Born right the first time?
The purpose of most religions is to make us “better” than we currently are. The Biblical premise is that all human beings are fatally flawed, not good enough, and in need of major improvement and control of their “human nature.” Without this continual overcoming of the evil self, growing into a better kind of person and change, one risks not being good enough to spend eternity, by their inability to change for a fairly short lifetime, in a punishing hell. . . Scripture goes to great lengths to remind all of us that our fundamental human qualities are deceit, wickedness, jealousy, anger, lust, and greed. Personally, I think it is one of the most useless and controlling lies ever imposed on human beings by religion. Of course, that’s how we can act, but that’s not who we are at all when given the freedom to be authentic and feel confident about it.
We are called “worms” and less than nothing in this great book of encouragement. Even early leaders, prophets, and apostle types knew that they had to degrade themselves as less than human in order to show that they understood their worthlessness as unregenerate human beings. Only when one realized that they were a piece of poop, they could guide people who were really poop. If you couldn’t pronounce the words, “I’m not worthy,” you would never be a Bible CEO. The Apostle Paul pointed out that he was “the least of the Apostles” and that “the things I don’t want to do, I do and the things I shouldn’t do.” He made his problems everyone’s problems. He came to the conclusion that he was just a miserable human being, just like everyone else. He reminded others that they were blind, miserable, poor, and naked in heart and spirit. He even said that he had to beat himself into submission, except after preaching to others, he should go crazy and be a castaway. He seems like he didn’t have the confidence “in the blood” to make up for the differences between what he was and what he felt he needed to be.
Jesus is also reported to have said that humans must become “perfect, even (in the same way) as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” There is no challenge to be better than you are at any given time! Of course this is not possible and it is not possible or plausible in any way “I am now converted and filled with the Holy Spirit”. You have never met any Christian who has reached this goal in life. I’ve known some who act like they’ve done it and I’ve known some who agonize over not being able to, but I’ve never met one who actually did it, whatever that means. Actually, I think they would be a strange human being.
How did we get this way? Well, of course it was due to the “fall” in which Adam and Eve, our real and true first human parents, created by God from mud and ribs, got agitated and ate the forbidden fruit. We have all been blamed for this event and must spend our lives under the blood sacrifice of a more perfect human/god and then continue the fight to be “better” until we die. That’s when we find out that we understood being bad enough to be good enough to live forever. The redemption of human beings through blood sacrifice and execution have always been the preferred solution to the depravity of man. Club membership usually costs ten or more percent of your material income and membership in the only true of many churches. I am not being disrespectful of the life and teachings of Jesus, but few understand how that has been woven into a story that Jesus himself would have cringed at.
I remember as a teenager when it was “time to get baptized” being told that I was all these miserable things and that I needed deep and sincere repentance and of course a savior. The minister took me through the Ten Commandments and asked if he understood that I had broken EVERY ONE of them in my short life and was therefore sentenced to death. I was an 18-year-old mother, good girl, good home, quite accommodating, a little guilty and shamed by the upbringing, but not a big nasty stoned sinner with three illegitimate children. And yet here I sat convinced that I worshiped other gods (money, success, human hopes and dreams), somehow always taking God’s name in vain (Mom and Dad would have washed my mouth out with soap… I only learned swearing and such after being in the ministry) and worshiped on the wrong day of the week along with having to repent of keeping the wrong Holy Days my entire short life.
I was in some deeply wicked way a murderer, adulterer, thief, liar and greedy for all the goods of men and women. When I said that he hadn’t actually killed anyone, they told me that he hated and that’s the same thing. I admitted that I hadn’t had sex with anyone at the time, but my lust covered that too. I wanted to say, “well, no, I really hadn’t done that either,” but that wouldn’t have been advisable if I ever wanted to get baptized and have a future with the group. He told me to come back another day and repent more deeply for my nasty, evil, wicked 18 year old self. Of course I made it in time and joined the “you’re still not good enough” club for the next three decades as a pastor who then delivered the good news of human depravity to thousands and reminded them that while they might think they’re kind people, you are under the penalty of eternal death, those stinking Adam and Eve brought us all regardless. However, I grew up a bit and concluded that the story of my guilt by association with Adam and Eve was not literally true. Human beings have evolved for the most part as good science has pointed out. I have had my own genome mapped 60,000 years back to all of our African origins. I don’t think it’s very fair for humans to pay a literal and eternal death penalty based on a mythical story and not literally a real one.
