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    Their God/S
    Their God/S
    Their God/S
    Ebook872 pages15 hours

    Their God/S

    By Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

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    About this ebook

    In the mind of each person on the planet, a set of notions and ideas of God or gods reside. Some of these systems are basic and simple. Others are highly complex and complicated. Some borrow their God/god notions from authority, or from others they know. Others are much more original - eclectically piecing together many separate parts from multiple sources. No two people in the world experience and translate God/gods in the same way. And this is what makes things so interesting! As I have encountered this wonderful life, I have also bumped up against countless people who were in the position to explain exactly who God was and was not. They were quite sure of themselves, and anxious to impart this wisdom to me. But because I had a mind and heart of my own, this put me on the outside looking in, for much of my life. We all come to a place where we realize we must make our minds up as to what we will and will not do, how we will think and who we will be. As I have encountered them and their God/gods, I have found my own way through this foggy maze, and discovered a modicum of peace and reconciliation in the process. This is the massive task of all of us, as well as why I needed to lay it out to you, in this lengthy, 2-part book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateNov 19, 2015
    ISBN9781504961226
    Their God/S
    Author

    Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

    Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut is a philosopher/writer on issues such as worldview, philosophy, personal memoir, spirituality, science, psychology, and many other general life issues. He is the author of 36 published and unpublished books, most written while residing in various locations between Central America and Indianapolis, Indiana. Michael now resides in Indianapolis with his wonderful wife, Tanya, their two German Shepherd’s, Teddy and The Bear, along with a large number of other animal, botanical, and biological life.

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      Book preview

      Their God/S - Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

      Freethinking Counterclaims on Life and God

      MICHAEL JEAN NYSTROM-SCHUT

      91669.png

      AuthorHouse™

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1 (800) 839-8640

      © 2015 Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

      Published by AuthorHouse 11/17/2015

      ISBN: 978-1-5049-6120-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5049-6121-9 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5049-6122-6 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2015918698

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      BOOK ONE: THEIR GOD/S

      PREFACE THEIR GOD/S, MY HERESIES

      OLD TESTAMENT THEIR GOD/S I

      CHAPTER ONE: RELIGION

      CHAPTER TWO: JESUS

      CHAPTER THREE: CHRISTENDOM

      CHAPTER FOUR: SCRIPTURE

      CHAPTER FIVE: FUNDAMENTALISM

      CHAPTER SIX: MORALITY

      CHAPTER SEVEN: LOVE-SEX

      CHAPTER EIGHT: AFTERLIFE

      CHAPTER NINE: UNBELIEF

      CHAPTER TEN: VARIETIES

      CHAPTER ELEVEN: GOD

      AFTERWORD: THEIR GOD/S, MY HERESIES

      Table of Contents

      PREFACE    THEIR GOD/S, MY HERESIES

      What about the God questions?

      OLD TESTAMENT THEIR GOD/S I

      CHAPTER ONE    RELIGION

      01.01 What is religion and how did it come about in the first place?

      01.02 Isn’t God and religion just about the very same thing?

      01.03 Are all religions equally valid?

      01.04 What are monotheism and polytheism?

      01.05 What was the time sequence for how religions evolved on the earth?

      01.06 Why join in on the unholy alliances of Man?

      01.07 Why let religious nut balls highjack God and the spotlight?

      01.08 What are the realities and illusions of formal religion?

      01.09 What are the two kinds of people in God’s world?

      01.10 How much of organized religion is about money?

      01.11 Is religion in the control and guilt-producing business?

      01.12 Why are religious opinions subject to such personal offence?

      01.13 Why do we continue to keep the dead lawmakers around?

      01.14 How can we turn our backs on the teachings from our youth?

      01.15 Are you allowed to criticize religion, and if not,

      why are the preachers allowed?

      01.16 Is a person’s religion pretty much the result of an accident of history?

      01.17 Can a child already be a Muslim or a Christian?

      01.18 What is learning and unlearning all about?

      01.19 Does the pathway to God go beyond religious systems?

      01.20 How does God choose to carry out his Plan for mankind?

      01.21 Is religion better helped with a stand-up comic or a preacher?

      01.22 How can we demythologize in our lives?

      CHAPTER TWO    JESUS

      02.01 Who did Jesus think he was?

      02.02 How did Jesus reveal to us our divinity?

      02.03 What about this man Jesus?

      02.04 Was Jesus a perfect, sinless god, while in man form?

      02.05 Was Jesus a Christian or a Jew? And was he born of a virgin?

      02.06 What color and race was the Man from Galilee?

      02.07 Where was Jesus from age 12 to age 30?

      02.08 What part of the bible did Jesus author?

      02.09 Is Jesus someone we can walk with and talk with

      (along life’s narrow way?)

      02.10 Is the invitation of Jesus Mankind’s salvation or his curse?

      02.11 What does it mean that Christ has love for the Church?

      02.12 Did Jesus suspect he was the King of the Jews or the Son of God?

      02.13 Is Jesus a good way to heaven, the best way to heaven or

      the only way to heaven?

      02.14 What about those who never hear about the one and only

      Son of God?

      02.15 What would Jesus think of this world if he could see it now?

      02.16 Would Jesus and Siddhartha (the Buddha) have been friends?

      02.17 Why was Jesus so preoccupied with the concept of a literal hell?

      02.18 If Real men love Jesus, what does that make the rest of us?

      02.19 Can you have the crucifixion without fiction?

      02.20 Must one be a Christian to embrace Jesus of Nazareth?

      02.21 What is the message of Jesus?

      02.22 Are we under a curse without Jesus in our hearts?

      CHAPTER THREE    CHRISTENDOM

      03.01 What are the basic groups in organized Christendom?

      03.02 What is the story of God, People, Jesus, the Devil, Heaven and Hell?

      03.03 Why does Christendom offer security but discourage

      the hard questions?

