I am calling my new blog simply “Abraham’s Blog“. Catchy, don’t you think? If you have a moment, please visit and leave a comment. Thanks.

God is a Concept by which
we measure our pain
I’ll say it again
God is a Concept by which
we measure our pain
I don’t believe in magic
I don’t believe in I-ching
I don’t believe in Bible
I don’t believe in Tarot
I don’t believe in Hitler
I don’t believe in Jesus
I don’t believe in Kennedy
I don’t believe in Buddha
I don’t believe in Mantra
I don’t believe in Gita
I don’t believe in Yoga
I don’t believe in Kings
I don’t believe in Elvis
I don’t believe in Zimmerman
I don’t believe in Beatles
I just believe in me…and that reality

The dream is over
What can I say?
the Dream is Over
Yesterday
I was the Dreamweaver
But now I’m reborn
I was the Walrus
But now I’m John
and so dear friends
you’ll just have to carry on
The Dream is over

John Lennon

I have not wanted to write much lately, but that does not mean that nothing has been going on within me. You may ask, well, what has been going on?

I think my lovely wife, Mary, has said it so well that I just want to point anyone listening to her words.

Here is the link: Take Another Look!

AS SOON AS YOU LOOK AT THE WORLD THROUGH AN IDEOLOGY YOU ARE FINISHED. No reality fits an ideology.  Life is beyond that.  That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life.  But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.  Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

Anthony de Mello (1931-1987)

Recently I was watching the debate on ABC’s Nightline on the subject “Does Satan Exist?” The four participants were philosopher Deepak Chopra, Bishop Carlton Pearson, Pastor Mark Driscoll of the Mars Hill Church (Seattle) and Annie Lobert, founder of the Christian ministry “Hookers for Jesus”.

As I watched I was struck with an amazing insight which nothing to do with the actual subject being debated. When either Chopra or Pearson spoke their thoughts, they seemed to thinking and reasoning from a basis of understanding about life, learning, and personal viewpoints.

When Annie Lobert spoke, she recounted her own personal experiences, interpreting those things in light of Christian doctrine she has learned.

However, it was Mark Driscoll’s answers and ideas that triggered something powerful in my own thinking. No matter how the conversation moved and whatever turn the debate took, Driscoll’s reference was either a Bible verse or Christian doctrine assumedly based on the Bible. Driscoll’s entire modus operandi was to define and prove every position by his belief system… his ideology. If something was said that was not “scriptural” it was wrong or untrue. And things he would declare were true because that is what the Bible says.

And suddenly it struck me with crystal clarity… he was proving everything by his belief system. This is what he knows. This is what he is identified with. I did the same thing for O’ so many years.

I am slowly coming to the place of understanding what Anthony de Mello was saying… the moment you see the world through a belief system, growth and spiritual life stops cold. Now the only thing you can do is get better and better at articulating the viewpoint of your ideology. Indeed, you are finished.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE HIPPOPOTAMUS who ate a Catholic priest, a Lutheran minister, and a Jewish rabbi?

Yeah… he had an ecumenical movement.

IF YOU HAVE NOT YET WATCHED THIS NIGHTLINE DEBATE, you might be interested. I thought it was quite fascinating and you might also. The debate took place on the ABC Nightline program called “The Nightline Face-Off”. In this installment, philosopher Deepak Chopra and Bishop Carlton Pearson face-off against Pastor Mark Driscoll of the Mars Hill Church (Seattle) and Annie Lobert, founder of the Christian ministry “Hookers for Jesus” about the existence of the Devil.

If you would like to see it, here’s the link: DOES SATAN EXIST?

Once you have watched, please let me know what you think about the debate. Thanks!

JUST A LITTLE FOLLOW UP TO THE “MOON” POST…

I heard this statement from a fellow named Anthony De Mello. He was a marvelous thinker who died in the mid-80’s. Listen to his New York Conference taped in 1986.

He quoted someone else in saying, “All revelation is as a finger pointing to the moon.”

Here’s a little follow up to that thought… an eastern mystic added…

“When the sage points to the moon… all that the idiot sees is the finger!”

Another French thinker added this… “…and we frequently use the finger to simply gouge each other’s eyes out!”

BELIEVING YOU ARE RIGHT IS SUCH A HEADY WINE. It is intoxicatingly powerful to center your identity on what you attribute to be, not only the truth for yourself, but the truth for every other person.

Once you have identified with such a belief system, you can never afford to be wrong. You have become merged with your beliefs. What a conundrum! If your belief system is found to be flawed, your very identity is threatened.

Now, I have been giving thought to the idea of “not knowing.” Yes, I realize that does not seem to be a very attractive idea. It is not a concept that would engender a lot of passion or gathering power. And it certainly would not seem to be a rallying concept to base a world mission on. You probably could not take up much of an offering amongst a group of people who have admitted to themselves they really do not know much, if anything, about God and truth.

