me tearful, stressed and deeply saddened. I have felt physically ill because of it and it has made me sick to the heart. Such is the vehemence with which I reject this doctrine, and all the damage that it does, and such is the burden that people like me bear. Difficult is the Narrow Path indeed, and it is a very hard road indeed.
2 There are a number of other factors involved in my reaching that 99.9% figure, but the main one is that it’s only about 0.1% of people in the world, at the most, that believe in the standard Evangelical ‘salvation’ model, and since it’s the Evangelical claims I am describing here, this is the figure I am using here so that the essay is consistent in its claims about Evangelical doctrine.

The Great Evil of the Evangelical Gospel

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

ā€œThe gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.ā€

Hmmm….

 

I read an article the other day where the author – an Evangelical Christian pastor – was describing his interactions with a couple of men, formerly of Evangelical congregations, who had become ‘…repelled by Christianity’. The article then went on to describe his (so far unsuccessful) efforts to get them to come back in to the ‘fold’, as it were. While his essay recognised several good points regarding what needs to change in Evangelical Christianity, one sentence popped out at me as being totally key in the perception of Evangelical Christianity, in addition to all the other things he was saying, and which he had completely failed to notice as such. The sentence was,

ā€œThe gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.ā€

And that, right there, is the very heart of the problem. In my opinion, the ‘gospel’, as the writer sees it, is indeed the problem. It’s both: it’s ‘We’ and it’s ‘The gospel’.

First, I will present the essay as written (with just one emphasis inserted by me), and then I will present my rebuttal on the ‘gospel is not the problem’ idea. There is actually some good stuff here, despite the guy failing to recognise the key issue[1].


Two long conversations in two days with two different men, one identical story: Grew up in traditional churches. Highly involved. Now completely repelled by Christianity. Why? Because of the terrible, appalling attitudes held and atrocities done by its leaders.

Heartbreaking.

I said all the obvious things. Apologised. Tried to point them away from religion towards Jesus. Apologised again. Mostly listened. But to be honest I don’t blame them. They were probably safer outside the church. I blame us.

Both men are still open spiritually, cautiously interested in my faith, deeply caring individuals. Both told me ā€˜I do my best. I’m a good person’. But both of them are also far too hurt to be open to any form of church.

I feel sad. Ashamed – as a Christian and especially as a leader. But I also feel discouraged. Here we are doing our best to reach the one lost sheep, whilst others are repelling the 99. Our back door is bigger and busier by far than our front door.

The Scottish comedian Billy Connolly fondly recalls growing up in the crowded Catholic tenements of Glasgow. Families were enormous and the children would play all day in and out of each other’s homes. At night, he jokes, each dad would make sure that the right number of children was put to bed in each house, without worrying about whose they actually were.

It’s a bit like that in the church. We continually seek to welcome strangers into our home, whilst our own children go missing, and then comfort ourselves that the numbers are roughly the same. We aspire to be good witnesses to the world, whilst neglecting and alienating the members of our own family.

The gospel is not the problem – we are the problem. [Emphasis mine – Ed] This is not a failure of Christian apologetics (both of the men I met are open intellectually); it’s a failure of Christians to apologise (their hurt hearts are firmly and understandably closed).

This is why we *must* do more than just preach the gospel and try to be nice. We must also urgently, practically nurture communities of healing and gospel life. We need systemic change in the institutional church. And of course we must hold leaders to account whilst raising up women and men whose integrity matches their ability. For every pioneer evangelist outside the front door amongst the unchurched, we probably need ten prodigal mothers and fathers on the back porch quietly loving and listening to those who have been (or are about to be) ā€˜dechurched’. What’s the point of winning new people when we are losing – repelling – the ones we’ve already got?

Religious sentimentality and a fetishistic obsession with the familiar is obscuring the concrete reality of our situation. There is hard graft, dirty and difficult work to be done: first, burying the dead religious rituals despised by Jesus (it won’t be popular), and then actively building the living, loving community he actually came to establish. We must apply ourselves to work and pray with all our strength to renew old churches and to plant new churches. Both together. One without the other will not work. And we must dismantle the toxic distinction between priesthood and laity. Oh and we are also going to have to apologise. A lot.

And then personally we must also be prepared to go on many long journeys with prodigals like the two men I met these past two days. We must listen to them respectfully and befriend them unconditionally. One whiff of bible-bashing and they will run a mile. But give it a few more chats over a few more months and there may well come a night, after a few beers no doubt, when one or other of these men will turn to me and finally say ā€˜OK, talk to me about the Jesus stuff. How can you really believe all that ****? Tell me more.’

Our back door is bigger than our front door and it has a long and winding driveway.

Kyrie eleison


So, there we have, along with the beautifully honest points about what corrective changes need to be made in churches, the understandable desire of a pastor to bring back what he sees as his ‘lost sheep’. You can feel the compassion and concern that he has for them, and it is certainly genuine.

Sadly, though, it has to be said: it is obvious that his ultimate objective is to bring them back to believing the same things that he and his congregation do. You can even see the ulterior motives there in his closing sentences, despite using the word ‘unconditional’, and also in his unfortunate and revealing use of the word ‘prodigal’. Heck, he even admits that they are probably safer outside of church! And while he indeed says ” ‘We’ are wrong”, there’s actually much more to it than that.

Recently, I have been working with ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), helping to bring them back into what could be seen as a ‘normal’ life, free of the habits engendered by a lifetime of being steeped in a toxic religious atmosphere. While the JWs do indeed have a whole pile of, shall we say, ‘problematic’, and indeed harmful, doctrines, I’m afraid Evangelicalism is little different except in specifics. The JWs have many ideas of reality that dictate the way in which they approach life and faith, and in this regard Evangelicalism is of course the same. After all, any person’s faith background, if it is held sincerely[2], will always dictate – to a greater or lesser extent – the way in which the person lives their lives. And it appears that the key to either voluntary or enforced adherence to one’s faith practices, in many if not most congregations, is that of fear. Fear of others’ opinions, fear of sanctions, fear of leadership, fear of exposure and/or public ridicule or shaming, fear of death, fear of afterlife punishment, and the list goes on. It’s all about fear.

When things like this become apparent to a former adherent to a particular faith tradition, possibly like the two men in the piece above; where they see the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, as it were, it becomes the prime reason why those people would never want to return to that particular ‘flock'[3]. If the gospel is one of fear – whatever form that fear may take – why would you want to subject yourself to that sort of thing? Especially when the pastor can’t see, and indeed doesn’t know and/or understand, what it was that drives people away in the first place[4]. And you can’t ‘unsee’ what you’ve seen; indeed, it would be dishonest, and ultimately pointless, to do so.

And there’s more.

Let’s come back to the main assertion:

ā€œThe gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.ā€

You see, I’d actually say that the ‘gospel’, as Evangelical Christianity calls and defines it, is indeed the problem[5]. Emphatically, it’s not that Evangelicalism itself is evil, and nor are the people in it.[6]. A lot of good comes from Evangelicalism; I believe that the love that many have for Jesus is genuine and they do lots of good things in society (some of which, yes, has strings attached) and above all their love for Jesus is expressed in some really good, inspired and indeed anointed worship music.

So, why is their ‘gospel’ a ‘Great Evil’, as the title of this piece claims?

The simple answer, which I will of course complicate by explaining and describing it, is that their gospel misrepresents God, presenting Him in the most terrible light possible, so much so that no-one in their right mind would want to associate themselves with such a monster god. And that’s even before you get into how this god has supposedly put – equally horrific – things in place in order to ‘put things right’.

When you really look deeply into Evangelical doctrine – and believe me, I have done just that! – you will find that the summary below is what is held as the true nature of spiritual reality[7] by Evangelical Christians. I’m sure they would try to qualify, explain away and and ‘Ah, but…’ the whole thing; I’m sure that I, as an Evangelical many years ago, would have done the same thing. But, right at its very heart, this is Evangelicalism[8]. Here, then, is what you have to believe, at the heart of it, if you’re going to call yourself an Evangelical Christian. Hold tight; here we go!

Evangelicalism’s god is an angry, capricious and bullying god[9] that acts more like humans than humans do.

He’s easily offended, he holds grudges, and the only thing he accepts to appease him (and as everyone knows, appeasement only works until the bully decides it doesn’t) is to kill his own son to satisfy his ‘holiness’, his ‘justice’ and also his honour.

People are given the ‘choice’ to ‘love’ this god, or burn forever in a furnace – ‘Hell’ – of that god’s own designing and maintaining[10], while those he’s supposed to have trained to love others either look on in glee – a standard doctrine in 19th century Evangelicalism, which, I am disappointed to be able to say, has persisted to this day in many circles – or are somehow ‘trained’ to forget about their loved ones burning; this being the other doctrine that explains how people can live a blessed life in Heaven while the excluded roast and scream[11].

And, because ‘narrow is the way’ (Mt 7:13-14), this inescapably means that many more people will go to that furnace than will not, probably including their (Evangelicals’) children, which they still keep popping out despite knowing that most people will end up in the furnace, statistically including their children. It seems they’re prepared to take that risk with the eternal futures of the people they will (hopefully) love more than anyone or anything else in this life.

And, remember, all this happens – Hell and so on – because this god is a god of love, they tell us.

The English word ‘Gospel’ – the translation of the Greek word ‘ευαγγελιον’ (euaggelion) – means ‘Good News’. This is where we get the terms ‘Evangelical’ and ‘evangelist’ from, of course[12].

The gospel[13] espoused by Evangelical Christianity, though, can under no circumstances be decribed as ‘good news’. It is in fact far, far worse newsĀ than anything in history, putting even the genocide of the Holocaust to shame. It pains me to even have to explain this, but in fact according to the Evangelical gospel, every single one of the Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust went straight to Hell, because they didn’t come to a belief in Jesus before they died. By any definition, except apparently any coming from Evangelicalism, this concept represents such a diabolical evil that the only way to reconcile it with a loving god is…. well, there isn’t one. The only way that an Evangelical Christian, one who really believes that, anyway, can so reconcile it is for them to live with a cognitive dissonance. That a god of love can cause and perpetuate such suffering is only capable of being handled by the human mind by means of having a cognitive dissonance. And that goes with the glibness of their claim that most people, whom their god loves, remember, will burn in Hell for all eternity, and their ability to believe that without going completely insane.

No, this isĀ NOT good news by any standard, and it is the reason why I refer to it as ‘The Great Evil of Evangelicalism’. Because that’s what it is.

Furthermore, the Hell doctrine is an integral part of Evangelicalism; it is fully intertwined with the way the religion works; it is ‘non-resectable’, to use a surgical term – it cannot be removed without doing irreparable damage to the entire structure. If you remove this doctrine, you break the whole thing, and it won’t be Evangelicalism anymore. This is why it’s so deadly. If you’re an honest Evangelical, you have to admit that you believe that this doctrine is true and, indeed, that what it describes will really happen to real people.

One of the reasons why Jesus came was in order to show God as being, well, in a word, ‘Nice’. Someone who loves us just as we are; someone Who has our best interests at heart. Someone Who heals, forgives and restores the broken. He did this in order to set right the image of god that people of His time had; that of being, shall we say, ‘Not nice’!

And yet, over the centuries, successive generations of Christian theologians have twisted that image back to the pre-Jesus concept of a horrible god. Nowhere and no-when has this been more apparent than over the last 150 years or so, since Evangelicalism (and its precursors) began.

This, then, is the evil of Evangelicalism[14]. Despite the clear example of Jesus, the depiction of God is one of Him being cruel, vengeful, sadistic – and, rather than continue the list, let’s just sum it up with one word: Unapproachable. Who would want the company of a god like that, in the unlikely event that he’d even allow us near him? And so, ordinary, decent people are rightly repelled by that depiction. The very people who need Jesus the most are repelled by Evangelicalism’s depiction of Him, and are thereby denied all the benefits and blessing of direct faith in, and personal knowledge of, Jesus.

