While stuck on a long plane flight I was thinking about a conversation I had with a Christian coworker a long time ago.  We were discussing Budhism / eastern religion in general and her position was simple.  One could not be redeemed by yourself, only through God.  Of course this is logical, but has missed one very important part: the “self” in the word yourself is misinterpreted.  That self is the false self, the ego that must be eliminated.  Without that, that which is within us is actually what you could call God.

From a perspective of western Christianity, the idea of a lack of belief in god can be quite confusing.  This seems to indicate a core of selfishness, a lack of moral compass that threatens and guides away from love and leaves one free to sin.

How can you learn how to behave, how to travel in this world without the guidance of an external god, without the teachings of a church?

Conversely, from the Buddhist perspective, how could one learn right behavior from a man created text and organization?

Neither position is complete, and neither understands the other. If they did, perhaps a greater understanding of the truth would arise.  Within eastern teachings, Buddhism, Taoism, whatever, the implication of selflessness is already presupposed.  It is not that we can operate without god, but that god is an inherent part of us all.  With that framework in place, the internal search for a relationship with the divine is not separated from the divinity in us all.  This immediately provides the framework for compassion and love of our fellow life, often expanded beyond our fellow human beings and into all life that surrounds us in this world.

For Christianity, the same concept is given through the compassion and selflessness of Christ.  In that case it is up to us to practice, but this practice is too often focused on an exclusive community within the church of our choosing.  The good churches spend a great deal of time focusing this love and compassion outside their own community and into the surrounding world.  This is in alignment with the divine.

Perhaps I’m too hard on Christianity.  I’ve spent a lifetime in that context, and not in a normal culture of Buddhism or other eastern religion.  This is a side effect of where I have lived, where I have grown up.  Perhaps it is likely that many Buddhist practitioners have equally exclusive and skewed applications of the teachings of the Buddha.  I do not know for sure, but I do know that the teachings are not only compatible, but from the same divine source.  Both have the potential for too much attachment to human influenced and ego based positions.

It is always when we take these solidified positions based on our human ego that the corruption begins.  It is always our isolation in our own senses during this life that we are fooled into our beliefs.  Once they solidify, they metastasize into a dangerous motivator for evil.

The only source of truth can be found beyond our ego, located in the space where our mind is silenced.  This is where our lives touch the divine, the true source of prayer and meditation, the point of mindfulness and meditation.  This is in us, all of us, accessible at all times and in any moment.  We don’t have to wait for this to happen, it is never in the future or missed in the past.  It can only happen now.

And yet we all fail at this, almost all of the time.  Why is this?  Is it the efficacy of the teachings we have learned? Some are certainly more effective than others.  The interpretations of man have shifted away from the divine purpose in many forms.  This is probably the most disappointing aspect of western Christianity, where the concept of prayer has devolved into little more than asking for whatever, as if a being in the sky is listening and will grant our wishes.  Instead I believe the intent was to release our false selves and come into contact with the divine directly, already within ourselves.  The outcome was never to grant a wish, but to provide peace through the loving acceptance of what is, where we are in the world right now.  There will always be pain or difficult situations and it was never meant to be easy.  This is all part of the path, the purpose of our short life on this world.

We are here to learn lessons, nothing more. Are we destined to repeat those that we do not learn?  I think so, and often you can see this in a single lifetime.  Those that miss the lesson of acceptance are often those that suffer in an endless loop of victimhood, plagued by constant bad luck.  Yet there are those that have nothing in life and remain peaceful and even happy.  The paradox of those lives is fascinating.  The suffering of those that do not learn these lessons is self-inflicted by fighting the simple truth of the situation as it is.  Some of these are easy, like living with meager means and yearning for wealth.  Some of them are indeed incredibly difficult, such as losing those you love in tragedy.

I feel like I write the same things in different ways.  I also feel I read and listen to the same things in different ways.  How many of these perspectives will it take to finally understand the needs, the goals of this life?  I for one haven’t gotten it yet in practice. I suffer from anger, from sadness and conflict when the expectations of my ego do not match the reality of my situation.  This is an endless struggle, and is also self-inflicted.  I can break this, I even know conceptually how to do so, but the application and execution is far more difficult to achieve.

Perhaps this repetition will eventually work.  Perhaps me making this available for others will help them even as I fail.  This is all I can hope for.  I know my attachments, I sometimes forget and will repeat their identification, but nonetheless I know.

The goal I have for myself is to keep trying, to keep coming back to these truths and to never stop repeating.  The adage that you only lose when you stop trying is indeed true.  The humanity in us all is set to fail repeatedly, original sin if you will.  For that to be surpassed, we must all keep trying.  We must all afford ourselves the compassion and forgiveness when we do fail.  And we must all remember that all others are working on this battle at the same time.

We are all from the same source, the same pieces of divinity, the same potential for wonder and such positivity, the same capacity for evil when we become lost in ego and separation.  We must all remember that, and strive to eliminate all man made labels and distinctions between us that dismiss and reduce that divinity to nothing.  That is the core lesson to be learned for us all.