      03.04 What hope is there for unification in the Christian church?

      03.05 How do we explain away the miracles?

      03.06 Should we expect the magical in our everyday modern lives?

      03.07 Am I praying? Or am I just talking to myself?

      03.08 What’s the deal with all of the sacraments?

      03.09 Does being an authority and expert make one right?

      03.10 How much does Christendom rely on celebrity status?

      03.11 Why are Christians so arrogant about what they think they know?

      03.12 Is it the Jew first, and then the Greek?

      03.13 What was the big argument between Peter and Paul all about?

      03.14 Is membership to a church club worth the money?

      03.15 Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

      03.16 How do we get over things without a Christian belief system?

      03.17 Is a church God’s house on earth?

      03.18 How does the up-sell work at Church?

      03.19 Why is there such a push to be born again?

      03.20 Why don’t most churches have to pay taxes like the rest of us?

      03.21 Is Christianity a business?

      03.22 Do Christians really tithe 10% to their church?

      03.23 Should Christians thump their bibles, or read them?

      03.24 How do our lexicon variances get in the way?

      03.25 Why do some Christians always try and recruit you?

      03.26 Why are women under men in the Christian world?

      03.27 Why are Christians so passionate about their beliefs?

      03.28 Why won’t Christians admit when they are proven wrong?

      03.29 What church did I choose after visits to ten of them?

      CHAPTER FOUR    SCRIPTURE

      04.01 Isn’t it odd that I believed until I got to Seminary?

      04.02 What were the gospel writers of Jesus thinking back then?

      04.03 How can I say what the bible is to me?

      04.04 What about the translations, editing and censuring of the bible?

      04.05 Are there ways to see the scriptures of the bible differently?

      04.06 Why is the bible interpreted literally by so many?

      04.07 Why should every Christian read the bible from cover to cover?

      04.08 Is God revealed through the bible, or through modern-day

      spokespersons of God?

      04.09 Why did the Book of Revelation get chosen over twenty other

      Revelation writings?

      04.10 What is eschatology all about?

      04.11 If there is one mistake in the bible, does not that make it fallible?

      04.12 Why do preachers cherry pick from the bible as opposed

      to valuing all 66 parts?

      04.13 Does the N.T. cancel out the O.T?

      04.14 Is there value in the prayers of an ancient king?

      04.15 Are there two Gospels - one from Jesus and one from Paul?

      04.16 Why does such a faith verses works controversy exist?

      04.17 How much damage has John 14:6 done to the human race?

      04.18 Doesn’t judging others just bring judgment down upon us?

      04.19 How confusing are the dispensations of God?

      04.20 Does the bible support slavery?

      04.21 Why do the scriptures make good people bad?

      04.22 What are the two ways to read the scriptures?

      04.23 What would your ten commandments be if you were in charge?

      04.24 If the way to God is simple and clear,

      why is it so confusing in the bible?

      04.25 Is it sola Scriptura for the world?

      CHAPTER FIVE    FUNDAMENTALISM

      05.01 What is a Fundamentalist?

      05.02 Who are the Christian fundamentalists?

      05.03 Do people who are so sure they know, really truly know?

      05.04 Isn’t Fundamentalism a narrow way to embrace the world?

      05.05 How is Fundamentalism different, say, than liberalism?

      05.06 Are fallen angels and the demons real-life beings?

      05.07 What are we talking about when we say televangelism?

      05.08 Why does mainline Christendom put up with those TV people?

      05.09 How much better is a triple blessing than a double blessing?

      05.10 Is money spent better on sunglasses or bible tracts?

      05.11 Does God live at your religious headquarters and is that

      why the check goes there?

      05.12 Who are the soul suckers and why must they take the oxygen

      out of the room?

      05.13 What about prosperity preaching and seed faith giving?

      05.14 Who gets the tithes? Who should get the tithes?

      05.15 Why is it good to give freely of ourselves?

      05.16 What happens when the prayer cloth and the anointed oil

      come to my door?

      05.17 What is a sermon prayer?

      05.18 Why does he call himself a man of God?

      05.19 How are the World Trade Center bombings and

      Fundamentalism connected?

      05.20 What about the notion that we agree to simply live and let live?

      05.21 What is the alternative for us if we don’t choose God?

      CHAPTER SIX    MORALITY

      06.01 What is a man?

      06.02 To whom should we be asking forgiveness to - God, or that guy?

      06.03 Why do people judge us for sinning differently than they do?

      06.04 Are there moral absolutes in the world?

      06.05 What country are you from and what is your religion?

      06.06 What is the highest moral code?

      06.07 Is there really a law of Karma?

      06.08 Do our actions bring about Karma?

      06.09 How did humans come up with morals and values?

      06.10 What are human obsessions with right and wrong about?

      06.11 Is legalism morality?

      06.12 What’s best: the letter of the law or the spirit of the law?

      06.13 Why become destabilized and imbalanced?

      06.14 Did God invent morality, or did we make it up as we went along?

      06.15 What is the illusion of good and evil?

      06.16 Don’t good and evil both clearly exist in the world?

      06.17 What’s the answer to the question on abortion?

      06.18 Did the Christians invent the Golden Rule?

      06.19 Are Christian’s better moral people than non-Christians?

      06.20 Are human beings naturally altruistic by nature?

      06.21 How do people deal with the three T’s:

      temptation, trials and tribulation?

      06.22 What about drugs and drink?

      06.23 What about the human hunters?

      06.24 What if you had cancer and I had a pill to cure it?

      06.25 What about the matter of malevolence?

      06.26 Is there positive energy in forgiving ourselves?

      06.27 Just how does guilt best work?

      06.28 Can we get better with time?

      06.29 What is the story of the good wolf and the bad wolf?

      CHAPTER SEVEN    LOVE-SEX

      07.01 How many wives can a good man take?

      07.02 Is it immoral for Muslims to take up to four wives?

      07.03 Should people wait to have sex before they marry?

      07.04 Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

      07.05 What about the exceptions and laws of a modern marriage?

      07.06 Do sworn documents make a marriage?

      07.07 What security is marriage in this fragile, changing world?

      07.08 How important is sex?

      07.09 What about monogamy?

      07.10 Is it wrong to masturbate?

      07.11 What about our gay friends and neighbors?

      Are they doomed to hell?