Since Evangelicalism is founded on such a diabolically evil dissonance, and one where words and definitions are routinely and irreparably twisted, it would be far better if not only those two brothers being counselled by our pastor friend, but also everyone else with a gentle loving heart, should avoid Evangelicalism entirely.

Such gentle hearts only get corrupted by the constant exposure to the evil that is the Evangelical gospel, which really is the polar opposite of everything that Jesus was, that He showed, and that He taught. I say this from personal experience; that’s what happened to me and it took me fifteen years to detox from it. Try holding the Evangelical gospel up next to the loving teachings of Jesus, and you will see that it only holds water if any of the things He is recorded as saying are twisted out of their real meanings and contexts.

I am so glad that those guys got out, and I sincerely hope that they will eventually recover. I’m not assuming that the points I make in this essay are the reasons why those two guys came out of Evangelicalism – indeed, the reasons are given as being the atrocities committed by leadership. But you can bet that there were other reasons too, and these will have much in common with both what I have written here, and what other ‘exvangelicals’ too have experienced.

So, regarding going ‘back in’ to Evangelicalism, well, you don’t recover from poisoning by drinking more poison. Yes, Jesus is amazing; again, I speak from personal experience. But, in Evangelicalism, even Jesus has been twisted and, in fact, silenced by the Bibliolatry[15] of Evangelicalism.

You see, if Jesus[16] tells a believer something that is ‘against’ the ‘clear teaching’ of the Bible – as interpreted by Evangelicalism, of course – then it is Jesus that is wrong, not the Bible. Moreover, Evangelicalism has stained and sullied the Bible over the years, and to such an extent, that now even the purest-hearted believer finds it hard to read it because of all the disgusting twisted interpretations they’ve been fed down the years that keep coming back to mind unbidden.

No, let those escaped men deconstruct in whatever way they need. Leave them alone. Don’t try to recapture them and draw them back into the cage they have escaped from. That would be pure evil – which like all the worst evil, comes from people who think they have the best motives.

Here is an excellent and very much on-point quotation from Rob Bell – a pastor who has of course been rejected by Evangelicalism because of his teachings against belief in Hell:

ā€œMillions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the Gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly Father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony. Does God become somebody totally different the moment you die?

ā€œThat kind of God is simply devastating. Psychologically crushing. We can’t bear it. No one can. And that is the secret deep in the heart of many people, especially Christians: they don’t love God. They can’t, because the God they’ve been presented with and taught about can’t be loved. That God is terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable.

ā€œAnd so there are conferences about how churches can be more ā€œrelevantā€ and ā€œmissionalā€ and ā€œwelcoming,ā€ and there are vast resources, many, many books and films, for those who want to ā€œreach outā€ and ā€œconnectā€ and ā€œbuild relationshipsā€ with people who aren’t part of the church. And that can be helpful. But at the heart of it, we have to ask: Just what kind of God is behind all this?

ā€œBecause if something is wrong with your God, if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all of eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, unacceptable, awful reality.ā€

– Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

And so the two men, in the original essay, came out of Evangelicalism. But, of course, for Evangelicals, that’s no escape! There is no escape from a god who would pursue a person right to the ends of the earth to make sure that they end up in that fiery furnace![17] They would say that simply running away or ignoring [their perception of] the truth won’t save you. There is no escape!

But it’s not that. It’s that these people are so honest that they believe that God isn’t like Evangelicalism says he is, so why would they want to be part of a community where that is believed and acted upon? They simply don’t believe that any more, so to them it doesn’t matter that this ‘truth’ might pursue them, for it is no longer relevant. So why would they ever want to return to something that they have essentially grown out of? Their path of spiritual growth has led them away from Evangelicalism, and to go back would be to nullify that growth. They have grown past that, in the same way that a butterfly has grown past being a caterpillar, and what butterfly ever benefitted from taking flying lessons from caterpillars?

And so, it’s not just that “…others are repelling the 99” as the author says; it is also, most emphatically, their gospel itself.

I am aware that many of my readers believe fully in the atoning death of Jesus, and in the deflection of God’s wrath away from us and onto Jesus. Of Jesus being the sacrificial Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world. I’m not trying to take that away from those people; far from it. Take a look at this article for more on what Jesus did on the Cross and why it all applies no matter what the precise details are of your belief system. Remember also that there are almost as many ways of looking at the Cross as there are denominations. Be encouraged; be secure: Jesus is still Lord, and Jesus still died for our sins, no matter how that actually works in practice.

The actual Gospel isĀ sooooo much better than Evangelicalism gives credit for. However it works, Jesus has obtained forgiveness of sin and victory over death!Ā This is not heresy; this is the glorious truth of it all!

So whatĀ is the Gospel, then? Many people outside of Christianity say, ‘If God is so good and so powerful, why can’t He just forgive people anyway?’

And, that, I believe, that is the Good News – the Gospel – that those ‘outside’ so intuitively realise: that God does indeed forgive, and has indeed forgiven, everything that everyone has ever done wrong, every ‘sin’ both actual and only perceived. This is indeed the case; because for Him they were never a problem. “As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions [sins] from us” (Psalm 103:12-14). There are so many ramifications that lead on from that one basic truth, but that in essence is what we’re looking at.

I might go into more detail on this later in the series, but, for now, I think I’ve blathered on enough!

Grace and Peace to you all


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Remember here that I’m not saying that Evangelicalism is evil. I am saying that its gospel is evil, though, for reasons I explain in the essay itself. And the people aren’t evil, either.
2 Or if it is enforced/forcibly imposed, as happens with Jehovah’s Witnesses, with other cults, and of course in some corners of Evangelicalism.
3 I appreciate that the quoted article says that it was the abuse from leadership that the men were repelled by, and not specifically by Church doctrines. That said, however, once bad leadership is exposed for what it is – the Wizard’s curtain is pulled back, so to speak – then all or most of the stuff they told you suddenly loses its credibility. Their hypocrisy does not speak well of the things they said they believed, and that they doubtless told the men that they had to believe too. ‘What else did they tell you that was lies?’, is the question someone will rightly ask when bad leadership is exposed like this.
4 Some pastors and other church leaders, of course, are actually abusive, whether intentionally or not. In these cases, they know full well how to manipulate people, especially their fears, and ensure compliance by using all kinds of abusive bullying tactics. And, generally, they don’t see the things that drive people away as being problems to be solved – and to be realistic, they probably don’t care. If people that they are unable to control leave, then that’s better for their power structure. People who refuse to succumb to their abuse aren’t welcome anyway. For more information and comprehensive help on church abuse, check out the book ‘Broken Trust; by F. Remy Diederich, referenced in my article here.
5 In a nutshell, and so that it’s clear what I’m talking about here, the Evangelical gospel is this: Humankind ‘fell’ when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Amongst other things, this means that all humanity inherit Adam’s ‘Fall’ and have offended god’s justice. Therefore, they will all go to Hell when they die because they are guilty. But wait! Jesus came and died on the Cross, thus acting as a lightning rod for God’s offended anger, meaning that humans who believe in Him now go to Heaven instead of Hell. Everyone else still goes to Hell anyway. This is the ‘gospel’ according to Evangelicalism. Don’t shoot the messenger; that’s really what they believe!
6 Most of them aren’t, anyway.
7 ‘Spiritual reality’ meaning things like what God is like and how He associates with humanity
8 They’d likely use the fallacious argument of ‘God’s ways are higher than our ways’ somewhere in their list of excuses! See this article for a proper analysis of what that passage (Isaiah 55:8-9) really means.
9 Small ‘g’ for this god, as this is not the Creator of the Universe. The god that Evangelicalism describes does not deserve the honorific of the capitalisation of ‘God’ nor of ‘He’, so I do not do it.
10 ‘Love me or burn forever’. How is that a choice?? How is that love??
11 Evangelicalism, though, does not usually mention as part of its ‘good news’ that those unfortunates will be roasting at the same time as the Evangelicals will be livin’ it up in Heaven. It does not explain, usually because the question is not asked, how those in Heaven will be able to cope with the idea of their loved ones suffering forever in fire. These two ‘explanations’ I have given here usually have to be prised out of the ‘thinking’ of those Evangelicals who have actually ‘thought’ about it and have come up with some sort of reasoning, however pathetic and inadequate their answers – these two concepts – may be. Yet another example of how the doctrine of Hell’s inadequacies have to be propped up by Evangelical ‘apologetics’.
12 And in some Christian circles, the Gospel is still referred to as the ‘Evangel’
13 Again, lack of initial capitalisation as this isn’t what I would call any kind of ‘Gospel’
14 And the ‘evil(s)’, plural, are the resulting attitudes and behaviours that spring from it.
15 Bibliolatry is the term used for the worship of the Bible; setting the Bible up in place of God the Holy Spirit
16 Jesus is alive and lives in the hearts of those who love Him. And because He is alive, He actually speaks to them. Weird, but true.
17 As opposed to a Shepherd who would leave the ninety-nine sheep to go and search for the one lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7)

Foody Morsels

Another collection of bite-sized quotations from various sources. Enjoy!


Yes, it’s true fascism doesn’t take a vacation[1], but that’s because fascism despises joy. It is antithetical to peace. Its goal is to gradually squeeze and suffocate the lightness out of people so that they stop dreaming, stop planning, stop dancing. Its authors are inherently miserable people whose sole joy consists of replicating themselves by reproducing despondency.
– John Pavlovitz

To Pharisees condemning the ministry of inclusion: ā€œYou are just the jealous older brother (from the Prodigal story). You have worked hard to earn the Father’s favour, only to be told that you had His favour all along. And now you want to deny it to the Prodigals out there. Well, shame on youā€.
– Me

ā€œGod doesn’t look at the world through the lens of judgment. He looks through the empty tomb Jesus stepped out of. And when He rose, He raised the world into a new status: Forgiven, Loved, and Included. This is the human race. To everybody in the human race… to anybody here that’s not a born-again Christian…. He raised you to this status: You are forgiven, you are loved, and you are includedā€.
– Creflo Dollar

[As a comment on a YouTube video] This song [Oceans] is at its best when people are allowed to live out the words without judgment from others. When you walk out into depths where only Jesus can hold you up, others may fear for you and criticise you – but there is no fear in Love. If it’s your time to emerge from the chrysalis, the caterpillars will not understand the beautiful butterfly you have become. If you know, you know.
– Me

JUST IN CASE YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS.. The Father does not need your decision, choice or belief to justify you, make you righteous, forgive you, love you unconditionally or accept you into the family….