It’s always them, the notorious “they” that are the source of all ails.  They impose unreasonable rules, restrict our freedoms or oppress our viewpoints.  They censor everything we believe in, they want to push their beliefs on us, they want to force us to be just like them.   They call us terrible names, disrespect us and think they’re so much better than us.

This argument has been a favorite for a very long time, and comes from any direction.  Perhaps it’s picked up steam in the recent societal climate, but probably not.  We just hear a whole lot more about “them” these days due to the ubiquitous social media feeds and the prevalence of doom scrolling through the news feed while stuck social distancing.

Who are they?

That’s indeed the question isn’t it?  Are they a group of people that all wear the same uniform and travel in packs?  Do they all subscribe to the same book club and finish each other’s sentences?  Just stop a second and think about it… is there really a group of “they” that can be simplified into one monolithic singularity?  Are there not individuals in any group that differ in one way or another, that may have independent thoughts?

They don’t exist

The answers above are obvious, of course there is no such thing as a unified “they”.  We all have our individual point of view, our individual twists on opinions, beliefs and positions.  Only when you get lost in your own head, lose contact and meaningful interactions with others can you devolve.  That’s when you can become convinced that everyone must have the same position as you, because it’s the only possible position!  Perhaps the increased isolation of 2020 has exacerbated this position, but I believe humans have been falling into this trap for millennia.

Who is pushing this “they” thing?

The source of this “they” thing is a basic argument error, the classic strawman where a false opponent is created only to be struck down.  It is advantageous to use whenever a person or organization of people want to establish and win an argument.  This tactic is prevalent in millions of pointless internet arguments, but more nefariously as a tool in media and political manipulation.  I’ve hit this theme before, but it stands as true as always: firing up people against some enemy through anger or fear is an incredible motivator.  These motivations are very easily manipulated into pushing agendas, or just boosting engagement and ratings for advertising dollars.  The expectation is that we’ll be so worked up that we forget to take a second and question just who this “they” is.  With the careful application of an extreme example and a slick extrapolation from that example to a whole group to oppose, one can very quickly manipulate a position and keep a viewer.  Once we avoid talking to one of those people that we’ve labeled as “they”, we no longer have to challenge the position we’ve been given.  More accurately, we probably already interact with all kinds of “they” every day but without engaged conversation on the topic we’ll never know it.

In the end this is a simple tool for manipulation.  As humans we’ll fall for it almost every time, even when we are aware of this as a potential problem.  This is painfully obvious everywhere today.  Trump supporters become “they”, the racist idiot lot of deplorables.  The BLM supporters become “they”, the collection of anarchist thugs intent to destroy suburban folks just trying to live their lives.  All of this is taking advantage of a base desire for belonging in our social creature DNA and weaponizing it by supposing everything is an “us” vs. “them” dilemma that threatens our very lives.

Are we really threatened?

In reality, no.  The media and our politicians have to work on raising the threat level to keep you engaged, to make you vote, to give them time or money.  There is a point when activism becomes important to counter a threat, usually when violence is starting or ongoing and people are suffering.  But that’s normally not the case, for example an inconvenience of covering your face during a pandemic is not suffering.  Innocent people dying in a military coup… that’s suffering.

You’ll be in a much better position mentally and be able to spot these manipulators much more easily if you simply place some context around the subject.  Does this whatever it may be take precedence of over what is happening in my immediate life now?  The answer will almost always be nope.  I still need to be present with what’s happening here, I still need to be genuine and show the love and compassion for those around me right now.  Those two behaviors outweigh all theoretical threats and speculations over what “they” may be doing.  Those two behaviors are also the very core of religions of all kinds, the very essence of a relationship with and through God of whatever name you choose.

What should we do then?

Very simply put:

• Change the channel
• Close the browser
• Turn off the screen
• Return to the beauty of the life around you

Doing so removes the power from those that are attempting to manipulate you.  The more of us that do this, the weaker the systems of human power and corruption become and the more love and compassion we create for not only ourselves but the world at large.

The worship of something other than God, as if it was God is a core sin in all the Abrahamic religions.  The conjured image of some golden idol in the form of a statue where folks would gather around and “worship” is what immediately comes to mind when thinking about idolatry in general, making it easy for the average person to confidently state “well I certainly don’t do that!”

The reality is a bit trickier

Of course to understand what is “God” to worship vs. “Not God” is the real root of the issue.  That bit is much harder to define than you imagine for one major reason:

The definition of God is not possible

Every religion either hints or straight up tells you this is the case.  The infinite defies definition, primarily because attempting to apply a definition, a black and white border around “God”, runs straight into the limits of our language and at a larger level the limits of our brains.  We like to have little definitions of things and are programmed by our survival and evolution to put everything in little buckets.  Early in human history this was to ensure survival, all input was labeled as leading to either death or procreation and therefore the survival of the species.  This tendency is no longer needed as much, as we’ve dominated all other species and generally made it simple to protect ourselves from our environment.