      07.12 Is it wrong to look lustfully on a woman?

      07.13 Could love come to me all the way from China?

      07.14 What is the flight of love?

      07.15 How precious are our moments?

      07.16 Can sex become therapy for the human animal?

      07.17 How is sex a loving sensual exchange?

      07.18 Are love and fear the contrasting emotions?

      07.19 Why does it make such sense to love God?

      07.20 What does the love chapter of the bible have to say to us?

      CHAPTER EIGHT    AFTERLIFE

      08.01 Is death just the undertaker’s game?

      08.02 How fleeting is our existence?

      08.03 If you had but six months to live…how would you live them?

      08.04 How is time an illusion?

      08.05 Is there a heaven, and who will be there (5%)?

      08.06 Is there a hell, and who will be there (95%)?

      08.07 What does it mean to be told you are going to hell?

      08.08 What is Dante’s hell and how hellish is it to imagine?

      08.09 What are the rewards and punishments of heaven and hell?

      08.10 Did we even ask to be born?

      08.11 After death what then: burial or cremation?

      08.12 Is reincarnation feasible?

      08.13 What would I like to say to God on my final Day of Judgment?

      08.14 What if I should die before I wake?

      08.15 The human organism: just an army of sixty trillion cells?

      08.16 Does consciousness exist outside of human life?

      08.17 Do out of body experiences reveal a life after death?

      08.18 How does pleasure defy death?

      08.19 Why do so many people believe in life after death?

      08.20 What if the Christians are right and I am wrong? (Pascal’s wager)

      08.21 Must we die someday?

      CHAPTER NINE    UNBELIEF

      09.01 Why are unbelievers so mad at the Nation of Christendom?

      09.02 How do atheism and agnosticism differ?

      09.03 Is it true that atheists and agnostics know more about

      religion than Christians?

      09.04 Why are unbelievers hated and mistrusted by so many?

      09.05 What would happen if the atheists all got together some day?

      09.06 Why do we question God in the first place?

      09.07 Can life be meaningful and purposeful without God in it?

      09.08 How does the ad homonym argument work?

      09.09 Are human beings just protoplasm according to unbelievers?

      09.10 Can the religious ever get along with atheists?

      09.11 What is the sliding scale of faith and disbelief all about?

      09.12 Isn’t it odd that I believed until I got to Seminary?

      09.13 How do we get to truth?

      09.14 Why are the unsaved, the damned and the lost all

      so pissed off at Christendom?

      09.15 Isn’t it either that God does exist or he doesn’t exist?

      09.16 Why aren’t Christian people clearly better than non-believers?

      09.17 What about the rise of the non-prophet organizations and

      logical atheism?

      09.18 Who are those Apocalyptic Four Horsemen?

      09.19 What is a bright?

      09.20 Do we really have a clear choice in the matter of our beliefs?

      09.21 Could the paradox be that God was standing there all along?

      CHAPTER TEN    VARIETIES

      10.01 What have been the primary varieties of religions known to man?

      10.02 How do we bury the various cultural gods from yesteryear?

      10.03 What are the primary religions of today?

      10.04 What are the basic manifestations of Christendom?

      10.05 What is the religion of Islam all about?

      10.06 What is Islamic Sufism?

      10.07 What is Judaism?

      10.08 Why are so few Jews Messianic Jews who believe in

      Jesus as the son of God?

      10.09 Was Jesus the Messiah the Jewish people were waiting for?

      10.10 What is Hinduism?

      10.11 What is Jainism?

      10.12 What is Sikhism?

      10.13 What is Confucianism?

      10.14 What is Taoism?

      10.15 What is Yin and Yang?

      10.16 What is Shinto?

      10.17 Is Zoroastrian just the vision of Zarathustra?

      10.18 Who was Epicurus, and what was his positive way of life?

      10.19 What is a cult and why are there so many of these suckers?

      10.20 What is the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons)?

      10.21 What about the Jehovah’s Witnesses?

      10.22 What is Christian Science all about?

      10.23 What is the New Age Movement all about?

      10.24 What is TM (Transcendental Meditation)?

      10.25 What is the world of Wicca (witches and Neo-Paganism) all about?

      10.26 Who are the Unitarian Universalists?

      10.27 What about the Unity Movement?

      10.28 Who were Charles and Myrtle Fillmore?

      10.29 What is the Baha’i faith all about?

      10.30 What is Buddhism and who is Buddha?

      CHAPTER ELEVEN    GOD

      11.01 How do you see God?

      11.02 How can we both ascend and descend to God?

      11.03 How many versions of God are there?

      11.04 Whose version of God is the right one?

      11.05 Are any of the gods the one true God?

      11.06 What is the theistic origin myth?

      11.07 What does a skeptical look at Genesis look like (Ch 1-2)?

      11.08 Does the plot thicken like gruel in Genesis after that (3-4)?

      11.09 Shall we make it a Genesis triple-play (5+)?

      11.10 Can a horse describe what it’s like to be human?

      11.11 How has God grown?

      11.12 Is God the One in the Many?

      11.13 How do we explain the paradox of the One in the Many?

      11.14 How illusive is an Ultimate Reality?

      11.15 Why did it have to be God the Father and not

      Goddess the Mother?

      11.16 If there is a God, do we mean much to It?

      11.17 Has God separated His Love from us?

      11.18 Do we have free will or can we know God’s will?

      11.19 Are we all equal in the sight of God and Man?

      11.20 Does God have a chosen people?

      11.21 If God loves one of us, does he love all of us (equally)?

      11.22 How does God pre-ordain all of this to be?

      11.23 What is the god of the gaps and is it a Goddidit thing?

      11.24 Can we know the Personality of the One Most High?

      11.25 Where is God?

      AFTERWORD    THEIR GOD/S, MY HERESIES

      Why have I railed on such a good thing as Organized Religion?

