The Official Website of Mike Adkins .com

Posts Tagged ‘Christianity’

A question from a reader: What do people mean exactly when they say they found God or that they were saved? How does it happen? I’ve heard of atheists and agnostics who have converted to Christianity. I don’t understand how someone can change their core beliefs so drastically. I’d really appreciate answers from such people who can draw on their own experiences.

A question from a reader: Like you know how there are so many different denominations for Christianity, is it possible that the first organized religion could have split up into Hinduism, Buddhism, those religions about the greek, norse, egyptian gods, christianity and all the the other religions there have been. Excluding scientology, this is the dumbest religion out there. The dumbest kid with down syndrome wouldn’t but this bull. The smartes kid with down syndrome might buy christianity.

A question from a reader: well what are the main differences between them? all i know is that in Catholicism priests can performing exorcisms if necessary but Christan dont, all i know is that they are different religions

A question from a reader: I am a christian and I would like to find a church.(I just moved) I don’t like how crazy baptists are,(no offense), but Catholic churches scare me a little bit. I firmly believe in the saints but I don’t want to go to a Catholic church. What is the difference between Catholic and Episcopal? Is Episcopal more laid back?

I shall start with the most obvious lie of the religious churches, evangelism. It also goes by other names like missions, witnessing and sharing the good news. Regardless of the names used, the objective is the same. It aims to get others to believe in the same doctrines and subsequently become the churches’ supply of free labor and money contributors.

Why is this a lie? In order to make it easy to understand, let me give you an analogy.

Imagine one day you have a job offer. The job description is the same as what you have been doing all these years. So, you are well qualified to do it. The best part is the salary is more than 10 times of what you are receiving now in your current job.

Will you take up the offer? Of course you will. Only a fool will reject such a great opportunity. You pick up the employment contract and read the terms. They were written exactly as what you have been told. So, you signed on the dotted line to take up the offer.

Congratulations. You are now an employee of such a wonderful company. One the first day of your new job, you were sent to attend classes for orientation. In those classes, you will get to know the company and its policy. You will also be taught on company loyalty.

Then the company begins to assign tasks to you. Those tasks are different from what you should be doing as stated in your employment contract. However, it is not an issue because you are not that petty. You move along because you don’t want to give the impression that you are a difficult person to work with.

As days turn to weeks, you have practically forgotten about the contents of the employment contract you signed. When payday comes, you receive lesser pay than the amount you were promised. Your boss told you that you should be grateful that the company pays you at all and don’t be so fussy about it. After all, it is only money. As a loyal employee, your priority should be the company’s profits and not your own salary.

You end up doing more work than what the contract says and getting lesser pay than the amount promised in the contract. One day, you suddenly wake up and realized that you have been conned.

Does this analogy sounds extreme? The truth is, it happens in every religious church. All religious churches have 2 separate gospels for 2 groups of people. They have one version for Non-Christians and another one for Christians. I prefer to call this phenomenon as Multiple Layers Gospel. Altogether there are 3 layers of Gospel. I shall explain in detail.

First Layer Gospel

This layer is meant for evangelistic purpose only. It is only proclaimed in evangelistic settings and outreach projects. The message is simple and good.

God loves you so much that he gave his only Son to die for your sins. All you need to do is to believe in him. When you do that, all your sins are forgiven. There is nothing else for you to do because Jesus has done it all. You have eternal life. Your place in heaven is guaranteed. If you are to die at any time, you will end up in heaven.

Think about this. All other religions require their people to do things to reach out to their Gods and earn their place in heaven. Over here, Jesus has done everything for you and he made the first move to reach out to you. You can go to heaven without having to do anything. Just believe in Jesus and say the sinner’s prayer.

Don’t you think being a Christian is a good deal? Only a real fool will reject such a great offer. So, the right thing to do is to go through the process of becoming a believer.

The first thing you will experience is joy beyond description. Your outlook of life has become so clear and wonderful. You are glad you have become a Christian and you wonder why you did not believe earlier. You feel like you are in heaven right now.