Mystic branches of religion generally accept that this pursuit is impossible, and even more mainstream versions of religion will start to get hazy as you attempt to define God.  The old human looking man in the sky with white hair that knows everything fails to carry authority past childhood bible school.  Attempting to add maturity to the definition generally leads to argument over the details, accomplishing little but fracturing us into little denominations.  Each having their own definitions and followers.

So if we cannot define God, what is it that we are worshipping?

Here’s the crux of the situation.  If God cannot be defined, doesn’t that make the religious texts, dogma’s and general targets of study and worship creations of man?  Of course it does, but then does that make it wrong to worship in this way?  That’s not easy to determine either, it would depend on how you use these creations of man. 

Pointing to the truth

Several of my favorite spiritual teachers define the works of man in spiritual pursuits as signposts to the truth, and advise not to place too much weight on the signs themselves (the words) and instead look for the absolute truth that they are referring to.  The reason for this is simple:  Men have always been searching for this bit of divinity since the dawn of time, but every attempt to write this down is inevitably a product of the cultural situation the person(s) doing the writing are bound within.  This is the case for all documents in all religions.

This makes them a perfectly suitable subject of study, provided that context is considered.  This also frees us to learn even more truth by considering other contexts, once we accept the idea that it is not the content we are truly learning, but the truth the content implies.  Using our rich human religious history in this way is not direct worship, but points us to a true worship oriented at that which we cannot define, that which can be called “God” if you like.

The corruption of Human Ego

The Ego is a very sneaky thing, and wholly embraces thoughts like these to take you away from your connection to others and the world around you:

• You know what others don’t know
• What you know is correct while the others are wrong
• Not only are you special and unique, others are not as special or as unique as you are

These ideas start at a small level, born from the inherent disconnection of our experience in this world via our own senses and memories.  The beginnings of the corruption occur once the value of your own Ego grows beyond the value of others, leading you to believe that ‘they’ are not as worthy as ‘you’.  This core thought creeps elsewhere, and can grow if unchecked.  The core of traditional ‘sin’ can be found here, once you’ve devalued another over yourself or a group to which you belong the mechanism for sin truly begins.

It is this same mechanism that leads religious groups to become exclusionary, to believe that they alone know the truth and have an exclusive path to future glory, peace, happiness etc.  The blueprint is always the same:

• This is the exclusive truth, given to us directly by God
• The rewards for compliance to this truth are in the future
• There is great punishment for not following our truth
• All other viewpoints are therefore false and lead toward that great punishment
• Therefore, all other viewpoints must be eliminated

Those all align pretty closely to the human ego tendencies don’t they?  Ego of course exists not only at an individual level, but perhaps more importantly as a collective of people sharing a common identity.  Religion is one of those identities, as is nationality, race, gender, political position, etc.  In all cases, the same pattern of Ego exists, we are right and ‘they’ are wrong.  The fervor over how right and wrong is at the core of countless historical atrocities, many of which are carried out in the name of “god”.  This becomes the point where “god” is not God, but a creation of the ego of man.

All religions carry seeds of this corruption from the human ego.  The trick is identifying it and letting that part go.

Placing the name “Jesus” on your idol doesn’t count

History is full of Christians falling for this same trap, and justifying their positions and actions by simply placing the name Jesus on their ego created idols.  From the murderous rampages of the crusades, to more modern examples such as The Troubles in Ireland, the roots of white supremacy in colonial American Christianity, the modern day prosperity preachers… all of them align with human ego instead of any level of divinity.

This idea may seem very challenging to you, especially if you’ve come here with a deep faith and background.  This will be difficult as it challenges what you’ve built that faith on as a creation of your own ego and the collective ego of your congregation.  Stay with me though, an examination of what exactly you’re putting in that Faith may be a point of growth rather than something to fear.  Let’s take just one on going example to look into, prosperity preachers.

Money and Power = Jesus?

The basic principle of prosperity preaching is that God gives to those who deserve it, therefore if you are deserving you will be blessed.  These blessings have somehow been twisted into meaning worldly possessions and positions of influence among men.  These preachers are often millionaires, and justify their extreme wealth with their own preaching “see how worthy I am, God has given me all this!”.   It shouldn’t be difficult to immediately identify the problems with this, but yet they not only persist but they also take very large sums of money from the vulnerable.  By pitching that monetary contributions somehow will bless the giver, those that are truly in need are convinced to give the little they have to organizations that simply support billionaire lifestyles of corrupt men.

One thing has always been very clear from the example of Christ… our concern should be with those that need, all of God’s creations are equally deserving of grace, and the world of man symbolized by money and power has absolutely no place in Heaven.  It starts here: If you only give what little you have to these figure heads, your favor will increase and you’ll get money!  Giving willfully to those in greater need than yourself is indeed noble and encouraged by not only the example in the life of Christ but also a piece of all religions.  The corruption lies at the very top, where very little of this money given goes to those that are in need, but instead it flows to the organization and its leaders who definitely are not in need.

