Slayeth

I do believe there has to be a creating power that set of everything, an energy that put things into motion. The same energy might have a sort of purposefulness that we would call intelligent design, taking into consideration the fine-tuning argument. This concept can be called god, gods or God.

Now, throughout history there has been people who have the ability understand the bigger picture of life, our purpose on earth, meaning of life and the concept of God. Jesus was one of them. He had more understanding than the others around him.

Jesus understood especially well morality, how we should go beyond obeying laws to build a functioning society but we should actually be willing to suffer and even die for each other to make this world a better place, to bring about the “kingdom of God” so to speak.

There is no Heaven or Hell after life but these can be made to reality in this life. Sure, Jesus may have believed in concrete afterlife but that does not mean he did not also mean creating such conditions to this life.

I think I can call Jesus the Son of God and Messiah. Early Christians believed Jesus became the Son of God through his death and resurrection. Later the thought was developed and his adoption to god status was timed to his baptism, then later to his birth and later still to creation of the world. I think Jesus was a human who through special understanding of the real purpose of the creation was adopted to become part of the creator. His enlightenment was the key.

What is it that he understood? He understood that in order for the world to become as intended by the designer we must welcome our own suffering. We must suffer for others to make their life better. We must all become each others servants. When Jesus died as perfect sinless person (person with perfect morals and love for the creation, person who understood the will of God) it was the ultimate way of living true the purpose of life to love the whole creation more than oneself. Perfect altruism. This makes him one with God.

And when we follow Christ we are basically partaking in his revelation and also adopting his perfect morale character and purpose to suffer for others. This can be seen in lives of countless saints who suffered for salvation of others.

What is salvation? It is saving ourselves from the misery of self-centered hopeless life. When one lives for hedonism they can never be truly happy. They feel numb and void of purpose. It is in sacrificing one’s own happiness for the sake of others that one finds true satisfaction and purpose.

So I can truly say Jesus is the Lord, Son of God, Messiah and true God, without believing in life after death.

I can even say I believe in soul because soul is just our sentience, our very being, which is actually very physical. It’s not separate from body. My body is my soul.

Resurrection and last judgement I cannot believe in as something occurring after death. But I do believe in transformation of a person, which can be thought of as sort of resurrection. It is called being born again, after all. And I do believe in one being tormented because of their selfishness through their own thoughts. Yes this is very unsatisfactory for those looking forward to Hell being a punishment for all the evil rulers of this world (looking at you Hitler), but that is the sad truth. There is not a fiery lake down there waiting to roast evil doers forever and ever. Instead we must make sure we do our part to transform this world into a place where there is no room for such evil to exist again, by suffering for others to make the world a better place.

I pray, I talk to Jesus. I know it is not really him but a mental image I have of him that I use to reflect on my issues and seek advice and help from. The idea of him in my head works as a guide through my life so I may truly transform to his likeness to also understand God as he did. Though I doubt he hears me I hope he does. But if he doesn’t it makes no difference. Even just the idea of him is powerful.

Holy Spirit means my state of being when I emulate Christ. It is the god-adoption happening in me, the enlightened state of being.

I doubt Jesus really resurrected except in the minds of his followers. And that is ok because the real key was his death -not his resurrection. But if he did resurrect all the better. I do wish he did.

Final sketch

And the battle I went through:

And it came to pass in the night before the judgment, when Pontius Pilate lay restless upon his bed, that sleep overcame him.

And in his dream there appeared an angel clothed in garments brighter than the dawn. His face was like fire, yet his voice was gentle as rain upon dry ground.

Pilate trembled and said, "Who are you, Lord?"

And the angel answered, "I am a messenger. I come not to judge, but to ask."

Pilate said, "Then ask."

The angel stretched forth his hand and said, "Tell me, Governor, what is truth?"

And Pilate laughed bitterly.

"Even in dreams I cannot escape that question. Today I questioned a man called Jesus, and still I do not know. The priests speak their truth. Rome speaks hers. The crowd shouts another. What man can separate them all?"

The angel sat beside him and said, "Then let me tell you a story."

"There was once a father who gathered his children and gave them ten rules for life. Be humble. Be kind. Seek wisdom. Forgive quickly. Speak truth. Share your bread. Keep your promises. Welcome strangers. Stand against cruelty. Remember that you will die.