Is this happily ever after? Fat hope. You are about to enter the living hell.

Second Layer Gospel

After you have become a Christian, you will be led to your first orientation. This can be one to one coaching (known as “follow-up”), an organized class in the church or a combination of both. In these lessons, you will be taught on the basic of Christianity like who is God, what he has done and what is the Bible.

In the next step, you will be taught on how you should behave as a Christian. You have to pray regularly, read the Bible regularly and attend church every week. Sometimes, you can be told to attend more classes for your spiritual growth.

As you attend more classes and Sunday sermons, you began to realize that they are nothing more than imposing rules on dos and don’ts on you. Your mind will be filled with a lot of things that you must and must not do. You are to serve in the church, go for mission trips, invite non believers to attend evangelistic events and give your money to the church. You may be saved by faith but they will tell you that faith without works is dead. This means you must do whatever they tell you to do. Welcome to the life of slavery and bondage.

Your church leaders can even have the right to ask money from you to finance whatever project they want. This had actually happened in my first church. The church pastors had decided to build an extension to the existing building. The cost was a few million dollars, which it did not have. They resorted to squeeze the church members for it. Every Sunday was fund raising day. In all their sermons, somehow every Bible verse that was quoted had a message on giving to the church building fund.

There was a leader who openly declared that God had provided the money for the church building. It was in our pockets. This means the church had the right to demand us to give it money because the money in our pockets was no longer ours. They were not begging anymore. They were demanding our money. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I left the church for this reason.

As I look back, I am glad this event happened because it helped me to realize how corrupt those pastors are.

Overall, in this layer you are to obey the list of dos and don’ts. The pastors will make you feel guilty if you fail in any of them. Even if you accomplish any, you will be told that it is not enough. Let me give you an example.

How long do you pray every day?

Answer: 5 minutes.

Reply: Not enough. You should pray for at least 15 minutes.

Answer: 15 minutes.

Reply: Not enough. You should pray for at least 30 minutes.

Answer: 30 minutes.

Reply: Not enough. You should pray for at least 1 hour.

Answer: 1 hour.

Reply: Not enough. You should pray for at least 3 hours.

And so on.

So, what is your answer? No matter what you say or do, it is never enough.

That is not all. There are some strange rules you have to obey. Some churches forbid their members to watch movies, read Harry Potter or do any work on Sunday. In my particular church, once the pastor had openly said that Christians must not pose for pictures in front of a temple. Here is the background. One of the popular tourist destinations for Singaporeans is Thailand where there are a lot of beautiful temples. Many tourists like pose for pictures in front of these temples. So, “wise” pastor considers it as a sin for Christians to take pictures with a temple.

All religious churches have their own unwritten list of dos and don’ts. I emphasize the term “unwritten” because none of them dare to put their dos and don’ts in writing. When asked, they will tell you to refer to the Bible. If that is so, why are they not written down? The truth is there are 2 reasons on why are there no written list.

First, a written list will expose the inconsistencies among them. Ten religious churches will have ten different lists. An act like watching a movie can be allowable in one church but it is a sin in another church.

Secondly, their dos and don’ts are not exhaustive. There are always new “discoveries” on new sins. The more sermons you attend, the longer your list of dos and don’ts will be. So, the wise course of action is to avoid going to church. Imagine, suppose the preacher tells you 5 things to do and you only manage to do 2 of them. You are guilty of 5-2=3 sins. If you don’t go to church at all, you will only be guilty of one sin, the sin of not going to church.

Where is the joy that you have when you first believe? It is gone and replaced with guilt. How can you not feel guilty? You can never do anything right. The system makes sure of that. The only way some Christians can experience joy is not to take their church seriously which I will explain later.

It that all the bad things that can happen to you? No, there is more. I have not told you the perversion yet. Let us go to the third layer.