That is the gospel !!
– Don Keathley

IN JESUS DWELLS THE fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in Him. Col 2:9-10…… SO YOU CAN quit your begging for more of Him, more power, more anointing, more of the Holy Spirit. It is time to tune in to the Spirit of Truth and fully awaken to who you have always been and what you have always fully possessed.
– Don Keathley

My reply to the above was:

So in the Garden, when the serpent told the woman that if she ate the fruit, she would be like God, it was offering her what she already had. Is that, then, a parallel with what religion offers: it promises to give us what we already have?
– Me

ā€œI still believe that at any time the no-talent police will come and arrest meā€.
– Mike Myers

ā€œHow do I know I’m standing on the right side of history? There is a simple answer. The wrong side of history will tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will expect you to be brave.ā€
–Ā JB Pritzker, Illinois Governor

For the purposes of righteousness, the Law is useless
– Me

Religion made it all about fear. Grace makes it all about freedom. Say goodbye to legalistic rules and enjoy the fruit of a loving relationship. That is the grace walk experience.
– Steve McVey

God isn’t disillusioned with us because he never had any illusions to begin with. He knows us and loves completely.
– Graham Cooke

The Gospel of Jesus Christ allows you to walk out of Prison. Religion causes prisoners to merely change cells.
– Rex Gaskey

Their sharp and steely eyes [of people steeped in a lifetime of religious legalism] are likely on the lookout for others’ ‘sin’, too. That’s the final destination of the atrophication of those with a religious spirit.
– Me

Often, we see only
What we want to see,
Get only
What we expect to get,
And accept only
What we’ve been taught to accept . . .
When we read the Bible.
– Mo Thomas

Threatening an atheist with hell, is like threatening a nudist with a wedgie…
– Derrick Day

There is a real dignified beauty about secret giving. No wonder Jesus was so in favour of it.
– Ā Me

[Social media] all reward engagement, not accuracy
– Robin Jackson

All Evangelical Christians know that the Bible was simply dropped from the sky by God. There were a lot of fatalities in mediaeval times from falling Bibles, primarily because they were so heavy. Apparently the same was true of the Pyramids:

– Me

Literature does the most wonderful thing: it takes the lost ā€˜now’ and places it right in front of you
– Anon (Quoted from a BBC Radio 4 Book Club advert)

They [Christians wanting to justify their behaviour] make it up as they go along. Romans 13:1-2 [that says that a Christian should obey the lawful authorities] is fine as long as they agree with those they are under. As soon as they don’t, it’s Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than people”. They get to choose which Bible verse they want to ignore based on their own leanings. Of course, this also proves that the Bible contradicts itself, much to the annoyance of Inerrantists!
– Me

I agree with F.F. Bruce that “eternal conscious torment” [i.e. ‘Hell’ – Ed] is inconsistent with the revealed nature of God in Jesus.
– Richard Murray

 

 

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Whether political or religious; the effect is the same on those who are subjected to it – Ed

The Destroyer of Faith – Reblog

This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

This is the second precursor essay to my series on the problems of evangelicalism, included now in the series so as to keep it all together. Initially published on 13th May, 2025, this one’s a long one!


A long Essay on Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma

TRIGGER WARNING:

This is a personal story involving religious abuse, and contains descriptions of religious abuse, religious trauma, and the techniques used by religious abusers. It may even come across as a bit of a rant, but I think it needs to be said in any case. It’s not for the faint-hearted. You have been warned! šŸ˜€


There are certain Christians who abuse other Christians in various ways. These people can so easily wreck and sometimes even destroy others’ faith by their words, by the damage those words cause, by their actions, and by their example.

I quote Oppenheimer above in order to emphasise that this kind of behaviour brings death. It is spiritual abuse, which brings spiritual trauma and kills a person’s spirit within them. Spiritual death[1]. And so, these kinds of Religious people are guilty of bringing that spiritual death to other people – sometimes unwittingly, sometimes as a fit of pique, and sometimes deliberately and maliciously. Sadly, I have seen all three šŸ™ Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that they reflect the character of ‘someone’ who is not Father God… indeed, they reflect more the character of the Accuser, who cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy (Jn 10:10 (KJV))- steal your assurance, kill your joy, and destroy your peace.

But, as always, by their fruits you will know them (Mt 7:16). If their words and actions cause suffering and the ‘steal, kill and destroy’ antics expressed above, you can be sure that that spirit is not from God. And while I realise that faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9), the phenomenon I am describing in this piece is where someone’s God-given faith is so badly desecrated, mauled and smashed by religious abuse – often from a person that the victim should have been able to trust, which is partially why it’s ‘abuse’ – that the person finds it is no longer possible to practise, express, exercise or enact their faith due to the damage that has been done to it. It is rendered lifeless by the abuse endured, partially because the abused person no longer feels safe to express that faith, at least not in the context they live, whether religious or social – or both. That’s why I refer to spiritual abuse as being ‘The Destroyer of Faith’.

In many of my posts, I have railed against Religious people[2] who seem to think it’s their job to police other people’s moral life. Many groups also have people amongst their number who feel free to assume that everyone is subject to their criticism and has to not only listen, but also agree and do something about any points raised, whether or not it’s someone they know and whether or not they have their permission. Certainly, if there is no actual relationship there, then they shouldn’t be doing that.

As a case in point, as my dear friend Derrick Day once said, “If you have a problem with me, call me. If you don’t have my number, then you don’t know me well enough to have a problem with me!”.

Now, granted, you may well offend or injure a complete stranger, in public or in private, and they would be well within their rights to complain to you. ‘Oi! You just trod on my foot!’ or something. And you would hopefully apologise, and that would (again, hopefully) be the end of it. But it’s superficial; there is nothing deep about it, nor is any other action required other than to apologise and maybe pay their medical bills if you injured them. There was no intentionality in it, either malicious or benign; it’s just neutral. I don’t need to expand on this; all of my readers will be familiar with this sort of thing.

However, there are some people, usually Religious people (and some political activists) who demand more. In short, they want blood. They want to know why you did something, what your motivations are, whether or not you are sufficiently contrite (sufficiently, that is, to their satisfaction) and most of all how you are going to make significant lifestyle changes to prevent further occurrences of your wrongdoing. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but anyone who has ever received a bollocking from a self-righteous Religious type will know exactly what I’m on about. The bottom line here is that any response to such a complaint is entirely your business, and no-one else’s.

Ten years ago, something like that happened to me. In fact, I wrote some of my first posts on this blog in response to that episode. One such example is the beautiful February 2015 article ‘Confrontation‘, which lays out the sort of approach that a believer, at least, would be advised and indeed expected to adopt, when confronting someone with something that has offended them. Certainly, it must be done in a spirit of restoration and reconciliation, not one of condemnation. No Christian should ever do anything that would cause someone to doubt that God loves them, by whatever means, but especially by lading guilt and condemnation, which can take literally years to throw off, and in some cases the person never recovers[3]. Three articles that may help when it comes to people correcting/judging are here (the ‘Confrontation’ piece referenced above), here and here.

Unfortunately, certain Christians seem to excel at that kind of condemnation, especially when it is inflicted on fellow believers. Maybe that works so well because they know that Christians are especially vulnerable to conscience problems, particularly those who are ‘sin-conscious’ and/or ‘sin-fixated’. Such condemnatory people cause tremendous damage and hurt[4]. While for Jesus it’s true that ‘a bruised reed He will not break; a smoking wick He will not snuff out’ (Isaiah 42:3), many of His followers do not have that same gentleness. As a friend of mine said on Facebook the other day, “Christians are the only ones who go out of their way to make sure that hurting people know they aren’t loved by God”.

Aye, I had to admit to him that, sadly, I’ve seen that first hand. In my case it didn’t work, because I know the truth about myself and about how God sees me, but they did try their best. Ten years ago now, it was.

So, here’s the story, with a bit of background too:

In August, 1999, I began my ‘dark night of the soul‘, where I stopped doing Christian things entirely. The short version of this is that I was being stripped of all the junk that had been hindering my faith for so long; religious requirements that had layered over my simple faith, and other things too. And it lasted for fifteen years. On on Sunday 2nd Feb, 2014, God said to me, ‘Ok lad, it’s time to go back’, so I duly went along with Fiona – and I got thoroughly zapped. Here’s what I posted on Facebook that afternoon: “What a morning. First time voluntarily in a church for fifteen years, and getting thoroughly zapped by God: weeping, laughing, complete acceptance, forgiveness. Wow, wow, wow! Going again tonight hehe”. That divine encounter was simply profound. I had never felt anything like that before, and I later said that I likened it to ‘being born again, again’! Since then, I have known that I would never, ever want to go back to the legalistic, religion-centred faith that I had previously had; it was like becoming a butterfly, having emerged from my fifteen-year chrysalis. My chains had indeed fallen off, and my heart was free!

To continue with the butterfly analogy, the problem with being a butterfly is that, while the butterfly can still speak caterpillar, the caterpillar cannot speak butterfly. It’s like you have a different language. The word ‘Grace’ now actually means something, rather than just something you say at the end of each meeting while holding hands and trying to avoid each other’s eyes, or a short prayer at a meal. Forgiveness is real, ongoing and at the same time permanent. You know that God ‘remember[s] your sin no more’ (Heb 8:12, which quotes Jer 31:34). You know that nothing can snatch you from His hand, nor can you jump! šŸ˜‰ So that by the time of the story I will tell below, my faith was real, vibrant and living, and my assurance complete, my sonship sure and my attitude to ‘sin’ was one of complete freedom to just leave it behind. My joy, despite Fiona’s illness and prognosis, was full and real; indeed, nothing but real joy would have survived the terrible agonies we were going through as a family due to the illness. And my whole frame of reference had shifted, from one of partial reliance on complying with Law, to one wholly, solely and completely dependent on Grace. That’s why I now speak ‘butterfly’!

In December, 2014, in the face of Fiona’s terminal cancer diagnosis, we renewed our marriage vows in a beautiful service in our local Anglican Church, where we were members at the time[5]. The wedding was awesome and many friends old and new came along to bless us, including even some from our former life in West Yorkshire. You know how with some people you have a ‘life bond’; a friendship where even if you haven’t seen each other for like 20 years or more, somehow you just pick up where you left off and things are just as they were before. Well, friends like that.

One of those friends, Sally[6], told us that she was organising a worship conference in February 2015, where Christians from all over the country could get together to learn more about worship. And she invited us to go. The conference was to be a residential one at a Christian centre somewhere well up-country, quite a way from our home in South Devon. But we decided we wanted to go, so we could get a handle on the latest knowledge about practical Charismatic/Evangelical style worship. So off we went, and me just a year into my new life walking in butterfly freedom šŸ˜‰ There was me, Fiona, our daughter Ellie, and my best friend at the time, a very practical and down-to-Earth man called Edd; we considered ourselves to be each other’s ‘wingmen’. We attended (what they referred to as) seminars, and took part in a sort of ‘open mic’ evening; we joined in and generally enjoyed it. We didn’t really learn an awful lot, to be honest[7], and the food was pretty dire[8]. We learned, a lot of, quite frankly, not very useful words denoting different aspects of (I think I recall correctly) worship practices of the ancient Israelites, and similar stuff, but to be honest it was pretty pithy and not much of it was of use. On the plus side, we met some amazing people and made some wonderful new friends, with whom we are still in touch nowadays, and we still continue to bless each other. While in some of the seminars, I heard things I didn’t really agree with, I generally went along with it because I know that not everyone believes the same thing, even at an Evangelical retreat. But there was one point – it was so insignificant that I can’t even remember what it was! – where I put up my hand and asked a question. The speaker, a lady whom we’ll call ‘Joanna’, was a bit nonplussed by it, she tried to answer it, and later I spoke to her privately, to make sure that she knew there was nothing personal involved; it was a genuine question. Little did I know that I had become a marked man! Obviously, for Joanna and her fellow speakers, the word ‘conference’ was nothing of the sort; it didn’t involve any two-way at all; we were expected to just sit there and listen. I am a trained Adult Education Tutor (I used to teach basic computing in evening classes at a local college) and I know that people have different learning styles; evidently Joanna didn’t know that. Probably not a teacher, or probably so full of herself that… well I need say no more! But the next day, I raised my hand to ask another question, and the speaker (not Joanna), even though she saw my hand up, quickly averted her eyes and ignored me. It seemed to me that she’d been briefed to watch out for that guy with the Yorkshire accent, because therein lies trouble! šŸ˜‰ And then, in a later seminar, it was Joanna’s turn to speak again and she said that (and I quote) ‘God can’t do anything without faith as a prerequisite’. Well, that was something I couldn’t really accept, and although I didn’t put my hand up (because I knew I would be ignored), I did put a small post on Facebook that evening:

“I’ve just heard the phrase, ‘God Can’t’. And that at a worship conference, no less. Well, I’m here to say God Can!”