There is a saying that goes like this… “Those who know, do not say. Those who say, do not know.”

A little too mystical for most of us perhaps, but think about it for a moment.

Consider the ramifications of honestly admitting to not knowing. Well, unless you had swallowed the guilt trip that you are supposed to know and know it well… knowing that you do not know is really quite liberating. You are free to not have all the answers. You are also free from the pressure of trying to impress anyone else with your depth of knowledge.

Actually I think that resting in the reality of understanding that you do not know is faith. For years I lived with a religious mindset that was constantly striving and struggling with growing my faith… developing my faith… helping others gain greater faith… ugh! It is, at best, a frustrating exercise in futility.

One fellow might say… “There is no reason not to know the truth… we have the Bible and the Holy Spirit to teach us!” Ok. I think I know what you mean. However, if it were as clear cut as that, why then is the world of Christendom, all looking in the same Bible with the same Holy Spirit, so completely divided up? Why is each segment set apart from the rest and each believing they have the clearest revelation?

Someone said, “Even the clearest of revelations is but a finger pointing at the moon.”

So, Abraham, have you lost your faith and turned your back on Jesus? On the contrary… heavens no. I am simply learning to rest without having to have the comforting illusion of a correct belief system to protect me. Whoever God is, He is greater than the sum total of all our belief systems purged and merged into one perfect doctrine.

I rest in that.

I received a forwarded email recently with the following message…

AFTER A DAY OF CONTEMPLATION AND SOUL-SEARCHING, I HAVE DECIDED TO REACH OUT TO MY FRIENDS AND RELATIVES AND ASK YOU TO DO SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN TROUBLING ME FOR A LONG TIME.

OUR NATION IS/HAS BEEN ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO HELL FOR A LONG TIME. IF YOU LOOK AROUND, YOU WILL FIND CORRUPTION, GREED, MORAL DECAY AND A STEADY MOVE AWAY FROM THE THINGS THAT MADE US GREAT. THE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED ARE NO LONGER OUR BACKBONE.  HOWEVER, WE CAN REVERSE THIS TREND.

IN GOD’S WORD HE STATES, “IF MY PEOPLE WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME WILL HUMBLE THEMSELVES AND PRAY AND SEEK MY FACE AND TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS, THEN I WILL HEAR FROM HEAVEN AND WILL FORGIVE THEIR SIN AND HEAL THEIR LAND.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

I AM CONVINCED THAT WE MUST PRAY FOR OUR NATION AND ITS LEADERS AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS.

That message was from a man who is obviously a very sincere person who believes quite deeply in his convictions about God, prayer, and our country. What he has written here honestly could have come from my own heart a number of years ago. In fact, the verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14 was a key scripture that we highlighted in the prayer magazine that we published in the 1980’s. Our ministry was dedicated to the healing of the nations and used this verse extensively in an effort to inspire people around the world to prayer with us.

I have said all that to say this… I have come to what I sincerely believe is a more complete understanding of this important matter. I am convinced that 2 Chronicles 7:14 is not a commission given to us to use or fulfill. In fact this is one of our problems. With great hearts of desire to make an impact for God, we unwittingly take scripture out of context and unwisely use it to fulfill our imagined mission to change the world. Our Lord Jesus told us that the scriptures themselves were about Him, not about us. They were a type and shadow of good things to come, not commandments and instructions for us good intentioned believers to fulfill.

In fact, read the verse again… it says, “…I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.” Well, Israel failed in their attempt to fulfill this word back then. However… God did hear in spite of our inability to humble ourselves, or to properly seek God, and our complete lack of turning away from our wicked ways! And what He did about it is THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD!!! He sent Jesus and through his death, burial, and resurrection GOD FORGAVE SIN!!!!  “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:19

We are forgiven! It is done! We do not have to call out to God to do for us what he has already accomplished ONCE AND FOR ALL! Unless, of course, we want to nullify the grace of God and make the cross of none effect.

The writer of the email message is not alone in his idea that America “HAS BEEN ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO HELL FOR A LONG TIME.” However, he, like most of our precious brethren in the evangelical church are just plain wrong. If we as individuals or as a nation are indeed headed to hell, then Jesus Christ failed in his mission to redeem mankind from the curse of the law. Am I saying there is no hell? No. I don’t really know much about hell at all. And, by the way, neither does the rest of the church. The Good News though is that the cross of Christ made hell irrelevant!

So what is it we see when we look at America? Sin crazed immoral and godless people bent on destroying themselves and our nation? I have read similar views touted in the name of the Lord in many Christian publications. The basic idea is that the “corruption, greed, and moral decay” we see in those who are not obeying God, are the forces leading us away from the principles that made America great. And the answer to the problem is to call upon God to forgive us and heal our land.

