Category Archives: Jesus

The Other Team Sport?

2019-01-01_waterdrops-8-1184377-1599x1066The human concept of religious freedom is our acknowledgment that spiritual beliefs, practices, and understanding can be as individual as the number of humans. The recognition and respect for all individuals to freely express their personal beliefs are fundamental as breathing.

So, why do so many people participate in their spiritual development as a team sport? Also, why have many people allowed their personal spiritual identity to become entangled with a religious organization? Organizational religion has two main goals. One is to aid in the spiritual training of those that join its organization. The second is to transmit to future generations the teachings and practices that are part of the religious culture for which it represents.

Many Sunday morning worship services in America have morphed to resemble sports and political gatherings with people supporting their home teams. The Sunday morning gatherings in America used to be a time of spiritual devotion where any visitor could join the community practice. It was an opportunity for people to temporarily escape from of their personal lives to reflect on the actions they committed or omitted during the busy week. It was a time for quiet reflection while being washed in spiritual words of encouragement. It was an opportunity for personal transformation.

Do you gather in huge a stadium or do you gather in a smaller group, and is it with people and friends that have the same perspective or worldview? Is there time for quiet devotion and reflection or does the gathering put on a production and presentation to keep you excited so you will come back again? Is the overall point of view being shared one that says, there is only one way to God and all others perspectives in the marketplace need to be driven out, so the world can become transformed? If someone holding a different worldview happens to visit or is invited to attend your service are they accepted as they are if they never change, or are they made to feel especially uncomfortable if they fail to cheer on the home team and its perception of the world?

This may be fine for sport and political gatherings, but it violates the concept for spiritual freedom. Yet, religious institutions have adopted this format as a method to support and bolster its organizational goals. Religious institutions train their membership in groups to maximize efficiency, but they fail to reinforce the idea that a person’s spiritual identity is as personal as their fingerprint and that it belongs to them. More important and because of tradition, many members freely abdicate their responsibility for spiritual development and trade in their personal identity for a group identity. Many people do this in hopes that God’s heart is moved by numbers when standing in faith on an issue. Have you given over your identity in hopes that it will be used as a political force that can influence the material world issues in a spiritual way?

For many years religious organizations, worldwide, have been more than happy to let people give them their identities so they can be the ones representing their spiritual lives. Just prior to the Protestant Reformation in the Christian culture, the most popular religious institutions were accused of having to much power and abusing that power. Back then the power was in the form of a financial tax on individuals, and families. From birth to death these organizations formulated a strategy of dispensing and withholding blessings to influence and control various parts of a persons moral and spiritual life.

Today people volunteer to be members of their religious institutions and have the freedom to terminate the relationship whenever they want. However, for those that choose to evolve spiritually, most never do it outside of a religious organization. Therefore, today these organizations continue to yield tremendous power from birth to death. They do not directly tax individuals, but the relationship has financial obligations and when it comes to political power, they strongly influence the beliefs and thoughts of most of its members. There is a valid chicken and egg argument to be made, however, within the membership only a few members hold differing beliefs from the membership at large.

But be encouraged, many people are waking up to these trends as it concerns personal spiritual development. The Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) movement and specifically within Christianity the Emergent Church movement and the Red Letter Christian movement are examples of pushbacks towards this trend. However, just switching teams is not a solution to the trend of spiritual development being a team sport.

Only the act of taking personal responsibility for one’s spiritual training can truly reverse this trend. It does not require everyone to exit organize religion, but it does require everyone to set personal goals and partake of training materials that they have sought out. With the advent of human technological advancements, especially in the area of social networks, individuals in the western world are without excuse when it comes to seeking spiritual enlightenment. Do you avail yourself of the spiritual resources available on the social network at least once a week?

To remained pigeonholed into a way of thinking spiritually from birth to death reflects truly on one’s beliefs about all things spiritually. Fear is the primary tactic that keeps many people from exploring spiritually. In every other area of life, people exercise freedom except when it comes to their spirituality. It is kind of like when a stockbroker or a doctor discourage you from getting a second opinion, you should automatically know that something is wrong. However, many falsely believe they will be better off not knowing the truth.

Again, be encouraged that you will not be the first pioneer to strike out on your own and do something spiritually on one of the other six days of the week and still show up on Sunday for the religious pep rally. Odds are that there are more than a few members already doing it. Social media sites like provide links with information about meetings and groups that have planned alternative events for exploring and finding people with awakened spiritual points of view.

For every charlatan standing in the pulpits in America, there is probably one on social media with the fraudulent intents, and yet my experience over the last 5 years has been all good and left my desire to explore peaked and all the while feeling safe. As human understanding grows some religious tradition will not stand the test of truth. What is true is that our spiritual identity as a created child of God is secure as God’s very Presence. That is our spiritual heritage and it has nothing to do with human tradition or the team we choose for our spiritual training.