This is an example of a deep corruption by human ego, and is a cancer on the spiritual growth of all involved.  It has spread from televangelism for money into the desire for political power and influence. Even today it continues it’s egoic pursuit to prove itself right and justify all means to do so.  The more entrenched in the political power structures of man, the further from the infinite truth and the more dangerous it becomes.

Flexibility vs. Faith

Presuming you’re on board with the realization that God cannot be fully defined and have the humility to accept that, the flexibility to engage in communities of other religions will come naturally.  Without the wall built around your religion barring you from considering other viewpoints, a pathway to dialog that breeds understanding and common compassion opens up.

The trick is that many religions actively encourage those walls by labeling them as faith.  Any deviance is labeled as doubt and discouraged, killing any ability to have reasonable inter-faith discourse and dialog.  As we’ve seen historically time and time again, the continuation of this exclusionary path leads to conflict and destruction instead of the love and compassion at the core of God.

Humility is Key

In order to break that cycle, one must simply be humble.  That is a requirement regardless of your position in a religious structure.  In fact, the more you take a leadership role, the more important humility becomes.  It is your ego that proclaims you know better, never God.  With this humility comes compassion for those in need that may look to you for guidance.  That of course never means you must discard your chosen religion’s positions, just that you maintain the ability to set them aside to truly listen.  When you are still and listen rather than constantly attempting to frame the situation into the definitions provided by your religion, you become free to experience what is needed now.  With the ego removed from the discussion, and a genuine attempt at presence in the moment, the truth of what is needed can arise.

This is where the intersection of your religion and true love and compassion can be found.  Without engaging the mind and your ego to label whatever situation presents itself as good, bad, compliant, deviant, etc., you can see the situation as it is.   A funny thing happens at that moment, whatever is needed comes naturally and without ego.  The need for a simple hug, an action of support in any form is driven from a place of selfless love and compassion instead of the ego and definitions of man.  If you look back, you will always find that your religion of choice had signposts to that love and compassion all along.

With that humility, applied through presence in the now and a release of inflexible dogma created by man, the portions of religion that are born from man and not God become obvious and fall away.  This is the release to true worship of God and the elimination of idolatry.

I come from a place of immense privilege.   As the country hurts and struggles to express the frustration seething through so many of our brothers and sisters, I’ve struggled with how to address, how to cope, how to understand.  In many ways I simply cannot.  I read the tales from black Americans, the details of how differently they have to approach tasks that I simply take for granted and my heart breaks.  How can I, who has never once been pulled over for simply existing and possibly “fitting a description”, who’s never once had to strategize how I react to a police officer to avoid escalating a conflict, who’s never once had to have a conversation with my child on how to do the same… how can I truly understand?  How can I, as an awkward middle class white dude help the people that simply want to be treated as I am already?

This I know… there are absolutely 0 significant genetic differences between myself and anyone with a different skin color.  There is absolutely 0 difference in our capacity for good or evil, our ability to love and be hurt, our capacity for talent and genius.  There is no difference in the chances of us making a mistake, committing a crime.  But even in 2020 in America, the statistics for arrest, incarceration, sentencing, and mortality in an encounter with law enforcement draws a stark difference that should not exist.  This is still only a small part of the problem, the statistics are just as grim for employment opportunities, economic upward mobility and credit, educational opportunity… all of it.  There are simply no valid reasons for any of it, which should concern each and every one of us whether we are affected or not.

This whole situation isn’t even remotely new.  The history of America is much longer under far more blatant and disgusting organized oppression than it is under whatever level of institutionalized racism we are living under today.  The Civil Rights movement of the 60’s was less than 1 lifetime ago.  Many today were alive when it was just plain acceptable to lynch a black man in the streets for making a white woman uncomfortable.  Of course, it only gets worse before that.  As Americans, all of us need to face that shameful history and learn from it.  It is our burden to bear, and we must not go back into a collective state of denial with comforting self-assurances that we ourselves are not personally “racist”.  The fact remains that we live in a racist societal structure, if this was not true the statistics wouldn’t be so skewed to highlight the problem.

I don’t know what I can do right now honestly.  All I can think of are little things, I can just hope they add up.  I can be brave and call out anyone, anywhere who exhibits a racist reaction.   That could be as simple as fearful reaction, a lady clutching her purse as a young black man walks by, or the obvious under the breath racist comment.  That could mean standing up to family or acquaintances to make sure they know that I believe their position is wrong and challenge it not through more hatred but by rational discussion if possible.  I can’t predict these things, and only hope that I have the clarity to see it happening and the courage to act when the time comes.   I do know I can act with my vote, and support those that mean to enact reform in the justice and law enforcement systems and I plan to do so to the best of my ability.  It’s hard to determine these days with the complete erosion of what used to be easily discernable  facts, but I will try.  I will try through rational discussions, through seeking the truth and never immediately believing what is presented to me, especially if I already agree with it.  That’s very, very hard, our human brains have evolved social conformance for survival over the millennia and are not designed to do this very well, but I will try.

