Were we Sold a Rotten Box of Goods as the Gospel? Part 1

Although all Christian religions claim that the Gospel is free and without cost, the reality is that once initial salvation is accepted a costly package deal follows in order to maintain that salvation that includes money and much more besides.

Though all denominations believe different beliefs and each neatly packaged deal is labeled "Christianity" and tied up with specific denominated name-tagged bows, the contents are basically the same. In that box you will find; godly doctrines and man-made doctrines...truth and lies...the real and the fake...hope and despair...heaven and hell...blessings and curses. The well dressed seminarian spiritual spokes person says that the acceptance of the gospel would fill the aching void in people's hearts and assure them of a place in heaven and we believed it because we were ignorant of spiritual reality, innocent as children and because their message was the only one we have heard. With persuasive emotionalism, numerous bible verses and loads of rhetoric, the package deal was sold to people and we bought it hook line and sinker.

     

In their personal study of scripture people began to see that what we were sold did not line up with  the character of God, did not line up with how Christ,(the express image of God) portrayed His loving Father, and we began to question the contents of the box and found that the packaged goods did not line up with the teachings of Christ. The neat denominated answers and religious principles, the denominated slanted songs and out-of-context bible verses were dissonant and flat in the religious world we discovered, and the religious mold begin to crack.

People still tried to fit the religious mold by clinging to the pat religious answers by ignoring the disharmony, ignoring the unanswerable questions, ignoring the feeling of spiritual dissatisfaction because we did not want to displease God and end up in hell. People were told that our dissatisfaction was because we weren't trying hard enough, we should pray more, we should read our bibles more, we need to take discipleship classes, we need to pay our tithes, only to find that none of these things worked. Then the dawn broke and Son melted away the religious cloudiness that was fogging our mind and removed the delusional religious spectacles, we then realized that the package deal of "Christianity" we were sold, was a lie! 

The religious  cracks began to get bigger and we saw a glimmer of hope. The voice of religion got duller an duller and the voice of the Spirit was becoming more clarion than the words that the denominated professional told us about God. His love began dispelling the darkness of religion and reaching past our doings we did for Him and we saw that it was about what He has already done for us. His Truth began to seep into the religious cracks and busted the religious shell that kept us from seeing and accessing the freedom that is in Christ. 

Then the process of deconstructing our religion was in motion. That process was not easy, in fact, it is a long and difficult journey, and often it feels like there is no way out of the religious bondage because we were taught that the Bible was the source of all truth, we even accepted whatever was in the margins explaining a Bible verse was true. We’d been told the denominated way to interpret it, and that any other denominated way was wrong and dangerous. Then we began to realize that many of those things so neatly marginalized by Bible verses were simply not true. Not because the Bible was not true, but because the understanding interpretation of it was flawed. The realization was that you could find a Bible verse to support any view, no matter how broken or twisted. And so the admonition to “just trust the Bible” held little assurance, because people were unable to read the Bible without hearing the words of the denominated seminarian professionals neatly packaged mixtures of truth and lies.

Part 2 to follow.