99 Cent Store Religion is on the Rise!

Go with the Flow!

Frequently, when I go to weddings (the heterosexual kind), I get a good chuckle. In about a quarter or so of the Christian weddings I've been to, including the ones I've performed, the couples has selected a reading from the Hebrew scripture (Bible) that goes like this:

Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people. And your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die. And there be buried beside me. May the worse thing in the world happen to me if I ever forsake you!
(Ruth 1: 16-17)

This passage is a beautiful commitment of love between two people. It stirs images of romance, yet is filled with a sense of practical reality. What gives me a good chuckle when I hear this reading at heterosexual marriage ceremonies is that Ruth spoke those words to Naomi. These are words of commitment from one woman to another.

Briefly, the story of Ruth and Naomi is a story of two women left to fend for themselves after the deaths of their respective husbands. With no rights in ancient society, widows were left on their own without property or inheritance because only men could own property or inherit wealth. Widows had to depend on their relatives to take care of them. In this case, the relatives would not take them in. So Ruth, the younger, pledges her faithfulness to Naomi. She then concocts a plan of getting a distant wealthy relative drunk and Ruth slips into his bed at night and as the Bible so coyly says she " uncovers his feet." Later, she tricks him into confessing that he took advantage of her. The result was that he was forced to take both Ruth and Naomi into his harem. (Yes, lots of Old Testament men had huge harems. The model of the nuclear family is simply one Biblical paradigm of family among other types of family units. But that's another topic)

Ruth was a bold, courageous woman. She was wise and knew how to take care of herself. She loved Naomi deeply and did everything necessary to assure that both of them would be cared for properly. Ruth was the grandmother of David, the greatest King of Israel. She is also one of the ancestors of Jesus. Her actions, which many would consider unethical today, are lauded in the Bible. She's a hero. Further, she did what she did out of love for a woman.

The topic of last week was multiple, but the focus was upon the State of Vermont and its acceptance of same sex couples uniting for almost married status. When I last heard the news and weather this morning there was still a Vermont and there was no sudden heat wave caused by smothering peltings of brimstone and fire. All is well in Vermont and the rest of the nation as well. I expect it to continue to be so. 99 Cent Store Religion is on the Rise!

Today I wanted to comment upon an article I read in a magazine I purchased at our local Gospel Supplies outlet on one of my many trips to pick up hundreds of Ministers' Manuals of Services of the Monastery's Ministry in a Box packages which are our best product for new and experienced ministers. A magazine next to Moody Monthly had a cover cartoon of a local town street with a Mayberry town look to it. The headline read "Look out for Religious Sects on the Internet." Of course, I bought it always the sucker for attacks upon our own. In the article it warns Christians to not even read articles about Eastern religions, not to allow their children to engage in "visualization" exercises in school because they are based upon Eastern mysticism, they go on to warn against "sects" that hunt the souls of "our" youth that are yearning for Gods love and they reach them with music and "lyrics" and the booming sounds of today's sex bands.

It seems to me that when I came up in the Sixty's they said the same thing. The same was said in the 40's about the Big Bands too! Hell, just think what they said about Elvis - The King - and his gyrating hips - the sure path to hell fire and damnation. Once you realize the cycle it is pure silliness. My younger brother 8 years my junior now has two teenage daughters 18 and 16 years of age. Oh, how I love to torment him by reminding him of his "adventures" in the land of lust. I remind him that the young men coming to date his daughters or visit and shake his hand in greeting him at his door don't really want to shake his hand at all, he should know what they want. Now he has to see life from another viewpoint.

THAT IS WHAT I AM ASKING YOU TO DO TODAY.

Look at life from a different viewpoint. I am all for happiness. If you are not happy, it is because you are not looking at the situation in a viewpoint that would cause you to feel happy. That is the only reason. The only difference between you and any animal of the field is that you can choose your thoughts. Why in the hell would you choose to think something that makes you feel badly? Don't tell me you can't help it, you can. If you cannot control your own mind, you need to be institutionalized for your own safety and that of others as well. One verse in the Bible that I like to quote goes something like this...think on the good, the clean, the pure.... there are other reference verses somewhat the same. When you think on those things, those types of feelings accompany those thoughts. It is like happy music evokes happy thoughts or memories or feelings. Why not feel happy all the time. You might think that no one can be happy all the time, I say why not.

Being happy is a choice. Only you make that choice. As an example...whether you agree with what has happened in Vermont or not, can you be happy for those that the decision makes happy? If you can, so much the better. If the decision in Vermont angers you and you are one going on some rampage against it and protest the actions of others, you are making a choice to be angry. You are the sick one. Rather than working on your own happiness and rather than disrupting the happiness of others, you are the sick one, lonely one, the damned one. Why be in that position? Do you think you do gGod service? Do you serve such a weak and helpless gGod that he/she needs YOU to do work a gGod should do? How high you value your own work! If your gGod needs you, I don't want your gGod.

God works for me, I tell God what I want. If God wants a new house we call a church, he needs me. If he wants pews for people to sit on, he needs me to make them or pay for them. God needs men and women, but men and women don't need God. That is very hard for you to take and very hard to understand, but until you realize it you are doomed to servitude. I don't care if you are a Christian or any other denomination at all. The definition of every single gGod is "do for me" that do for me either means provide or protect. One reason is that you can find others to join with you or you can join with. Everyone likes numbers to be with them!

You do everything for gGod. If you don't see it, you won't ever believe it and the contrary is also true...if you don't believe it you won't see it.

You serve a gGod because you need one, one to ask for things, beg protection from and live on promises, just promises. That is fine if you realize it for what it is, but don't demand that others follow hollow promises taught as truths when they are beliefs.

Remember in all denominations even in the ULC - every belief is just that - a belief and a belief is not a fact or we would not call it a belief it would be called a fact. People get those two mixed up. That is why people leave religion. When they come to their senses and I really mean senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing) they realize reality and beliefs do not mingle. YES, you can have HOPE, churches have been selling hope since the beginning of churches. HOPE springs eternal. It would be fine if they did not charge for it.

My task for you today is to exchange as many beliefs as you can for facts.

A fact will not discourage you, will not let you down, will not promise you anything it cannot deliver, makes no promise of anything other than what it is, does not charge you for being a fact, does not intimate and threaten you, does not care if you accept it as truth or not it still remains a fact. NO belief can do any of those attributes, yet millions and billions of people grasp at straws; I mean beliefs to get through the day...living in hope and dying in despair.

I say to hell with beliefs and stay with facts as much as you possibly can.

Yes, you can have a few beliefs if you feel you need them, but realize them for what they are; nothing magical, nothing mystical, nothing of the divine. The closest to divine you ever will get is YOURSELF. YOU are the divine, you are the most important person in the world. You are number one. Everything you have ever had, everything you now have and everything you will ever acquire will come from another person ---not from some sky gGod.

If a bag of money dropped from the sky, would it be from gGod? If so, your gGod would be a counterfeiter! Would that not be a sin? More likely it fell from a plane or carried aloft in an air current from far away or nearby. Think. Rev. Hensley used to tell us that the greatest problem in the U.S. was that people think they think and I believe he was right.

What do you think?




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