These issues should be a moral imperative, this is not about party or long term economic theory used simply as a talking point to sway the masses and maintain control.  Party doesn’t matter, in fact none of these arbitrary dividing lines matter: race, gender, political affiliation, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, toilet paper over the top or under the bottom… none of it separates us from our fellow humans.  It is up to each and every one of us to stop dividing on these surface characteristics and look to all of us as equally valid and love ALL as ourselves.   We are ALL fellow travelers on this crazy rock hurling through space.  All of our ideas and feelings are equally likely to have merit and are only separated by the perspective granted through our little window frames to the world around us.

It’s time we all lived like that individually, and strive to emulate that as a society.

As the United States of America barrels closer to yet another contentious presidential election it’s becoming increasingly apparent to myself and many others that we have a serious breakdown in how we citizens interact with each other, and how the government works to support us.  Leading to the conclusion…

This country is broken

We’re at the point where:

• 33% of the people perceive the dominant 33% of the media as straight liars
• Another 33% of the people perceive the dominant 33% of the media as straight liars
  • Except they both only perceive the opposite of their opinion as the dominant liars
• The last 33% just shake their heads and wonder what’s wrong with everybody

As with anything, the truth is in the middle

The truth itself has become difficult or impossible to determine.  It seems the complete overload of information access in the internet age has had the effect of bad sources of information being just as accessible, and difficult to discern from the accurate sources.  There’s likely a few contributing factors to this… mostly driven by human psychology. 

As humans we like to see information that agrees with what we already think and believe.  That’s just far more comforting than having to challenge a position we hold.  The more entrenched that position becomes, the more uncomfortable it will be to face information that opposes it.  The brain’s simple solution is to simply reject that information, problem solved.  All kinds of justifications will be applied to support this filtering.

As social creatures, we tend to coalesce into groups of like-minded or otherwise similar groups.  This tendency feeds the so called information bubbles that are happening on social media.  We simply get along with people better when we can observe or even just suspect they’re similar to us.  This also feeds racism in our society by promoting self-segregation, and keeping us from truly experiencing different cultures.  Combine this with the vast and varied (often conflicting) info on the internet, and the semi-anonymity that enables us to say the worst things to each other online that most of us would never consider saying to another’s face, and you have huge groups of people living in their own little worlds.  In your own little bubble of information you won’t be challenged with another viewpoint, relieving the potential stress of that scenario.  Add that the internet enables you to very easily de-humanize those with opposing viewpoints, the justifications to avoid critical thought are easier than ever.

The Media plays this game too

There is about 33% of the media capitalizing on this separation, by fueling the outrage emotions.  That works super well for clicks, views, ratings and therefore advertising revenue.  In that way they are really incentivized to continue this behavior.  Add to that the ability to sway groups of people as a voting block and pursue political power, and you have some serious incentive to keep spewing misinformation.

But, seemingly unbeknownst to either of those polarized 33% groups of people, there is a collection of real media that reports facts, checks statements etc.  Unfortunately due to the above human tendencies, few seem to seek out this actual information or take a moment to really consider it and allow their beliefs to be challenged.

So what do we do about this?

Sometimes it seems nothing but a full scale revolution and destruction of the current status quo will change this… but then I pull back from the edge and focus on the reality of now, and what it is that I can do.  Then things become more simple.  If we were ALL to do the same, real change will happen.

Stop with the internet, and dialog in real life

Remove the ease of argument, and make the effort to really listen to other’s viewpoints.  This will only work of both parties are willing to challenge their beliefs of course, which will be rare.  The only thing you can control is your own position.  Doing so in real life allows the rest of the communication process to take place (only 7% or less can be conveyed in text).  This will make it harder to dismiss someone as stupid, ill-informed or willfully ignorant, and foster true communication.

Start with compassion

The person that may disagree with you is no less human and no less deserving of consideration than you are.  If you have additional experience or background, explain rationally but rely on that compassion to stop you from dismissing them.

Start the hard conversations

This is perhaps the most difficult part for me.  I tend to project where it will go, always to an argument and bad feelings.  I do that with those closest to me, let alone any more distant friends or strangers.  The truth is, if you approach these topics with respect and compassion the conversation can be healthy.  This is how we move the needle on a small personal level.

What about the political system?

This is the rub… America’s two party system is not only no longer representing the people, it has become a self-feeding shit show of extremism.  There are some politicians out there that are genuine, are in the game to do what they believe is right, and will listen to constituents.  At least I have to believe there are, and suspect they primarily exist at the local level.

We’re treading way into opinion here… but I feel the parties themselves destroy that nature as a politician ascends into the national arena.  It’s become a defend the party first, think of the good of the country second system.  There are lots of ideas about this that I can’t possibly summarize and put here as viable solutions… so here’s a few high level thoughts instead

• The election count system actively eliminates the chances of a new political party
• The parties themselves actively eliminate deviations and discourage compromise
• The funding systems eliminate the voice of regular citizens
• Citizens United greatly increased that elimination of the voice for regular citizens

These will take a miracle to correct I’m afraid, mostly because those that need to change this setup are those that benefit from it… the politicians themselves and the very large amount of money in organizations around them.