Third Layer Gospel

This is the perversion level. The pastors will use the text on Apostle Paul’s description of the thorns of the flesh and story of Job to explain that God has a different definition on the word “good”. God is good. God is so good that he can give you disease, cause you to be knocked down by a car, make you bankrupt or any other perversions. The term “good” in the Third Layer Gospel has the same meaning as “evil” in the dictionary.

I can relate a story here. One day, my brother-in-law was hospitalized for some sort of disease. When my wife and I reached him in the hospital, I saw a group of people surrounding him acting like they were praying for him. After the prayer, a lady in the group said, “Maybe God wants you to rest more.”

Wow. So, God gives diseases to help people to rest. Are you impressed? If you are not resting well, don’t worry. God will give you some disease to help you to rest. When you see sick people, tell them that their sicknesses come from a loving God who wants them to rest. How about those who died from disease? Well, God must have loved them so much that he kills them so that they can continue to lie down and rest for eternity. Are you not glad to have such a wonderful God?

How do you know that your God loves you? The answer is, he gives you good things in your life like making you sick, causing you to have road accidents, burning your house, killing your loves ones and many other similar things which the rest of the infidels will call perversion.

Such “good” things are not only for God to display his love. He uses the same things to punish people for their sins. Do you know why disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, bush fires or terrorism happened? It is the judgement of God to punish the people involved for their sins. The most popular of those sins is abortion and followed by homosexuality and stem cell research.

If you want to be a prophet, there are 3 ways to do it.

The first way is to wait for any disasters to happen. It can be natural disasters like earthquakes or man-made ones like terrorism. The only criteria is, it must kill a lot of people or cause a lot of damages. Then you proclaim publicly that God has spoken to you and he told you that the disaster was his judgement on the people for their sins. What sin should you use? The safest bet is abortion, followed by homosexuals and stem cell research. This tactic works every time. You will establish your career as a prophet.

The second way is to proclaim publicly that God had spoken to you and he told you that he wants to judge the community that you are in for their sins. You can use back the same sins as above. Then you invite your congregation to join you to plead for mercy. If any disaster happens in the next few days, you hit the jackpot. You are now recognized as a true prophet. If nothing happens, you can always fall back on God’s mercy. God has heard your plea and he had decided to cancel his judgement for your sake. So, you are right regardless of any disasters happening in the next few weeks. Heads you win, tails you also win. Isn’t it cool?

The third way is more personal. You will need a huge audience. Proclaim publicly that God had spoken to you and he told you that someone in the audience had a specific problem. Describe the specific problem. If the population is big enough, you will hit someone with the exact problem. This person will be your advertisement.

These are the 3 ways I can think of that can help anyone to be a prophet. It is based on this layer of Gospel. If you are in this layer, you are the living hell.

This sums up the Third Layer Gospel. The next question is, do everyone in a religious church equally miserable? The answer is no. There are exceptions.

Exceptions to the rule.

There are people who attend church services every week. They walk in, sing the songs, perform the rituals and sit through the sermons. However, after they leave the church, they will forget everything inside there and live the life they want. So, they are not affected by the toxic. I consider them to be the smartest people in religious churches.

Conclusion.

With the exception of the analogy, the above facts are real. You can experience them in any religious church. How to find religious churches? The first clue I reveal in this chapter is evangelism. Religious churches are very obsessed with it. They are so committed that they are willing to resort to threats and blackmails to get their members to do it. A religious church is an evangelistic church.

When you see Christians on the streets trying to get people to the church or sharing the gospel, don’t be too hard on them. They are just victims of threats and blackmails from their churches. Try to be sympathetic instead.

The complete book is available from http://www.youpublish.com/files/27950/10-Lies-Of-Religious-Christianity

A question from a reader: Although many Christians dislike the teachings of religious fundamentalists, they do follow the word of God the closest. Anything else seems to be Customized Christianity.

