Jim Palmer's Blog, page 56

There is nothing for you to defend or prove… ever!

So many of you need to be acknowledged… for all those things that no one else sees, notices or knows about you.

You’re still standing. That alone needs acknowledgement. No one can fully know the path you have walked, the heartache you have suffered, and the pain you have endured. It could have easily taken someone completely out of life. But you’re still here.

For many of you life sometimes feels like trying to run a marathon with your wrist handcuffed to your ankle. You’re doing the best you can under difficult conditions and circumstances. It’s tough and I know that, and you should be acknowledged for the fact that you sign up each day for life.

Many of you give so much of yourselves to others. You show up and you love. Sometimes that love goes unnoticed, doesn’t seem appreciated, and not always returned.

Some of you had been deeply wounded in life. Some have been victims of horrendous abuse, while others have fought the demons of depression. Many of you have experienced catastrophic loss.

Let me be the first to acknowledge each of you for your courage. Thank you for showing us that there is hope for every human being, whatever we have had to face and endure in life. Thank you for the love, compassion, kindness, gentleness and understanding you so liberally extend to others even though you have so seldom been on the receiving end of them.

You may come across people who make a hobby out of judging others. Maybe there are some folks who enjoy making sport of your life, or are so quick to judge you and your path. Don’t listen to them. It’s not worth your energy to concern yourself with them. They don’t know you or your life. Try not to let them get you down. Don’t give them permission to push into your life.

Look, I’ve talked and interacted with many of you and heard many of your stories. I have nothing but the highest admiration for each of you – who you are as a human being, and the life you are living. Many of you have been kicked down in life more times than most people could imagine but you keep getting up. This world needs more people like you.

Never apologize for who you are or your life. There is nothing for you to defend or prove… ever! Your worth and value was settled and secure before you ever took your first breath. You are good. You are beautiful. Don’t ever let any person tell you any different.

You need so much more acknowledgement than anything I could ever write in a post. You don’t need a special Facebook page to have fans. Consider me one of your biggest fans, and someone who believes in you. Someone who doesn’t pretend to understand what you have or are walking through, but someone who respectfully offers my acknowledgement of the miracle of you and your life.

Waiting on the world to change

Religion imagines a better reality to come later – after death or some sort of apocalyptic end to our current world. Many people are anxiously awaiting the passing of this world in order to get to Heaven, the perfect place and paradise.

However, our world first appeared as a paradise in the Book of Genesis.

Why do we not see that the state of our world currently has been created and conditioned by our way of understanding, acting and being? It’s convenient to expect God to swoop in and clean up or set ablaze the mess that we made. That’s not going to happen. God has done everything God is going to do, which includes you being a bona fide human manifestation of God’s essence and nature.

Think of the impact Jesus had as one person and a 30-year life on earth. And yet Jesus said we would do greater things than he did.

The big miracle is not escaping this earth; it’s transforming it.

(Photo by Darla Winn)

God is not a belief system

“God is not a belief-system.

Jesus is not a religion.

The good news is not a ticket to Heaven.

Church is not an address.

The Bible is not a book of doctrines.

Transformation is not behavior modification.

Community is not a meeting.

Grace has no exceptions.

Ministry is not a program.

Art is not carnal.

Women are not inferior.

Our humanity is not the enemy.

Sinner is not our identity.

Love is not a theory.

Peace is not a circumstance.

Science is not secular.

Sex is not filthy.

The herelife is not a warm-up for the afterlife.

The world is not without hope.

There is no “us” and “them.”

Tattoos are not evil.

Loving the earth is not satanic.

Seeing the divine in all things is not heretical.

Self-actualization is not self-worship.

Feelings are not dangerous and unreliable.

The mind is not infallible.”

- Jim Palmer

Addressing the misrepresentation of Jesus

Jesus was not a Christian. He is not the founder of Christianity. Jesus never encouraged people to worship him. Christianity is a religion created in the name of Jesus, and is much different from the actual Truth that Jesus taught. Were Jesus alive today, I don’t think Jesus would be a Christian. Jesus is still one of best-kept secrets because his Truth has been grossly distorted by those who claim to speak for him. There is a religion-free Jesus who belongs to all of humankind. Christianity does not own or have first rights to Jesus. His truth has universal significance. It’s often the case that you have to disentangle Jesus from institutional Christianity in order to uncover his Truth.