Meanwhile…

• Become informed, break that bubble and compromise!
• Vote for those that support what you care about, drop allegiance to political party
• Support those that compromise
• Call out corruption and actively campaign against it

Reading you social network feed or any number of conservative commentators would quickly lead you to believe that Christianity is under constant attack.  Your rights are under attack from any number of boogeymen, gays, liberals, the media, whatever government they don’t currently control or agree with. 

It’s a simple strategy for the media, inciting fear is a sure fire way to promote clicks and views, ratings that increase their reach and monetize their platforms.  It’s the exact same strategy for politics, incite fear, create an external threat to fight against, and you’ll divide out a very loyal group that becomes impervious to reason and evidence that may expose something you’re really doing.  There’s a very strong incentive to push this narrative, but it’s missing the point and the real threat entirely. 

Christ cannot be threatened by the world 

Nothing of this temporary world can really threaten Christ.  In this case, I should probably clarify what “Christ” is being referred to.  Not historical, as in the person that was once Christ so long ago, but Living Christ as the theological but ultimately indescribable thing.  Christ is the call to live in close contact with the divine, by leaving the false distractions of this world and our own false identifies we create as we live.  Christ is a frame of mind (or rather, no mind), and can never be threatened by anything.  Even direct threat of violence against those that would practice their faith cannot touch our ability to continue to live as Jesus did.  And to be fair, there are plenty of pockets in the world where Christians are identified and targeted as a minority for actual persecution.  However, the US is not one of those places.  Here, the real threat has evolved to come from inside the house. 

The call is coming from inside the house! 

Classic horror movie setup, but in this case it seems most people haven’t had that realization yet. 

In Corinthians, the Apostle Paul speaks directly to the leadership of a new Christian church, an organization of man in this case that is trying to do the work of Christ. In there he states to cast out the immoral among you.  This seems to often be interpreted as applicable to justify shunning anyone you feel is a sinner in your interpretation of right / wrong.  That of course, is fundamentally contrary to the core of forgiveness and love. 

So what did Paul really mean? 

He was speaking in context to church leadership, and in that capacity as someone claiming to represent Christianity as a leader, he speaks to the damage an immoral human can cause to the perception and therefore the legitimacy of following the church, and by extension the living example of Christ.  This damage is deep and readily apparent in modern context.  Sexual abuse from a pastor shakes and can destroy not only the faith of the abused, but countless others that may hear about it.  Selfish and immoral behaviors, the constant chase of money and power while claiming to represent Christ does similar, if less dramatic damage. 

It’s up to you to repair this damage

This must be done as Paul stated, disassociate what you believe as a Christian from those false leaders that would carry that label without seeking to live as Christ.  This cannot be done with anger, but by example through each individual. 

Do what you are called to do always 

• Live with simple humility 
• Live with awareness that ALL are children of Christ, regardless of their situation or background 
• With that awareness comes compassion, kindness and love 

For how could you harm another when you see them as your own brother, child, mother or father? 

When dealing with leadership and collective organizations of humans including the church in whatever form, it is important to watch for these disconnects that corrupt Christ from the inside.  When they happen, call them out.   Get involved, change the direction back to the living Christ.   And ultimately, if the organization cannot re-direct, you must make the decision to leave it for another or start your own.  Ultimately if enough Christians do exactly this, the organizations that cling to a false label of “christ” will die of attrition.  And in doing so, the real growth of the living Christ will happen. 

The fastest growing religious group in America is now those that no longer identify with a particular religion.

Why would that be?  Is it because we’re growing more secular, more sinful, further from God?  I’m sure some evangelical types may take that position, but what if it’s really due to the condition of the modern church?

These same people leaving the church continue to identify themselves as spiritual, meaning in some way they continue to seek the infinite, whether they call that “God” or not.  This isn’t surprising in the least, as humans we’ve always had some sort of call to the infinite.  At the very least, we’re called to determine some sort of meaning during our short stay in this world.  Something that not only comforts our fear of death, but also provides some purpose during life.

Back in early society, it was this calling that founded our religions.  Fueled by a few significant characters, the revelations that they conveyed to the world were so powerful that they gathered followers.  Those followers then grew, and began writing down what was taught.  This continued, passed from generations, modified by future people, and turned into large organizations.  The commonality between them all is simple:

A human had a glimpse of a relationship with the infinite
That human taught others
Those humans organized the teachings into a structure

Then the rails fall off…

The structure becomes the important part instead of the relationship to the infinite.  That’s when humans, being human, decide that those that don’t agree with their version of the structure must be wrong.  This, depending on the “humanness” of those in charge, leads to a variety of ills within the structure.  This can be evident in an exclusion of those that don’t buy into the documented structure, either indirectly by trying to convert them somehow, or directly by ostracizing them.  The exclusions only get more severe from there, right up to systemically murdering entire swaths of those that believe differently than those in power.

The one single element that is common in this corruption is this: humans.