      Unlike famous, well-known writers, in my obscurity I have never had friends or professionals assist me with the editing of my books. Since I am very loquacious and verbose, and my books (including these here) are full of words and pages, you are bound to come across occasional typos and mistakes. Please forgive these sins of mine (sin = Greek, for to miss the mark). In the case of this book, my lovely young friend Sara Watson has been invaluable to me. I sometimes note acknowledgements that literally include an entire staff of writing support people listed, and I am glad those human resources were available to them. As for me, it’s always just been a solo endeavor (but now, for me, there’s Sara!), and while I hold myself to the highest standards of writing I possess, you may just notice my slight lack of…well…backroom support. For this, Sara and I extend to you any advance apologies you may require.

      On the other hand, writer/philosopher friends (with several enemies smattered in here and there) most of whom I have never met have contributed without their awareness of it to me in writing this book. Without their input and offerings, I would not be placing this body of work into the Universe. I wish they all could know what they have done for me, and by listing their names on this short list below, at least I have said something of it;

      My four original writer-teacher-heroes are:

      Wayne Dyer (thank you, my friend)    Deepak Chopra    Sam Keen    Ken Wilbur

      Greatly influential to me, and adding to the content and structure of this book, were:

      Karen Armstrong

      Resa Aslan

      Jim Bakker

      Dan Barker

      Miranda Bronaugh

      Joseph Campbell

      George Carlin

      William Lane Craig

      Paul Crouch

      Richard Dawkins

      Neil deGrasse Tyson

      Daniel Dennett

      Matt Dillahunty

      Dinesh D’Souza

      Bart Ehrman

      Billy Graham

      A C Grayling

      Sam Harris

      Ayaan Hirsi Ali

      Christopher Hitchens

      Eddie Izzard

      Carl Jung

      Marcus Lamb

      John Lennox

      John MacArthur

      Bill Maher

      Shawn McCraney

      Tim Minchin

      Guy Murchie

      Tanya Nystrom-Schut

      Robert M Price

      John Rankin

      Pat Robertson

      Robby Rolfingsmeyer

      Carl Sagan

      Timothy Schut

      Bishop John Shelby Spong

      Michael Shermer

      David Silverman

      Rabbi Tovia Singer

      Dan Spencer

      Charles Stanley

      Jimmy Swaggart

      Sandra Tanner

      Eckhart Tolle

      Iyanla Vanzant

      William Van Steenis

      Alan Watts

      James White

      Mary Ann Williamson

      E O Wilson

      Oprah Winfrey

      So, these men and women were my teachers, preachers, movers-shakers, influencers…thank you!

      Dedication

      I dedicate this book to my sons and daughters, to my wonderful grandchildren, my angel-wife Tanya, and to my fellow pack-members. It is my sincere wish that my priceless young seedlings (as well as you the reader) grow and evolve a working adult relationship with Life, and with Truth, as it is steadily come to be explored and understand:

      Children:

      Andrew

      Rhiannnon

      Angela

      Carter

      Jo’Tan

      Jordan

      Christian

      London

      Benjamin

      Corey

      Angelia

      Grandchildren:

      Cole

      Cassidy

      Sawyer Rose

      Easton

      Ericah

      Christian

      Alexa

      Maryah

      Ryan Jr.

      Kynan

      Kingston

      Erick Jr.

      Devon

      Ryno

      Gator

      Jania

      Janice (lil mama)

      D’Laiah

      Deontai

      Kaleb

      Mehki

      Jeremiah

      A’naijah and A’nailah (the twins)

      Pack members (according to pecking order):

      Personal Disclaimer

      This book is not intended to bring harm to my family and loved ones. I am especially talking about family members who are in various forms of ministry within the realms of Christianity. If any of the content of this book offends or injures any of you, please know that it was not intentional. We are each obligated to come to our own conclusions of Life, God and Such. Herein are what I found to be my disclosed realities as I lived out the days and nights of my existence to date. Please don’t be angry or upset. You know me. Just factor that part in as you assess your thoughts and feelings about what I have said here. I love you all very, very much. And I could not be more proud of the lives led by my many relatives on both my dad and mom’s side of our great family.

      In memory of:

      Dorothy Nystrom-Schut (December 1928-June 1975) I love you mom.

      Robert Schut (October 1927-January 2013) I love you dad.

      (Married August 1950-June 1975)

      While Christendom nestles comfortably in the Certainty of being on the side of Truth, and Right, and (the Most) Good, I remain perennially conflicted about countless religious matters; even more so now, since finishing this tedious, one year, two-part, loquaciously-worded endeavor of scattered illogicality.

      Don’t choke or panic on that opening paragraph; it was just a warm-up. And I don’t really talk that way. I will say that little of anything surprises me anymore, for, just where does one get started as it pertains to the all-important questions about God? Where do we begin to unravel the most significant set of inquiry known to Mankind? This is a massive set of undertakings. It’s a big deal. The questions are big. God is big. I mean, God is Really Big! What’s in fact Bigger than God? Isn’t God the Biggest thing about life? Like me, don’t you think so as well?

      As for me, I carried around a very, very, very small God in my feeble mind-brain for the early part of my life. If you could fit a bible into a breadbox, you could fit my own personal idea of God right next to it as well. This God of mine was, then, and later still, confined to religious ideologies, physical geography, spatial territories. My little God, could even, in fact, be relatively understood. I was quite intelligent back then…

      But, really? Was I really? I did not know then that I would have been much more suited in life to be born a Jew than to ever be born into a pocket of Christendom. This is because Jews believe God to be unknowable. And here I started out thinking I could know him. They told me as much.

      Yet, the ancestors of Jesus were right; Yahweh is indeed unknowable. You cannot know the Big God, or the little god, as all versions of God – both great and small – are inevitably unknowable.

      So, yes, I should have been born a Jew. And coming out of the fog of Christendom now, some four decades later, I find my position in life to be that of many Jews. What is that?

