Whitewashed Tombs

I saw this on Facebook this morning.





We were at Holy Spirit. This was the priest who was written about in The Story.

The Bigger Picture

Susan,


Re being fooled: I guess it never really hit me that you would feel fooled and I am sorry that my deconversion made such an impression on you. Everything I said, thought, wrote here was 100% from the heart at the time. Why is it so inconceivable that people change their minds? They change when evidence doesn't line up with what reality shows. That is not to say that this is the end of learning and growing, not at all.


In being so laser-focused on Christianity and especially on the Bible narrowed my view. Now that I've been able to zoom out, see that this is only one of many religions, all of which espouse truth, has opened my mind to other possibilities. Maybe we're all saying the same thing in different ways.


I've said here a few times that if I would have just stuck to what I had in the beginning, without trying to make it all make sense, I would probably still believe. Maybe all those years of trying to make it make sense were a waste of precious time.


I'm still not completely given up on Spirituality, In fact, I think in many ways the rise and fall of religion for me was a necessary journey.


Not sure what I mean by that, but I'll leave it for now.





I've been looking into many things and a recent trip to our local Hindu Temple has piqued my interest about this faith tradition.

 No, I'm not a Hindu now, I just find it interesting that for all those years, I completely ignored a huge belief that I knew nothing about. All those people who see God in a different way, with their own traditions, scriptures, visions, saints are part of humanity also. I am glad to be seeing a bigger picture.


Also, I do think in retrospect listening to and watching so many different teachings and preachers stunted my own growth as to me not trusting the still small voice inside me.



Peace

Jesus and Prophecy- 3 That don't Exist

When we were teaching Sunday School at Christmas time one year, we came across the first of these and filed it under ???? for the time being.





Matthew 2:23

Matthew 27:9-10





The video deals with these two from  2:45- 5:52 for those who want a condensed version. There is more in the video about other things, but I'm just dealing with these for now.



And one I found on my own when reading though Mark a few years ago.

Mark 9:11-13

11 And they asked Him, saying, “Why say the scribes that first Elijah must come?”
12 And He answered and told them, “Elijah verily cometh first and restoreth all things, and how it is written of the Son of Man that He must suffer many things and be set at nought.
13 But I say unto you that Elijah has indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they pleased, as it is written of him.”


Where is it written that John the Baptist (or Elijah if you please) will meet a fate that is "written of him?"

Prophecy and Jesus- The Virgin Birth

I thought I would touch on just a couple of these, as yaddy has provided some ideas for discussion.


To me, this is an easy one.

…22Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US. (Matthew 22-23)

According to the cross reference, the writer of Matthew is referring to a verse in the book of Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

If one reads the entire chapter, it is apparent that there is no mention of any future Messiah here, just a prophecy that a virgin (or young woman- the meaning of the word doesn't change the fact that this isn't a prophecy) will have a son and before he is old enough to know right from wrong, the land would have peace. (my very brief summary). That happened, prophecy fulfilled, done. Note that I don't argue that Isaiah's prophecy was genuine, either, but that's not what this is about.


Also, Mary and Joseph did not name him Immanuel, nor is he ever called that by any New Testament writer outside of this verse plucked from Isaiah.  It may seem like a small point, but God seems to make a huge deal of names in the bible, often changing one from another.


And that's it. That's the fulfilled prophecy that we are supposed to believe happened from an out of context verse in a book that has nothing to do with the future messiah.  

Prophecy and Jesus

I am grateful to have readers who are in disagreement as it gives me a chance to do more digging into the truth of things. Even if we all end up never changing from our original stance on an issue, giving both sides a fair hearing is (for me) the only intellectually honest thing to do.

In my case I have been on the other side, so I can say without any reservation that I understood it, or at least believed it for a time, so there is nothing new there that I don't really know. Or do I? I don't know I guess I'll have to see. 

In a recent comment yaddy states:

To prophecy is to tell the future....the one you talked about has not happened yet, but will/can still happen

The prophecy I was talking about was this one:

From the book of Matthew:

Setting the context, Jesus is talking to his real-time disciples.

24 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:

21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

25 Behold, I have told you before.

26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Clearly this didn't happen, or Christians would not still be waiting.  As yaddy states, it has not happened yet, yet Jesus said it would in the lifetimes of the people he was speaking to.  It was this realization that forced me to drop the premillennial, dispensational eschatology and begin to explore preterism. There is a whole other set of problems there, but that's not part of this discussion.

I will touch on OT prophecies that Jesus was said to have fulfilled in some upcoming posts. This has been done by many others, but I think it couldn't hurt to get my own take on it, and it will allow me to look at them again and see if there is something I'm missing.

Historical vs. Mythical Jesus

In the comments section of my last post Bob asked,

Are you saying that Jesus did not exist or that the stories in the gospels are embellished accounts of his life?