The Bible is pretty clear on the kingdom of man and its potential problems, instructing us to focus on the kingdom of heaven instead.  Why do we then follow and belong to organizations that are built by man?  Why would we believe that our chosen organization is either free from or minimally corrupted by man, while other organizations are not?

Don’t get me wrong, many of these organizations do significant good in our society.  They run charities, they help those in need, they love each other, and often love those outside their ranks equally.  But not all do…  and those that don’t do irreparable damage to the perception of their own religion and organization.  It’s a nasty fact of human perception that the negative outweighs the positive in our memory and perceptions.  Need evidence?  Look no further than the daily news cycle and ratings.  Drama, fear, hatred all have higher Neilson scores than love and compassion.  The negative wins our attention every time, with all of us unintentionally feeding it by tuning in and paying attention while we condemn it.  Condemning it verbally and among friends and family does nothing to stop this, you still tuned in, you still watched, which means you still supported it.

We see Christians and other religious representatives in media passing judgement, aligning with fear rather than love and compassion.  We see them in our neighborhoods, passing more judgement on their neighbors.  Just one of those experiences quickly cancels the hundreds of kind encounters that may or may not have involved a member of the church. 

Perhaps those leaving the church are doing so based only on this… if that’s the church, I want no part of it.

The staple phrase of Christianity, but what does it really mean?  The way it’s described and taught in modern churches has always seemed either way too shallow, or too mired in dogma to be useful.

Believe in the lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved

That phrase has been used for the simple explanation.  Simply declare your belief, causing you to instantly become born again and secure a place in heaven.  The idea that a magic phrase can somehow transform you always bothered me.  There are of course millions of examples of folks that will gladly tell you this phrase as evidence of their salvation, while struggling every day with behaviors and habits that are obviously not based on the words or even the spirit of the bible.  These struggles range from the relatively harmless like a lie of convenience, to large scale damage and destruction of sexual abuse within church leadership.  Pointing this out immediately elicits the standard response of “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”.  Granted, the vast majority of those that would proudly declare these statements are well meaning individuals just trying to do their best.  So why doesn’t this belief and the concept of being born again more effectively help people achieve the simple core goal of Christianity:

Live with selfless love, compassion, and kindness to all of creation

Side note: this is also the core goal of most if not all religion… but we’re focusing on Christian vernacular at the moment.

The dogmatic approach is harder to discuss because of its diversity across denominations, but mostly because I tend to reject it from memory based on needlessness.  What use is detailed explanation or documented rules about the infinite?  This is summarized by Christ nicely in the new testament: “Consider how the flowers grow. They never work or spin yarn for clothes.”  A paraphrase that appears in several books of the gospel.  Taken with a larger meaning outside the clothing example, this is applicable to these dogmatic intellectual exercises of man.  God doesn’t require this work, only selfless presence just like the flowers in the field.  With that, the right action is determined naturally and sin is dissolved.   It is man that determines and documents these details and rules, not God.  Once they stop serving the core purpose of love, compassion, and kindness, these things should be discarded.

Being Born Again is not a single event, but a constant struggle

Being born again implies a death of something that then needs re-born.  If you allow your views and definitions to expand beyond church sanctioned language and old Christian dogma, a curious alignment occurs.  The thing that must die to allow us to be born again is none other than our own false self, our egoic mind, the self that is created out of our illusion of separateness.  With that stripped away, our relation to the divine, our true self, becomes the remaining presence.  In that moment, we are born again as our true selves, with a direct relationship to the infinite whom in this context we’ll refer to as God or Christ.  In this state, the motivations to sinfulness disappear.  How can we be sinful against our fellow man when the line of distinction between “me” and “them” is gone?  To think of hurting another, let alone executing those thoughts becomes impossible.  That is what I believe Christ was teaching, not a simple declaration of belief that can be proudly posted on your wall ironically boosting that same ego that you’re trying to release.

Being born again is a state of selflessness, a death of ego that must be returned to and maintained.

The funny thing is, our ego doesn’t simply stay gone.  Just try to meditate for a few minutes, to release the thoughts that constantly make up our false selves, the focus on the past, the worry about the future, all the bits and pieces we’ve gathered that define our “selves” as separate from each other, the world, and the infinite.  Even those that practice all the time don’t manage but a few minutes of actual presence without the self butting in with some inane thought.

In the mindfulness / meditation circles, it is assumed that all will fail at maintaining being born again.  Why isn’t this same approach used in Christian thought?  Instead the individual ends up in a loop, seeking forgiveness instead of focusing on growing and maintaining a life as truly born again.  Inevitably, the ego returns to its power and convinces us that I know better, I am more important, he/she/they are wrong.  And once we identify with those thoughts as truth, the barriers to sin come down and the cycle repeats.

Instead, I propose a new approach to being born again.  This approach must be taken every minute of every day… allow your false egoic self to die so that you may be born again into the moment, in fellowship with the infinite God and all life that has come from it.

You will fail at this, like we all do.  Forgive yourself these failures over and over again, and return to the new moment where you have equal chance to truly be born again… again.

