God and Evil

I’ve been wrestling with the problem of God and evil for a while. It’s not a typo. The problem, to me, goes beyond good and evil and forces us to confront the problem of God and evil. Christians claim that their religion is the only true authentic religion—the only religion that includes divine incarnation, bodily …

The System Doesn’t Want to Be Fixed

Consider the absurdity of endeavoring to change a system whose most fundamental premise is that the system shall not be changed.

The Factory

In the factory, the workers either sit quietly in the training room with their backs to each other or stand at their place in the assembly line doing rote tasks. The manager is generally the only one who speaks. Sometimes, he calls on someone to voice his opinion, but the context of the question leaves little room for free expression. The leading question usually invites an answer that corroborates the manager’s opinion.

Fighting Against the System

The creative power of humans is astonishing. I’m not referring to creativity in the artistic sense, but rather in the sense of our ability to create spiritual entities that wield a tremendous amount of influence over human actions. We refer to these entities as Institutions. Now I’m not suggesting that in creating institutions we create …

The Perfect System, Part 1

From the earliest days of recorded history, people have concluded that humans can engineer an exquisitely designed social structure that will shape society in  a manner that allows them to triumph over the human condition. Yet rather than acknowledging that human nature has remained fundamentally unaltered throughout its history, each succeeding generation has endeavored to re-create its own more perfect version of the Tower of Babel using various religious and political systems. Each has failed or is in the process of failing.

The Great Omission

And Jesus sent forth his disciples two by two and said unto them, “Go forth and develop marketing plans, with which thou shalt draw all men unto the institution that I am founding.  And bring forth some kick-ass logos to let the nations know that thou art hip and relevant.  Create programs that appeal to …

Above Criticism?

Let’s talk about criticism.  For starters, let’s understand what criticism really is.  To criticize something or to critique it, implies that you are examining an argument or a writing or a performance of some sort, and trying to determine its accuracy or its worthiness.  While there are nuanced connotative differences between the words criticize and …

Good Enough for Me

Never having been one to shy away from overstating the obvious, I can authoritatively state that I’m pretty critical of religion.  For the last two and one half years, this blog has been primarily dedicated to dismantling the lies and the walls of religion, and encouraging people to seek God outside the guilt, coercion, dogma, …

There Is No Formula!

My last few posts were a tongue-in-cheek look at the dogmatic, formulaic views of salvation by a few of the more popular Christian denominations.  I imagine that most folks who hold any of those particular views would be irate at the lampooning of their views, but would chuckle at the depictions of the others.  I …

The Word

What John (the gospel writer) called the logos went far beyond the word “word” as we casually understand it today.  John’s understanding of logos was probably influenced by Aristotle who used logos to refer to a logical, apprehensible truth.  In Jesus, John got a glimpse of God’s intent distilled into being and made alive before human eyes.  “The Word was made flesh and lived among us, and we beheld his glory.”