That was it. That was all I put[9].

The next morning, I ran Edd to the local railway station early on, because he had to get back to Devon for some football coaching he was doing that day. I returned in time for breakfast – rubbery sausages, some sort of hard-fried egg with a pale yolk (we have free-range chickens, so we are somewhat spoiled!), Sainsburys Savers beans and the Tesco in-house version of Coco Pops. As I was eating my final bowl of (air quotes) “coco pops”, Sally and Joanna approached the table with facial expressions like those disapproving expressions that used to be worn by Cissie and Ada in the Les Dawson Show. The photo here, of Cissie and Ada[10], does not do Joanna and Sally’s faces justice because they both had tight lips like they’d been sucking lemons, and their heads both held in an identical tilt to the left šŸ˜‚.

Well, they must have indeed been disapproving expressions, because despite being Autistic and generally unable to read any sort of body language, even I noticed, and Ellie called out ‘This looks like an intervention!’ Displaying no humour whatsoever at Ellie’s brilliant comment, as is usual for the Religious when they are ‘on a mission’, they agreed that it was an ‘intervention’. They wanted to take me to task about my Facebook comment of the previous evening. Well, for me, breakfast is a sacred time, for eating not arguing, so I told them I hadn’t finished my breakfast and I was going to do so first. So they sat and watched (something I can’t stand, being Autistic) while I finished off every last orangey-brown drop of cheapo-chocolate flavoured milk from the “coco pops”. Remember this was at a fully-occupied breakfast table with about another four people there in addition to myself and my family – of course, Edd was on a train back to Devon so I didn’t have my wingman there to watch my ‘six’. Anyway, before they started in on me, I made it clear that I am my own man and that I do not recognise any authority over me, including theirs, and they agreed with that on the surface, probably just to get their own way. But in the presence of all these people, in full violation of any Biblical principle about confronting people (Mt 18:15-20) – they made up their own rules as they went along – they proceeded to lambast me verbally about my post, concluding that it was ‘all over the World Wide Web'[11], this being concluded by Joanna’s contemptuous chucking of Sally’s phone (which she had been brandishing) on to the table. Accompanied not only by the obligatory sniff, but also by a demand that I take down the comment. Sally had shown Joanna on her phone what she’d seen on my Facebook feed, and Joanna had gone straight on the warpath. They’d clearly jumped straight to their own conclusions and given it no thought before coming to administer me a bollocking! In addition, she also told me that I had done ‘nothing but contradict her since [I’d] been there’, which is a bit of an exaggeration as I’d only asked one question, and made sure afterwards that we were ‘all good’. Hardly the actions of a disruptive person. And this all being done to a chap who has had only a year to come to to terms with having his faith restored in quite a surprising way, in the presence of my daughter who was just beginning to flourish as a young Christian girl, and my lovely Fiona who had a terminal cancer diagnosis. All these factors; those two women knew about them all. How callous is that? How selfish? I refused to take the comment down, mainly out of principle, because I detest the suppression of free speech just because someone doesn’t like what is written. Fiona was stricken and explained that I have Asperger’s Syndrome, and that most likely I would eventually see their point of view and take the comment down. But they were having none of it. Joanna even said, literally through gritted teeth, that if I was Autistic then they could pray for me![12] I mean, I would probably have got turned into a toad or something! Honestly, words cannot express the depths of the disgust that this episode engendered in me. Needless to say, we returned home that day, missing out on the rest of that last day of the conference – not that we’d have learned much, I’m convinced. Just as the first seminar was being set up – Sally was going to be teaching on that one, so I am sort of sorry I missed it – Fiona went in to see her and to give her a hug; she must have known that this was the last time they would ever see each other and Fiona wasn’t the sort of person who would leave something like that up in the air. But we left. My peace damaged, my mind in a turmoil, my ladies gutted on my behalf. But once the dust had settled, I learned a lot from it as I will describe below. To be honest, I don’t think, now, that Sally intended for Joanna to go off on one like that; I think she was just hurt and shared it with Joanna to share her burden. And Joanna decided to take her already – existing dislike for me (for being trouble enough to listen carefully to what she was teaching and actually ask a question!) into a public shaming event. Shame it tarnished her own reputation more; those around the table got to see just how toxic she was. The old phrase ‘that says a lot more about them than it does about you’ was particularly apropos there! Anyway, I did actually take the post down, within a day in fact, because my attitude was that if it was hurting someone, then it shouldn’t be there, and I messaged Joanna to let her know, at which point she promptly blocked me with no reply. Petty and ungrateful, much. A relevant point here is that while a person may well feel free to take someone to task about something they don’t like, the response to the criticism is always in the hands of the one being criticised. Someone may well feel free to criticise my actions, but they don’t get to dictate my actions. This is a principle that all members of medium- to high-control groups could do with knowing.

But back to the story. It might not seem like much, but for an Autistic person to be publicly humiliated like that – indeed for anyone to have that happen to them! – it’s pretty bad. For someone who is an innocent, clean, joy-filled and free Christian believer acting in good faith – it wasn’t even a bad comment! – to be attacked like that. For a new believer to have to see something that ugly. For a dying lady to have to see the husband she adores being treated like that. That – is disgraceful. And sadly it’s not untypical of religious people to do things like that.

The next few paragraphs may seem a bit random or confused; a bit ‘all over the place’, but please see it as a mosaic of different impressions and realisations, also some expressions of reality, from the fall-out from that event. I have left them like this in order to simulate, in some small measure, the disjointed thinking and shock and damage effect of what it’s like when something like this happens.

I didn’t actually hold anything against the women in the story, and I still don’t. I forgave them, as you can see from the article I wrote only a few days later. I have not published the details of what happened until now; I have certainly not named-and-shamed. I have thought in depth about when – or even whether – to publish this article, or even to write it. Indeed, I am writing it only a few days before it will be published. I have waited on this for ten years. So, it is obvious that it is not coming from a place of either unforgiveness nor bitterness. I am still good friends with Sally[13]. I’m not saying that Joanna is the Destroyer of Faith, nor am I saying that she is a Destroyer of Faith. What I am saying, though, is that her actions are an example of the sort of behaviour thatĀ is the Destroyer of Faith.

I wanted to publish the story because I know that this is not an isolated incident. It may well be for Joanna, of course (although I doubt it; usually people who do this kind of thing already have a habit of it), but still, people need to know that this sort of thing goes on in churches, especially those where the ‘authority’ of leadership – even if they are ‘only’ conference speakers – is held as a licence to abuse people. Joanna’s husband is in the leadership team of Sally and Joanna’s church, so she’s probably seen as some sort of ‘untouchable’. The Evangelical idea of ‘do not touch the Lord’s anointed’ is rife in churches like theirs – although their pastor is one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever met (he’s not Joanna’s husband). I wonder if he knows that stuff like this goes on among his flock?

I understand that my post was received as hurtful, for which I apologised at the time, and I almost – but not quite – understand why. It was their ‘baby’; they had put a lot of work into the conference (although sadly the other organisers hadn’t put much money into the food budget 🤣 ) and they were offended by my post. That said, my post was more of a general comment anyway, it was not targeted against anyone (I don’t do things like that) and it was posted in all innocence.Ā  It wasn’t even about the conference; it was about something that someone said. And if it was that hurtful, why did Sally have to share the hurt even further, except to cause trouble? Why didn’t she come to me, one-on-one? No-one could tell from the post where I was, nor whose worship conference I was at. Part of being Autistic is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the Autistic person to see things from others’ points of view, especially when it’s all so convoluted, inferred and second-guessed. This is partly why I stay away from people in general, and occurrences like this only serve to reinforce that attitude as being the correct one in my case.

Leading on from the thing about the conference being their ‘baby’, yes – I get that. But I think that linking my comment about faith with the quality (or otherwise) of the conference was really taking themselves a bit too too seriously. This is a classic example of offence being taken rather than given, as I have shared in other posts. When someone is told that offence was not intended, but they still insist on receiving that offence, then that’s a sure sign that the problem is with them, not with the comment or its creator.

As an illustration of how this incident improved the way I approach life, I wrote, in this article, the following, very observant, comment, which references the events in this story:

“Interestingly, about a year ago I was once again subjected to an (uninvited) barrage of accusations/doctrinal correction/call it what you will, from a ā€˜non-free Christian’, and it made me realise, while in the process of categorically rejecting that person’s diatribe, just how far I have come in my freedom. I never want to go back to that life. My ā€˜detoxification’[14], as it were, has released me into entirely new freedoms to love people of different views without judging them or trying to change them. And that, to me, is real freedom!”

And now a thought about how some Christians seem to think that they hold some sort of power over others. These Christians could be either leadership, their relatives (‘Elders’ wives’, as it were) or others who feel they have something to say and that they are too important to leave it unsaid. Remember that I stated clearly (after I’d eaten my “coco pops”!) that I did not consider myself ‘under’ Joanna’s authority in any way, which, of course, she then proceeded to ignore. At least from her side, anyway; it didn’t affect the way in which I received the criticism. I still rejected it, and her authority along with it.

Anyway, these kinds of abusive people mis-use the faith position of the victim in order to facilitate their attack. In other words, they know that a fellow believer is likely to have sufficient conscience and gentle heart to listen to criticism, whether that’s in the interest of maintaining harmonious relationships, wanting to ‘keep short accounts with God'[15]or any other good and noble reason[16], and this makes the victim open and pliable for what comes next. Their defences are down; why would they want to raise their defences against a fellow member of the Church family? Until it hits them, of course, but by that time the damage is done.

High-control church leadership invariably go on about people making themselves ‘vulnerable’, citing it as being a ‘softening of the heart’ so that Jesus can change it. There was even a Graham Kendrick song some decades ago, called ‘soften my heart’ which espoused that principle. While the sentiments behind a favourable response to this softening idea is seen as admirable, and indeed it can help some people to become more compassionate, it has two problems. Firstly, such a softening should and must only occur under the prompting and direction of the Holy Spirit, and not from a human, whether or not it’s set to music šŸ˜‰ And it’s usually an unconscious thing; I find that all of a sudden I have reacted to a need in a way I wouldn’t have done before, and I never noticed that my attitudes had changed. That’s how the Spirit works. Secondly, it opens up the believer to abuse; specifically, abuse aimed at the vulnerability of that softened heart. Abusive leaders take full advantage of that, and this was what happened in Joanna’s case with me. And that’s partially why it hurt so much. Although in my case, the main thing was what it did to Fiona; the poor girl was devastated. As was Ellie. ‘Dad, you’ve come so far, and she goes and does that to you’. And she was right. I would also add that these abusive leaders don’t necessarily consciously realise that it’s the ‘softened heart’ they are targeting; they just know that it works. Or at least it does with people who submit to them, at any rate. I cope with the ‘softened heart’ concept in my own way. My heart is indeed soft; I have deep compassion for, well, everyone, including all life, really – animals, plants and so on. But I also have an armoured box, which granted does remain open most of the time, but it stands always ready to snap shut on the approach of nasty people. That’s how I defend; your method may vary.

And it really is time for these destructive people to learn how to respect boundaries. Even for those visiting ‘evangelists’ on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago; they had crossed a boundary. They had knocked on my door despite the clear presence of signs on the door (and right next to the doorbell, too!) that said ‘No Cold Callers’. I wrote to the church a few days later (of course, I am still awaiting a response at the time of writing!)[17] and said this:

“No-one is going to change their mind about not wanting to be disturbed just because it’s religious people doing the disturbing, nor are they likely to want to attend your church if this is how badly people’s boundaries are respected”.