One reason that unconditional love is in short supply among the human population, is because love has been made conditional to the spiritual identity of the spiritual team a person trains with. Yet, the true source of unconditional love is God. This is the reason that Jesus made love the only condition for a true relationship. While the religion of Jesus day had 613 ways to break the relationship, Jesus made love the only condition for a relationship.

So, let each of us stay mindful that we have the right and the freedom to develop our personal spiritual training. If nothing else, explore the limits of your current training organization. Ask questions of God, your organization’s leadership and other members. Open your heart and spiritual ears to God and determine where you want to end up when this earthly life is finished.

Do you want a personal faith relationship in your spiritual team or personal faith relationship in God? There are 52 Sundays this year, will your personal spiritual development remain as the other team sport?


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Spirit or Religion, One Difference Is Love












The Parable of the Good Samaritan









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Love and Material Reality

2016-12-31_cascading-water-1183847-1278x855God is love and God is Spirit.  Each member of the human family is also created in this image or pattern.  Turning water to wine, multiplying food, and healing the sick are all results demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth while a member of our human family.  Likewise, any person with a deep spiritual understanding also has the capacity to make material reality subject to spiritual law.

Love for example is a spiritual law that is simple enough for any human to exercise, experience, and experiment with. In the same way, that the laws of flight overcome the laws of gravity, love is a law that over comes most laws of material reality. This is the reason Jesus demonstrated and taught the spiritual truth of love as the basic way of living. Jesus used the condition of blindness as both a literal and a metaphorical teaching object. The material reality of blindness is powerless when confronted with the spiritual understanding of the power of the law of love.

Spiritual understanding is simply conscious awareness of an existence beyond this material world. Faith in the possibility of spiritual truth is a start, but it is not until one has a conscious experience with spiritual truth does this material world begin to yield and reveal its weakness. During the holiday season of Christmas there is an atmosphere of love, if one can become consciousness of it. When we allow ourselves to get caught up in the spirit of the season any impediments to our peace and happiness that was erected in the material realm, seem to dissolve. However, most people dismiss such disillusions as Christmas magic.

Because very few of us humans have attained the understanding or awareness of the spiritual realm, we settle for the peace and happiness that the illusions of material wealth and health give. If those that claim to be disciples of Jesus obtain even a little success in the mastery over this material reality, a joy unspeakable would reverberate within their being. To be able to pass on an inkling of this consciousness to their children would be an inheritance fit for a king. Imagine a generation of humans having beliefs beyond what passes as normal religious faith.

Jesus said, “Love others as self”

Yet, He always demonstrated,

“Love others before self”.

So the question becomes how can, any human operate a love that transcends this material reality. First, we must awaken to this simple insight. Jesus said, “Love others as self” yet, He always demonstrated “Love others before self”. Secondly, one must make an effort and assault the common notion that love is a two-way street. Holding that belief as truth will make it impossible to walk on water, disappear through a crowd, or walk through walls. When love flows from God, through you, toward others it is an indescribable feeling. In that moment, we need nothing from material reality, and there for we are no longer subject to its laws.

Galatians 5:23 (NKJV) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

We hold beliefs that God is infinite and that we are created in His image or pattern. Yet most religious and scriptural interpretation does little more than give an infinite God the human attributes of a face, arms, and legs. Very few if any appropriate the infinite qualities of God like an infinite conscious, one that does not slumber or sleep, or infinite presence. We lay down to rest the body and our consciousness soars as it returns to the greater realms of what we misname as the realms of dreams and deep sleep.  When we return to the smallest realm of the material reality, we say we are awake, all awhile we are blind and dismiss the greater realms we just left.  We must let go of the belief that the “I” of our being shares the limits of our material body

Psalm 82:6-8 (NKJV) I said, “You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.” Arise, O God, judge the earth; For You shall inherit all nations.

Luke 6:40 (NKJV)  A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.

We humans were created for so much more, yet we are stuck in our traditions. A box of no escape may be good for building an earthly organizations and protecting its membership, but it will never get humanity to see itself as sons and daughters of God.

Escape velocity is a term of violent revolution for earthlings that have not achieved travel at the speed of light.  Likewise, we humans holding a set of beliefs that exalt the laws of material reality need a violent revolution of love as demonstrated by Jesus in order to become transformed.  We need to redefine the common definition of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. My suggestion:

A Disciple of Jesus is a believer, motivated by the belief that within a single human lifespan, any human could be trained to replicate any of the works of Jesus, and live as the child of God they were created to be. Upon graduation the child of God lives out the remainder of their days in the office of Ambassador to God’s Kingdom.

If humanity is to complete its evolutionary journey and reach its full potential, we need a constant update of our beliefs, as we consistently become more conscious of spiritual reality. Love is the doorway out of a belief system that material reality reigns supreme.

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Filed under Emergent, Emergent Church, Jesus, Kingdom of God, Mystic, non-duality, Spiritual, spiritual but not religious, Spirituality