      I would say that a deistic agnostic describes it closely; I believe in some God of some dimension somewhere…one who is very, very unknowable. I am not certain of any part of it. Yet, I know they are…

      Kindly imagine with me for a moment, if you would, a God who could never be understood. As I grew, so many aspects and features of God changed for me that when looking back I don’t even recognize Her from my original God template anymore. To an unfathomable degree, my early foundations have been shaken and moved, and rest very far off center. Like millions of us, I grew up in a small town and in that small town I attended a small church. In that small church I was taught about a God that loved me. However, as hard as they (nice, loving, caring, simple folks) strove to make Him Sound Really Big, he still came out small.

      The trouble in part with that God back there was that He was so comprehendible. And though he was palatable to my small taste, I grew to dislike the flavor of that particular God. I managed to learn that I was fortunate to be born in a free country. I learned that, although by virtue of my birth I was not one of the chosen ones of God (I had been born a Gentile and not Jewish), I could still become a saved Gentile – and all praise should go to God for making that stipulation in his magnificent pact with Mankind!

      I was essentially told what to do and I pretty much, then, did it. As time progressed, and as a card-carrying confident young man of Christendom, and an up-and-coming mover and shaker in my little world, I made it my purpose and ambition to tell everyone the right and wrong way to live life. I explained the complicated, conflicting paths leading both up to heaven and down to hell. I shared the good news of salvation, which turns out to really be more bad news than anything. For if you believe the good news in the first place, you surely know then, that most are not destined to take this path. And that means, for the overwhelming part of us, our final installments in life (and beyond) will come to contain for us very, very bad news.

      Good and bad news – like I could personally know which was which. Regardless, I came to share to all, with vigor and zeal, the ways and means of the proud faith of Christendom.

      Now, I should stop for a minute and think. I really have to be careful. It is not my intention here to take away from anyone’s faith in particular, but in the process of my remaking I do desire to demonstrate that, of the 10,000 or 12,000 religious faiths currently represented and practiced on the face of earth, all cannot possibly be totally correct. All are not, I am sure, and on the other hand, totally wrong. Indeed, it would seem that partial truth exists for all religions – but only for all is there partial truth. No one has it all, even though that’s not exactly what my church thought. I’ll bet that if you went to church (or to mosque, or to the temple, or to any kind of religious gathering) it’s not what they told you either. But I say, today, the more you say you know, the more I know you don’t know.

      Putting it into different words, unlike I may have been instructed, it turned out that I was not representing the only way to avoid hell and get to heaven. At the time though, I was sure I was on an unmistakably high road towards ultimate truth. So it was that I labored well into my twenties with a small God that could be identified and typified. I explained that God had dropped off a single, solitary piece of literature, the B.I.B.L.E – written material for us to examine, over and over and over again – and that this material represented the whole of the Character, Intention, overall Plan, background and historical reference for the One True God of the Universe.

      Theology is something that provides us all the answers. There are countless theologies though. I tried to be a Theologian, but seeing how cocksure and confident the Theologian is about knowing so much about God (well, thinking they do anyway) I was forced to eventually revert back to an early way of thinking – one of philosophy. These guys are the ones who ask the tough questions, knowing we cannot know, and not pretending to give answers to complicated theological suppositions, propositions and impositions.

      But I already digress; happy to have been so lottery-blessed and benefited, I enthusiastically and recklessly shared God with all who would listen. I racked up many conversions of lost souls for the cause, and correspondingly out of the snatches of the dreaded devil in the process. Looking back, I could say that had I actually been born into another religion – such as for example, Islam – it might be Islam that I would be aiming these many counterpoints here towards. It so happened to be Christendom, and as my remaking unfolded, I began to gradually disbelieve the very words that flowed from my increasingly smooth and practiced tongue.

      From the pulpit I was sharing the message of Jesus to many people, and numbers of them were being influenced for the Good by my words of wisdom. The sheep were being shepherded, sorted from the goats, saved to heaven and spared from hell - amen and all praise be it unto the Mighty One. All the while, I was building up my mansion in heaven, and I was insuring that I would not suffer an everlasting, eternal hell, with the devil and his rebellious band of fallen angels.

      At some point along the journey, I realized that my line of reasoning amounted to an incursion of terribly pitiful assumptions – indeed that they were statements I could and should not support without reason. For myself, with time, they became lies, and I became a teller of lies. Speaking from the pulpit, my words were no longer believed by the very bearer of these lies – me.

      It was a fact. My mouth was speaking of things that my mind had ceased to believe. Truly, I really never did believe most of what I was perpetuating. When I finally came to my senses I felt the need to repent – not of my sins, but of my stupidities. Time passed and like all of us, I changed.

      …I am far more pleased with the God I project today. Yes, I used the word project because that is what I am doing – projecting God. We all, in sum, imagine what God is to us, and project that God or gods into our world. Make no mistake – all of us do this – the entire 7.2 billion human souls of earth. For all I know, those in the wider kingdom of animals have their own way of doing it too. When I say that I project God, I am just suggesting that my mind has created an image of God, and, to the best of my understanding, for me, this is God – something or someone of whom I then manifest into my world. The Jews were doing such a thing in the Wilderness. Moses did it. David and Solomon projected God. Jesus projected a God whom countless have come to know and love. Peter the first Pope did it. Paul did it differently than Peter, and from an evangelistic standpoint, more controversially and more popularly and successful than Jesus himself! And many, many others were to follow.

      Much further along, Martin Luther projected quite differently than his predecessors and viola – the Protestant Movement! Now, turn on your telly right now and listen to hundreds more differing projections of God, coming from countless religious speakers who pay to share their thoughts and prayers with and for you.

      …As for me, now, the God I project today is, first and foremost, born out of love. More than just taking this by faith (which is the essence of all religious endeavor), I surmise that God is love because I don’t imagine that anything could survive for very long without love. It is love that prods the act of propitiation. It is love that drives the maternal and paternal instincts. It is one form of love or another that perpetuates each species, and motivates them to go forward with continued aspirations towards ultimate survival. Love is the most powerful and driving force on earth that is at least obvious and observable. I tend to superimpose, then, that characteristic onto God Almighty. So, for me, my God is one of Love.

