So, how exactly did I get from sickeningly-sweet goodie-pants to jaded anti-establishment feminist?

Let me tell you the story of my FREEDOM (queue seat belts fastening). I call it the Great Shift.

My life within organized religion is not entirely negative. I had two primary institutional church experiences in adulthood: Catholic and Evangelical. What appealed to me about the Catholic Church were its sacraments and rich spiritual past, especially the mystics. What I liked about the Evangelical community is that you heard the simple John 3:16 gospel message every Sunday. But the problems of both churches I tried to ignore, purposely turning a blind eye so I could stay within my comfort zone. Fortunately, there was a pea under my mattresses, and his name was Brent Arias (my husband).

For our entire marriage (about 18 years), something about the church had been getting under his skin, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Within the Catholic context, where we started, he could see that priests were not invested in their calling. Brent called it, "stir crazy". They seemed bored, restless, focused elsewhere and apathetic.

This led to a church led by laypeople, and the ones stepping up to take the helm were caught up in the liberal vs conservative debate. They made church entirely about expressing the freedom they found in Vatican II, throwing out the old, classic, strict, Latin, formulaic church for one of felt banners, people dancing in the aisles, and campfire songs. As it is, the Catholic Church was riddled with superstitious beliefs, complicated dogma, and a Hodge-podge of Saints to remove your focus from the gospel. It only served to make it more confusing that they were throwing in their agenda and politicizing the whole thing. Top it off with a priest who clearly didn't want to be there, and it was enough to take my husband's fervent faith and make him wonder if there was a God at all.

We spent the first ten years of our marriage searching for a Catholic Church that seemed to "get it", to no avail. Following that, we spent a span of time going to no churches. At this point, my husband's beliefs turned toward pantheistic (God is all things), and I found Jesus and church to be in my yoga practice.

Finally, we decided to try a Bible Church. The Fundamentalist world, though, is a whole other beast with its own set of problems.

For instance, they said out of one side of their mouth the gospel is "by grace you have been saved and not of works", but they still needed us to do LOTS of works. Including but not limited to: being actively involved in ministry, donating 10% of your income, reading the Bible daily to yourself and your children, attending Sunday worship and a weekday Bible study (cell group), praying or having "quiet time" daily, bringing your children to the children's weekday lessons, donating your time for various church projects, loving everyone at church like they were your closest friend even if you didn't like them, listening only to Christian music, and having friendships with non-believers with the express purposes of eventually converting them.

Not only that, but the overall church gave you the impression that God had multi-personality disorder. This is mostly because of their attachment to the Bible. They had to make the God of the Old Testament (genocidal, angry, jealous, unpredictable, mean) the same guy as the one in the New (patient, kind, meek, loving, inclusive, safe). Why? Because the Scriptures were the infallible Word of God, and nothing in them is contradictory. The Bible was on such a pedestal that it took on idol-like qualities. Logical reasoning to allow the book to not only express God's word, but also the ideas and misconceptions of the humans that helped write it, was beyond them. It was ONLY God's word, and you had to "literally translate" it (i.e. accept their translation).

The overall impression of the Evangelical world created a pressure-cooker for me. I was desperately hoping no one would notice that I wasn't quite up to snuff, and kick me out of the social circle. It made it all the worse that God, who could see all things, knew the real sinful me, and was very disappointed. Acceptance by God and the church community were EVERYTHING to me at that time. I also had the uncanny tendency to take on the Phoenix stuff-oriented culture, the mommy-has-to-be-perfect culture of my generation, and the immaculately-clean-house-equals-perfection culture and added all that on top of the mounting church pressure. I was a mess, and was raising my children with the fear of what others thought as my main motivation.

By this time, my husband was watching all this and getting more and more fed up. He went to church every Sunday, but he'd make us twenty minutes late every time, and have psychosomatic back pain like crazy the whole service. To my disappointment, not only was he refusing to go to the Men's Retreat every year, but he had no interest in climbing the ladder of the church and leading ministry. Since his background in theology and church history is extensive, I saw this as a wasted opportunity to impress the hell out of people.

But even worse, he'd say things like the members of church, in his estimation, have a lower than average sanity level. And to top it off, he kept repeating that even though he couldn't agree that there was no God, he'd rather be talking to atheists. At least they were sane. This did not go over well with me.

That brings us up to date with January of 2015. I pinned my husband in a corner and let him know that every Sunday, we missed the worship part of the service because of him. This was unfair, because it was precisely that part of the service which got me in touch with God and set me up for a good week. He then dropped a nuclear bomb, telling me that it was going to church that set him up for a BAD week. I said, "Well, then, we can't go to that church anymore, can we?" But inside, I felt as though my husband was making me choose between my marriage and God. And I was in love with both. That January was tough, because for the first time in my life I was thinking about leaving my marriage. Eventually, Brent could see through me and said, "You don't even want to be with me anymore, do you?"

So, January was very dark and dismal. But the light was just around the corner. We were sent an angel, my friend Teri, who was at my house one day and noticed I didn't seem to be myself. She asked what was wrong, and I let her know about my evil husband and his plans to ruin everything. Then she said something I will never forget, "Ya know, I haven't gone to church in eight years and they've been the happiest eight years of my life!"

​I was blown out of the water. For the first time I saw that I could have God and my husband, too. I ran to get Brent, told him what she had said, and right there on our driveway we had a life-changing conversation. She told me about the books, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobson & Dave Coleman, and The God's Honest Truth by Darin Hufford. I devoured those books. 

