Losing My Religion, part 4, Nails in the Coffin

Parts 1, 2, and 3 for those who want to follow in order.

Remember back in part 2, I said that rebellion was a major factor in my desire to sin.  I've never gotten over having a rebellious, questioning and contrary attitude.  I'm this way about politics, economics and lots of other things in life.  It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that I'm this way about church related stuff.

Back in part one, I talked about being self-righteous and legalistic.  The sin of pride should be included in that list as well.  One of the cool things about being a modern day Pharisee is that you know the book chapter and verse for what you think, and you have the skills and training to manipulate those verses to make your point.  Another cool thing about having those skills and knowledge is that you, have those skills and knowledge.  In my case arrogance, knowledge and my contrary attitude, led me down a path that I wasn't expecting.

In my denomination we don't talk about the Holy Spirit.  Universally folks would say they believe in the Holy Spirit.  By "believe" I mean we acknowledge "It's" existence.  The greatest extent of  "It's" existence is what we call "the indwelling".  Any reasonably informed preacher in my denomination will give you a trite and shallow explanation of what they think  "the indwelling" is or means.  I've never met one that could tell you more about it than to say "It's" something every Christian receives at baptism.  Which is scripturally actuate and practically useless.

Slightly off on a rabbit trail for a moment.  Try this experiment, ask your pastor, or favorite teacher in your church what the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit" is. See how satisfying of an answer you are given.  Then ask a follow up question: "How do I experience more of this?".  I'm interested in what they have to say.  Put it in the comments or email it if you care to share.

Folks in my church would tell you that everything the Bible had to say about the topic of the Holy Spirit was true and happened the way it was written.  They would also tell you that the Holy Spirt doesn't do much today, and certainly he doesn't manifest Himself in miraculous ways.  A key teaching, if we have one, is that everyone else is wrong about the Holy Spirit.

In my arrogance I decide to take on everything my denomination had to say about the Holy Spirit and teach a 13 week adult Sunday morning class on the topic.  To do that, I decided to study everything that the Bible had to say about the Holy Spirit, both old and new testament.  Because in order to teach you first have to learn, I undertook a substantial study on the topic.  I wasn't prepared for what I learned. 

A special shout out to Rabbi B for his assistance in Hebrew word studies and developing my understanding of the ruach hakodesh.

Losing My Religion part 3 Testing God

Part 1 and Part 2 for those who want to read them in order.

Does anybody know why religious people fast?  I don't mean the ones who do it because they were taught that on certain days of the year you do it because it imparts God's favor.  I'm talking about people who fast just because.  A few years back, I started wondering about that. 

Then I started wondering why Jesus said that his disciples would fast.  Why does the fat pastor not teach his congregation that Jesus said they should fast?  I've heard all about not smoking, drinking, dancing, mixed bathing, no MTV, and no Halloween.  Pastor Ardy Parlin told us when I was in high school that hand holding led to pregnancy. 

True story.  It happened during Spiritual Emphases Week at Jackson Baptist back in the 80's.  Me and some of the guys took our plastic sandwich bags out of our lunches.  We stuck our hands in them and tried to get the girls to hold hands with us.  Laugh if you want.  Some of them were down with it.

So I decided to test God on this fasting business.  What I did was fast for a 24 hour period, every Wednesday for a year.  The year ran from my birthday in 2015 until my birthday in 2016.  I did it.  With the possible exception of a small Wendy's Frosty that a co-worker slipped me on a very hot day in August and that I ate before I remembered it was Wednesday.  I say possible exception, because I swore off food, not beverages.  A frosty seems like a sort of gray area.  It's not really a beverage and its not really solid food.  It was very hot that day.  I was thankful, even if I felt guilty afterwards.  Other than that little slip I stuck with the program.

I had been doing one of those, read the bible in a year things, too while I was fasting.  So I was going to church regular, like always, reading my bible pretty much every day, and fasting once a week.  Prayer is often mentioned in the Bible along with fasting.  As part of a days worth of fasting, I planed for a "special" prayer before I broke my fast.

For some reason I started praying crazy prayers.  A crazy prayer is one that only God can hear and make happen. It's asking God for outrageous stuff.  Crazy, ain't no way its gonna happen, stuff.  The lottery went to a billion bucks when I was doing this.  I bought a ticket.  I prayed.  I didn't win.  Crazy Stuff, right?  Everybody prays to win the lottery.  Not exactly a let down when it doesn't happen. 

I noticed something about these crazy prayers.  When and what I asked for other people happened.  Yes, every time.  What I asked for myself, didn't.  I asked God to give a friend a job.  Next day he had one, $28/hr plus tons of overtime.  They didn't lose their house.  I asked God for a slightly better job for me.  That's it, just a slightly better job.  Did I get it?  Nope, still pulled $9 hour doing the same old thing on the night shift.  My friend had a drug habit.  I had an MBA.