      Thus, I start with love – the obvious place. Love makes the world go around. Without love, we don’t have anything. God is Love. Take away Love, and there would be no God. It all starts, and ends, with love…God’s love.

      God, the Universe, the Father, is everything that is. God is the essence of life. I do not embrace a projection of God like that of a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a New Ager, or a Buddhist, or a Mormon. They have their version of God. I have mine. And you no doubt have yours. My God is impersonally connected to me, as God to me is not personal. My God is an impersonal projection that has come to me as a result of many years of learning, un-learning, learning, un-learning and then learning and un-learning still some more. You get the picture?

      He is not a friend of mine, in the manner of, for example, my friend Miranda, who is like a sister, and is a close human friend of mine. Conversely, in my mind God remains un-anthropomorphized. I try to see it that way and I choose to leave it that way. My God, however, is distinctly mine. I place my faith in my Faith, and I am not afraid or leery of having it challenged by anyone outside of myself. I retain confidence in the notion that nothing can really be understood. Neither can we, while human at least, carry on a personal relationship with an impersonal being. God is simply not that to me. I talk to myself and I am a friend of myself. And we could in fact, quibble over these theologies for days, and I might budge, literally, about an inch over to your side with you – though I am open to anything you have to tell me, and at all times.

      In my search for the Ultimate, I realized I was undertaking something of a futile endeavor as I sought to find some outside source or figurehead known to so many as God. The God I sought to know out there was really one who was in here, (I point within myself) and had been there in fact, all along. We can, thus, never be alone. This is primary among multiple points of my personal remaking.

      I like to image this thought: I was a baby, born into the unconscious hell of unknowing. I entered upon my birth and development into a more conscious awareness of this hell, and thus encountered in the process the conscious hell of knowing. After all of that, as a result of much more remaking, I entered into a conscious heaven type of knowledge – something that is going on still. I am coming to a point of knowing, understanding, and accepting – all the time. It is personal evolution at work.

      The heaven and hell in this case are not literal. They stand for the emotional conditions of chaos and tranquility we are born into; so no, I don’t mean them literally. What I do suggest by it is that, at first, I did not know about the chaos of my confusing condition of being human. Then with time, I knew. Leaving the boundaries of hell, and entering into heaven, I did so when I came to understand that I was inescapably, irreversibly caught up in the essence of all that is. This conscious heaven remade me into a person who knows that he is in God, with God and an unchanging feature and aspect of God. Thus, nothing can separate me from the love of God…when I suggest nothing, I mean absolutely nothing. This God I speak of, naturally, cannot be known. While I can be assured of knowing to that which I speak, I cannot know to whom I speak.

      …It has been years since I have fully opened up the matter of the deep contemplation of these matters for myself again. I entered a number of years following my Christian ministry pursuits where I simply did not wish to have anything to do with the whole sorry business of God. The way I usually refer to this is by saying that I tossed the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I discarded the notion of a loving God, because that notion was all tangled up in conditions and terms and rule following and such.

      What I now realize is that we make our own way through life. Like you hear many say, we make our own heaven; we make our own hell too. This one life we tentatively possess on earth can be a heavenly experience if we want that for ourselves; and why not choose that? The sum total of our choices creates the life we make. How will we go about the process of living our lives? That is entirely up to us as individuals.

      From top to bottom, and since the early days, my complete and total value system has been steadily remade. I had originally borrowed a huge group of secondhand values from my religious upbringing. I did not understand that these people were merely borrowing from other sources too, and that most of what they were basing their faith on was also passed down.

      After discarding nearly all of it, I experienced a serious value void. In short, I was about nothing, or at least next to nothing. I had tossed out the borrowed notions and traded them in for, well, nothing much in particular. It left me rather foundationless, without an anchor in which to keep me stable or positioned firmly in life.

      When experiences came into my life, I had no guiding influences by which to govern them. I made wrong choices. I did things I regretted. I brought considerable damage onto myself – and also to others around me. The years passed and I reached a place in my life where I thought, Enough is enough. It was time to re-think some things. Hell, it was time to re-think all of it. It was time to go about the business of becoming self re-made.

      Some of course call it salvation, or getting saved. Others call it enlightenment, or gaining awareness, or illumination. In reality, call it whatever you wish. We are so caught up in our words. We all reach a time where we know we are somewhat fallen, and where we understand all too well the condition of our frail humanness. When we come to that time, we see that we are ripe for change. If we are wise – and this never happens in a day – we start to make little baby steps in the direction of a more happy, stable, mature life. Once in a while, we stop, look back, and are able to note with amazement the distances of which we have traveled. We see that we are on the right path and we then surge ahead, still more, encouraged by our progress.

      As for me (and as you will come to see) I don’t get all of my spiritual food from any one special source. There are some very good words written in the bible. I sometimes ponder more, those words inked with red. In some bibles of course, they are the Jesus words. Eclectically, however, I gather from everywhere, ideas and notions about life and God and the cosmos and philosophy and all things. I am constantly doing this all of the time. To my mind, it has brought about incredible growth and evolvement in my life. It has left me still searching for more, but satisfied as well. Some of us choose a path of always seeking out Truth, and can never be completely satisfied – and that’s OK. Old things are passed away – all things indeed become new – and this happens all the time, until such time as we die.