A question from a reader: How did Christianity serve as a pivotal force in the development of medieval civilization in Europe? Was it just a matter of religious belief or did the organization and practices themselves make significant contributions?

A question from a reader: If you are Christian, what would you do if someone tried to convert you to Atheism? No offense to anyone, it just seems like a lot of people on here are Atheist. I am Christian and I have no idea what i would do if someone tried to convert me to any religion or non-religion.

I have come to a conclusion; there is a difference between religion and spirituality. People that are religious say that they are spiritual. Many times the words are thrown about interchangeably.  However, there is a difference. Religion is an idealized set of beliefs. With religion everyone has to ascribe to those beliefs or they are not a part of that religion. Spirituality is personal with universal concepts, Universal in that all can ascribe to those beliefs and they work without impartiality to race or condition. Religion is objective, meaning others agree to dogma and rules. Spirituality is subjective; it is subject to the internal beliefs, moods and emotions of the individual.

Jesus was teaching spiritual principles, but man for its own reasons made Christianity about Jesus rather than what he was attempting to teach. Jesus was attempting to teach us to connect to a universal consciousness not some all powerful being that watched over us like a guard dog ready to bite us and punish us when we did some wrong determined by man. Jesus teachings were to lead man into discovering his greater existence in the universe. Man unfortunately for centuries have believed that the world we live in is the entire universe. Man has believed what we experience with our five senses is all there is to the universe. Even though there is much evidence to the contrary, man persists in his limited view of his existence. Religion is an aid in the persistence of limiting thought.

 In the NIV bible, John 4:24 Jesus states, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

 This is one of the scriptures that Jesus makes a statement that is meant to be universal in nature. Man has now defined what a worshiper is and the consequences when he does not fit the definition. Did Jesus intend his teaching to separate man or to unite? Religion says we all have to fit a definition of worshiper. Jesus had principles that taught us HOW to worship.

 John 7:16 Jesus answered, “my teaching in not my own. It comes from him who sent me. If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” 

This scripture is spoken figuratively by Jesus. He says …HIM who sent me. Can God be a person, or did Jesus mean a universal force? What is God’s will and how do you choose it? Who decides your choice? Who decides where his teachings come from? Religion believes they have answered those questions and they have answered them for anyone that believes in the ascribed dogma. Jesus was giving us formulas to find out for ourselves. How does one know that the teachings of Jesus come from God? When they search for the meaning for themselves. When that person goes inside and starts to ask the hard questions.

 John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

 Religion made this scripture and statement about the man. Figuratively Jesus was saying that he can teach us how to recognize our eternal selves. If we follow his TEACHINGS he can give us the knowledge.

 One of the most destructive verses to mankind and his universality is John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

This one verse man has taken literally from Jesus. He meant that through his teachings man would be enlightened. Religion made it about THE MAN Jesus rather than about the universal enlightenment of man. Religion has separated mankind from its understanding of his place in the universe for thousands of years. We have within us a vast reservoir of knowledge. We have to be brave enough to step outside the accepted NORMS of religion to discover that knowledge. That is what the teachings of Jesus was about. Not the dogmatic rants of self proclaimed disciples. Does a teacher TELL you how to think? Or is a teacher to give you a foundation on which to build? 

It is time for us to wake up. We have gotten lost in religion. Our purpose is much greater and our knowledge more vast than any religious thought will allow us to perceive. Religion controls through fear and misinformation, giving us concepts of a vengeful God and hell. We should open our minds to the eternal wisdom of our souls. Not to the finite rants of preachers. We all have infinite abilities that Jesus alluded to in the scripture. You have to be brave enough to investigate for yourself and strong enough to stand up to thousands of years of ignorance. Spirituality is personal and liberating. Religion is bastion of fearful and confining thought.

 Are you a brave soul? 

reginaldc is me @ http://reginaldc.me

A question from a reader: I’ve often wondered why the practice of following Jesus is called Christianity. Wouldn’t it make more sense to call it Jesusianity? Where does the term Christianity come from?