"But the children forgot the rules almost as soon as they heard them."

Pilate nodded.

"Such is the way of mankind."

"So the father told them stories instead. Stories of kings who rose and fell through pride. Stories of travelers welcomed by strangers. Stories of brothers who forgave one another. Stories of fools who chased riches and lost themselves. Stories of heroes who spoke truth and paid dearly for it.

"And the children remembered."

Pilate considered this.

"The stories carried the rules."

"They did," said the angel.

Pilate frowned.

"But were the stories true?"

The angel smiled.

"What do you mean by true?"

"Did the kings exist? Did the travelers walk those roads? Did the heroes say those words?"

The angel was silent for a moment.

Then he asked, "When a mother tells her child a tale about a wolf in the forest, must there be a wolf for the child to learn caution? When a poet writes of love, must every word have happened exactly as written for hearts to be changed?"

Pilate had no answer.

The angel continued.

"Men hunger for certainty. They wish every story to be a ledger and every poem a census. Yet stories are vessels. Some carry history. Some carry wisdom. Some carry both. Their value is not measured only by whether every stone and every footstep can be accounted for."

Pilate looked into the darkness.

"And what of the sacred stories?"

The angel's face grew solemn.

"Many cling to stories because they fear that if the stories are not exactly as they imagine, then nothing remains. But wisdom is not so fragile. Compassion does not disappear. Justice does not vanish. Love does not cease because a chronicle is imperfect."

Pilate felt a weight lifting from his shoulders.

"So a story may be meaningful even if it is not literal?"

The angel replied, "Does the sun cease to warm you because a child draws it with a smiling face?"

Pilate laughed despite himself.

Then he grew quiet.

"My foundations are shaking."

The angel nodded.

"Every foundation must be tested. Some crumble. Some endure. What remains after the shaking is what truly belongs to you."

"And if all certainty leaves me?"

"Then keep searching. Better an honest question than a borrowed answer."

The night deepened around them.

At last Pilate said, "Then what is truth?"

The angel rose.

"Truth is larger than facts, yet never hostile to them. It lives in history, but also in meaning. It is found in what happened, and in what happens within you when a story changes the way you live."

The angel began to fade.

Pilate reached out.

"Wait. How shall I know what to keep?"

And the angel answered:

"Keep whatever makes you more loving, more courageous, more humble, and more honest. Let the rest be washed away."

Then Pilate awoke.

The morning had come.

The crowds were gathering.

The priests were waiting.

The prisoner stood before him.

And Pilate looked upon his hands.

For a long time he stared at them.

Then he poured water into a basin.

As the water flowed over his fingers, he remembered the angel's words.

And he said to himself,

"Perhaps the question is not whether every story is true.

Perhaps the question is what kind of person the story makes me become."

Neither will you.

See, there is no hell, nor Heaven.

That is why we have to work that the kingdom of God would actually ascend here. How is that done? By changing nations. By changing individuals. Uprooting evil.

I'm deconstructing what the church teaches about women. Most of the church (though not the entire church) teaches that husbands are supposed to RULE over their wives.

Wow has this done a LOT of damage to marriages and done a LOT of damage to women. This is wrong, and it deserves to be called out.

I went to seminary. Graduated in 2010. I have a Master of Divinity degree. I read the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew. I'm not trying to brag or boast about that, just bringing receipts. I never did get fully ordained, though I was licensed for a while.

But since then, I've been reading the Bible for myself in the original languages, and something I know for CERTAIN is that the English translations are all corrupt.

When I read the Bible, I read the original languages alongside the ESV translation, which is supposed to be a fairly accurate translation. But please know that when I do so, I get very frustrated with the English translations - all of them - in every verse.

Every single verse of the Bible is pretty much mistranslated. Part of that is because translation is very difficult. It's impossible to do it accurately.

…

But what does the Bible actually say about women? In Gen 2:18, English translations refer to a phrase "help meet", as in the King James, or "helper fit for him" in the ESV.

But the Hebrew words this phrase translates mean something different. First, the word that's translated as "helper", which we take to mean something like "assistant", and we understand to mean something like "secretary", actually means something more like "ally". Think of when one country is attacked by another, and they call upon an allied country to help them defend themselves. Does that sound like a "lesser" person?