The question of boundaries is indeed an important one. For example, and at the risk of seeming to behave like them!, only in a church will someone ask you a question about sexual matters. They love it. They will even feel free to ask a couple if they are sleeping together! In our pre-marriage ‘counselling’ sessions, Fiona and I were asked straight up if we had ‘misbehaved’ together. I kid you not. No doubt the Elders got some sort of cheap thrills out of it; Fiona was always absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. But the fact remains that they crossed a boundary in asking us that. Christians do so love to talk about sexual matters, all in ‘love’ of course, and ‘strictly as a matter of spiritual healthiness’. I do think it gives them a cheap little frisson of forbidden sexual thrill. But in what world is it ever acceptable to ask someone a question like that? And even more, to expect an honest answer, which in some groups could earn you instant punishment as a reward for your openness? No way!

The take-home message for that is this: I can see absolutely no reason at all to ‘open oneself up’ to the potential of abuse by lowering one’s defences and making oneself vulnerable. [18]. I share this recommendation so as to protect you, my gentle reader, from making the same mistake. There is absolutely no need to make yourself vulnerable to anyone outside your family.

Let’s put that another way: Churches are not family, no matter how much they claim to be. Blood is definitely thicker than water. When I left my church in Leeds, only a very few people from that church maintained contact with us; those who really loved us. Mark and Alison (who greatly helped us in our move south, although I won’t say how because it would embarrass them), Richard and Elizabeth, Chris and Dawn. That’s about it. Not the Church Elders; you know, the men who used to conclude their Elders’ Meetings with a Chinese takeaway paid for with church funds, when I and my family were living on the breadline and tithing to the hilt. The Elders who told me that I couldn’t buy the church synthesiser to go to Devon with me, because how would they find someone who would know how to buy another?[19] Please don’t interpet this prose as a complaining diatribe, nor as bitterness. Like I said, I’m well past all that. But maybe see it as a warning that you simply cannot trust church leadership anywhere near as much as they would tell you that you can. As they’d be the first to tell you (after saying ‘Do not touch the Lord’s Anointed!, of course!’), they are only human. But it further reinforces my belief that the only reason why they put up with me in that church was because I was just so damn good at leading worship šŸ˜€ They weren’t bothered about me as a person.

This is encapsulated perfectly in the following quote from the Irish writer-poet, Dylan Morrison:

“Religious and spiritual movements both tend to come and go, with only Divine Presence remaining constant.
“May I respectfully make a suggestion, one born out of personal experience.
“Don’t pour your whole identity into a movement, no matter what the brand.
“Why not?
“Well, it all usually ends up in tears, disillusionment and deep confusion.
Best to open up one’s heart to the One without change, I reckon”.

– Dylan Morrison

Now, that says it all.

Another factor is the Religious spirit. I go into some detail about that in this article, but for now let’s just say that, as I have already mentioned, some Christians take themselves far too seriously, and that is often (though by no means always!) due to the Religious spirit[20] Here are a few quotations where the lightness and levity of being a free believer are contrasted with the load of being under the religious yoke:

ā€œThe Religious of Jesus’ day complained that He was a glutton and a drunkard. Sounds like He was enjoying life pretty much to the full, while at the same time preaching how much God loved people. To me, what they found offensive was that someone could take life so lightly while at the same time taking God so seriously. Religion can’t cope with thatā€. – Me

ā€œā€¦pride [in this case, pride engendered as part of the effects of the Religious spirit – Ed] cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One ā€œsettles downā€ into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man ā€œfallsā€ into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.ā€ – G. K. Chesterton

ā€œMaybe people should more often than not just [accept what the Bible says] and shake the dust off and leave when their message is not being received? According to the Bible, saying nothing is actually a good thing and shows maturity and wisdom. But alas… They probably won’t, because such is the religious spirit[21]. It always has to be right and always has to get the last word, or it will eat them up inside. Their comments will never seem to be about correcting for love’s sake, but will more than likely seem to be about correcting because nobody is as right as they are.ā€ – Tim

ā€œIn general, I’ve found that people who are very legalistic try very hard to recruit others to their ranks. My opinion is that the more insecure one is in what one believes, the more that person will need the validation of others, which is often gained by getting others to join them and by refusing to even hear any other views. I suspect they’re also jealous of those who’ve found freedom by not having to beat themselves over the head daily with guilt and shame and ā€œlawsā€. Jesus made it clear he didn’t / doesn’t appreciate spiritual enforcers, those who think they’ve got such a grip on righteousness that they are hammers, and everyone who doesn’t agree with them exactly is a nail that needs to be hammered.ā€ – Jack B

And yet, Jesus wants even those with the Religious spirit to loosen up and actually enjoy life with Him. Of course He does. Listen to this:

ā€œAre you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.ā€ – Mt 11:28-30 (Message)

And He meant it, too. For so many Christians, their faith walk is one under the heavy load of religious burdens. My life changed when I shed those burdens and walked free.

ā€œThe enemy of the Truth does his best work through the religious folks. He keeps them sin conscious while convincing them that they are Christ conscious. They are the first to throw stones, point out specks and elevate the Bible to the level of an idol. But thanks be unto God that He will bring them too into a realization of Himself through Christ in due course of time. For now ya just gotta love them. They can’t help their blindness.ā€ – C Andrew May

I sincerely hope that this happens, especially to Joanna. Wouldn’t that be great? šŸ˜€

Another point is that who would want to go to a church, any church, where it is expected that you open yourself up to this sort of thing? It’s actually the main reason why I’m writing this essay – in order to warn people of what can happen if someone overcommits or overexposes themselves in this sort of environment. Ok, so I am putting people off going. I’d rather that than have them come to harm, and in any case the churches have brought it on themselves.

No, if you want to go toĀ  a church, go to a simple, quiet little CofE church or something, sing the hymns, feel the presence of God (after all, that’s the whole point!) and leave after the service, or after coffee if you’re feeling brave. Don’t let them rope you into anything. And don’t feel you have to put anything in the collection plate, if they have one. You don’t have to tell anyone your ‘doctrinal position’ on matters like Hell, salvation or LGBTQ+ issues. If you feel judged at any point, get out and don’t go back. And never, ever ‘hang on in there’ for just a little bit longer hoping that things will improve, because they just won’t. It might also be an idea if you don’t get drawn in to a political discussion! If you have special talents, abilities or Autistic superpowers, don’t tell anyone. If you’re gay, definitely don’t tell anyone. If anyone asks you about anything sexual (and believe it or not, they might!), find the pastor and report them to him/her. And then leave. Yes, if you go alone, people might ask if you’re married. If you go with a member of the ‘opposite sex’ (and yes I’m aware that this is a ‘problematic’ concept nowadays!), keep your relationship status secret. Keep ’em guessing!Ā  If you go with a member of the same sex, don’t entertain any questions about anything to do with your sexuality. And then report them to the pastor. Yes, there are sick Christians who do indeed ask questions on matters like that…how can that ever be considered normal?? But they do. And then they gossip about you.

Despite all this, I would say – and not even grudgingly! – that Christianity in general does produce an awful lot of good stuff. There’s social initiatives, there’s soup kitchens, there’s programmes to help the poor, there’s all the good things that Christianity has done down the ages like initiating national education, abolishing the slave trade, establishing hospitals, and many more things. There’s some really good worship music, that I still find a real blessing (I have a Christ for the Nations playlist playing as I type this, despite them being a highly legalistic organisation[22]) I get all that. And to be fair, I actually think that Christianity does more good than it does harm, for all its faults. But what I’m doing here is to give my readers a general feel for the sorts of nastiness that can befall someone who gets involved in any medium- to high-control, culty, church where certain of its members seem to think it’s ok to interfere in other members’ lives, and to castigate complete strangers just because they feel like it. And I hope I am also helping their potential victims to gain a real and healthy wariness when considering membership of such a group. The thing is, they will inculcate you gradually, so that you don’t notice what they’re doing. One little thing you don’t like here, but don’t call it out, leads to another one there, down the line, where you don’t call that out either and, little by little, they’ve got you. And, sooner or later, I guarantee that someone will be nasty to you; you can absolutely count on it. I think that my shock on being confronted by Joanna was so great because I hadn’t seen it for a long time; she assumed I’d still be susceptible to that kind of thing (because Sally had told her some of my former background, back before I discovered Grace) and she came in with that assumption. And of course it no longer washed with me, whereas maybe it would have done before. Actually, even then, I would likely have kicked back. I was never that badly inculcated. But it made me remember just how bad it is in Evangelical churches for this sort of thing, and reminded me of the freedom I really have by not being part of one. The Anglican church I was part of at the time didn’t have that sort of thing going on (dunno why!) and was only nominally Evangelical anyway (maybe that’s why!)

If you’re already a believer and thinking of joining such a church, or any church for that matter, be sensitive to what God is calling you do do, if anything, and don’t go beyond that. If, during the after-service coffee, someone wants to rope you into something, go and find someone else to talk to. Watch especially for the old lady in the tweed skirt; it’s her job to get complete strangers to bake cakes for after next week’s service 🤣 I kid you not; the first time we went into our ‘new’ Evangelical church in August 1995, there she was, and that was what she did!

Someone wrote a comment to me recently, saying, “Ain’t no hate like Christian love!”, and in a sense, he’s right. While I have a dear friend in Northern Ireland who is currently experiencing the real love of God expressed through a church congregation, it is a sad fact that such congregations are few and far between. Much more common are groups where the love of Christ has gone cold, and all that is left is the cold, shrivelled neutron star (what’s left of a powerful supergiant star, once its fuel runs out) of a church cinder that has had its day, it’s just going on to try and recapture memories of its past glories, and it’s about time it closed. It’s interesting that folks in such remnant congregations generally have only sin-policing and dislike of ‘worldly’ systems as their common/uniting factors, rather than uniting in love and letting that love leak out into their community. In a sense, they are closed systems with no new life. Maybe that’s why their fuel has run out.

For further help, let me say that there are many books out there on recovering from spiritual and religious abuse, some better than others. Search for them on Amazon or wherever, and read the reviews too. Some of the reviewers of a given book may say that although they found the book helpful, there were bits they didn’t like. As always, with anything like this, when you read a book, feel free to eat the meat and spit out the bones. Keep what is useful; discard what is not.

While this attack and the whole incident did shock me, and it rattled me, and gave me what we used to call ‘a bit of a clattering’, it did not kill my faith. Fortunately for me, my roots in Jesus are so deep that this did not damage my faith in the slightest; in fact it made it even stronger because it is in adversity that our faith is tested – not tested by God, Who doesn’t need to test it (He knows all about it already), but tested by the circumstances so that we can see for real how our faith stands in adverse circumstances. However, I did find that the unjust and irrational nature of the attack did offend my Autistic sense of justice; injustice really rankles with me, and I have tremendous difficulty coping with irrationality, particularly from humans. But my faith is based on actual, historical events that happened in my own life which have given me foundational security in my faith. Two of those events (there are more) are given here and here; I even have the dates and times for them, they had such a profound effect. Furthermore, because I am a ‘butterfly'(see above!), the best (or I suppose you could say ‘worst’) efforts of the caterpillars do not reach me on a faith level anymore, because I live my faith at a level they cannot even imagine. I don’t want that to sound boastful – although in some ways I’m not bothered if it does! – but this is the truth. My faith now works at a level that is so far beyond what it was like before my ‘rebirth’, that it bears little resemblance to it. In a way, my former faith was in two dimensions; my new life is in three dimensions. It is as different from my former life as a cube is to a square – the same basic shape, but with real substance. Or, in keeping with the theme of my blog, it’s like being able to fly, and work in three dimensions, as opposed to the two dimensions to which a mere ground-dweller is restricted. Such is the effect of Grace on a believer’s life. I would moderate that with the following two caveats, though:

ā€œOnce you say ā€˜higher level’ (regarding one’s level of spirituality), you appeal to the ego, and all the wrong instincts in people.ā€

-Fr. Richard Rohr

ā€œWhen you begin to refer to where you’re at on your journey as a ā€œdeeper place,ā€ ā€œhigher level,ā€ ā€œanother dimension,ā€ or some other such thing, you create a space where pride, arrogance, and superiority can thrive in the name of spirituality. No, we’re journeying, and on this journey, mountains are laid low, and valleys exalted. Every place is an equal place for the sincere, it’s just that we are never all in the same place at the same time, and tend to assume wherever we’re at is the place to be.