I think we’ve missed the point. You can shout and scream about moral decay all you want. Put it on a billboard or TV ad. Pound the pulpit if you like. Line up all your verses about what happens to people who do bad things. Tell everyone how God hates sin.

Or you can do like I did when I played the great archangel in the theater production of “The Glory and The Fire.” I stood at the top of the golden stairway leading to heaven with giant wings on my back and a golden cap on my head. When the people in the play would die in their various circumstances they would find themselves standing before me. Then, with dramatic intensity, I would search the great book of God, the Lamb’s Book of Life, to see if their names were written therein. If I found their names, beautiful music would play and golden lights would guide the redeemed souls up the stairway to heaven.

However… if their names could not be found, I summoned my most saddened but sternly judgmental voice and pointed the way to the hellish flames. Demons would leap out from the shadows and drag the screaming sinners to their eternal torment.

Pretty cool, huh? O yeah… we scared the stinkin’ bejibbers out of so many people. They could not wait to come up front to be prayed for at the end of the production. Back then I called it revival! Today I call it manipulation and coercion. Or to put it a little more poetically… I call it a load of crap!

What people need, in my opinion, is the gospel… the real “good news” and not a threat of eternal punishment at the hand of an unhappy, angry God, who cannot seem to get us humans to do anything right. The real God of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is completely satisfied that his Son’s soul was made an offering for sin. (Read Isaiah 53, especially verse 11.) That sacrifice settled the sin, death, and hell matters in one cataclysmically strategic stroke of divine brilliance.

Lifestyles are not the real issue. Humanity’s struggle with behavior has more to do with religious condemnation and guilt than anything else. The gospel is the key.

•    The redemption of the world is complete!

•    The blood of Jesus has forever broken sin’s power!

•    The judgment of the world is not looming in the future. It took place two thousand years ago on the cross of Christ!

•    The human race has been brought into complete oneness with God!

•    And we are completely FREE!

I HAVE BEEN, FOR SOME TIME NOW, WORKING THROUGH THE PROBLEM of my former religious mindset. For over thirty years I accepted as truth, without question, that only believers in Jesus Christ were “right” in the sight of God and, therefore, fit for heaven. All other people, those who failed or refused to believe, were on their way to an eternal torment in a Godless Hell.

This is the basic viewpoint of the evangelical Christian church. I obtained the following statement from the Statement of Beliefs of a local church close to our home. Here is their doctrine of Final Judgment… “We believe there will be a final judgment for all unbelievers. Hell is an actual place of great suffering, bitter sorrow, and remorse reserved forever for the devil and his angels and all whose names are not written in Christ’s book of life.” And, of course, the common teaching in the Christian church is that a person’s belief in Christ (believing in his death, burial, and resurrection from the dead) is what causes a person’s name to be written in the Christ’s book of life. (Never mind the fact that there is no mention in the Bible of anyone getting their name written in Christ’s book of life!)

The bottom line here is that I no longer believe in any “judgment to come” at all for anyone, believer or unbeliever. What I believe comes from an interpretation of the New Testament that attributes more love, more grandeur, more accomplishment, more compassion, grace, peace, and mercy to God than the Christian church has ever acknowledged.

First of all, I do believe in God’s wrath being poured out in judgment against sin, but I am convinced it is behind us and not ahead of us. According to Jesus’ own words (John 12:31) his cross was the judgment of this world! If there is a judgment against sin that yet looms over mankind… what was it that the cross of Christ accomplished? Was Christ’s “passion” worth only a conditionally partial triumph over sin, hell, and the grave? If that is the case, what a treacherous precipice lays before us all! Not only do we have to believe, but we have to believe correctly and respond to that belief within divine parameters that we know will properly qualify us for a blissful eternity with God.

Personally… I am so thankful to report that I fully reject that miserable viewpoint.

Secondly, it has become my belief that all humanity was redeemed and reconciled to God through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It was there that we were “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 3:24) I love those words, “justified freely by his grace…” That is exactly what “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” accomplished… a freely given justification through HIS GRACE! It is freely given by God to humanity… his creation! It is not freely given after you believe, receive, or accept. It is freely given by God’s grace to an undeserving humanity.

Moreover, I do not believe that human beings are “in sin” until they accept God’s offer of salvation. What I believe is what Paul actually wrote in Romans 5:18, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

In my view, this understanding credits the Lamb of God with the complete and overwhelming achievement of “taking away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) In this light, Christ can no longer be considered the sorrowful rejected savior that is only able to “save” a few hardy souls who managed, through their own faith, to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of God. No longer can God the Father be thought of as having this wonderful will and plan for all mankind, but sadly “only a few there be that find it!”

As my friend, Mike Williams, has often said… “true spirituality is never measured by how many people you can exclude, but by how many you can include!”

God included us all in his perfect plan “…according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself…” This amazing God “…raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”