John Shelby Spong - Not Born Again to Regress as a Child but Mature Enough to Become Fully Human

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What is Chrislam?

There is a new fear term – fear word - circulating along the born again fear blog networks and that is the word Chrislam.

What is Chrislam?

Actually there is a Christian sect in Nigeria that started the term “Chrislam” in the 1980s in an attempt to build bridges of understanding in a 50/50 Muslim/Christian nation.  In that sect, both the Bible and Koran get respected as valid religious text.

In the context of born again blogs, whenever a megachurch pastor such as Rick Warren sits down and talks to a Muslim or has an interfaith conference or prayer service, or a Sunday school teacher outlines the basic facts of Mohammed or his religion, all hell has broken lose!

(An army of negro muslims has been spotted and rumored to be on the road to Smalleville USA at this very minute? What’s Jeff Davis’ cell phone number!)  Sad.

The ranks of Christian soldiers have broken ranks.  What next? Hispanics in the local Christian town square in the white heartland demanding jobs and socialism?  Secularism! Whatever.

Most of these fear blogs mention two things – Rick Warren – and the Koran/Quran - Korans are being put in the pews of these liberal, progressive, godless churches next to the bible. Yeah right. 

If there are two things the far right GOP Church Party types do not have to fear – that is Rick Warren or the Koran.  Boring stuff.

The same way Rob Bell got labeled as satanic simply because he choose to spell Hell with a small “h” as in hell, Warren can take the heat from these borderline lunatic fringe Christians and their paranoid blogs. And the Koran is simply the Koran.


Get a life people, won't you.

Have a nice day, free of fools and fear.

When did Christianity turn into a Religion of Hate Doctor Bachmann?

There seems to be a theme of Matthew that runs through this rant.

I have to wonder what personal torture that white heartland born-agains have to endure in order to fit into the still existing heartland prairie town square where conformity is of utmost important and existence? 

You conform or you get shunned, banished and or killed for your personal instinctual sexual being.  The ghost of Matthew Shepard’s memory, of Wyoming hate crime fate, lives on, a victim of being different.

I do not want to say this with anger and or hate.  But I think that two suppressed sexual human beings in the form of Marcus and Michele Bachman are hiding behind a cross of confusion in their desire to establish a Christian theocracy in America.  It is a life but not much of one IMHO.

The above photo is of a gaydar billboard outside St. Matthews church in Auchland, New Zealand.

'Gay-dar' church billboard vandalised

An Auckland church known for its edgy billboards has come under another attack from vandals. 

St Matthew in the City put up a "gay-dar" billboard on Friday, which shows a spectrum from gay to straight, with a cross acting as a gauge.

A message underneath states: "As used by the Anglican Church to assess potential priests." 

Church spokesman Clay Nelson said the sign aimed to highlight discrimination in the Anglican Church against members of the gay and lesbian community. 

However, it had already been vandalised.

Gay-dar or gaydar is a word I had to look up very recently. It is a new acronym for gay and radar.  Meaning that certain types of body language and or presence supposedly connotes gayness.  In a way, gaydar is more often used to taunt children or young people who do not seem to conform even if they are or are not by nature homosexual.

What is the good in this vandalism in New Zealand?  At least the topic of homosexuality, a 19^th century pseudoscience terminology, is being put on the table for discussion in the Anglican Church worldwide.

Sexuality, and not just homosexuality, is a closeted subject in all of Christianity or so it would seem to me. 

I am looking at the current civil rights thing here in the United States regarding legal rights for Homosexual Humanity.  And even if I only believe in limited legal connection and not marriage as a right, I have to step back and realize that partial rights are really a statement or justification for no rights.

That the 3/5 clause in the original U.S. Constitution to appropriate representation based on a slave, first as property, and secondly only as 3/5 of a human being status, has long ago been changed in that Constitution.

But this is not about voting rights which is what the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s was all about.  That movement’s overall mission was to start establishing the reality of equality by first guaranteeing free access to the voting booth for all citizens.

This present era is bogged down in the decay of old ideas and old prejudices and things long closeted against the rights and privacy of each individual not only in this country but on this planet as well.

That the struggle for humanity throughout the ages has been to find one shiny perfect moment, a city on a hill moment, when man and woman, as part of God’s evolving creation, can stand on stable ground and separate the animal from the divine in our split natures and to maturely recognize the differences.  That, and to move on to higher ground and on to true ordained potential.

It is one thing to legislate equality.  It is quite another to legislate morality.  You cannot legislate what your definition of morality is.  Morality is oft times defined by geography more so than by any magic make believe revelation from above any normal timeline and existence.