The first one set me free to realize that organized religion today isn't necessarily what Christ had in mind when he brought his Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. Also, not attending a church at a building doesn't make you not part of the Church universal, because the body of Christ consists of all believers. Those who like church buildings don't have ownership of the word "church". Lastly, gathering together as Christians can happen in any setting, and doesn't need to be formulaic.

The second book set me free. It broke down 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, which reads...

​"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

...and explained what it would look like for a God who is Love to have each of those attributes. It only took that chapter explaining how God is in essence Patience, and never loses his patience with us, to click a light on in my brain. I thought, "You mean, God actually IS Love, and I don't have to EVER be afraid of him?" The rest of the book was a confirmation of the Truth I had buried: that God actually is all we hoped he would be, all we knew he must be, deep down inside. No one need fear him. 

With my pressure cooker released, I became a new person. One who had no fear of sin, and didn't even think about it anymore. After all, nothing could separate me from the Love of God. I became aware of a God who delights in me and wants me to have the journey I choose to take, without pushing or pulling or disapproving or prodding. He lets me be me, and that's all he ever wanted anyway. I figured out that the gospel really is about Grace, that Hell doesn't make sense (because love never fails!), and that there is nothing to fear. I finally was able to look out of myself and see that the rest of humanity was just as precious as I was to God, so I didn't need to fix them, either. They would make their way towards Love in their own time, and that was perfect. It didn't need my constant attention. I didn't have to save the world, someone much more capable had already handled that.

So, no more institution and its lies. No more being inferior and subject to men, no more judging non-believers and "sinners", no more looking for approval from everyone. Wow, talk about a breath of fresh air.

I know that a lot of people who read this post will write me off as either going to Hell or leading others astray. Who gives a shit. I'd rather be my "evil" twin than die an early death from the stress of being "good". 

I will never give up my freedom again.

The problem of suffering is a hard one for the organized Christian religion. They are hit with the question, "If God is Love, why is there suffering?" about as often as, "Can God create a rock so big he can't lift it?"

There are a lot of canned answers, most of which go along the lines of suffering drawing us closer to God, that God brings good out of evil, or that we learn from suffering. I don't think any of those things are untrue, but somehow they fall short of hitting the satisfactory answer that most are searching for.

You see, we've all known suffering on some level, even if it's all in our heads. But some of us have known suffering on an extreme level. Take children who are sex slaves, veterans who have survived the horrors of war, or victims of 9/11. Some people can't even name what they are suffering from, giving them a feeling of being alone in the world (sometimes from unidentified sources like diet). Suffering can be so awful that taking the time to try and heal is too painful, and never happens. Or it can be so agonizing that the victim goes insane. How is that drawing closer to God? How do we learn from that? How is that good coming from evil? 

Part of it is a 1st-world problem. The American Christian religion doesn't understand what it would be like to be born into suffering, spend your life that way, and die after having an almost non-stop miserable experience. A child born with AIDS in Africa might understand, but not the typical American Christian. 

Recently, I took a step back and looked at suffering in the face. Why is a God who is Love letting it happen? I have no flipping clue. But I do know reality, since I'm living in it every day, and I've drawn some interesting conclusions.

Conclusion #1: God doesn't seem to be as concerned about suffering as we are.

Suffering doesn't pick sides. It hits Christian and Hethen alike. It's all over the place. A friend of mine once said, "If God's in control, couldn't we get someone else up there to take the wheel?" A point well taken. He isn't doing anything about it. It's like the energizer bunny: It keeps going, and going, and going...

Conclusion #2: God cares about us.

I have no doubt that there is a place within each person which is free of suffering. At our core, we are complete. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." It is there where we are at one with God, made perfect without the slightest need. We have peace, joy, etc. 

The problem being that most people live in the egoic mind and aren't much atuned to this inner space. Doesn't mean it's not there. And when we do get in touch, the love of God connects to us. He's there, and he's Love. That's what I believe, based on my own experiences. You can believe whatever you want.

Conclusion #3: This is all a big Sandbox.

This little terrarium called Earth seems constructed to be the ideal Free Will Experiment. It has laws like physics, chemistry and mathmatics. No one can change those laws. No one can "break" those laws. They are as solid as it gets.

Within the context of these laws, there is one variable: Life. The laws are like the sand, toys and walls of gigantic sand box. And life is like the children playing in it. Interacting, making harmless or harmful choices, and learning.

Naturally, although each living creature is acting according to its nature and, in our case, it's will, consequences will happen accordingly. It might be because of physics (throwing sand in the air might cause it to land in your eye), or because of other life forms (your neighbor might hit you over the head with his Tonka truck). Either way, the consequences are very real. So the choices are real. So, therefore, the free will is real.

Conclusion #4: God cares a lot about free will.

If God didn't want anyone to have free will, he'd have to put us in a padded cell, or not give us physical bodies at all. But that's not what he did. He put us here. And even though our choices might lead to us suffering or someone or something else suffering, our choices are never messed with. They are there and they are real. A massive Free Will Experiment.

Conclusion #4: This is a learning experience.

This world and it's situations cannot harm our untouchable inner self. From the safety of God's arms, the inner self watches, matures, grows and learns. An infinite spirit having a human experience. 

I must make it clear that this type of learning doesn't require a brain. It is soul growth, and can occur whether or not you possess reason. The soul is learning here. Everything, including suffering, is its teacher.

Conclusion #5: God cares a lot about union with us.

