Let me start by saying this is not meant to convince anyone of anything. Everyone must find what resonates with them. This is what resonates with me.
I write this because I was brought up going to Sunday School and Church every Sunday. If I wanted to spend the night at a friend’s house Saturday night I had to go to church somewhere the next morning or I couldn’t go. It is something that is important to my family and it resonates with them. However, it increasingly doesn’t with me and recently for the first time I addressed this with my mom and my sister. I honor what they believe and for years I’ve gone to make my family happy and because it gave me a chance to sing but it has become increasingly frustrating and unfulfilling and here is why…
First off as a history major it is distressing to me to hear people talking about the Bible as a historic record. It is a book of faith and not historically accurate. Often people try to support their faith by citing the Bible as historical and that just doesn’t work. The more I learn, starting in college as a history major up to now as I am learning and expanding in the Universal Laws getting my coaching certification, etc. the more I find organized religions narrow and limiting. I will keep my comments to my experience I’m not a religious expert but all that I have learned about and experienced seems to follow some similar trends. (I do try and learn about other religions.) There are labels, and focuses on legitimizing. Judgement and in more extreme cases wrath and punishment. Now of course the more extreme cases are the exceptions. But even in a loving church there is a narrowness that I find dampens my spirit instead of lifts it. I was brought up in a church that says either the Apostles Creed or Nicene Creed every Sunday and I can’t really say that in good conscious. Here is a version and I will explain my frustration with each line.
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: Creator God is fine, heaven and earth is limiting, Creation is all the galaxies, all the Universe, every microbe, everything!!!! This power that created EVERYTHING is in EVERYTHING and Connects everything! We need to think more like a Jedi, the force is everywhere connecting everything.
And male? Really?
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: Here is the part where we have to prove Jesus existed, he was human and God and our Savior.
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: Human and God...
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell: Amazing fact of history? What has it to do with his life and teachings?
5. The third day he rose again from the dead: Defeated death? What is so bad about death? It’s part of the cycle of all creation and rebirth, still harping on the Human and God bit which, to me is not what Jesus was about, we are all created from Source (I feel “God” takes us back to that antiquated thinking about a puppeteer controlling our destiny and punishing) and are human.
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: Why must heaven be a place for rulers and separate from us, distant and not with us, in us, part of us just as the creative power is. And honestly, it doesn’t really matter if Jesus lived or not, or that he died! The point should be he taught love, he taught: so you do to the least of these you do to me. Why is that important? Because that creating power is within all of us…. The word became flesh and dwelt among us...not just the birth of Jesus but every single thing that has ever been created and born. He wants us to know God with us, Divine within us, we are one, we are love, we are the front wave of creation to be...not whether or not he had a birth certificate. And why do we need someone to save us? From what? The creation that is from the Source of all Creation? All we need to do is recognize that it dwells within us. There is nothing wrong with being helped or even saved but it has led to people distancing themselves from that amazing power that is within us. Or waiting for a rescue. It takes away that divine power that we were born with.
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: Judgement...fear mongering! There really is nothing worse. Fear is the lack of power. Love is the abundance of power. Again the wrong focus compared to his teachings.
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost: I kinda like the Holy Spirit but it gets brushed aside often as un-explainable.
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints: See already onto a new subject, poor Holy Spirit, where Jesus gets a whole paragraph legitimizing him as the real deal and not even mentioning his teachings. Universal (catholic) church...not with all these creative beings coming from just as many perspectives. Saints? Got me.
10. The forgiveness of sins: Sin? I don’t believe in sin. The Creator made us this way, we are part of the creation, we won this spot for this time on earth to expand the creation. Errors are to be learned from. And fear and judgement stifles creation yet the church uses it. It is nonsensical.
11. The resurrection of the body: More interested in the spirit than the body. You can’t destroy energy it just changes form, so if I decide to come back to this plane I’ll get a new body...if I don’t I’ll go on in the vast consciousness of spirit. Again I think this just promotes a fear of death, and thus a fear of the natural cycle of energy.
12. And the life everlasting. Amen. This I don’t mind, energy is everlasting, so be it!
I know not everyone is going to see it this way. But this is how I see it. This is what I’ve come to understand and believe. So much of what the church holds onto was created by humans to make it understandable to them, but it made it understandable to them 2000+ years ago. We’ve grown and learned and discovered since then and yet the church hasn’t updated or change much at all. Why are numbers dwindling at churches on Sunday, perhaps that is why!
I’ve enjoyed a service at a Universalist Unitarian church. It is more about the teachings of love and growth of spirit within us all than about whose religion is correct. But I also don’t really miss having a group gathering to worship together by not attending church. Maybe it is the introvert in me, gatherings of people are draining not uplifting, and so maybe I don’t feel the spirit as well that way. I feel much more connection to Source in meditation with a cat purring on my lap and walking on the Soul Plane with other souls than I do in a room full of people following some ritual.
We should be about showing our love to others. Listening to our fellow spirits. Creating and expanding our thinking. Supporting and encouraging our young and our planet. It doesn’t have to be a big movement, it is in many little things we do. If you learn to do all that in church, more power to ya! It doesn’t work for me.
I don’t know, maybe this still won’t make sense to my family. I don’t even know that they will read it. But since trying to express myself this has been rattling around in my head. You know an introvert works over and over again a previous conversation, perfecting it in their mind. This was my way of finishing the processing to move on.
