Still Assessing; Still Learning

While I would like to tell anyone asking that my deconstruction from evangelical Christianity is complete, I would also have to admit that I am still working out both who I am and where I am spiritually.
If I were to sum up my thoughts on evangelical Christianity in particular or religion in general I would have to say that religious people tend to worship religion -- not God. Throughout the Christian religions, Christians tend to worship Jesus, the Christ, rather than worshiping God, the Creator.

Even more so, they tend to worship this religion built around Jesus that has very little to do with the Creator at its center. 
It seems that other religions have similar structures where they worship practices and doctrines more than an actual deity of some type.

Admittedly, there is a part of me that misses the euphoria of a worship experience. But I don't believe that I will ever go back to that. 
I believe in, and recognize God as divine and as the Creator of all things, but I don't believe that this God wants, needs, nor expects my worship.
I can't really tell you what I think of an afterlife because I no longer consider an afterlife as something to influence my decisions of how I behave towards others, towards the planet, or even towards God. Just making good choices for today seems to be enough.

I haven't really thought of myself as a victim of church abuse or that I have experienced any kind of real trauma from churches, but that is beginning to change as I learn more about religious trauma in general and church trauma in particular. I'd say that my distrust of religions and churches (the people part of  religion) is pretty equal, but in the end I believe that it's bizarre how far people are willing to go to make other people believe the same things that they believe -- yeah, think Crusades, concentration camps, burning at the stake, and even crucifixions. 

It's pretty sad to go through life believing that people suck, but damn -- people suck!
Guard yourselves accordingly.

That can serve as my quotable(?) Wednesday Wisdom contribution for this week -- 
People suck. Guard yourselves accordingly.

John

Sunday Self-assessment

I've been doing a lot of thinking about Christianity -- Christian Nationalism, Christianity as understood by, well -- Christians, and simply being a follower of Jesus.

The way I see it:

I don't believe that Christian Nationalism is anything like Christ -- not in name, not in morality, not in any way. In fact, it is generally in direct opposition to the teachings of the Christ, Jesus.

Christianity as understood by Christians isn't really too far removed from the crusaders or colonist of the past. While today's Christian churches and people may not go to the same extremes as the church of history, there is still both social and spiritual condemnation and isolation instead of the physical torture and execution of the infidels that refuse conversion. 

Followers of Jesus should be about caring for the marginalized of our society, taking care of people in need, speaking out against injustice, and doing that love your neighbor/love God thing.

I honestly don't really fit into any of these definitions.
While I certainly agree with the teachings of Jesus that expect us to love one another, I seldom even want to be around people, much less show them any sort of attention or care.
I don't know how monks or cloistered nuns can claim to be Christians without interacting with people, but I like that they've found a way that seems to work for them. I know that I am not ready for that extreme degree of isolation, but it would be nice to find some sort of middle ground where I can be a Christ follower and not have to deal with people.

Maybe it's time to admit that I am not really a Jesus follower, after all. I certainly can't claim any Christ-like qualities or regular practices. You can ask any mainline Christian today and they will tell you that doing good deeds isn't enough to call yourself a Christian.
In fact, according to most, you don't have to do any good deeds. Just call Jesus Lord, trust him as your Savior, and you are good to go! Maybe I should go back to believing that. 

Again, it would be nice to find some middle ground.

I know there doesn't seem to be any real point to this -- not for myself, nor for anyone else. It is just stuff I've been contemplating and felt like writing down. I know there are others that may have found themselves in a similar place. Maybe you'd share some insights for those of us still trying to figure things out.

John

Things that make you go, "Hmmm..." (in the Bible)

I haven't kept up with the thinking-about-the-Bible posts, but I have been thinking about some of the weird stuff found in its pages. Before I continue with weird stuff from Genesis, what are some of the weird things that you've read or heard about from the Bible or from the Bible lessons you've been taught?
To be fair, much of the stuff I just accepted as a kid or even as a learning adult. You make this assumption that the people teaching know what they're talking about, but really they just know what somebody else that didn't know jack shit taught them. 
Conservative Christians are in this culture (emphasis on cult) that doesn't allow for questioning the content or counters questions with some "That's just what I've been taught," bullshit.

In Genesis 6 we find that the sons of God see that the daughters of men are pretty hot and decided to rape them at will. The offspring are basically giants and things on earth are going to hell in a hand-basket. This apparently catches our omnipotent and omniscient God by surprise. God regrets ever having created man and decides to wipe out humanity. Not being much of an animal rights activist, killing all the wildlife is just collateral damage, but God decides to preserve each species by saving a few to reproduce and repopulate the earth. 
God finds one family of humans that aren't totally corrupt and uses them to accomplish the goal of saving the animals and restarting the human population, as well. Man, talk about your shallow gene pool! 

The whole idea of spiritual beings taking on human form and raping women to birth some kind of super beings that corrupt the earth is bizarre enough without the part about God tossing up his hands and destroying all of (well, most of) creation. 
Seriously, wouldn't you scrap the whole thing and start over--new heaven, new earth, new beings. I'd probably skip the snake part of creation and I'd reconsider that idea of putting knowledge and eternal life in fruit trees, for sure!
And yet conservative literalists will insist that it happened just so and the universe is only a few thousand years old, science be damned!

I guess the thing I don't get is this--
If you are going to make up a creation story, wouldn't you come up with something better than a bumbling god that doesn't know what he's doing and can't keep control of his cosmic experiment?
If you ask me, this whole Judeo/Christian Old Testament is pretty much a power grab for control of humanity. It makes a base that's difficult to overcome with the idea of a New Testament savior. 

Reconciling evangelical deconstruction is difficult at best. Trying to figure out the stories of a book that are obviously not infallible nor inerrant is torture for a mere layperson like me.

What makes you pause and go "Hmmm...?"
Maybe we can figure some of it out together.

John