Jim Palmer's Blog, page 81

God is not a belief-system

God is not a belief-system.

Jesus is not a religion.

Christianity is not a check-list.

Church is not an address.

The Bible is not a book of doctrines.

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.

Life is not a warm-up for Heaven

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.

A witness to the journey of being human

For the month of December, make a financial contribution to my ministry and receive a copy of my new quote book, Life Is My Religion: A Raw, Honest, Messy, Unfiltered, Hopeful and Inspiring Witness to the Journey of Being Human.

Issac D’Israeli wrote, “The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.”

The first major writing/editing project I ever did (many moons ago) was a compilation of quotes. In doing my research I quickly learned that most quotes books aren’t very good. Typically, about half the quotes are pat-answer don’t-worry-be-happy kinds of hopes, and most of what remains are “same ole, same ole” quotes we have all heard before. This is unfortunate because there are many extraordinary things people have said about the journey of life that are worth hearing. The best quotes don’t just lay around for everyone to find; you have to go digging for them. Writers are usually literary diggers. Good writers are widely-read readers, and have an antenna up for the unique and powerful ways people express themselves in words.

I decided to compile a book of quotes, some of which I have used on Facebook and some you have never seen. The book is entitled: Life Is My Religion: A Raw, Honest, Messy, Unfiltered, Hopeful and Inspiring Witness to the Journey of Being Human.

The last year or so I’ve been trying to make my way as a writer off the grid of traditional publishing. It came to head with my last book when my publisher wanted to censor my message, and ultimately canceled my book contract because I wouldn’t. My next writing project is the Religion-Free Bible, which is also going to be an independent project and publication.

It’s not easy going off the traditional publishing grid. Back in the day, I would receive a financial advance to write a book, which provided a measure of financial predictability and security. Those days are gone. I HATE talking about money and finances. I always have. That was a big motivation for my leaving “professional ministry” – I didn’t like the way money influenced what happened. That’s a whole other story. The bottom line is that I depend on people who find value in what I do to help make it possible through financial support.

So, this is my year-end “ask.” I wrote an Introduction, and selected all the quotes, and Heather compiled them into PDF form. Eventually, after we figure out how, we will convert it to Kindle on Amazon. But for now, a PDF. In exchange for a year-end contribution to help support what I do, you’ll receive the book of quotes. I think you’ll find it’s worth it. You can access my PayPal to make a contribution by searching with the email address: religionfreebibleproject@gmail.com or you can click the PayPal Button above. With whatever email address you use to make the contribution, I will send you the PDF book, Life Is My Religion: A Raw, Honest, Messy, Unfiltered, Hopeful and Inspiring Witness to the Journey of Being Human.

15 Things Jesus Didn’t Say

15 things Jesus Didn’t Say:

“For God was so disgusted with the world and you that he gave his one and only Son.”

“I have come to bring you a new religion.”

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have correct theology.”

“If anyone would come after me, let him disparage all other religions and their followers.”

“If you love me, you will regularly attend a church of your choice… within reason.”

“Blessed are the tithers for they shall be called the children of God.”

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in Heaven after the earth goes up in flames and destroyed.”

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ which means the people with whom you attend church and relate to in your Christian sub-culture.”

“In my Father’s house there are a limited number of rooms. But no worries, there is plenty of room in Hell.”

“The kingdom of God has come!… Well, not exactly. I mean, not completely. Let’s face it, the really-real kingdom comes after we die. Hang in there. It won’t be long.”

“And you will know the truth and the truth will make you superior to all the other simpletons who never learned Greek or Hebrew.”

“You are the light of the world… well… in a sinful-filthy-scum kind of way.”

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you a checklist of things to do and not do in order to remain in God’s favor.”

“For God so loved the world… you know like theoretically… as in, God loves the big ‘W’-world. But when it come to you specifically, that are quite a few things that would need to change for God to actually and specifically love… or even like… YOU.”

“He appeared to his disciples over a period of 40 days and spoke about how to incorporate his life and teaching as a 501(c)3, and go into all the earth to build mega-churches in his name.”

Should you care about 12.12.12?

Should you care about 12.12.12? Well, it’s not for me to say but I decided to look into it. What follows is an attempt to convey a view of what 12.12.12 is about and why it is significant. I’m sure there are many views about if and how 12.12.12 is significant. What follows is what I found in researching one view of it.  Whether any of this resonates with you or not, I thought it might be useful to unpack one interpretation of 12.12.12 that many people ascribe to it. After all, we all are going to be talking about it all day!

At the end I’ve written 6 questions to help you make 12.12.12 a significant day for you and your life.

Here goes…

December 2012 is a marker set in time by time. There needed to be a message through time to awaken you to the opportunity for your enlightenment. Many cultures have predicted there would be a generation of change and enlightenment of some sort. But little was pointing to when this might occur in your future. Thus a marker was set so that you would look to this time and awaken to the potential of the era that would follow.