Somewhere along the timeline, Christianity got obsessed about sex.  All sorts of twisted and bizarre justifications for spiritual enlightenment have to do with fasting from sex to get that spiritual high.  Rather than having discussion about sex, sex was not discussed.

All sexuality got hidden and closeted.  “So deep in the closet – you could see Narnia.”

Anything sexual got put under the label of sin and only the clergy could dole out definition or dispensation on a monopolized area of natural human activity.  Bizarre!

In fact, one of the things the first Council of Nicea did was ban self castration as mentioned in Matthew 19:12.  There was also no doubt a backlash against the old pagan practice of having sex with a temple prostitute to elevate your spirit and mental being up into your preferred god and or goddess presence.  But let’s not go there at the moment.

Never the less, Jesus, in the imperfect account of him in the gospels, does not seem to specifically mention homosexuality.  Paul mentions it here or there and usually in a long litany of sins.  Though they say that Paul was light in his sandals, I don’t believe it.

I think that Paul, the self appointed “Apostle”, was more likely a victim of a botched circumcision reversal operation so popular with middle class Hellenistic Jewish boys who wanted to fit in at the local gym amongst their gentile peers, so to speak.  “Look guys, I fit in, I am just like you now.” (wow)

For Paul, the lack of sex is a good thing, a spiritual thing.  But it was his thing.  Not necessarily any of our individual things.  There are many roads to spirituality, not just one.  And so it goes.

When did spiritual enlightenment, in so-called Christianity, get divorced from personal obligation to try and love yourself and your neighbor?  Love first.  Salvation second.  Not the other way around I would think.

When did the privacy of sexuality become the peeping Tom right of civil or church government to interfere in the life of an individual, or consenting adult individuals?

If you are unhappy in your own skins, in your own sexuality dear Marcus and Michele, please do not try to impose your unhappiness on others.  

In other words - get a life! 

Have a nice day.

Pathways and Roadblocks to Salvation

An unfinished thought occurred to me the other day in a previous article and I did not go with the flow. A lot of talk, thought being stirring up in the religious press because of Brian McLaren who knows that Christianity is doomed if it chooses literalism over flexibility in a world exploding with technology and knowledge. Many interesting stats, that by 2050 America could be a nation with a majority of non-believers. Rather a soul-less world so to speak of or envision. Kind of like France.

Viewpoint: Not every brand of Christianity can be the right one

In an interview with Christianity Today, Brian McLaren said "I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer. I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy." ("The Emergent Mystique," Christianity Today November 2004).

In Mclaren's case I guess I don't know where he thinks the saved go after they die. He can't seem to define what it is to be saved, he has no "right" gospel message to give. Someone is wrong.

Why Christianity Must Adapt -- Or Perish

…A literal interpretation of the Bible offers regressionism and leaves little room for progress. This is exactly where McLaren finds the inherent problem with modern Christianity, and the exact thing that must change: the Bible is a ballast.

What of a new Bible, one that makes more sense examining the past and is pro-human when applied to the future, releasing past dogma for improvements and corrections? As you may have guessed, it is not necessary to replace the physical work and words of the Bible; it is sufficient to have it become a new book via a fresh reading.

The thought I had started the other day had to do with looking at bible passages and rather than accept them literally, to look at them in terms of human energy and or the energy of the Universe, a force of God. Of course that energy could also be represented not only by human words but also by simple symbols or common elements.

Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God [John 3:5].

I think the above is one of the most perplexing quotes in the new testament. It also is a keystone of modern evangelicalism and their “born again” agenda as a marketing selling point.

Maybe, just maybe, the birth of water and the spirit is a birth of soul out of water and fire.

Very basic symbols but think about it. If you are mediocre and conform or never think much about passages in the bible or how they might be reapplied in a modern age or modern situations, maybe your way to heaven is a very dimly lit corridor on the other side of life.

But if there is a maximum of energy spent in the conflict between thought and non-thought, belief and non-belief, water which is life on earth and fire which is the fire of the spirit of God, the final victory over life is in having more fire in life to withstand the water of living of your everyday life.

The spirit, the soul, the divine spark within must dominate over the water of the perhaps drudgery of life which if in proper balance could be the kingdom of God on earth – to reflect the fire which should be within and recognized, cultivated and multiplied.

Life is a balance of yin and yang, water and fire, thought and soul, actions improper and proper. Life after death is a reflection of a life lived by your input and manner.

Salvation can mean much more and mean many more things than any sentence of words in black ink on paper from John.

To be a prisoner of words sometimes means being a prisoner locked away from truth, light, freedom and rebirth here and forever.