Keep the Message Simple

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I did not know when I started this blog how much I did not know about Christianity. It has been a learning experience. I learn new things everyday.

My perception of the subject matter has changed. Touching and working with the product has given me new insights.

It is like being a stage manager backstage and watching the play and knowing how it all is just a play and just an illusion at times. Or like being an elder at a monthly elder’s meeting and seeing how in so many ways a church is a business in terms of cash flow, memberships, goals, following the party line etc.

If I had the time or money to waste on biblical scholarship and research, my obsession, like so many I have met so far on this life journey, would probably be to cross the “t”s and dot the “i”s of acceptable scholarship and protect my reputation and pension. (Yawn!)

My greatest disappointment to date is in the realization that many great biblical scholars including Luther questioned certain parts of the NT as antilegomena. That certain books, epistles, are in contrast to good or believable scholarship and should not be a part of the official “sacred scripture”. Luther had his doubts about four works including Revelation and modern Lutheran scholars have expanded that "factory-second" label to another three epistles.

Of course there will never be a church council to re-evaluate the official NT. Constantine’s Bible stands forever.

Church hierarchy seems to exclude the common folk on every level. Too comfortable with the cash flow to do anything radical or rock the boat even if the matter at hand has to do with truth or the humanity of recognizing alternate life styles as valid in the eyes of “God”.

Christianity in a metaphoric sense these days seems destined to be an eternal Garden Party for Christ (of, by and for the hierarchy only), a daily press release, as at the recent Lambeth fiasco/corporate convention with little humanity or black and white LOVE to be expressed to or by God’s children.

Will the last person to leave the Christian church please turn off the lights!

My disappointment also lies in the fact that if I asked a question of a pastor while I was an elder, I did not get a straight answer on some theology questions. Ask the right question and get an answer. Ask the wrong questions and get a dumb stare.

Christianity since the Council of Nicaea is more about a dictatorship of the spiritual proletariat than about the basic philosophy and message of a Jewish goatherd named Jesus.

I have never liked Revelation, the last book of the bible, and have always wondered what it had to do with the basic Jesus. Coked up visions and killing your enemy’s children is a little bit I would say “unchristian”.

Love and tolerance and recognition of faults and forgiveness of self and a new start is the most basic form of the Christian message (and a super highway to heaven).

It is little wonder that Islam has its five pillars and the Buddhists have their five precepts as well.

K.I.S.S. “Keep it simple stupid.” goes the cliche.

K.T.M.S. Keep the message simple.

Somehow layer upon layer of propaganda, reworked script, and layer upon layer of horse crap has piled up in the stables aka basilicas aka churches of the Christian religion over the centuries and it cannot be easily translated into a modern age message.

The struggle between the sacred and the secular seems to favor the secular in the modern world.

Christianity seems a dying religion and maybe that is a good thing.

I believe in God and put my faith with the simple message of Jesus.

I don’t put much faith in religion anymore.
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