I have to say that I haven't come to any conclusions about this totally, but over the past year or so in trying to piece a lot of things together, I did discover the idea that maybe Jesus was just another myth. A couple of things popped out at me here and there that led me to search this out, but I'll get to them later.


I found that there are more and more scholars beginning to wonder this as well. I'm keeping an open mind about this as a seeker of truth.



Here is a lecture by Richard Carrier and his theory. Granted, I haven't done all the homework myself, but I do here and there little by little as time allows.

To me, a mythical Jesus would explain quite a bit, but like I said, I'm still keeping an open mind about all of it. 

The Devil's Holiday

It's that time of year again.

I love the fall, at least the still warm and the leaves are still turning pretty colors part of early fall. It seems somehow magical.  I don't much like the rainy, drizzly, here comes winter part of late fall, but it's still early.


Hubby has always hated the fall. He says there is evil, death in the air. Everything is dying.


I guess I never really had thought of it that way. When we were kids, it was time for the school's fall festival, caramel apples, getting to wear our Halloween costumes to school, and lots and lots of candy.


My kiddos have always had a pretty lame Halloween, especially during the times when I was really uneasy about "celebrating" it or any other holiday for that matter (even Christmas- see: Saturnalia). The only safe one was Easter, but please don't call it that.


I have a new found apprecation for the holidays now (any and all) outside of religious trappings. Halloween, dying and death- but going out with a bang. Staving off evil spirits that would take our souls with costumes and scary pumpkins and such. I can totally see how we invented all this. The winter holidays, the lights and decorations, the hushness and solemnity of nature dormant for a time. And then spring! Resurrection- all is new again in the cycle of death and rebirth.



I still don't like the idea of the kids roaming the neighborhoods around here to trick or treat, although I'm no longer against it in theory- it's just not the best neighborhood. They always go to our immediate neighbor's house and the grandparents spoil them as well, so they aren't missing much. I'll probably buy some over-priced candy myself for them and we'll have our little thing.


I see all the churches 'round doing their non-Halloween version of Halloween, too. As long as there is candy, the kiddos won't care what you call it.

An Involuntary Testimony

I was watching this deconversion series for the second time yesterday and the last part especially spoke to the things I can't always articulate.

At about 5 minutes in:

Christians can acknowledge many ways a person can become an ex-Christian except for one: except for the most genuine: a broken Christ-follower who tries desperately to not become an atheist but is finally forced to accept that the message of Christianity, that Christ died for your sins, that you are defective by your nature, corrupt and lost without God, is not true.

And if that happened to you, would it be your fault, or would that make your life an involuntary testimony of the poverty of Christianity?

I had written a post a few years back titled "Broken". I thought about re-posting it, but it was just basically me struggling with my sins and unworthiness. I remember that day clearly sitting at the old family computer in the morning, my soul writhing with anguish that I would ever be good enough. That my sins were too great, that I hadn't followed closely enough, or loved enough, or been obedient enough.  (I know, it's not about me, but what He did for me) but I have to tell you that was never very much comfort.



It didn't make sense.



And now looking through the archives of the old blog this morning, I can see how the whole thing was a deconversion of sorts, an unintentional one. Since the first day I started to blog, I guess I was trying to make my case for God, for Christ, why it all was true- letting my little light shine.


I dug, I prayed, I read and studied. I asked the hard questions. I know others come to different conclusions.

A Brief History of God

One commenter on yesterday's post wrote that the Bible may have been the work of ordinary humans with very human agendas.



It reminded me of a video I had watched sometime ago.

I remember reading in our kids' homeschool curriculum about a certain Pharaoh who tried monotheism. It didn't stick.


In a previous video the narrator talks about John Shelby Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die.  

What we see in this History of God is that religion, God, or at least our concept of god changes and those changes must come in order for the religion to survive.

What About Morality?

Someone asked me recently about morality. I told that person that I don't feel like I'm any different of a person now as far as my behavior goes and that the only real thing that has changed is that I don't feel guilty all the time anymore.


What is right and wrong and how do I steer that ship without a biblical compass?


I don't know if there is a absolute objective morality, I'll let the philosophers hash that one out, but to me it pretty much lies in what we all consider to be the Golden Rule.


This video raises some interesting points. (Warning for a bit of "language" toward the end):

Your commitment to this book puts you at odds with your own inherent sense of morality.



When he said that I thought, YES, that. So many times I ended a bible reading session scratching my head at what in the world God was doing and how that could be right.



One story that has always bothered my husband was the relationship between David and Michal, the daughter of Saul. Go ahead and read that if you still want to look up to David as the great man of faith that we all have been told. Yes we know that David was remorseful in the whole Bathsheba and Uriah incident, but not here.


One more quote from the video:

Give credit to that sense you have that tells you that NO MATTER THE CONTEXT hurling rocks at an adulterous young women until she dies as a result of it is nothing less than obscene, barbaric cruelty.


I ignored that sense for far too long and it is my hope that other people would really stop to think about it as well.