The date represents a window of possibility for an evolutionary leap. In other words, this time was planned to be an opening and the forces to create this were aligned accordingly. The marker was set for you to begin exploring the possibility. This opening is about the realization of your power to create a new world on a date that you globally decide to create it.

As it stands, December 2012 is wide open for this probability, and many are seeing the potential for something great to occur and for the old ways to die. Again, you decide how miserable the death of the old way will be. Will it be a smooth passing with a smile of bliss, or will it go down with a fight? Since the opening is now well established, many will go through it no matter what. How gently you will go is a matter of speculation. The energy is available for a profound awakening to spontaneously occur in December, 2012, following several smaller awakenings that have been and will happen all year.

You are set to see global insights come rushing forth on or around the date of 12.12.12. This day will be the gateway to what will be a final walk through on 12.21.12. One date is preparation for the other.

Numerology is significant in the universe. Firstly, you can plainly see that the number 12 is prominent within these dates. 12 is a number of universal import and you see its repeating patterns in your culture; 12 hours of the day, 12 months of the year, 12 in a dozen, 12 zodiac signs, 12 apostles, and 12 days of Christmas, for example. These relationships are not a coincidence, nor are they about convenience.

Within the 12 you find the number 3; the sacred trinity, third chakra, and number of creation. It is universal that when you put two things, ideas, or what have you, together, a third is naturally created. In these December dates, you have three threes. This equals 9. Thus the creational value is tripled and the result is the completion of a cycle, which is a meaning inherent in the number 9. From this we can plainly see the vibrations at play of creation and completion, in the cycle of development.

These two dates, 12.12.12 and 12.21.12 are divinely linked. The 12.12.12 is the gateway to what will transpire on 12.21.12. Thus, the gateway that you align with on the first date will determine what world you see when the gate opens on the following date. Are we saying it is important what you are doing and being on these dates? Yes, and particularly where you are and what you are focused upon on 12.12.12 will be significant. Needless to say, what you will be focused on will likely be determined by all you have done in preparation during this year 2012 and leading up to it.

Given all this, it is hoped that you will allow your soul to open to your highest state of being for these dates. The predictions of December 2012 are true and real. However, you will determine what and how they will manifest. Allowing the fruit from the old tree to fall to the ground and rot away will be beneficial to your Earth. What new seed you plant, and in what soil, is now up to you. What seeds will you plant at the gateway to flourish on your new fertile soil as you walk into the threshold of your new world? This is more than a metaphor, and numbers speak of more than mathematical calculations.

That said, give consideration to where you will be on 12.12.12 and 12.21.12. Be in a place that you feel is, or will be, a gateway place for you on December 12 and in a place to see fruition on December 21. The gateway for you may be to face a fear, or it may be a place that encourages you to come into a new power. It may be a place that you feel you can reconcile and bring new truth to the past. Perhaps it is a place that needs transformation and you will go to aid in that for the location, and for your soul. Even if the spot is your backyard, do not take it as if it is just another day. Make it a gateway day of import for your soul. Have a special ritual or create a sanctuary in your yard that will be your symbolic, and perhaps real, gateway to your next dimension of being.

Have fun with the symbolism of your gateway crossing, and use it in a way that becomes real for you. In other words, you may really want to cross a bridge to somewhere else. Or you may want to actually build a bridge on 12.12.12 and cross it on 12.21.12.

This can be a literal bridge, or be something in your life that represents a bridge for you. Think big. Go beyond what your limits allowed in the past. Stretch yourself and use your imagination in the creation of your gateway and your following threshold. Do it all with a lightness of being, and a sense of soul purpose.

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Here are 6 questions to help maximize your 12.12.12:

1) What old and self-sabotaging story about yourself are you carrying around in life that you need to bury once and for all?

2) What new possibility is it time for you to begin courageously creating in your life, starting today?

3) You are not limited to the person you have become. Imagine a new way of being you that you get to create, which deeply resonates with your heart, soul, and spirit. Describe that person in writing.

4) The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Where is it in your life that you need to do things differently, and explore a new way of thinking or being?

5) Share one of the above items with others. In other words, share with a friend the story you’ve decided to bury, or share the new possibility you are creating for your life. Write a post about where you plan to do things differently in life, or new ways you are exploring what it means to be you.

6) Do something symbolic to represent the significance of today as a new starting line in your life. Walk that bridge. Bury something in the ground. Cast something into the waters. Watch that balloon float into the sky. Create a collage that artistically expresses the significance of today for you. Get a tattoo that holds signifi9cance. Whatever it may be for you, do something that is physical or sensory oriented that connects you to the meaning of today for you.

The question of what Christianity really is.

Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer penned some provocative letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels “religionless Christianity.” Below is one of them…

“To Eberhard Bethage, April, 1944:

What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience–and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as “religious” do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by “religious.”