ā€œThe place to be is wherever you areā€.

-Jeff Turner

I still fully agree with those two quotes. But how else can I express it, that which has become a reality to me? Except just to say that I am aware of no pride or superiority in my thinking; it’s just the way things are. I am stating facts, not putting myself on a pedestal. I suppose that at the end of the day, I am just expressing why the comments of the ‘caterpillars’ do not affect the life of the ‘butterfly’, and why they did not in this case (and they certainly can’t make me into a caterpillar again!) It’s that they don’t understand; indeed they cannot understand. Until you have seen Grace, you can’t understand it. But once you have seen it, you can see nothing else, it is that life-changing.

For those whose faith does get badly damaged, though, there is still good that can come of it. As you will have seen when reading this essay (assuming you haven’t fallen asleep, that is), you can learn so much, just as I have done. And setbacks in your faith walk can be made into strengths as you discard old beliefs and ‘faith positions’, and learn modified ones. This is a part of the ‘Stages of Faith‘, which few Christians know about, but which is what growth in Christ actually looks like. Take a look at my series on spiritual growth; while Christians do tell their congregants that growing into Christ is important, and indeed is one of the objectives of the Christian faith, most of them do not know what this actually looks like, much less do they teach it in any detail. And even by reading this piece, you have put your experiences into a wider context, which will definitely help you from this point onwards. Let Jesus lead you into Grace; read this blog and search for all the teaching on Grace. If you want to find it in the Bible, begin with Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and take it from there.

I hope this has been helpful.

Grace and Peace to you all.


Sorry there’s so many footnotes – more in fact than in any other piece I have written. It’s just that in this post, there are so many side issues that needed to be explained, but without breaking the flow of the main piece. Still, I suppose that’s what footnotes are for… šŸ˜‰


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 In this piece, I am describing a different ‘spiritual death’ than that espoused in Evangelical doctrine, which holds that ‘spiritual death’ is what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden. Although God ‘clearly said’ that when you eat the fruit, you will surely die (Gen 2:17), they obviously did not die, else humanity would not exist, if indeed they were the ancestors of all humanity. And so, they invented the term ‘spiritual death’ in order to make that ‘death’ that God warned about into something we can’t see, so that it can be neither proved nor disproved. Clever, eh? Just tack the word ‘spiritual’ on the front and that explains the whole thing without actually explaining anything. In this present case, though, ‘spiritual death’ means the death or extreme (death-like) damage inflicted on a person’s spirit by religious abuse.
2 I define Religion as being the concept of humans trying to please, appease or otherwise placate ‘the gods’ (including the God of the Bible) so that said humans will not be subject to those gods’ wrath, whatever form that wrath may take – volcanoes, famine, flood, going to Hell, or even just plain and simple ‘bad luck’. Usually, Religion involves performance of some kind: doing rituals, magic spells, sacrifices, obeying rules either written or tacitly inferred. Religious people are people who feel that this ‘doing stuff’ is necessary in order for them to be able to approach God/the gods. Personally, I think that’s just a modern form of superstition.
3 Because I am irrepressible, though, I’m still going to sprinkle a lot of my usual low-key humour through this piece 😜
4 The other thing, of course, is that if their target is not a ‘Christian’, nor indeed anyone else who is expected to just behave themselves, and lie back and take such abuse, then their intended victim will likely just tell them to go and get stuffed. Some more liberated Christians might even do the same, myself included. This suggests to me that these abusers only go for the easier targets; those who will not bite back for fear of appearing ‘less Christian’ to others around them. This makes the abusers also bullies, then, in that they are attacking people they see as weak. Can’t be doing with bullies, not at all.
5 Not long after Fiona’s funeral, and just as our Vicar, Mark, moved on to pastures new, I stopped going to the church. There was no animosity, nor did I leave under a cloud; indeed, I am still friends with those dear people. But our house group had ‘ceased trading’ (the leaders felt they were not called to lead it any more) and I just felt that this was the end of that particular season in my life. As my regular readers will know, I do what I see the Father doing (John 5:19) and this gentle breakaway was indeed what He was doing at the time. So I went with it.
6 Not her real name of course; names have been changed to protect yada yada yada and all that
7 Apart from me learning that Evangelicalism hadn’t changed at all in all the time I had been ‘out’, and the worst parts of it were just as bad as ever, as I was to discover all too soon – in spades!
8 Being a Christian conference, the food was most likely provided by the lowest bidder. People familiar with the ‘generosity’ of Christian organisations will know exactly what I’m talking about. Legend has it that when a ‘sinner’ goes to Hell, they will have to pay for their own handbasket because there’s no way the church will cough up for it šŸ˜‰
9 Edd said later that he was convinced that God didn’t need anyone’s faith to help Him when He made everything!
10 As played by the late genius comedians Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough.
11 Yeah right. My Facebook profile is visible only to my actual FB friends, so no-one else would have seen the comment outside of that circle anyway
12 Like being Autistic is an illness that needs to be cured!!
13 At least, maybe not after she reads this, if she ever sees it. ‘Sally’, if you want to talk about it, you know where I am!
14 That is, my ‘dark night’ followed by my ‘rebirth’
15 Keeping short accounts with God is a peculiarly Evangelical concept (although it has likely been pirated by other denominations too; that’s what religion does) that assumes that every. single. ‘sin’. has to be confessed, individually and specifically, in order for that ‘sin’ to be forgiven. The concept is based on a mis-reading, misinterpretation and/or misapplication of the verse in 1 John 1:9, which says that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. As always with this sort of thing, the concept is, and has been, passed down from generation to generation of Christians without anyone (in that group at least) questioning it or challenging it. They just believe it because they’ve been told it. And it stands in complete contradiction to the other verse in Heb 8:12, which quotes Jer 31:34, which says, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”. When you really think about it, their ‘short accounts’ concept means that just. one. ‘sin’. in the final second of your life means that you will not be forgiven, because you won’t have had chance to ‘confess’ that ‘sin’. So, say you see someone point a pistol at you and in your mind you think ‘You b@stard!’, then that’s it. You used that ‘cuss word’, even though it was only in your head! You never got the chance to ask for forgiveness. You’re toast. What a stupid concept that is!
16 Or even that they don’t want to argue or get angry, because then they would definitely be ‘seen as’ being in the wrong, and they’d be judged and criticised for that too; for simply defending themselves vehemently, and which the abuser has jolly well asked for. In other words, Christians are, or want to be seen as, ‘too nice’ to bite back. This is a tactic which many abusers rely on to avert any comback. And that’s absolutely disgusting.
17 This clearly demonstrates that, while they expect others to be answerable to them, they do not feel answerable to others! – [Edit]: Actually, I did later get a reply, which, to be completely fair to them, did include an apology!
18 If I use the first-person pronoun euphemism ‘one’ any more, I’m going to start sounding like a member of the Royal Family, so I apologise.
19 The synthesiser disappeared sometime after that; in fact it was at this up-country conference that I heard (from the lady who had taken over from me in the Musical Director’s role in the church) that it had disappeared. Stolen, then!
20 I don’t really care whether that spirit is one of a type of actual ontological beings, or whether it’s simply the way the human mind works when damaged by Religion (I won’t go into details on that) –Ā  still the ‘manifestation’ is the same.
21 See the fourth bullet point in my article here for more on what a ‘Religious spirit’ looks like
22 I have a friend who was expelled from Christ for the Nations because of a certain ‘sin’ he was struggling with. He was expelled because he couldn’t defeat it; all he would have had to do would have been to keep quiet about it, and he’d have been fine. God knew his heart anyway. But, because of his honesty, they penalised him. That’s disgraceful.

What To Do If You’re Losing Your Faith

This entry is part 7 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

I am sensitive to the possibility that some of the dark things I have been sharing recently may have introduced, or reinforced, some unease in my readers.

Either the things shared themselves, or the reactions they have engendered in my readers. Or even just the reminders of things that maybe we had buried as too painful to confront.

Either way, doubts may have arisen (or pre-existed) about their faith, doubts about their church, doubts about their leaders, their denomination, their beliefs. While I fully acknowledge that God uses all these factors in order to move His children on in their spiritual walk, sometimes we need a bit of help along the way. There’s nothing wrong with doubts, but they can be uncomfortable, and that’s what I want to address today.

In our processes of rebuilding our faith structure, therefore, and re-realising what we actually believe, it is good to get some encouragement from ‘outside’; in this instance, from a good ‘third party’, the brilliant John Pavlowitz. This essay reminds us of just how good God is, which is always a good thing šŸ™‚

Here, then, is his encouraging piece. I hope it blesses you as much as it has blessed me!


I just don’t know if I believe anymore—and I don’t know what to do about it.

I hear words like these every single day from people from every corner of the planet, from every strand of the Christian tradition, and every segment of society. They are once-religious people who, for any number of reasons, are now finding the very ground of faith eroding beneath their feet, and they are panicking.

And this fear is understandable. After all, a faith shift is terrifying stuff to endure. It’s one thing to question the institutional Church or to poke holes in the religious systems we’ve put in place, or even to critique the Bible and how we interpret it. Those are all manageable crises.

We can endure such things and still hold a steady confidence in the belief that God is and that God is good. Even if on some days, that is all that remains of our fragile faith narrative, it can be enough.

But what do you do when with all the sleepless wrestling and the furrowed-browed prayers and the ceaseless questions and the best-intended efforts, even that seems out of reach? What happens when the very reality of God (or of a God who is good) seems too much for you to claim ownership of? How do you keep going while in the middle of a full-blown spiritual collapse?

It often isn’t a matter of just being more determined or more ā€œreligiousā€. Most of the time, people have reached these desperate moments despite continually reading the Bible and praying and volunteering and attending church services, and trying to believe. They haven’t refrained from those disciplines. They often are as devout and engaged as ever, only these pursuits no longer yield the clarity and confidence and comfort they once did.

Many people come to me in that barren spiritual dryness, and they almost always carry the crushing guilt of failure. They are grieving deeply, feeling helpless to get back what they’ve lost, and angry at themselves for not being faithful enough to conjure up a belief that used to come as a simple given. (And often they’re pretty ticked off at God, too.)

If you’re in that place right now, I won’t pretend there’s any easy way out or a simple path back to faith. I can’t even promise that you’ll ever find your way back, at least not to what you used to call belief. It may be a very different experience in the future.

So what can you do right now?

It might be to pray or read the Bible or find a new church, but likely it’s something else entirely.

Maybe it’s about asking yourself what you still know to be true; about the goodness of people, about the things that matter to you, about the gifts you’ve been given, about the kind of person you want to be in the world.

It could be that today it’s just about what’s right in front of you: about what you can see and hear and touch and smell and taste. Maybe the best thing you can do right now is to experience all of the things that you can know, and simply receive them with gratitude: a delicious meal, the evening breeze, some music that moves you, the laughter of your best friend, the intimacy of a relationship, the smell of your child’s head as you hug them. Those measurable and tangible things can form a working theology of beauty, awe, and gratitude that don’t need to be called anything else.