A core thought… what does it mean to simply be?  We can’t escape it, whatever we do we are always being something.  We may choose to fight what we are with what we want to be, or embrace what we are as it is.  Take a quick guess at which is easier… yet we all pretty much suck at just being what we are.

Perhaps it’s the world we find ourselves in, as social creatures developed over thousands of years of evolution compounded with an infinite amount of information about others to constantly compare ourselves with.  This just adds to an existing human tendency, to spend all our time in our mind, projecting to what may happen in the future or pondering what happened in the past.

This leads to the inevitability that we are not simply being… we are instead lost in a false reality created entirely in our own heads.  If we were able to simply be… there is really only one possible place for that to happen, and that’s now.  There are a billion ways to do this, strategies to employ learned from ancient religions, modern mindfulness, and even sports and performance training.  Any of these strive to get you to the current moment, where it really is now, where we can really perform and be our best.

The evidence is everywhere, we perform our best when in the moment.  No skilled person in any sport is ever pondering the past or future when in the game, only the now and what needs to be done.  When we aren’t burdened with the past and future we naturally make the correct decisions.  Studies are now showing that we  are simply happier when we can spend time in the now, we are more satisfied when we have some sort of method to get there.

It doesn’t matter how you get there

Though some methods are temporary and quickly forgotten, it’s still effective as long as you get there sometimes. This is a challenge for me.  I read material from modern and ancient teachers that I believe truly do see the now, but struggle to stay there myself.  That’s OK though… the irony is that being upset about not being able to reach the moment keeps you further away from the moment, because by definition you are thinking about the past, when you noticed you were drifting in your own thoughts again.

To regain the moment, you must forgive yourself

True forgiveness is applicable to yourself, as well as all others.  To truly forgive, the past must be left as the past, and unrelated to the potential NOW.  This is true for yourself, as well as any others in your life.  The truth is that we all have the same potential to be in the now, to do the right thing, to be the right person, to be an instrument of God or whatever vernacular describes the infinite you feel comfortable with.  We all have that potential at every moment.  Forgiveness requires us to not forget what happened in the past, when the right action was not made, and return to that infinite potential for good.  When we apply forgiveness to ourselves, we are free to return to the now over and over again, without judgement and without fatigue for trying and failing over and over.  What I hear is that it gets easier and easier…

Forgiveness frees you from the future as well.

True forgiveness releases you from the speculation that you (or another) will fail again.  As we know, since we all keep that same potential to do right each moment, we must release the notion that failure is eminent.  There is risk here of course, and it would be foolish to forgive and enter a risky situation such as loaning money to an addict that just might really use it for good, but may simply continue addition.  In these circumstances the forgiveness is accompanied by some amount of risk analysis to reduce the potential for harm.

What happens if we really can Be…

All of infinity lives in the infinitely narrow timespan of now.  This infinity has many names, to relate to my background… God.  Describing this in great detail is futile of course, our minds are bound by time so this will never be an intellectual pursuit.  However, we can get glimpses in feelings, in the peace that resides in a temporary trip to the now.   That clarity while the baseball speeds toward you while gripping a bat, the feeling of freedom as notes ring out of your instrument in perfect time with the music.  These tasks take you to now, even for a moment.  In religious practice this happens in meditation or prayer as a communion with God.  This is not prayer in the bible school sense, stating our egoic wishes to some personified being elsewhere.  That is not prayer, but a mind exercise strengthening your own mind and made up images of a god.  True communion with God happens when we lose ourselves, we find that moment of now, and we transcend the “me” that is simply made up of a collection of past memories and future expectations.

Here we find God, we find the ability to not only commune with God but to reach our full potential of God’s will.  This is the exact same goal of enlightenment, nirvana, submission to the will of God.  When in the now, we lose consideration of our false selves.  It is this false self that drives all sin, without a self to appease we would not lie, steal, murder, covet… none of it is applicable without selfishness driven from the false identity we’ve built in our minds.

To Be is to forgive the past
To allow all possibilities of the future without expectation

I saw this simple sign in a church men’s room. To me, this speaks of mindfulness and presence in the moment more than any particular religion, regardless of the source from the book of Psalms.

Be Still

Simple advise. Just shut up… let the past and future fall away, that is always where our minds are occupied. Stilling ourselves is not just physical in this case, but mental. When we are still and present, that is when we can know the infinite, referred to as God in this case. That is when we experience it… when we truly pray, to use more Christian vernacular.

I Am

Only then do we know through direct experience the I Am. This phrase has always intrigued me too. From its appearance in the old testament, always capitalized signifying a deeper meaning to those two words, to its recurrence as a quote from Jesus followed by the way, the truth…

This to me refers to a more simple truth, not an exclusive requirement of Christ. The truth is that the infinite, God if you will, simply is. Nothing more, nothing less, just is. I would also postulate that Jesus was giving that same hint, not that only he had some key to truth and life but instead referencing God as I Am.

And that simple task of being still, and just being until we simply Are, that is the way, the truth, and the life.