Theocentric Musings

The world as a whole, everyone in it, needs the Real Jesus, that I have to even say that means people haven't been listening. But, the world cannot know the Real Jesus until the church as a whole gets to know Him. That is the problem I am addressing in frustration with many of my posts. How can you send out missionaries to reach the world, or even your own backyard, for Jesus, when all the majority of American Christian™ churches do is teach people about the same false god those in the world, or in your own backyard, already worship only with a clever name change to "Jesus?" That makes no sense. So before people can meet the Real Jesus, the people tasked with sharing Him with the world need to know Him. That is simple logic. So people say how can you be so certain? How can you be so sanctimonious? Who are you to say who is following Jesus and who is not? What made you the unofficial spokesman for the Real Jesus? Keep your prattling on to yourself we don't want ...

In this age of violence, I notice many trying to justify or excuse violence by using a single event in scripture to support their narrative of a violent non-pacifist Jesus. I shake my head because it’s the same problem I see day in and day out when it comes to scriptures. People do not use exegesis, they rely on eisegesis. This is a major, major no-no when it comes to scripture.   A brief explanation of the 2 terms may be in order for those who don’t know what this means: exegesis is the process of drawing out the meaning from a text in accordance with the context and discoverable meaning of its author, eisegesis occurs when a reader imposes his or her interpretation into and onto the text. In a nut shell, exegesis is studying scripture to find out what IT says, eisegesis is studying scripture to make it tell what YOU say. So instead of “reading” the text, you are “reading into” the text. All this does it provide confirmation bias, which is:   the tende...

  God is not doing anything bad to America, he actually wants us all young, old, black, white, asian, native, latino, jewish, indian, muslim, etc. to come to know Him in this country so we can be filled with Love and have a giving heart towards all, around the world, and guide more into a freedom filled, life giving relationship with Him.   Blood moons, harbingers, storms, torturous wrath, all that nonsense is not how He operates, drop your messed up view of the book of revelatio n, and the ignorant view those in the OT had of God, and realize the depth of John 3:16 and the absolute lengths He is willing to go to bring His children home.   God is Love, Love is perfectly defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Jesus came to clear up the image of God in the eyes of those misled in the OT about the character of God.   Don't regress into being blinded to who He is by fear mongering, ignorant speakers that have an economical or sociological interest in keeping ...

I think a slightly better tagline would be read the bible in light of the finished work of Christ, the law of love, the Holy Spirit, and using right division. There are 43,000 denominations that all share the same bible, the kkk uses the bible, and various other cults, and usually what has infected their interpretations are not believing, or knowing, that the work of Jesus made a difference, not using a lens of love by not understanding that the number one attribute of their God is Love, letting their own emotions or biases lead them to interpret things a certain way, which usually is in a manner to read into it that their god hates the same people they seem to hate, or is a task master like their earthly father or early influences were, and not knowing the who, what, why, and when regarding a particular scripture. Mix that in with a little bit of believing that someone with letters behind their name knows more, when they simply were taught the specific theology of what the coll...

I was watching something recently and I found it very interesting. It was one of those elimination types of shows. On this particular show it was an artistic competition with 3 judges who would rate the artists' work and then make a decision on who would be the weakest artist to be put up for elimination. A certain artist on the show went up against another artist for elimination. Two of the artists not up for elimination were helping that other artist to defeat him and send him packing. The artist made a comment that the other artists needed 3 people to beat him because they “feared” him. That was his honest perception of the situation. The problem was that it was not only completely in error, but even sadder, that you could not convince him of his error. He was stuck believing a lie and nothing could convince him of the truth. You see, they wanted him gone because he was not pleasant to be around. He had a very abrasive personality. He suffered from a huge ...

The thing is that much of what is attributed to God even in "infallible" scripture isn't actually true, it was a relational perception at the time of writing. The Holy Spirit didn't make people robots and have them write beyond their revelation, they wrote as things were revealed to them and things that they believed. If any Christian of today was inspired to write a canon of scripture out of the 43,000+ denominations it would be slanted towards their beliefs. God doesn't force you to believe something as false if you don't want to. He can try to reveal it to you but if you (speaking of anyone in general) are set in your beliefs He's not going to "make you" believe something about Him. People aren't mindless zombies. People have prejudices and beliefs that are ingrained in them through various teachings or life experiences. Some of those are toxic false beliefs. If you've been taught the sky is green most of your life it's going...