When you see God working, it's in the heart. He rarely does miracles on the physical plane. But miracles of the heart? He's at that every day, all day long. 

If you think about it, life is a two-fold path: Hope or despair. With every decision, you are choosing one or the other. With every attitude you take, you stand for one or the other. God's quietly calling us toward hope, and union, all the time. Saying, "Come out of the egoic mind, rest here with me in green pastures." 

The Christ came to show us God in a very tangible way. Jesus showed us God is indeed Love, Compassion, Mercy and Complete Acceptance. Jesus suffered willingly to get the point across, and made the miracle of Free Will living in harmony with Loving Union possible.

Final Conclusion: This world is necessary to give us Free Will AND Loving Union.

Perhaps there was another way. But Love dictates that if he could have saved us from suffering and still given us Free Will, he would have. There is something so INFINITELY IMPORTANT about free will, God thinks this world is worth it. Whatever. I supposed we are at liberty to disagree.

We must remember, too, that it is a huge assumption on our part to think that doing away with suffering would be good for the world. Have you ever met someone who's never suffered? They turn out pretty special.

All in all, reality is what it is. Many say God is love, and an overwhelming majority also believe in suffering. It is quite the conundrum to resolve, and the Sandbox Theory is my way of making sense of it. If you find a different way, God bless you.

Welcome to the final post on the topic of my metamorphosis. Here is the last belief of mine I wanted to share with the big, bad internet:

Belief #6: God is Love.

This one takes a lot of defining, because love is such an ambiguous word in our culture. Fortunately, Darin Hufford already did a stellar job in his books, The God's Honest Truth and The Misunderstood God. I HIGHLY recommend getting your hands on a copy. The book The God's Honest Truth changed my life. 

Here is a summary of my belief system about love, and how it would look for God to be Love, most of which are revelations from Darin's writings with my own personal twist (based on 1 Cor 13):

Love is Patient. God is in essence patience. He NEVER looses his temper. It's not even possible; he's patience itself.

Love is Kind. God is not manipulative. He does not give gifts so that we'll GIVE THEM ALL BACK. He's not looking for or needing our time, talent, treasure, glory or life. He gave us those things freely because he's KINDNESS, not to get something out of us. He wanted to touch our hearts with them.

Love is not jealous. AMEN. God is not a jealous God in the sense that he craves and deserves all the gifts he's given us back again. He doesn't want all the glory, either. Can you imagine a father saying, "I'll love you and raise you, but everytime you accomplish anything in your life, make sure to give me ALL THE GLORY." God is glory, he's got plenty to spare and lavishes it on us. If you've accomplished something, go ahead, take credit. And he doesn't envy your love and attention on others. To love is to be God to those people. He is everywhere in that.

Love does not boast. A boaster is codependent. They need the approval of others to feel ok. I think Jesus is proof enough that God is not concerned about his reputation. He doesn't want to make sure you know at every moment the difference between you and him. That creates a gap. He came as Christ to close the gap. Going beneath us as a poor, dirty vagabond carpenter, so that he could lift us up.

Love is not proud. Pride indicates a core belief that you need no one. God needs us. He is infinite creativity, the muse for all artists. Artists need to create. He is LOVE, relational, and needs children, like a young married couple that hopes for children. His creation and family are what dwells in his heart.

Love is not rude. God doesn't "tell it like it is" without concern for stepping on the heart. Every move he makes has our care in mind. A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not put out.

Love is not self-seeking. It is relational. God is relational. He is father, you are child. The father looks out for the interest of the child. The father didn't have children so he could take advantage of them for his own interests. That would be sick.

Love is not easily angered. So you can quit worrying about a God that "gives up on you", "looses patience" with you, "turns his face" from you, is "grieved" by you, etc. All bullshit. All the wrath God has ever had was dissolved in the person of Christ and his sacrifice. There is no more wrath. It has been satisfied.

Love keeps no record of wrongs. Thank God. I used to do that. Every time my husband was late, I thought he didn't care about my time and felt free to waste it. He's late a lot. I built up over the course of our 19 year marriage quite a case against him. I had a mountain of evidence. When I learned God was not doing this oppressive, destructive habit with me, it set me free to set him free.

Love does not delight in evil. He doesn't punish, use fear tactics, guilt and shame people, or give and take our salvation depending on our behavior that day. He doesn't take vengence. Like before stated, he died and rose to conquer all that.

Love rejoices with the truth. God is Love and Truth, so he deals with us according to both. Gently guiding us to discover what is real and what is the fiction in our minds, he matures us by exposing us a bit at a time to truth. He chisles away like water carressing stone at the walls in our hearts. Never jack-hammer style. Such a God sets us free to respect where other people are on their own journies and leave them be.

Love always protects. How does God always protect? God's love is like a blanket hiding and treasuring the deepest, core truth and essence of who we are. Often in yoga, I guide my students to "go inward" to that part of them which is perfect, pure, stable, still and complete. It is you, and it cannot be molested by the outside world. Why? Because it is covered in the love of God. No matter what happens, when we take the time to go inward, through the layers of ourselves to our very core, we find it untouched, content, and complete. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." The true self is never in want of anything, for it has LOVE to protect it.

Love always trusts. God always trusts you, because the first step in loving someone is to trust. You cannot love fully when part of your heart doesn't trust. His heart is all yours, and his trust is complete. He trusts in your way of being, learning, growing and becoming. The huge amount of freedom we have to act and become shows a lot of trust. Its the exact thing Church, Inc is so uncomfortable with. They want to box you in, so Christianity isn't just a big free-for-all. They don't trust Christians to find God and grow in love simply on their own, with nothing but the assurance of God's love for them to guide them.