Have you ever considered the fact that you and I may have been born right the first time? What if the simplest and most spiritual goal a human being has is to become their own genuine, authentic, self? What if our purpose in life is not to jump through hoops set by others, who think they know, nor to fight and strive to dramatically improve on who you are? People don’t change much throughout life, regardless of their religious affiliations, and while it’s an improvement to stop committing suicide with sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine along with assorted other body-killing habits, it’s okay to be yourself. .
Is it easy to be yourself? No, not in our culture and certainly not in many others where not being a mere cog in the tribal wheel can get you killed in a very bad way. One of the simple truths of life that most humans have long forgotten or never knew is that we are all one and the same and all smaller parts of one thing. I don’t claim to know what that is, but let’s just say we are all one in the same consciousness trapped in a limited five sensor carbon based wetsuit for now. As Mike Adams said in a recent article on The Discovery of DNA Variability, Holographic Blueprints, and the Symphony of Life… “We are, in fact, an expression of the very phenomena we are trying to understand, and if we read the poetry DNA correctly, we will realize that life itself is not about the accumulation of wealth, things or power over others, but about the discovery of oneself. And the “I” does not exist in isolation. We are, in every imaginable way, intertwined. We are all made of the same stuff, crafted from the same patterns of nature and, in fact, formulated from the same musical notes played in five billion unique but compatible melodies. With this discovery, Western science has concluded that we are all more different from each other than previously thought, but I think it is evidence that we are all just unique verses of the same universal poem.”
That is far from humans being mere wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked worms in need of major rehabilitation at the hands of prophets, priests, and pastors. To say that we are born right the first time and that we do not need to be born again or reborn goes against the meme, which is the mental virus that we were all taught as children. Our parents taught it to them and their parents before that. It is the idea that we are all defective at birth by a non-event in the lives of our first parents Adam and Eve, not literally. It’s the idea that even if you’re a pretty good person, you’re filled with vanity, jealousy, lust, and greed that, unless you’re paid by a perfect blood sacrifice, demands that you spend eternity in hell burning forever, apart. of God or permanently. dead. It’s also not true and it’s not what a genuine human being actually needs to become the monkey on his back.
What a liberation it is to simply recognize that we are all one and the same smaller parts of one big thing. It is just as difficult to live an authentic life as it is to live a life of false submission to the will of others. It’s easy or not easy depending on the need to please everyone or seem to agree when you don’t, to be true to yourself and by yourself, I don’t mean the ego. I mean faithful to the consciousness that dwells in the container that we too often mistake for the self. You are not your body. That’s just transport and a container for a short time. You are not your brain. That is a receiver of information and memories that can, in fact, emerge from outside of a bigger you and me than we can imagine. You are not your mind, which is that thinking brain that spins in the angry past or projects itself into the anxious future when it has nothing better to do in the present.
How much misery and struggle to be all one can never really be has religion heaped upon the faithful. Not many will leave the warmth and comfort of the boxes they were born into by chance and explore ideas that are not acceptable to the tribe or church. But some will. They could be labeled “heretics” or perhaps more benevolently, “ahead of their time.” In the past, those who were ahead of their time were often burned at the stake. Getting out of the box of religious dogma is difficult and many times you are left alone and on your own. Those in the last frame do not usually follow them. You can be your authentic self as it comes to you and risk a lot but gain a lot, or you can put on the mask and be more comfortable but gobbling up antidepressants for the rest of your life. That seems to be the path to the fact that being yourself is the simplest spiritual truth there is for a genuine human being.
Politics, fear, guilt and shame are some of the reasons why human beings behave badly. Feeling insecure can cause a lot of damage. All of Iraq is falling apart due to fear and self-preservation, not some inherent evil that is the true, ongoing, daily nature of man. When people feel safe, appreciated, respected, and heard, you’ll be amazed at all the good that can be accomplished. If Chicago were Baghdad, these same fears and survival skills would rear their ugly heads in the neighborhood.
What is the simplest spiritual truth that a human being can come to recognize? While there may be many, the simple recognition that being your authentic self in thought, word, and deed is okay is near the top. If even my saying that makes you uncomfortable, then you can know that it is not far from a truth that you, as a conscious being, must consider in the time you have left to live in your limited five senses, wet at carbon based. go on.