      I am on a continual path of being made and remade again and again. I view from the highest pinnacles of my projecting mind an unlimited God of the Cosmos. This God is no respecter of persons. This God has no favorites. This God is the Force, and nothing but the Force. Who or what can separate me from the love of this God amounts to what? To nothing whatsoever! Where is God? Who is God? God is in all places, and I especially note the Force to be at work within the living organism I know as myself. As to the question: who really is this God? God is the same God to one, and to all. The one that Jesus talked about is the one that the Buddha sought and the one that is not only available to us all, but inseparably encompassing all of us, whether we know it or not. All humans share in the divine. No one is left out in my projection of it all…

      This, however, is the trouble that we are sometimes having in the world of ours. When we are not aware of our Oneness with God, we are wise to take caution, for many negative repercussions are likely to follow. In the gaps between subject and object, comes all the evil that has ever been done by man towards his fellow man. We see this on every side of us each day as we live life, as we turn on the news. As we encounter each day in life. Only as we really want to know, will we know, and will there be occasion to come to the understanding that we can grow and become evolved, remade, with the advancements of time.

      It’s an amazing world in which we live. It is inscrutably unfathomable – the Greater Cosmos, that is. In no place in it – no black hole, no outer galaxy, no hidden door – does there fail to exist the causative germinating origin of God Itself. Under my own microscope of life and breath, I have put to test this elusive God hypothesis, and found it to be provable within my own mind and heart. No other proof, as such, is requested or required.

      …This loquacious book is about a lengthy journey I am undertaking. It is both simple and complicated. It is consistent and contradictory. It is filled with life, love, laughter, longing, pleasure and pain. It is the tale of lies, of revisions and of heresies. It is my story of what I see and sense. It is only partially theorized and incomplete, for the story continues with each passing day and night of my brief time.

      Of course this is what is also going on with you, in your personal journey though life as well. We are in this, travelling separately, yet together.

      Please consider travelling with me as I share some of my expedition, in the hopes that it will have some kind of bearing on your own. My hope for you is quite simple: That you uniquely come to know God and Life in only ways that bring no harm to yourself and no evil to others in your world. And though it sounds like a simple hope to have and maintain – I am really wishing for something very Big to come of it for you. Otherwise, why bother writing anything at all?

      Well, I’ve perhaps started off in the Introduction of the book just a wee big strong. It might be best if I would back off a bit? Maybe provide a smattering of needed background to all of this? I do want you to maintain interest and inquisitiveness as you read, so that we can establish value and significance in these discussions and you don’t waste your precious time. And we do, after all and hopefully…have just a ways to go.

      Further on, I hope you can process the words from me to you in this book in some kind of conversational way. You can, incidentally, read it like an unfolding novel, or if you wish, you can skip around, and experience ideas and questions I process less systematically. It can be done either way. And another thing: don’t get bogged down like I do sometimes. Instead of that, skim by my weirdness and on to something more palatable for you.

      But again, I would wish for you to suppose that I am chatting with you, and you and I are sitting together in a cozy place. That’s how I tried to imagine it during those countless nights of writing it. (I am, perhaps 90% of the time, one of those night writers).

      Now, to be real about it, I admit that I went off the deep end several dozen times, repeated myself repeatedly, and often waxed weirdly poetic when I was really mesmerized with the content of my wording. So, keep all of that in mind as you read. It’s not your typical book and I am not your typical writer. You will be the judge of what all of that means to you. I am just doing my thing: thinking and writing…thinking and writing, some more…

      …In the Beginning, since we humans first started organizing into small groups, we have made endless attempts to understand just why we were here. There is an innate curiosity about such things that is peculiar to our species and ours alone. For all we know it exists in some form with varied other life forms on our planet but there is no affirming such a thing. We share this lovely blue-green ball with countless expressions of life, and since we are the only ones writing books and talking about it, we sometimes think there is no contemplation of the deeper things unless it comes from the minds of us sentient humans.

      Other reactive beings aside, we can trace our inquisitiveness in the fossil record back thousands of years. There seems to always have been some form of outreach that involved our quest for God, and in its organized forms we’ve often labeled this outreach religion. Peering deeply into the human psyche, commonalities arise which can be traced back in time to early civilizations and then back still. What are they? What is it that brings forth an inclination to be religious?

      Stories of how we got here were passed down from parent to child for countless generations. These stories inevitably evolved into the various creation myths and explanations to address why we are here, and what our purpose for being here might be, along with what might happen to us once we are gone. These came to us with a full cast of heroes and villains as well - some in human form, most not. With time, most of the heroes and villains became extinct. This is because cultures grow up and then die, and along with them go their myths of life.

      I might interject that I strongly suspect wherever we came from we did so from the same place as did all others. We are not from different creators, creation plans or planets. We seem to be all beings of Origin Earth. Though perhaps (who knows?) different alien pod packets of us arrived at different times from different Alien Cultures – can we completely rule that out? Well, maybe yes…

      But we earthlings have changed and evolved through time, while remaining distinctly human. And while our purposes might be many and varied during our short encounter with life, they are roughly similar one to another. Also, as each of us closes our eyes in sleep, we enter into a condition that is not unlike one another. Dreaming, we enter a different world. Our mind-brains leave what we thought was self and go into other dimensions. Emerging from the underworld of sleep, we return to resume the pursuit of this self. Death is a prolonged sleep. It ultimately is the same for one and for all, as is birth. So, we didn’t come from different places and we don’t go to different places, though many would tell it otherwise.

      The answers to these questions differ and vary greatly from culture to culture and from one individual and group to the next. And along with our stories of origin and destiny and triumph we develop beliefs and points of view that address the various details of a busy human existence. You could call what I’ve said so far the reality of doctrine and mythology. Religions develop from man’s minds in order to give individuals and gathered bodies – and later all constituents within their larger groups – a foundation for living life. They came about to explain what was unexplainable.

      Events and experiences along the way needed to be understood and interpreted. These encounters each of us has will either help develop other parts of us, or direct us to conclusions we make about life in general. Invariably we will also confront questions that circulate around our behavior towards one another and how to treat each other. Out of this comes morality. Moral and ethical questions are often answered through the lenses of our religious probing, and our leaders, instructors and mentors are there for us to always lead the way.

      To reinforce the essence of our views on life, we established ourselves into separate, organized, tribes. And in so doing, we established rituals and practices and the more our individual faiths evolved (devolved?) it did so with increasing dogma. With this, it naturally came to be that certain practices became more sacred than other practices. Objects, too, became more precious artifacts, or aspects, of our functions and practices.

