Perspective

This is just a bit of what I think about. I used to have traditional beliefs about God, the Bible and that body of believers known as Christians. At some point about twenty five years ago those beliefs became inadiquate for me. I started following the teachings of American style Christianity and saw lies. For instance, I have a problem with the whole Mafia style God that promises not to burn you forever in a torture chamber, designed and built by Him, if you join His "orginization". In my view, this is the foundation of fear based spirituality that has us worried about right religion and sets up the religious elite as the only ones that can truely be saved. But we the regular people know that can't be true so we invent the "magic incantation"(the sinners prayer) that keeps God from breaking your legs, spiritualy speaking. Those in control continue to teach about how we are flawed from birth, and while we can never escape the flaw we can escape the punishment that God will surley heap on us for being something that is not our fault. Satan was the first one to try this tactic and it is very effective. His attack on Eve and Adam was to convince them there was something wrong with them. That God had made a mistake and they were missing crucial knowledge. Once they believed the big lie, their behavior followed. They ate fruit they were ordered not ot eat. They joined the "moral majority", covered up their naughty bits and hid from God. Everything they did was a direct result of believing the lie, "there is something wrong with you". And everthing they did after the lie was an attempt to prove how flawed they were.

This foundation of the fallen nature of man is the perspective that we view the gift of God. Jesus died for us lousy pathetic human beings, not to help us no longer be weak and pathetic, but to make sure God doesn't send us to said torture chamber. Make no mistake. Even God cannot fix that which he made wrong in the first place. So according to this teaching, Jesus came to save us from God. Like paying protection money to the mob, only bigger.

I choose a different perspective. I believe that Jesus came to save us from the lie instead of God's hell house of horrers. That God sent His son because He believes we are worth dying for and wants us to believe what He believes. That we are equal in value to the life of Jesus. To erase the lie from our subconscience so that our behaviour will the real truth. That we are good and whole and none of our past actions can ever change that. To free us from the grip of satans only power, the lie.

I am in no way saying this is "the correct" view. It is just the one that I have embraced. And it all started by reading a very old book called "As a Man Thinketh" that changed the way I read the Bible forever.
Fred