Love always hopes. Hope is a trust placed in truth. Hope placed in falsehood is just wishing. Hope looks forward to what WILL be. Our value to God is not only who we are now, but who we will be. He knows our outcome, and is never without hope for us.

Love never fails. God never fails. That's why I don't believe in Hell. No matter how grim a person appears to be, they have a core self that wishes for freedom and redemption, that wishes for love. And they ARE loved. If they can't get connected with that enough to break free from their earthly hell in this life, then they'll be set free in the next. Love won't break them or snuff them out.

So there it is.

Love, 
AJ 

​Belief #4: There's no such thing as Hell. 

I'd just like to say here that according to the doctrines of the Christian faith, God is supposed to be the ultimate source of love and justice. Yet, the Hell idea sets him up for failure on both fronts.

His loving heart is too small to grasp that maybe not everyone's going to get it that the only way to heaven is through answering an alter call and "accepting Jesus into your heart." Can you imagine a loving, just Father saying to his kid, "You failed to trust me. Now, I will pour gasoline on your head and light you on fire! May you burn forever!! [insert evil laugh here]" 

Even the American justice system doesn't think the worst of offenders deserves to be eternally punished for screwing up royally. It believes in meting out punishments comenserate with the crime. How can any crime commited on the temporal plain merit eternal repercussions? Why don't people pull their heads out of the sand long enough to ask the question, "What kind of Satan have my beliefs made God into?" It's a valid question, and deserves some thought.

The God I believe in is Love, but more than that: Love with a Brain. My God has Logic down just as much as he has conquered things like Peace, Goodness, Mercy and the other classic attributes. But I know some of you out there might be attached to Scripture and think that unless I can prove from a Biblical standpoint that there is no Hell, I've got no argument.

Just to humor you, the concept of Hell as we know it nowadays wasn't present in Biblical times. They had three words for a place where souls go after death: Sheol, Hades, and Tartarus. And there was a fourth word, Gehenna, used a lot by Christ, which referred to a trash heap outside of Jeruselem where they would burn the dead. None of those words can be correctly translated to mean the place of unending torment we picture today, because the concept simply didn't exist at that time. Just like if you read a Biblical translation and found the words "cell phone" you might be suspicious of how valid the translation was, so too should the word "Hell" raise red flags. If you'd like more information on the Bible and the words Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna, here are a few references: Hell Defined I, Hell Defined II, and the documentary, Hellbound?

Belief #5: No Hell doesn't mean there's no point in Christ's sacrifice.

When the concept of not believing in Hell comes up, it hits some people in a weird place where they then conclude, "Well, if there's no Hell, there's no reason for Christ to have died!" Actually, that's not true. Humankind has most definitely fallen from grace. It is not perfect. But we have, deeply seeded within us, this concept that it "should" be perfect. We spend inordinate amounts of time and effort on perfecting ourselves, with our without the help of organized religion to egg us on. Perfection, that elusive human dream, is always just out of reach. But somehow, we think it ought to be ours and feel cheated that it's not. 

Perhaps it is a dilemma to have our cake and eat it, too. If we have free will, it stands to reason we might make imperfect choices that would harm us in tangible and intangilbe ways. And finding our way back to wholeness and goodness is apparently impossible. Seems once we fall, unless God stretches out his hand to lift us up, we can't get up. So, He did stretch out his hand. He manifested as Christ on Earth, saved us from our sorry selves, and now waits with infinite patience for reconciliation with us all. He gave us the cake: free will. And let us eat it: perfection, and union with God.

I don't think the lack of a Hell makes Christ's suffering, death and resurrection any less incredible. It makes it MORE incredible. Because it was good news for ALL humankind, and he was the savior of ALL the world. God isn't the head of a heavenly clique, letting in only the Christian elite. He made a path for all of us to follow, and allowed the complete reconciliation with God to be the end of every human journey. 

Given what I've just said, you'd think perfection would be a state we reach after death. But, I feel that is only describing the most obvious level of human conciousness. In the egoic mind, we cannot find perfection. In my own experience, exploring the inner self, I've found a place already perfect and whole that nothing can touch. Is it God? Is it me, with God? My intuition tells me this is so. Perhaps what Christ did was more than just a path to eventual perfection. Perhaps his sacrifice was that ultimate and epic anime blast going in all directions, touching the souls of the past, present and future, with the perfection they longed for. Truly making us a perfect race, where sin has lost its sting. 

Sure, on a purely egoic level, we can be caught up in sin and our own self-created Hell. But, we are more than inflated egos. We are infinite spirits having a human experience. Watching, learning, growing and maturing, but unable to be touched by it at our deepest, most fundamental level. Some of us catch on to the difference between who we really are and our thoughts, and no longer identify with them, going instead deeper into ourselves. And what we discover is bliss, a true self that needs nothing and is at perfect peace, united to God. That is enlightenment, and those who touch upon it have been enlightened for as long as they stay. 

To me, this life is a journey of reaching enlightenment, and then staying with God in your "Holy of Holies", your most inner soul, for longer and longer stretches until it becomes where you always dwell. It is a practice of remaining in the Truth. And being united to God in the inner self was made possible by what Christ accomplished. But, even if you never find it in this life, you are not lost, because of the God-man who came "to seek and save the lost". So, we can be utterly lost in the Hell of our own creation, but not forever. One day, we'll be reborn and remember God, and this Hell will evaporate like fog in the morning.