Next, the word that's translated as "meet" or "fitting" actually means something else too. It literally means "as his equal" or "as his opposite". Kind of like a reversed mirror image.

Back in Gen 1:27, it says God made Adam (not man, ADAM) "in the image of God...male and female he created them." It is not the case that men are created in the image of God, and then females are something else. Male and female TOGETHER constitute the image of God.

And God is described, even right there in Gen 1, as a plurality. The word for God in Gen 1 is Elohim, which is a PLURAL word, which SHOULD be translated as "gods" in my opinion, and when Jesus quotes from Psalm 82, "I said you are gods", he quotes it in the Greek (he's quoting the Septuagint translation that was common at the time), and he quotes it with the PLURAL word "gods". And the Hebrew word there in Psalm 82 is ELOHIM.

There's a lot to say on THAT, but at the very least, God reveals himself to be a plurality, and that's why Adam being ALONE is "not good", as it says in Gen 2:18. So God created Eve in order to COMPLETE his creation of humanity in his image.

So as created, Adam and Eve were EQUAL. They were ALLIES. They were in this thing called life TOGETHER. Equal partners.

After the fall, in Gen 3:16, when Eve is cursed, it says "toward your man, your desire, BUT he will rule you". Yes, this DOES mean he will subjugate her, or something like that.

But here, we don't need to explain this away as if it doesn't mean he will have authority, or that somehow it doesn't mean something bad, or that it can still mean they'll be equal.

No - after the fall, it means that Adam will OPPRESS Eve. And if we just glance casually at history, we'll see that yes, it's very clear that men have OPPRESSED women throughout history.

But this is a CURSE! It's a PUNISHMENT!

And Christians seem to think this is a GOOD thing and the way things OUGHT to be!

But Paul - the one who supposedly hates women, says:

"Gal. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

And that's even the ESV translation. He's talking about how things ARE in the church, in the visible expression of the coming Kingdom of God.

Jesus said that in the resurrection, there will be no more marriage between male and female, because we'll all be like the angels (Matt 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:34-36).

So in the coming age, there will no longer be a male/female distinction.

So in Gal 3:28, is Paul saying that male-female relations should look like the CURSE??? Or is he saying that in the church, male-female relations should look more like the coming kingdom of God?

He's CLEARLY suggesting that it should reflect what's coming, what we're going TOWARD, not the curse of this fallen world.

The CURSE in Gen 3:16 isn't portraying how things SHOULD be, nor is it a command to men to subjugate women.

Many men in the church love to quote from Eph 5, which in English translations says "wives submit to your husbands". The translations don't get it right.

In fact, in Eph 5:33, there's no command to women. There's only a command to MEN. It basically says, men, if you want your wife to respect you, then love her as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? By beating her? By enforcing obedience? NO. He loved the church by sacrificing himself in her place, but GIVING HIMSELF, giving his LIFE to save her.

The church loves to insist that women OUGHT to submit to their husbands, but it HATES calling men out for their failures.

And the rest of the passage in Eph 5 is horribly misunderstood. Culturally, as a result of the curse on Eve, yes, at the time of the writing of the Bible, wives were considered under the authority of their husbands. But in the rest of the passage, it says that everyone in the church ought to be submitting to one another, JUST AS wives submit to their husbands.

Is this a COMMAND for wives to submit to their husbands? Nope. It's a COMMAND TO MEN to submit to everyone in the church, just as their wives ALREADY submit to them. And THEN it goes even DEEPER, calling men - who thought themselves in authority OVER their wives, to follow Christ's example of laying down his LIFE for his bride, the church.

And he even QUOTES from Gen 2, before the fall, to help make his point. He's reminding them of the EQUALITY that men and women had BEFORE the fall, and attempting to persuade men to RESTORE that equality.”

- exert from anonymous Facebook post. Published with permission.

A sweaty toothed mad man with a stare that pounds my brain.

His hands reach out and choke me, and all the time he's mumbling.

“Truth, truth.”

Like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.

You push it, stretch it, but it'll never be enough.

You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us.

From the moment we enter crying,

to the moment we leave dying,

it'll just cover your face,

as you wail and cry and scream.”

—Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society

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