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the “religious a priori” of mankind. “Christianity” has always been a form–perhaps the true form–of “religion.” But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless–and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any “religious” reaction?)–what does that mean for “Christianity”? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our “Christianity,” and that there remain only a few “last survivors of the age of chivalry,” or a few intellectually dishonest people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them? If we don’t want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity–and even this garment has looked very different at different times–then what is a religionless Christianity?

The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God -without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even “speak” as we used to) in a “secular” way about God? In what way are we “religionless-secular” Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?

The Pauline question of whether [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from [circumcision] is also freedom from religion. I often ask myself why a “Christian instinct” often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, but which I don’t in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, “in brotherhood.” While I’m often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people–because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it’s particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable)–to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course.

The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village…How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I’m thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon. It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall a heavy responsibility.”

(Image by flordelys-stock / deviantart.com)

What is a “Religion-Free” Bible?

We want to keep the process of creating the first Religion-Free Bible open, fluid and accessible. More on that later in another post. So, the question came up, what is “religion” and what does “religion-free” really mean?

The word “religion” comes up a lot. It was in the title of my first book, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you). It’s in an often-used phrase of mine, “Life is my religion.” Then there’s my latest endeavor – The Religion-Free Bible Project.

Whatever “religion” is, it certainly isn’t one thing we all agree on. For some people, “religion” is a dirty word while others equate religion with profoundly encountering, experiencing and expressing the sacred or divine. Sometimes people think of their particular religious tradition. There are an endless number of meanings people apply to the word “religion,” and it can sometimes shift meanings depending on the context.

The phrase “shedding religion” refers to the journey of deconstructing your faith and letting go or unlearning those mentalities, beliefs, attitudes and actions that corrupt our relationship with ourselves, God, others and life.

When I say, “Life is my religion,” I’m essentially saying that the sacred or divine isn’t something I have to insert into life or go looking for, but is inseparably part of everything, everywhere, everyone and all the time.

Today there was a discussion about what “religion” means with respect to The Religion-Free Bible Project. What is a “Religion-Free” Bible? Inside this context, we distinguished “religion” as an organized process for knowing God or the divine. That’s not to say that this is what religion is. As previously mentioned, religion is many different things to many people. This is just what we mean by the word “religion.” So, the reference to “religion” is a reference to an organized process for knowing God or the divine.

What we mean by “process for knowing God” is a process for things such as: seeking and finding God; overcoming our separation from God; proper conversion for becoming a bona fide child of God; measuring up to the expectations of God; striving to properly align ourselves with the will of God; conforming ourselves to the behaviors or characteristics deemed becoming of a man or woman of God; sin management; training for living a godly life; gaining forgiveness and achieving reconciliation with God when needed; properly relating to people inside and outside one’s religious tradition; etc…

This process often established for knowing God includes disseminating and indoctrinating a certain theology about God, usually a set of beliefs or doctrines, often encapsulated in a creed. It’s also a process that determines a set of practices and behaviors to adopt for knowing God, and organizes them in a system of meetings, programs, classes, activities, buildings and spaces to support them. Religious professionals are hired to develop, implement, manage and oversee this process constructed for knowing God.

“Process” is defined as, “A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.” It’s a mindset – all the things we must believe and do to achieve the result of having a relationship with God; all the things we must believe and do to achieve being accepted by God; all the things we must believe and do to achieve being the kind of person God wants us to be; all the things we must believe and do to achieve the fulfillment of God’s purpose for our lives; all the things we must believe and do to achieve staying connected to God and under God’s protection and blessing; all the things we must believe and do to avoid punishment and gain blessing; all the things we must believe and do to attain heaven and spared from hell, etc…

What we mean by “Religion-Free” Bible – is a Bible written without this mentality imposed upon it. What if this process is something we assumed and created, and called it “religion”? What if this process, rather than connecting us with God and the divine, only hinders it?

What if we are seeking to achieve what has already been accomplished? What if we are striving to become what we already are? What if we are working to attain what we already have? What if we are trying to cross a divide that isn’t there? What if we are trying to solve a separation that isn’t real? What if we are trying to find something that is already always present? What if we are trying to measure up when we already do? What if we are falsely dividing up the world in “sacred” and “secular,” and “us” and “them”? What if the whole idea that we have to get somewhere, achieve something, change something, improve something, add something, subtract something in order to have a relationship with God and the divine… isn’t true?

This is the conversation we are having about what “religion” is and what “religion-free” means. Let me reiterate, we are not saying that what has been stated above is actually what religion is. Religion is many different things to many people. This is just an exercise of what we mean by these terms. For the purpose of The Religion-Free Bible Project, we are taking the words “religion” and “religion-free” to mean what I have described above. It’s still a process of clarifying further, but this is a start.