Moving right along: 

Belief #3: Fellowship isn't fellowship if you don't want to be there.

Ok, people. Let's get real here. You like some people, and other people are...a challenge. You click with some people, and other people are a dud. Why, oh why, do we fight reality? The human condition is fascinating. I agree with Ekhart Tolle. There's nothing quite so insane as disagreeing with reality. 

In the church subculture, there is this idea floating around which caused me a great amount of undue pain over the years: the AGAPE LOVE COMMUNITY. It is this idea that in the early church, and I'm talking year 0001 and 0002, people loved each other so dang much that no one was excluded or left out. It comes from this passage in Acts, if you care: 2:42-47.

From this idyllic community, we have steadily declined into the absolute hot mess of today. So, the church institution tries to fix this problem with forced FELLOWSHIP. That's where you are brainwashed into thinking you need to constantly get together with people you have no interest in and force yourself to love them unconditionally. 

The result is a group of people being entirely deceptive all the time with each other.

Don't get me wrong, it is possible to be madly in love with humankind all together and naively think each person you meet is an object of your fondness for the whole. And then get your heart stomped on, diced up and served for lunch to those people who are there out of obligation and don't give a rat's ass. How do I know? Ya, that was me.

I came in thinking "I've arrived, this new church will be the place where agape love happens, and I am accepted and appreciated and loved and hugged and it'll be great, great, great!" And then, the first small group they stick me in, I'd pour out my heart. Problem being, the people who are there out of compulsion are on the defensive and my effusiveness and honesty came across as a bit daunting. So they were rather cold. Eventually, I'd move on to another group, or another church, and rinse and repeat. I was sure that somewhere this agape community existed. I didn't find it. Are you surprised? I didn't think so.

Well, I don't know if it does. But I did find something close. You see, when I left the church, and got a little pissed off about it all, my true identity started to shine. I changed my name to my initials, got two tattoos and a nose piercing, sped everywhere and cussed a lot. People started to hear the real me talking, and not beating around the bush. I became a tangible human being. Amy the super-christian yoga rock star became AJ the super-cussing say-it-like-it-is reality enthusiast. 

Funny thing is, I couldn't make a close friend to save my life in the institutional church. Suddenly, outside of it, I had close friends coming out of the woodwork. There were frickin' cool people everywhere I'd never noticed before. And they crave hanging out with me! This is a totally new phenomenon. I decided to name it fellowship. 

The Catholics claim the holy book to be one of three authorities (the other two being tradition and the official church councils). Honestly, that sounds like an even bigger hornet's nest. But in one way I prefer it: they believe the Scriptures are written 100% by God, and 100% by humans (it's an official church "mystery"). So, they allow the VOICE OF HUMANKIND to be part of it. This leaves them open to logic more than Protestants.

They can, for example, admit the book of Job was an allegory, given that it has all the literary signs of being one. Protestants want to insist he was a real man. So, our God who is LOVE up there makes bets with Satan that involve our ruin and destruction, not to mention confusion and fear. I'd hate to be a Job, and who can say if that ever-so-perfect Father in heaven is still making those gambles with our welfare??

I promised in my last post I'd talk about my new belief system.

Belief #1: Anywhere you see love in the Bible, you're hearing the voice of God. If the Bible is claiming God did something unloving, that is the human world trying to justify itself.

Example: Imagine living back in Biblical times, and wanting to take over an area of land. You don't want to share it's riches with the existing population, but would rather just take them all for yourselves. So, you claim God called upon you to wipe them off the face of the planet. It's called genocide, people. When Hitler did it, he was (rightly) accused of being the most evil person ever born. When God does it, it's okay, because those were bad people anyway, and this land is supposed to belong to the chosen race. Sort of sick, if you ask me.

Belief #2: Prayer is not like giving a song request to the Holy DJ in the sky.

When it comes to this topic, I cannot get over the EPIC amounts of voluntary blindness that takes place. And I cannot get over how much I used to participate in it. The world is harsh and real. Bad stuff happens. It has to do more with choices people make and physics than anything else. I have no problem believing in miracles. But I have to say: the real world and my experience of it suggest very little to no involvement by God on the physical plain. I understand people waking up to this neglectful-parent-figure God, who didn't protect them from a bad experience, and not deciding to have faith that all things work out for the good of those who love Him. Instead, they quit having faith all together. How can you trust a God like that?

So, why haven't I lost my faith, despite seeing the obvious? Well, it comes down to life experience. I have felt the presence of the love of God within myself. I see that there is good in the world, and much that inspires my awe. I see God in others, and I've watched lives changed by love. And not just a mundane love, but one that is bigger than all of us. I have read and understood the story of Jesus Christ, and chosen to believe it was real. Why? It rang true.

I think God's goals are different than ours. He cares about the heart. I have found deep within myself a place that cannot be touched by the outside world. A place of peace, where I need nothing. The part of me that watches me have my human experience, but doesn't ever get caught up in it. God protects that place with love and joy; nothing can harm it. And I believe everyone has it. The rest of this is just illusion, created to give us true freedom of will.

So do I pray? For things concerning the heart, yes. That is where God moves most often. In secret, changing hearts. And I pray for the connection it brings. A prayer of living life "hanging out" with God, not necessarily using words. Just being there, and enjoying his presence.

Up next: My changed beliefs on fellowship, the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice and organized religion.