Contrary to popular belief Jesus did NOT:

Start the Christian religion
See human beings as “sinners”
Die in order to rescue people from God
Establish a spiritual hierarchy of “clergy” and “laity”
Create a theological orthodoxy about God
Write or read the New Testament
Advocate the hatred, diminshment or maltreatment of another human being for any reason
Teach that women were subservient to men
Deny the image of God in any human being
Believe that humankind was separated from God

I wrote two posts to clarify the ways Jesus is often misrepresented by the religion that bears his name:

15 Things Jesus Didn’t Say

15 Things Jesus Did Say

 

6 things I said about the Bible that received hate mail

(1)

“From the very beginning, there was no attempt at creating a single orthodoxy with the Bible. If there’s one thing that’s clear is that the editors of the Bible incorporated different and diverse traditions about such things as the creation story, the stories of the patriarchs, the story of the exodus from Egypt and four different views of Jesus, each with distinctive slants on Jesus. The Bible is not a landing strip for landing on a particular belief system or theology about God, but a spiritual launching pad setting me free to explore the height, width, and depth of myself, God, humankind, life and this world.”

(2)

“The Bible is not a club that you beat over someone’s head,

it’s a cup of cool water to a parched and weary soul.

The Bible is not a book of information and doctrines about God,

it’s an invitation into the reality of love, peace, and freedom.

The Bible is not a playbook for being more religious,

it’s a story about humankind’s relationship with God – the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly.

The Bible is not a book with a message about what’s wrong with you,

the Bible is a voice, whispering how good and beautiful you are.

The Bible is not a smack in the face about what you should be doing better,

it’s a tap on the shoulder, reminding you that you are never separated from what you most deeply long for.

The Bible was not written for establishing a belief system about God,

it was written as an invaluable spiritual resource for one’s journey with God.”

(3)

9 Thoughts To Challenge Your View Of The Bible:

1. The Bible is not a religious book.

2. The story of the Bible has value for all of humankind, regardless of your religious tradition or no religion at all.

3. The Bible is not owned by any particular sect of people, including institutional Christianity; the Bible is a spiritual resource for all people.

4. Contrary to what “they” say, there is more than one way to read, interpret, and understand the Bible.

5. People need to know that the destructive and oppressive ideas they learned about God as a result of their involvement with religion are not truly “biblical.”

6. In the hands of the people, the Bible can be an instrument of love, beauty, peace, acceptance and harmony in the world.

7. Humankind needs permission to walk away from the lie we learned about ourselves that we are bad, flawed, defective, not good enough, and unacceptable to God.

8. You don’t need an MDiv or PhD in theology to embrace the simple but profound message of the Bible.

9. Jesus could not and would not subscribe to what is often passed off as “orthodoxy.”

(4)

Why we need a Religion-Free Bible

Reason #12: Toxic Claims “Spiritual Leaders” Make About the Bible:

“In order to be a real Christian you need to know who the real God is, and how the real God feels. Some of you … God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is meritorious. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too. God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you. He has had enough.” – Mark Driscoll

(5)

What if a collection of writings, giving different snapshots of humankind’s relationship with the divine, were assembled into one volume?

What if these snapshots told a story that we somehow find ourselves in at every turn, including moments of profound beauty and goodness, and moments of deep heartache and sorrow?

What if the story includes chapters where people are getting God horribly wrong and justifying hatred and atrocity in God’s name, and other chapters where people are getting it right and living as powerful expressions of love in the world?

What if it’s a human story, a divine story, and a cultural story happening, evolving and intertwined all at once?

What if their is an unnamed brilliance, depth and mystery to the story that requires one to look deeper, read between the lines, and listen with your heart?

What if the primary plot or theme of the whole story is strangely fulfilled in the birth, life, and death of a divine nobody?

What if the story has the power to inspire love, peace, beauty, healing, wholeness, harmony, and goodness in the world, and transform humankind’s relationships with ourselves individually and collectively, with God, with others, and with life itself?

What if this story is the Bible?

(6)

During my process of shedding religion I put away my Bible for a season, and it’s one of the best things I’ve done for my relationship with God. I quit reading it. I tuned out preachers and others quoting or referring to it. Of course, I had enough horse sense not to broadcast my taking a break from reading the Bible, but it’s not something you can hide from everyone.