I remember feeling let down and a little mad at God over giving Dan a job.  God did exactly what I asked, but I was mad a God for doing what I wanted Him to do.  So much for being logical.

Pots & Kettles

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday slammed Facebook for profiting from its users' data — and called for the social media giant to be more tightly regulated.

Apple cares about ethics in marketing.  Really?  Are they talking about Apple the computer and I Phone company?  Can't be.

Tomorrow's news will have Wells Fargo lecturing bookies on being nice when breaking a dead beats knee caps.

BJW - Child of the 80's

If you can identify with at least half of this list then you, my friend, are a "Child of the 80's".

1. You know the profound meaning of "Wax on, Wax off".

2. You know that another name for a keyboard is a "Synthesizer".

3. You can sing the McDonald's Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fry song while jump roping.

4. You know who "Mr. T" is.

5. You know who Fat Albert is. And also the boy with the pink mask.

6. You ever wore fluorescent, neon clothing.

7. You could break dance, or wish you could.

8. You wanted to be "The Hulk" for Halloween.

9. You Believed that "By the power of Greyskull, you HAD the power!"

10. Partying "like it's 1999" seemed SO far away.

11. You thought that Transformers were more than meets the eye.

12. You wanted to be on Star Search.

13. You remember the Garbage Pail Kids, and owned some.

14. You knew what Willis was "talkin' 'bout."

15. You HAD to have your MTV.

16. You wondered why Tootie always wore those skates.

17. You actually thought "Dirty Dancing" was a REALLY good movie.

18. You watched Purple Rain over and over again.

19. You remember the episode of Good Times when Flo broke down after James' funeral.

20. You remember when ATARI was a state of the art video game system.

21. You own any cassettes.

22. You were led to believe that in the year 2000 we'd all be living on the moon.

23. You remember and/or owned any of the Care Bear Glass collection from Pizza Hut.

24. Poltergeist freaked you out.

25. You carried your lunch to school in a Gremlins or an ET lunch box.

26. You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the ONLY female smurf.

27. You know what leg warmers are and probably had a pair.

28. You wore biker shorts underneath a short skirt and felt stylish.

29. You had a Swatch Watch with the Swatch Guard.

30. You remember when Saturday Night Live was funny.

31. You had Wonder Woman or Superman underoos.

32. You know what a "Push Up" ice cream is.

Losing My Religion part 2

Back in part one I talked about how I grew up very religious and I touched on my up bringing.  I started to get into how I wasn't able to live up to the standards I was taught.  I wasn't and didn't.  Looking back over that time I realized that my main motivation was the fact that I enjoyed rebelling against my parents and those in authority more than I actually enjoyed sinning.  That may seem strange but it is true.  For example the last time I got drunk I was 22 or 23 years old.  Going to the bar lost its sense of excitement as soon as I turned 21.  Getting drunk lost its appeal shortly after.

After I got married there was pretty much nothing left for me to do in the category of fun sins.  I still told lies and cussed and stuff.  I've laughed at and told dirty jokes and acted like a general heathen, but I was still what folks would have called a good guy.  I settled down to attending church and even teaching Sunday school.

That's pretty much how things went until I lost my hearing.  I didn't lose all of it.  The way my ears work now I can only hear out of one ear.  Things like music don't sound right, but I can generally make out what folks are saying if I can see their lips move or if there isn't much background noise.

After losing most of my hearing things changed for me.  I quit listening to music because it sounded strange to me.  Songs I used to love and remember no longer sounded "right" because I couldn't make out some of the music.

With nothing better to listen to I turned to the local Christian talk radio.  Which was a all sermons all the time format.  At first it was fun to listen to because I could pick out what was wrong with it.  After awhile it was a fun intellectual exercise to see how different hermeneutics produced different points of view on scriptures.

The more self righteous you are, the easier it is to avoid the reality of your own sins.  Which is why even though I was in church and even going above and beyond what other folks did, I was still basically sinning and not becoming what they call "Christ Like".  The word used for this is "hypocrite".  Which was what I was.

BJW

A pirate captain was out to retrieve his buried treasure.

After months of hard sailing, his ship caught sight of land, the land to which his treasure map had been leading. He and his first mate disembarked on the island to search out the buried treasure, which was supposed to lie hidden deep within a swamp at the center of the island.

Sure enough, at the center of the island was a swamp, and the Captain and his first mate bravely entered the swamp. Soon the swamp began to get deeper, and the pirate's feet, then ankles, and finally entire leg below the knees were covered in the swamp.

It was at that time that the Captain banged his shin against something hard. He reached down, searched around, and pulled up a treasure chest. Prying the lock open, the chest revealed gold and jewels beyond imagination.

The Captain turned to his first mate and said,

"Arrrr, matey, that just goes to show ye, that booty is only shin deep!"