I have found out something of significance: truth lies in each of us. It is there because God is there, his Spirit at one with ours. I am excluding no one here. Truth is at the core of everyone. When we live in harmony with it, it lies still and at peace. When we don't, it sends up red flags here and there that we are at liberty to try and ignore. When we veer completely off course, we start to live at war with our own selves, burying truth and therefore, love also, so deeply that not only do we not recognize God anymore, we're at a loss as to who we are, either.

I say I have found this out like I just learned it. In reality, I had acknowledge it intellectually a long time ago. But three months ago, it was proven to me at a heart level when a web of lies in my life was torn away, and the real me, the truth, and love were left standing there, naked and surprised. 

It took a long time in coming. When you are raised in a certain paradigm, be it cultural, religious, familial, or otherwise, it seems so concrete that its hard to break away. I was raised in the Lutheran church, converted as a young adult to Catholicism, and then, without letting go of my attachment to my Catholic identity, began attending Bible churches around the time I was 30. This religious context touted certain things to be absolutely true. But they were raising red flags. I ignored them, however, because the fear impressed upon me of Hell and of being a bad girl was so strong.

Certain contradictions with the reality I saw in the world and my deepest sense of truth within me kept bothering me. Some of them are (anytime I speak of an ambiguous "they" below, I am referring to the leadership of the institutional church):

• God is love, but sends people to Hell.
• If you don't say the sinner's prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, you are not saved, and are destined for Hell. Babies who die early, down syndrome people, and millions of unlucky souls born in remote areas who never hear of Jesus are destined for Hell. Yet, God is love.
• You must acknowledge the trinity, Jesus's divinity, and the authority of scripture, among other core doctrines, to be considered Christian. So, again, salvation is based on the intellect and the luck of being part of the correct denomination. Yet, from the same pulpits they preach that what God cares about is a personal relationship with you. 
• The Bible must be taken literally. Yet, it paints a contradictory picture of God. One second he is loving and patient, the next he is opening up the earth to swallow people and wiping out entire nations. Love is trustworthy and safe. I cannot trust a God like that. If I do something too bad, I may get struck by lightning and sent to Hell.
• The Bible is the ultimate authority. And yet, it is not. THEY, the leadership, are the ultimate authority because they are the ones interpreting it for you. 
• They love to quote the verse that says you need no one to teach you, because the Holy Spirit will lead you to all truth. Yet, if your truth doesn't match up with theirs, then you have not been listening to the Holy Spirit. Obviously, if you had, you'd have come to the same conclusions as they did.
• If you pray with enough faith, you can move mountains. Reality contradicts this constantly. Prayer doesn't work the way they claim. Disease, divorce, dilemma and destruction happen with the same consistency in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike. Either they are praying wrong, or they just don't understand the basics of how the cosmos and the creator of it work.
• They say leaving the institutional church will lead to backsliding and unbelief. I belong to a "free believers" community which long ago ceased church attendance, and yet we still believe. http://freebelievers.com
• God gave us free will, yet he wants us to be his willing slaves, giving up our lives, futures, treasures, time and talent to his cause. All the blessings he gave us are not ours to keep from a loving father. They have strings attached.
• God gave us free will, yet at every moment we are supposed to discern what he wants us to do. If we don't, we might make the wrong decision and go outside of his plan for us. This isn't free will.
• God is love. Love is trustworthy and safe. Yet, we can "go outside his covering", "grieve his Holy Spirit", disappoint, disgust, or anger him. 
• God is love. Love doesn't take revenge, it forgives. Yet, God actively punishes us for sin and holds a list of our wrongs to make sure we pay. Either here on Earth, or in Purgatory, or if you're really special, in Hell.
• Jesus vehemently was against his disciples trying to set up themselves as authorities over each other (Mat 23:8-12, Mark 10:42-45, John 13:12-17). Yet, we have pastors, priests and shepherds galore, all touting that they know better than us, and dismissing those who suggest they may be making mistakes sometimes. It seems to be the habit of those in charge of the institutional church to stop listening altogether. That is the opposite of wisdom.
• Everyone who's not Christian is Satanic. All outside religions are Satanic. Yet, when you meet these people, they are normal, not Satanic. And when you study their religion -- lo, and behold! -- you find many noble attributes: wisdom, love, peace, goodwill, self-discipline, purity, holiness, grace, forgiveness, etc. God is everywhere, after all, and apparently there have always been people of every people group who got in touch with that.

Obviously, I have left the institutional church. We are the church, in reality. The body of Christ. A building, denomination, non-denomination denomination, or Christian belief system does not get to claim the title. Just because they do, doesn't make it truth. Jesus wasn't picturing the modern day church institution when he came speaking of the Kingdom of God, but instead was preaching of truth that sets you free, ACTUALLY FREE, and hoping for a unity of his believers that we don't see the institutional church helping to create. Once I figured that out, I felt I could escape. I do not neglect to gather together, as is the habit of some. I just do it outside the church building. 

My beliefs are now in line with the deepest truth in my soul. I am no longer fighting with myself, at war with what is being preached to me as truth vs the truth within. I'll write more in my next post on the conclusions I've come to, which may be subject to change, and I do not expect anyone to wholeheartedly accept what I believe. If you are in touch with your true self, and living life from your truth, I think you have done well. I don't need to convert anyone to anything. But, for the sake of sharing, I will tell you what I believe.

By far one of my favorites, Exalted Warrior gives me the joyous feeling of lifting up praises to heaven. 