I write this because I was brought up going to Sunday School and Church every Sunday. If I wanted to spend the night at a friend’s house Saturday night I had to go to church somewhere the next morning or I couldn’t go. It is something that is important to my family and it resonates with them. However, it increasingly doesn’t with me and recently for the first time I addressed this with my mom and my sister. I honor what they believe and for years I’ve gone to make my family happy and because it gave me a chance to sing but it has become increasingly frustrating and unfulfilling and here is why…
First off as a history major it is distressing to me to hear people talking about the Bible as a historic record. It is a book of faith and not historically accurate. Often people try to support their faith by citing the Bible as historical and that just doesn’t work. The more I learn, starting in college as a history major up to now as I am learning and expanding in the Universal Laws getting my coaching certification, etc. the more I find organized religions narrow and limiting. I will keep my comments to my experience I’m not a religious expert but all that I have learned about and experienced seems to follow some similar trends. (I do try and learn about other religions.) There are labels, and focuses on legitimizing. Judgement and in more extreme cases wrath and punishment. Now of course the more extreme cases are the exceptions. But even in a loving church there is a narrowness that I find dampens my spirit instead of lifts it. I was brought up in a church that says either the Apostles Creed or Nicene Creed every Sunday and I can’t really say that in good conscious. Here is a version and I will explain my frustration with each line.
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: Creator God is fine, heaven and earth is limiting, Creation is all the galaxies, all the Universe, every microbe, everything!!!! This power that created EVERYTHING is in EVERYTHING and Connects everything! We need to think more like a Jedi, the force is everywhere connecting everything.
And male? Really?
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: Here is the part where we have to prove Jesus existed, he was human and God and our Savior.
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: Human and God...
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell: Amazing fact of history? What has it to do with his life and teachings?
5. The third day he rose again from the dead: Defeated death? What is so bad about death? It’s part of the cycle of all creation and rebirth, still harping on the Human and God bit which, to me is not what Jesus was about, we are all created from Source (I feel “God” takes us back to that antiquated thinking about a puppeteer controlling our destiny and punishing) and are human.
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: Why must heaven be a place for rulers and separate from us, distant and not with us, in us, part of us just as the creative power is. And honestly, it doesn’t really matter if Jesus lived or not, or that he died! The point should be he taught love, he taught: so you do to the least of these you do to me. Why is that important? Because that creating power is within all of us…. The word became flesh and dwelt among us...not just the birth of Jesus but every single thing that has ever been created and born. He wants us to know God with us, Divine within us, we are one, we are love, we are the front wave of creation to be...not whether or not he had a birth certificate. And why do we need someone to save us? From what? The creation that is from the Source of all Creation? All we need to do is recognize that it dwells within us. There is nothing wrong with being helped or even saved but it has led to people distancing themselves from that amazing power that is within us. Or waiting for a rescue. It takes away that divine power that we were born with.
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: Judgement...fear mongering! There really is nothing worse. Fear is the lack of power. Love is the abundance of power. Again the wrong focus compared to his teachings.
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost: I kinda like the Holy Spirit but it gets brushed aside often as un-explainable.
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints: See already onto a new subject, poor Holy Spirit, where Jesus gets a whole paragraph legitimizing him as the real deal and not even mentioning his teachings. Universal (catholic) church...not with all these creative beings coming from just as many perspectives. Saints? Got me.
10. The forgiveness of sins: Sin? I don’t believe in sin. The Creator made us this way, we are part of the creation, we won this spot for this time on earth to expand the creation. Errors are to be learned from. And fear and judgement stifles creation yet the church uses it. It is nonsensical.
11. The resurrection of the body: More interested in the spirit than the body. You can’t destroy energy it just changes form, so if I decide to come back to this plane I’ll get a new body...if I don’t I’ll go on in the vast consciousness of spirit. Again I think this just promotes a fear of death, and thus a fear of the natural cycle of energy.
12. And the life everlasting. Amen. This I don’t mind, energy is everlasting, so be it!
I know not everyone is going to see it this way. But this is how I see it. This is what I’ve come to understand and believe. So much of what the church holds onto was created by humans to make it understandable to them, but it made it understandable to them 2000+ years ago. We’ve grown and learned and discovered since then and yet the church hasn’t updated or change much at all. Why are numbers dwindling at churches on Sunday, perhaps that is why!
I’ve enjoyed a service at a Universalist Unitarian church. It is more about the teachings of love and growth of spirit within us all than about whose religion is correct. But I also don’t really miss having a group gathering to worship together by not attending church. Maybe it is the introvert in me, gatherings of people are draining not uplifting, and so maybe I don’t feel the spirit as well that way. I feel much more connection to Source in meditation with a cat purring on my lap and walking on the Soul Plane with other souls than I do in a room full of people following some ritual.
We should be about showing our love to others. Listening to our fellow spirits. Creating and expanding our thinking. Supporting and encouraging our young and our planet. It doesn’t have to be a big movement, it is in many little things we do. If you learn to do all that in church, more power to ya! It doesn’t work for me.
I don’t know, maybe this still won’t make sense to my family. I don’t even know that they will read it. But since trying to express myself this has been rattling around in my head. You know an introvert works over and over again a previous conversation, perfecting it in their mind. This was my way of finishing the processing to move on.
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