Perhaps just accepting these pure and measurable gifts of being alive and presently cherishing them is all the faith you are able to have right now, and that’s OK. Maybe that’s as close to proof of the Divine as you can consent to in these moments.

To simply live and to find appreciation in the living is itself a spiritual pursuit; it is a holy thing. And as you do this, you may find that this contentment is the straighter pathway back to what you’ve lost. It may clear the road to God that has been cluttered by sadness, anger, doubt, and yes, even religion.

But don’t lay that expectation on yourself right now, because that would only turn this all into a means to an end, a result to achieve, another religious exercise to evaluate. For now, just receive the goodness and pleasures of this day and allow them to speak to and surprise you. You may find there the beginning of a new season of faith.

Don’t worry about what anyone else says. You’re the one walking this road, and you understand it in ways they never will.

And above all, don’t worry about God. If God is indeed God, then God is big enough to handle your doubts and uncertainty and knows exactly what you’re going through and why belief is such a struggle right now.

You may have indeed lost your faith, or you may have just lost your way a bit. Either way, this might be a good time to breathe, look around, and find joy in what is beside and around you as you travel.

If that is all the faith you can muster right now, let it be so.

Be encouraged.


The original post can be found here

Top Tip: Read the Signs! – Reblog

This entry is part 6 of 12 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Thinking of my series on the problems of Evangelicalism, I have decided that two ‘precursor’ essays, which I published before the series, and which are referenced at the end of my opening piece on the series, are so totally relevant that I need to incorporate them into the series itself. So, here’s the first, originally published on 1st May, 2025.


To members of religious organisations who decide to ignore my ‘No Cold Callers’ signs: Try thinking ouside your box for once.

You ‘think’ that the signs are there to protect *me*, and therefore you ignored them today.

But they’re not; they’re there to protect *you*. Ignore them at your peril, and you will get the full 16-inch broadside again, like you got today.

You really have no idea what you’re messing with!

That was a post I put on Facebook, the day after a couple of ‘evangelists’ from my local Evangelical Church came around to my house uninvited and proceeded to knock on my door, despite there being clear signage asking people not to do so.

I’m going to talk today about why this action of theirs was not only wrong, but also that there are a number of learning points that those two men could maybe consider thinking about.

After our conversation, I gave them the business card for my blog, so who knows; maybe they’re reading this right now. Hello again, gentlemen!

Well then, in Matthew 16:3, Jesus suggests to the Pharisees that maybe they should try reading the signs of the times. And that’s fair enough.

These days, however, it seems that some Christians can’t even read signs that are written down, and displayed clearly and prominently.

Allow me to explain. There are disabled people living in my house. I have people that can’t answer the door due to mobility issues, and people that can’t help but take their time getting to the door because of age-related mobility issues (it takes them longer to get down the stairs, for example) and also people who have neurodivergent issues which means that it is stressful for them to answer the door to complete strangers who will of course be pushing an agenda.

And so we have a couple of defences. We have a Ring doorbell, which enables occupants in the house to screen callers, and to talk to them remotely. I’ve even done it from the local library once, ‘Sorry, I’m not in, please can you leave the package behind the wheelie bin?’ and so on.

But we also have signs on the door telling people that cold callers should not knock/ring. These signs are legally binding, because they state clearly that unsolicited callers are not welcome and that to ring/knock constitutes an offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, 2008. And to be fair, sometimes it works. We hear the proximity alert (someone is approaching your door) but they don’t ring the bell, and instead walk away. So far, so good. And we always report the unrepentant to the police; those callers who ignore the signs when they are tradespeople or sales people and then claim that they always ignore such signs. Their punishment is deserved.

However, it has been my experience that the worst offenders for ringing the doorbell when they shouldn’t are people from religious groups. While I have actually seen Jehovah’s Witnesses see the signs, turn around, and walk back up my driveway, to their credit, unfortunately the last time some of them came, they actually rang the bell! And I gave them a theological run for their money and they left wishing they’d never called – not that I was nasty to them, of course, but I told them lots of things they didn’t like me saying. And to be even more fair, religious groups are actually exempt from the door knocking regulations – although I always tell them that ignoring the sign is not a ‘good witness’ for their religion. What does it say about the kind of people they have in their group when they ignore a perfectly reasonable request to not knock? There’s simply no excuse.

So anyway, these two guys turned up a couple of days ago, and I knew they were from my local Evangelical church because they tried to present me with a leaflet and I turned it down, but not before I’d seen the pictures on the leaflet, so I knew their colours.

The following Facebook post sums up the interaction succinctly:

Lol I just had two blokes on my doorstep from our local Evangelical church. They wanted to give me a sermon, but boy did they get one. 🤣

The nature of Grace, and how it abounds even more than the biggest ‘sin’. Their ‘sin fixation’ was highly evident, to be honest. One of them even asked me if I would look at a blonde in a miniskirt going down the street, thus revealing his own heart on such things…

When you preach freedom and Grace, and all they can say is ‘but….’ then you know you’re up against hardened hearts. Still, one of them was listening…but I’m sad to say the other one had a religious spirit. You could just see it, especially the barely concealed anger in him when I declared my support for LGBTQ+ relationships. Like it’s his job to police the opinions of a complete stranger.

Nevertheless, I gave them cards for my blog, with the suggestion to eat the meat and spit out the bones, and be blessed by it. Who knows; maybe the uplifting effect of the true Gospel may have found a mark…

They had opened with a response to my immediate query about how their church copes with LGBTQ people – my Litmus Test. Of course, although they immediately responded by talking about the love of Jesus, they very quickly went into the bait-and-switch of quoting the Bible. Standard operating procedure for evangelists; they hold up the bait of the idea of the loving Jesus, which is a really attractive concept, and then they switch to the Bible and its rules – in this case, they were of course quoting some of the ‘clobber passages'[1]. So Jesus is ok as long as the Bible can be brought in somewhere. It is my new hypothesis that the Bible leads people to Jesus (John 5:39-40), but then the purpose of Christian evangelists is to lead people back to the Bible. I mean, you can’t have Jesus talking to people unsupervised, now can you? Remember, everything Jesus says to a believer has to be held up against the Bible, by other believers, to see if it is valid. This is because the Bible is the third person of the Trinity, of course[2]. </sarcasm off>Ā  šŸ˜‰

The other bait-and-switch, of course, is the Grace-to-legalism switch. I could go on about this, but the idea is basically ‘Come as you are, God will love you anyway’ and then switch to ‘Ok, now we’ve got you, here are the list of rules you have to obey in order to ‘stay saved’. They lay over the top of the pure Jesus experience layers and layers of requirements until the new believer is buried in the mire of religion, and the poor neophyte loses that initial joy because of it. This is what churches do; it’s very, very rare to find a church where the individual’s relationship with Jesus is held as the primary source of their faith; no, it has to be the Bible. Again. Because, again, they don’t trust God to be capable of speaking to a believer Himself[3].

Anyway, here is a list of, shall we say, ‘suggestions’ that I have come up with for people doing door-to-door visitation. Not that I would encourage such presumption in others’ behaviour, of course (I would not encourage door-to-door ministry for many reasons), but since I am Autistic (something else they never knew about; just treat everyone the same, why don’t you, guys) I have of course obsessively analysed the interaction in depth and found many of the flaws in their method. And for those who may unwittingly fall victim to these intruders on your property, I hope that my actually writing out these ‘Top Tips’ will give you things to look out for, and that you can pull them up for. Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re doing it from a sincere heart and with a genuine desire to ‘save’ people, and their courage in doing so is admirable. But as usual their cloistered, out of touch situation of being in a tight church community blinds them to how their ‘ministry’ looks from the outside. Which is not a good thing.

And at the risk of confusing Christians (it has been my constant experience that most Christians can only cope with one talking point at a time), I will list the points below.

Ok, here we go:

  • Don’t be pre-judgmental and assume that everyone you meet will be someone who knows nothing about God and His ways. You don’t know who you might be talking to. In my case, you were talking to an acknowledged genius with an acutely sharp mind, and with in-depth Bible college qualifications, and who has been walking with Jesus for the best part of 45 years.Ā  Hardly someone who is unfamiliar at least with Jesus, and even the Bible too.
  • Related to the above, don’t presume that others are ignorant about the things of God. Even if they’re not someone like me, they too will likely have some sort of spiritual walk, even if it is ‘merely’ being good to other people.
  • Very importantly, don’t ignore signs like mine on the door. It displays your unconcern for others’ feelings and needs if you do ignore the signs, and, furthermore, you may be surprised to learn that others will likely not consider your message as important as you think it is – and certainly not after you have ignored their notices. No, just don’t do it. Period[4].
  • If you have a religious spirit, you’d best stay at home, mate. Such a spirit is more obvious to your audience than you realise; in fact you probably don’t even realise it yourself since your slide into that spirit was so gradual. And it is by far the most off-putting thing in all of Christianity for people to experience someone with a religious spirit. How can you tell if that’s you? To be honest you yourself likely can’t, but a big clue is found in the fact that you are doing this activity in the first place. At the end of the day, you are going out to tell others how wrong they are, and how you have the answers. Don’t try to pretend otherwise, or to try to mask it by feigning concern about your neighbours’ welfare, like it says on your church website. That behaviour is presumptuous, arrogant and artificial, and this too will be detected by your victims. Certainly, talking a lot about ‘sin’ is a dead giveaway for the religious spirit, especially when you start to list your pet peeve ‘sins’. And see below, too, about how this reveals your heart. Also, being prepared to adopt underhand tactics such as those discussed below, are a sign of the religious spirit. You may also find that you have lost your joy somewhere along the line, and your faith now consists of a grey, lifeless adherence to what you see as God’s Law. This is why Paul says that “the written Law brings death” (2Cor 3:6) – but be encouraged! because he immediately follows that assertion in typical Hebrew fashion by saying “but the Spirit gives life”. Linked with that loss of joy, you will likely also have lost your sense of humour, partially because you have to be selective about what you allow yourself to find as funny, and also because laughter needs some sort of joy to fuel it – and your joy tanks are dry. Finally, the religious spirit always has to have the last word. He glories in (what he thinks is) a magnificent parting shot, whereas in actuality it is a damp squib in the face of vastly superior firepower. If what he had to say was that good, he’d have used it during the general discussion, rather than as a shot at someone’s back when there is little chance of a rejoinder. This is the religious spirit; that’s what it looks like.
  • Listen more than you talk. Your audience needs to feel valued and listened to, and you need to tailor your replies to their words. This is what’s called ‘basic conversational skills’ and, having been walled up in a closed community of like-minded people, you’ve probably never had the chance to learn it properly.
  • Remember: you started it[5]. You turned up at their house unannounced, uninvited and unexpected. If people say things you don’t like, remember you put yourself in the situation voluntarily and in fact you didn’t ask the householder if it was voluntary on their part. None of this ‘is this a convenient time?’ or anything, because you assume again that what you have to say is so much more important than anything they would possibly rather be doing in their own house. Remember you weren’t asked to come and visit and you’re there on the homeowner’s sufferance. Respect that and don’t assume any sort of entitlement.
  • In my case, you failed to recognise my Autism. Granted, I mask it very well. But the take-home message here is that you should always be aware that everyone is different and, therefore, their responses will stem from vastly different thought processes, backgrounds and motivations, none of which you can assume you are right about. Something they never teach at churches is that one size definitely does not fit all. But of course you will not believe that, since as far as you people believe, there is only one way to ‘get saved’, and that’s by your way. You assume that when Jesus spoke of a ‘narrow way’, a) you understand what He meant, and b) you have found that ‘narrow way’. Of course you have; how lucky that was for you.[6]
  • Please stop doing the old ‘Bait and switch’ – switching Grace for Law and Jesus for Bible. You bait with Jesus, and you end up giving them the Bible. You claim to preach Grace, but as with most churches that claim they are ‘into’ Grace, in reality it’s nothing of the sort. You just impose a set of rules for people to follow (Matthew 23:4), and that’s called ‘Law’ in anyone’s book. What you are doing by using this method is no different from the tricks used by pushy and disreputable salespeople. You claim to be ‘in the world, but not of it’. Why not prove it. then, by not adopting ‘worldly’ tricks like this one.
  • Related to the point above, even though you begin by saying you preach Jesus, in actual fact you really preach the Bible. Your rulebook says in John 5:39-40 that the Bible leads people to Jesus. And yet it seems to the victim that your task is actually to lead them all the way back to the Bible again. You’re not on your own, of course; most Evangelical churches do this exact same thing; this is to me a sure sign of the, yes, apostasy in today’s Evangelical church. Stick to Jesus. Relate your testimony of all the good He’s done in your life. Describe how your relationship with Him works, and how much it blesses you. If you can’t do that, then I would suggest that you don’t really have a relationship with Jesus Himself, but instead you have one with the Bible. If that’s the case, then you should not be going out lying to people by claiming that you do indeed have that Relationship with Jesus Himself. As Don Francisco once said, “If all you know of God is from books, you are walking in deep darkness”.
  • Remember that you will meet all kinds of people, including fellow Christians who are further on in the faith than you are. Accept that, and be prepared to listen and learn. If you remain teachable, then you will find that you will learn something from most if not all of your conversations, even with ‘unbelievers’. Do not disregard the wisdom of the world; it too can come out with some real gems, as you’d see if you looked at some of the posts in my ‘quotations’ series[7]. And you likely have forgotten this Scripture, but again your own Rulebook says in 1 Corinthians 2:15 that ‘The spiritual man judges all things [note, not people – Ed] butĀ he himself is not subject to human judgment.Ā And therefore you shall not judge any fellow believer that you meet on the doorsteps. If you do this, then that believer may well give you nuggets from God that you were not expecting, you will not want to hear, and which may well change your life for the better. Of course, your hardened heart will protect you from this to some extent, but, well, you have been warned! For one of the visitors the other day (and yes, it was the guy with the religious spirit!), his parting shot was “You need to spend more time in the Word!” Spend more time in the word, you say! How on earth do you think that I managed to quote all that Scripture, from memory complete with chapter and verse, to you if I wasn’t completely steeped in the Scriptures? Look, your own Rulebook says in Colossians 3:16, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…’ and, for the last nearly 45 years, that is exactly what I have done. The fruit of that is shown by my extensive knowledge of the Scriptures and by my extensive scholarship in the Bible and its concepts[8]. You were simply closed to what the Spirit was saying to you, as well as being so focused on your own thoughts that you were unable even to discern what was going on around you. I was fully conscious of the huge anointing on me as I spoke to you, and you were seemingly impervious to it. I am sad to say that it seems you have a long way to go before you get a hold of the freedom that Jesus actually offers you – but who knows? He may just reveal it all to you in a flash, just like He did for me all those years ago. He may well surprise you, and I sincerely hope He does. Your life will never be the same again.
  • Looking at the above bullet point from a slightly different angle, remember that when Christians meet, they are supposed to bless each other. And that was what I tried to do, by explaining the wonder of Grace to you.
    But all you did was to try to argue your way out of God’s Grace, to almost try to explain why it didn’t apply to you, and also try to drag me down with you.
    Why would you want to do that; to deny yourselves such blessing, and also try to destroy mine as well? I mean, why? Now, I fully understand that you will meet with hostility on your ā€˜rounds’. But you don’t need to assume that fellow Christians will be equally hostile. Even once I had declared myself as a Christian, you remained hostile; in fact you actually got worse. As if you were annoyed that someone calling himself a Christian could possibly believe something different from you. So rather than share blessings, you simply turned nasty. All you’re doing with this attitude is to miss out on so much more blessing, and on learning more about Jesus from someone who has a different point of view, but which nonetheless will likely complement yours nicely. And so, you didn’t share blessing; you shared disquiet and discord. When you go out, it’s supposed to be ā€˜peace on this house’. But you didn’t share any peace at all.
  • Related to the above, I noticed that once I ‘came out’ as a Christian, you immediately switched attitude. In short, you assumed that because I am a fellow believer, you were suddenly entitled to make unwanted input into my life. What gives you the right or permission to do that? Do you think that because we have the same Father, you can suddenly tell me what to do or think, or judge my attitudes more harshly than just the general ‘oh he’s an unbeliever’ judgments you would reserve for those who do not profess belief? Why should I suddenly be subjected to a new set of standards, coupled with your belief that I should abide by them? I saw your anger when I declared my support for same-sex relationships, after you knew that I am a Christian. I mean what?? And then your parting shot of saying ‘You should get into the Word more’. How dare you! Would you have used that on a non-believer? No, because you wanted to present a ‘nice’ front to people who might want to make the mistake of coming to your church[9]. But of course once you know I’m a believer, that all changes; you know that I know what churches are like, so there’s no need to pretend any more. If I’d never owned up, you’d have kept your ‘speaking to an unbeliever attitude’! Honestly, you guys make me sick. God knew all along about my attitudes, but He didn’t see fit to inform you of them, and therefore they’re not all that important to Him in the context. Why should anything be any different because all of a sudden you know things that God has known all along? It’s because you have an exaggerated sense of self-importance; you think that God can’t manage dealing with His children in His own way; you have to do it on his behalf. And that’s a pathetic attitude.
  • Don’t use proof-texting. It is disrespectful both to your victim and to the Bible itself, for so many reasons. Check out my blog post here, including the comments section where I give bonus content, for more details on this.
  • I presume that your church is one of those who believe that the Bible is not only inspired, but also infallible and inerrant, as partially evidenced by the line on your website that declares that declining belief in the Bible is largely due to the teaching of evolution in schools and other establishments. Well, in regards to inerrancy, and also related to the bullet point above, a point which is which is universally missed by Biblical inerrantists is this. If you insist on providing ‘proof texts’ which contradict any text quoted by your victim, this is actually declaring that you do not believe in inerrancy. Inerrancy means that the Bible is never wrong. Inerrancy also infers (and this is backed up by inerrantists who claim, when challenged) that the Bible does not contradict itself, despite you using those verses to do so. Well, any honest reading will immediately show this assertion to be incorrect (in Proverbs 26:4-5 for just one example of many). But my point is this: simply by quoting a Scripture verse that contradicts another Scripture verse just given by your victim, you are showing that the Bible does indeed contradict itself. And, while you may be blind to this, your victims will not be, especially those who are well-versed in the Scriptures. The problem is actually not so much with the Bible, but more with what you are expecting it to do. If you expect it to give you unified cast-iron rules, methods, opinions and doctrines, then you will be sorely disappointed. This is because, while the Bible is undoubtedly inspired, it was still written by many people in different cultures and time periods, and who had each had their own encounter with God in their own, unique way. While their lessons and experiences are priceless even to us today, you should not expect the Bible to present a unified front, at least not on the surface level of the words written. It was never intended for that, and if you simply throw out the concept of inerrancy, then that will solve the problem. It is simply not the case that the Bible loses its authority just because it is seen for what it is, and what it is not. Yes, there are contradictions, but these can still be used to edify and build up those who read them. To come back to the Proverbs 26:4,5 example above, if it is read as Hebrew parallelism rather than just as a plain pair of inerrant but yet still contradictory statements, then it is far more useful. Applying a similar idea to the rest of the Bible, inerrancy becomes redundant and the Bible is far more understandable because of it – even to the layman.
  • Stop focusing on ‘sin’. Your Rulebook says in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”. That’s good advice, and will take your eyes off ‘sin’, at least until you realise how much you miss thinking about ‘sin’, that is. And then, sadly and in all likelihood, you’ll likely return to it like a dog to its vomit (Prov 26:11) šŸ˜‰
  • Finally, be aware that if you start suggesting things as examples of things that you consider ‘sinful’, you will likely inadvertently be exposing your own heart, its predilections and its hidden ‘sin wishes’. People are more perceptive about dead giveaways like this than you give them credit for. So if your idea of a ‘temptation’ is, as one of you suggested yesterday, ‘a blonde in a miniskirt wearing a low-cut top'[10], then you need to know that you are betraying your fantasy to the world at large. I wonder if your wife knows about this particular leaning….[11]

So, there we go. If you’re going to come around and visit me again, you’ll need more than just your Bibles, boys. Unless you want to hear about Grace, in which case I’m all yours. šŸ˜€

Grace and Peace to all my readers.


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 The Clobber Passages are the six main Scriptural passages that Fundies quote when trying to prove that homosexuality is somehow wrong
2 The Holy Trinity, for those dependent on Biblical inerrancy, is of course Father, Son and Holy Bible
3 Of course, they would couch this in terms of ‘the human heart is deceitful above all things’ (Jer 17:9), and therefore it’s the believer that they don’t trust to hear God correctly – notwithstanding that they conveniently forget that someone in Christ is a new creation (2Cor5:17) where that deceitful heart has been swapped out for a ‘new’ heart (Eze 36:26). In which case God might as well not bother, so it amounts to the same thing
4 A few days after this incident, I actually wrote to the church to complain about the evangelists having ignored my signs. Of course, there was no reply. So I wrote again. Like I’m just going to forget? And I did then get a reply, which, to be completely fair to them, did include an apology and a note that they had mentioned to their boys that they shouldn’t knock on doors where it says not to. So I have to give them credit for that!
5 ‘We did not start it!’ ‘Yes you did, you invaded Poland!’ – Fawlty Towers, Series 1, Episode 6, ‘The Germans
6 Another thing with that ‘narrow way’ business (Mt 7:14) is that you presume that this Scripture means that most people will be lost – they will go to Hell – and few will be saved. Other considerations from this repugnant idea aside, there’s this: If you consider that those words are true, and that they mean what you believe they mean, then why on Earth would youĀ ever, ever consider having children? Because, if this stuff is true, then there is a far greater chance of them ending up in Hell than of them going to Heaven. And don’t imagine for one second that their simply being your kids will protect them, because, as you so gleefully and openly proclaim, ‘God has no grandchildren’. Each person, according to you, must make their own decision and then live by your rules (oh, sorry, I forgot, they’re God’s rules, aren’t they, because you say so) for the rest of their lives, on pain of Hell if they dare to be guilty of ‘falling away’. You will of course ignore this, but that’s the state of it if what you believe is actually correct.
7 The reason why controlling religious leadership tells people not to consider ‘worldly wisdom’ is because they don’t want you to obtain knowledge outside of their carefully curated list of ‘approved sources’. This is about as culty as it gets. I would even go so far as to say that if a leader tells you not to read a certain book (some years ago, and maybe even today, that would have been ‘The Shack‘ by Wm. Paul Young), then you should immediately pause that conversation and go and order the disapproved-of book straight away. Truth comes in many forms, and not all of them – in fact very few of them – come from Religion’s approved sources
8 And that without it being the third person of my Trinity!
9 Rest assured, I personally shall never do that!
10 ‘A blonde in a miniskirt’ has since become a meme in my family; a meme for people obsessed with ‘sin’, especially the sexual-type ‘sin’ so beloved of Evangelicals. Thank you for the laugh and for the meme; we will treasure it always!
11 In fact, I would even suggest, in all seriousness, that you should notify your Church’s safeguarding team about your lust problem. Let’s be honest: that’s really what you were talking about here, isn’t it?