• Start in Downward Facing Dog.
• Bring your right foot through and place it between your hands.
• Look at your back foot. Plant it at a 90 degree angle on your mat, and line up the instep with the heel of the front foot. 
• Windmill the hands and torso back and up, finding Warrior II. Keep a deep bend in the front knee, without letting the knee go past your heel (you should still be able to see your toes).
• Now lift your right hand high while lowering your left and sliding it down the back of your thigh. 
• Bring your gaze heavenward while lifting the heart in praise & thanksgiving.

If loving God with all your heart means offering up to him your emotional self, and loving God with all your mind means cultivating a quiet mind brought into obedience to Christ, what does loving God with all your soul mean?

First, becoming justified. Then, sanctified. 

There is no topic more paramount than the justification of your soul. Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan, sin and death were conquered. And a pathway was opened wide and clear for this fallen world to be reconciled with God. Your part to play in this is a simple yet profoundly critical choice. The only choice that matters. Will you take the free gift of salvation offered to you by the sacrifice of Christ? 

I have an atheist acquaintance who once got into a friendly debate with me over this topic. He said if he had sinned against another person, he understood them taking offense. But why would some God somewhere care about what he'd done? He hadn't sinned against that God, so why does he owe that God anything? At the time, I was unable to answer him. 

A couple of years later, the answer came to me while listening to the message that Pastor Caleb Campbell was giving at Desert Springs Bible Church. Caleb said that when God created the universe he poured out his love into it. You can see the care and creativity put into all things, from the grandiose galaxy down to the veins of a leaf. God is truly the muse for every artist there ever was, inspiring all human creative endeavors from Day Six on with the immeasurable beauty of the universe around us. 

And no creation was more favored than mankind. We were given a soul, and animated by God's very breath. He made us in his image. Every day he walked with us in the Garden, wanting to savor his relationship with us. We were loved and cherished. 

But we invited evil here.

When you have a child whom you love and adore, and you raise them with great care, and then they choose to invite evil into their lives.... it hurts. 

If you think of it from his perspective, he has had to sit and watch evil inhabit and destroy from the inside out that which he loves and holds dear. Because he gave us freedom, as unconditional love requires, we had a choice. We made the wrong one. And he was most definitely the offended party. 

Once evil took up residence here, we got what Adam and Eve wanted. They knew the difference between good and evil. But I bet they regretted the choice. Yet they had no power to take it back. 

But God did not sit, victimized, and feel sorry for himself. He made a plan to get us back. He decided to send his son to become flesh and take on our punishment so that we could be reconciled to him again. So he could take back that intimate relationship. That is why Jesus Christ, the Good News for All Mankind, came to us. That is why he lived, that is why he died. He paid for our sins so we could be justified, evil could be eradicated, and all could be forgiven.

So if I have the opportunity to see that atheist acquaintance again, I now know the answer to his question. When you sin against someone's cherished child, you sin against them. When you sin against God's beloved creation, you sin against him. What mankind owed, and what Jesus paid, was an enormous debt.

If you have never been reconciled to the Father through the Son, I invite you to do that now. HE invites you to do it. It is only a matter of choosing to believe and trust in him. Of saying, "God, I have sinned against you, but I want to be reconciled. I want you to save me and dwell in my heart. Please give me the gift of salvation made possible by your son, Jesus Christ." 

Salvation and eternal life with God are a gift. You can only have a gift if you accept it. A gift offered to someone who refuses it remains with the giver. It's up to you to accept. The opposite of salvation and eternal life are damnation and everlasting death. That is why there is no choice more critical and no subject more paramount than this. Your eternity is at stake.

But God is not finished with you once you have been saved. Justification is the dawn, and sanctification is the rest of the day. Once you've let in the son-light, he begins a good work in you: bringing you to Christlikeness.

If God has saved us, aren't we done? Shouldn't we live our lives as we want, and look forward to eternal life? Paul asked the same question in the book of Romans:

And again in 1 Corinthians 6:12:

As well as Galatians 5:1:

Sanctification is the process of cooperating with the work of God in your life. It means that his goal of unity with you is also your goal. That his will in the world is also your will. The process is not an easy one, because the strongholds of sin and selfishness take a siege like no other to pull them down. But it is not your work. You can't remove even a single stone. The warrior responsible is God, and you are the prize inside that the enemy is hiding away. Your only job is to allow him to attack the stronghold. Let go of your attachment to patterns of sin, lies, and attitudes against the Spirit, and let him make you wholly new.

In the yoga community, there is a lot of talk about enlightenment. About the attaining of a state of being where you are free from suffering, free from the selfishness of the egoic mind, and perpetually united to divinity in bliss. The Yoga Sutras, which are often used in teacher training, explain the "steps" to achieving the goal. You could say it is a twist on works-based righteousness.

In Old Testament times, the people had the law to tell them what to do and not to do. If they could follow the law perfectly, then they would be in no need of salvation. But none of them could achieve that. So, they would offer sacrifices for their sins, giving a spotless, innocent animal as recompense.

No matter where you go, no matter the religion or creed you hold dear, there is this idea that if you follow a strict path you will achieve righteousness. You will find God. You will regain what we lost when we invited evil here.

But hang around on planet Earth long enough and you will discover what all human beings, reaching back through the ages, have already known: nobody's perfect. The systems we've erected set us up for failure. God is not attainable that way.

It is a good thing that human beings are not the only ones working on the reconciliation of God and man. We cannot attain God by scrambling to climb heavenward, but he can reach down and pull us up. The secret is the surrender of our desire to do it ourselves, to be the author of our own salvation. The secret is to let God help you.