The results? God deepened his life in me during my hiatus from the Scriptures in ways I’m still coming to grips with. At the top of the list was the experience of God’s unconditional acceptance. For many years I carried inside and unspoken list of “what if” questions about the extent of God’s acceptance. I knew God loved me, in a general John 3:16 sort of way, but what if I didn’t go to church anymore… or have daily quiet times… or didn’t read my Bible? Would God accept me and love me then? Would I still have a relationship with God then? Would there really even be a God… then?

God didn’t stop communicating with me when I quit reading the Bible, which took care of several of my “what if” questions. I discovered a living God I could know and interact with in real time whenever I wanted to. The personal and intimate, accepting and loving Father God the Scriptures pointed to was real, really real! God began expressing himself in a variety of ways, which I had been oblivious to operating under the assumption that God only spoke through the words of Scripture. These spiritual exchanges between God and me occurred through such things as nature, people, art, film, music, and the still, small voice within.

For me, God went from being locked up in a book that I accessed during morning quiet times, sermon preparation, and Bible study to being everywhere all the time. It’s amazing what you can see when you’re actually looking… and that goes for hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, and feeling as well. It’s like God was always there but my radar was off, or only on during specific times and then only narrowly focused in one particular area of Scripture.

Update on Jim Palmer’s Notes from (Over) the Edge

If you didn’t hear the news a big push is underway to make Notes from (Over) the Edge available before Christmas in softcover and digital editions. There are a team of folks working furiously behind the scenes to make this happen. This is an independent publishing project with means we don’t have the funds of a major publisher to cover the cost for publishing and distributing the book.

On Friday we launched The Notes Campaign, inviting people to join the team to help release the book. Please visit the home page and read more about it. 

In just the second day of the campaign we pushed past the $500 mark. Thank you to each person who has made a contribution, left a comment, and shared the campaign with others.

You might be wondering: What are the costs that can be involved in independently publishing a book? Here’s an article that identifies many of these costs.

The Notes Campaign runs for 30 days. The cost of self-publishing Notes from (Over) the Edge will be close to $5,000 dollars.

The full title of the book was determined this morning – Notes from (Over) the Edge: Unmasking the Truth to End Your Suffering.

Notes from (Over) the Edge was originally slated to be a 60,000-word book. Well, I guess I didn’t get (ignored) the memo. I just kept writing and I stopped at 80,000. In addition to the Preface and Postscript, the book is broken down into five parts or sections. Right now those five parts are titled as follows:

Part One: What is required to know the Truth

Part Two: Bringing an end to your suffering

Part Three: Christianity’s distortion of the person, message and truth of Jesus

Part Four: Breaking free of religious pathology

Part Five: Special Cases

The names of these sections may go through one more revision, but you get the idea.

Whether it’s a 5, 15 or 50 dollar contribution IT DOES NOT MATTER! It’s not about the size of the contribution but the number of contributors. The Notes Campaign hopes to inspire a groundswell of interest related to the message of this book. There are “perks” at every giving level. Please consider making a small contribution and leaving an encouraging comment in the comments section on the campaign site. There are “perks” for every giving level. Consider sharing the campaign with your network of friends. Do not think a 5-dollar contribution wouldn’t matter. It does! Every contributor matters!Every dollar matters! Every encouraging comment matters!

Thanks

 

Simply loving my neighbor

I once dreamed of launching revolutions, sparking movements, mobilizing the masses, and changing everything. Now I’ve learned the beauty and profound significance of simply loving my neighbor.

The Notes Campaign goes public

Today we are starting a 30-day effort to get our ducks in a row to publish Notes from (Over) the Edge. The effort is called “The Notes Campaign,” and you can find out more about it by clicking this link. I appreciate the encouragement and support so many of you have been along the way with finishing this book. I hope each of you will feel like it was well worth it. The exact release date is still in the process of being determined, but the plan is for the book to be made available before Christmas. You can read more about it at The Notes Campaign site linked above. Please share the site with your friends. Thanks!

(notes campaign art/pic by eonsketches on tumblr)

Notes from (Over) the Edge update

Working furiously behind the scenes with folks to make Notes from (Over) the Edge available before Christmas.

Phew!

The road to truth is paved with no preferences

“Jesus said, “Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” The reason why so few find the Truth is because we impose our conditions and preferences upon it. We insist the Truth must look a certain way, including the path we take to get to it.”

- Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge

Photo by Forestina-Fotos (deviantart.com)