      If one were to break down and dissect the purpose for religious practice it would become quite clear that the causes of it are innate to the human experience. It seems we (our brains?) were programmed from the beginning to perform in certain ways, and when it comes to our quest for God, untold millions of us have sought Higher Meaning with these essential things in mind.

      Here is what a list of religious elements might look like in outline form (yes, I did do some research!):

      Mythology of origins

      Doctrine of beliefs

      Personal human experience

      Morality and ethics

      Institutions of religion

      Rituals of participation

      Objects and places

      Now, if one were to shun such things as a meaningful belief system, a background explanation of our origins, meaning in our daily encounters with life, a personal system of morality, and, to perhaps a bit of a lesser degree special places and objects involved in interpreting life, groups to support our thoughts and practices that strengthened our positions – then what might we be? Who might we be?

      Would we be better people or worse people for shunning these kinds of notions? As a result we did these things, in more sophisticated ways with time. But no one follows them like anyone else and thus we’ve have this great diversity of God/gods available and all around us, both from recent times and from our past. It helped us in certain ways then, and still helps us understand so much more than we would normally come to know. So, we keep thinking about such things.

      You can take these basic themes and you can emerge a fanatical fundamental religionist as a result. It so happens that the world is absolutely full of such individuals today. A young person asked me the other day if I thought there would ever be a world where we all finally got on the same page and began to see things the same way and put our religious differences aside. Of course the answer is a resounding no – not going to happen I said. There will always be too much diversity and difference of opinion and style for that. But would it not be wonderful and fantastical, if rather than trying to all conform and be alike, we all came to allow, to permit, the variances in our personal expression to be appreciated and accepted and tolerated without such molestation towards one another?

      That would be a very special and interesting world to live in I think. And I can’t help but imagine if that could ever be. In our freedom to exist, to create ourselves, it is important to jump in and get started. Hopefully your ship will sail far from the shallow shores of religious routine and security and out into the depths of great spiritual understanding. These two things are quite different you know - religion and spirituality. If this happens, you can say you transformed yourself from the natural human inklings to be religious, into something much more significant and lasting than that.

      …Coming back down to earth for now, let me wish your journey to be a lasting, long and purposeful one. I hope to see or sense you along the way. Stay with me as we delve much deeper into all of this…

      In asking the question of whether or not God and religion are just about the same thing, I would without hesitation come quickly back at you with, "Gee, I hope you are joking, right?" Of course they are different. In so many cases, they are barely even related.

      But there was a time in my life I had no clue that this was the case. So many years since, however, I’ve known they are different, and wonderfully so. And it is with enthusiasm I share this awesome news with you, possibly a young reader not knowing about much of such a thing. Religion is…well, read the chapter and you will likely know more about religion than you do now. Google the word; see how structured and organized and systematic the religions of the world are. All of that is religion; it’s like a tree, with many branches that extend out in all directions.

      God (to my subjective way of thinking: the real spirituality part of it) can’t be succinctly summed up so easily – on paper, or in real, day to day life. It is a lot of hard to describe things. A spiritual involvement in life is positive and helpful and important to our human existence. This is an existential world we live in. It is devoid of meaning and purpose until and unless the human being develops those kinds of avenues to flow in and through their lives.

      I have heard agnostics, and even atheists, talk about spiritual dimensions in the midst of their existence. While it is not a common thing to behold, did you know that about 20% of the population of America describes themselves by using the term spiritual but not religious? And I see no conflict in any of that. Religion cannot own spirituality.

      Spirituality exists on its own and stands by itself. It is in fact my own personal saving grace. I was very young when I systematically began to exorcize the demons of organized religion from my life. In those early to mid-20s years I readily grouped religion in with spirituality, seeing no real difference. That was a terrible mistake. Two decades later in my early forties things came full circle and I came to fully realize this. It was then that I began to reach out, to dabble, to delve into deeper senses of the ideas of ethics, morals, meaning and purpose. They were spiritual ideas and precepts. They did not put me off as the religious ways had done.

      They in fact, incrementally liberated me. The practice of them in chorus strengthened and solidified me as an individual and as a human. They provided so much of what was missing and what was lost. I fell a long ways from an artificial world of living a religious life, to an abyss – one empty and without value. I came to know that I would indeed be lost without the dimensions of spirituality that exist in my life now. Much of this will be discussed at length in the coming, but mostly the final chapters of this 2-part volume.

      So we never had to get religious in order to get to the good stuff. We can go straight to the core of things and fall deeply in love with basic spirituality 101. It will do nothing but make you many times more the person you ever dreamt you could be. It will provide a true light in the darkness of the existential abyss which is the Unknown and the Unproven. It will be daylight at midnight. It will shine into your heart – into your soul. You will feed endlessly on it until you are full and overflowing. Can you get enough of the good spiritual stuff in your life? No. You can’t. That’s why you want to turn the light on, and walk out of the darkness and into the light that it shines on your path. And then never stray from it.

      In my world it is not important to compare religions and decide who the winners and losers are. This is the case as I am not seeking the one true way (there is no one true way) and also the case because I am not auditioning a staged contest between religions to see who the champion emerges to be. I rather am merely involved in the meaningful pursuit of religions (as well as many other disciplines) to uncover more layers of the meaning and purpose of life, love, truth, freedom and God - to name but a few

      We are all aware that Christendom (as it was known to be called for centuries and what I will call it here) is famous for wanting to be king of the hill. Due to their dogma-based arguments from scripture to claim to have the corner on truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it’s their way or the highway. In the course of this, they categorically and systematically dismiss the virtues and values of essentially all non-Christian endeavors (as well as all religious and non-religious enterprises Christendom deems un-resembled of their own). They are the first to tell you that all religions are not created equal.

      All religions that have ever come down to us were not from Above. They were simply products of Man, in his innate curiosities and longings, reaching out to God/gods. But Christendom is different. It is God extending a Hand down

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