He created us to be in perfect unity and everlasting relationship with him. He created us so we could be loved by him, love him completely, and love those around us unconditionally. Allow him to reach down and pull you up. Cooperate with him in this work of reunion he began in you.

Decide you will choose the best instead of the good: "'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful." (1 Cor 6:12)

Decide you will not be dominated by sin, but dwell in freedom: "'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything." (1 Cor 6:12) "Do not submit yourselves again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal 5:1)

Decide to walk in newness of life, and let the dead stay dead: "...in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Rom 6:1)

Did you ever notice that the pursuit of happiness is the goal of every human being? Deep down, achieving lasting happiness is the motivation for everything you do.

Rejoice, because happiness is what you receive when you cooperate with God. It is his goal for you. But he has no illusions as to what will make you happy and what will cause that happiness to last forever. He knows that when you are in union with him, you will be happy. That is what he created you for:

Joy, unending joy.

Peace that passes understanding.

Hope that does not disappoint.

Love that endures forever.

Faith that can move mountains.

Life, and life abundant.

And he has promised he will bring that work to completion.

Be encouraged, brothers and sisters in Christ. Putting sin to death in your life is a painful, long and trying process at times, but cooperation with God leads to rewards that far exceed that pain. Let his Spirit, alive in you, give you rest. Rely on his promises. Fight the good fight, run the race. Keep his words always at the forefront of your mind:

The vast majority of the human race is utterly given over to compulsive thinking. Whether they are playing out some fantasy, worrying over some imagined future, reliving a past event or simply trying to remember what they have to do that day, the typical person has a non-stop diatribe rolling in their heads. In fact, we spend so much time thinking about something other than what we are doing that it could be said we are on automatic pilot. We flit and buzz from place to place, and if nothing interrupts us, we will hardly notice the motions we are going through. We aren't really awake; we aren't really dreaming. It is a stupor and if we stopped doing it we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

The whole phenomenon reminds me of the movie Dune, where the members of the Spacing Guild, previously human in form, had so long taken in so much of the rare Spice that they had mutated. The Spice gave them the ability to fold space, that is move between time and space, which made it possible for people from various planets to travel great distances in an instant. But the price they paid is that they now were nothing but floating brains swimming about in large glass containers filled with orange smoke.

I invite you to quit being a floating brain.

The Master tells us:

But how do you love the Lord with all your mind? If God is the great "I AM", then he is not part of your imagination. However you may conceive of him, it does not contain even half of what he truly is. Not only that, but notice the present tense. "I AM." He's not the great "I WAS" or "I WILL BE" because the only thing that is real is the present. The past is a vague conglomeration of inaccurate memories and the future is fiction and conjecture. Only the present is real, so it makes sense that that is where He is. Of all the attributes he could have chosen as his name, he chose his present existence. But are we in the present? No, we are lost in the labyrinth of our brains.
The first step towards surrendering the mind to God, towards loving him with "all your mind", is to be where he is. Here and now.

The idea that you are your mind is quite common and a lie. Your mind is simply a tool. You are something much more splendid than all those thoughts that plague you - namely, a soul. Yes, your mind is a part of you, but your soul is what lives on when the mind dies.
Many of us long to connect in a more substantial way to God. We know that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) and that the Master Teacher has said, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth," (Jn 16:13). But if we never cultivate silence within ourselves, how will we hear his guidance over all the noise?

Jesus himself tells us how to do this in Matthew 6:6:

It can be difficult to quiet the mind, so that is why finding a meditation technique that works for you is so helpful. One of my favorites is to use a breathing verse. Take Psalm 103:1, for example: "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" As you slowly breathe in, think, "Bless the LORD, O my soul," and as you breathe out, "and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" Let your inhales and exhales be slow and even, and let the verse wash over your mind and clear away any thoughts that intrude. Invite God into the space you make.

But this is just one of many meditation methods. Here is a small sampling of some others:

• Focus on the breath
• Listen to the sounds of the world around you
• Focus on the body and any sensations it gives you
• Focus on a word you repeat to yourself, like "Jesus", or "Maranatha" (Greek for, "Come, Lord Jesus!")
• Focus on opening the heart

My recommendation is that if you are new to meditation, start off slowly. Try a couple of minutes before you start your day and before you go to bed at night. If you have a prayer and Bible reading routine, work those couple of minutes into the beginning of that. Take time to, "Be still and know that I am God," (Ps. 46:10).

But learning how to quiet the mind and be present with God is only half the equation. God is interested not only in the quantity, but the quality of your thoughts. Consider these words from the Master Teacher:

Jesus uses strong, striking language to convey how serious the sins of the mind are. But how seriously do we take them? It is easy to spend countless hours in the downward spiral of resentful, hateful thoughts and justify it because we believe the other person to be wrong. Or to let our lust lead us down a path of fantasy because we lie to ourselves and say we are sinning in secret. It is equally easy to claim victimhood as our identity, holding onto depression and despair like they are desirable. Christ died on the cross to set us free from slavery to such thoughts. We need to claim that victory!

You may long to connect to God. How can you hear what he has to say when there is a cacophony of thoughts in your mind? And how can he show you his good, pleasing and perfect will when it is your ego and its desires running the show? Love him with all of your mind by giving time to him in stillness and by putting to test every thought that arises. Then you will connect with the God who came to Earth so that you may be transformed, heart, soul, strength and -- by his grace -- mind.