As you take in all the hate, ugly partisan anger, violence and world turmoil in the news of late especially with regard to the instability in the Middle East, keep in mind that they are all just ‘symptoms’ getting worse, and these symptoms have been trying to teach us something for centuries upon centuries. It is time we woke up and finally learned the lesson.
The lesson we are meant to learn has been ironically BLOCKED to a large degree by the Big Three organized religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism). While they have ostensibly supported the concept of ‘things spiritual’, they have been created by institutions of power throughout history to first divide, and just as importantly to CONTROL mankind in the name of “God”, while teaching a man-made false image of God and spirituality that is always deeply and fundamentally rooted in division, elitism and bigotry.
That is absolutely what must change for us to learn the lesson these ugly, divisive and violent events are trying to teach us. Just like the awakening that took off with the Civil Rights Movement, we are vastly overdue for a spiritual awakening movement, where it finally dawns on mankind that we are ALL a part of what “GOD” is, not divided and enemies of one another.
Organized religion has largely caused what we are seeing. Like the definition of insanity says about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, mankind has dogmatically kept embracing and teaching the dividing and elitist teachings of these man-made religions to their children over the centuries, expecting a different VICTORIOUS result, while the same repetitious pattern of bigoted violence and wars has continued to unfold.
We lie to ourselves, and claim that our religions are about love, while teaching such monstrous bedrock Bible stories as the one about Abraham trying to kill his son Isaac as an offering to God on an altar. If you went to Sunday School or Children’s Church at all as a child, whether a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you remember this story being taught to you…
Abraham, the father of both the religions of Judaism and Islam, is said to hear the voice of God commanding him to ‘sacrifice’ his son Isaac on the altar as an offering to God. So he invites Isaac to go for a walk with him.
What little boy (or girl for that matter) doesn’t jump at an invitation to go for a walk with their daddy? You see your father as the ultimate protector, someone you know you can trust to guide you through this experience of life that is monumentally scary to a child, as you are struggling to understand and make sense of it. But our “beautiful” Bible-based and Koran-based religions would have children believe that God decided to have Abraham take Isaac out for a walk to be sacrificed as an offering to God…
Abraham takes Isaac for a walk up a mountain, and upon reaching the top, subsequently stops to build the altar upon which he is going to kill his son. Isaac has no clue. I imagine had he been told by his father what the purpose of the walk was, he probably would have said, “No thanks Dad, I think I’ll stay here and play World of Warcraft with my stick figures, knock yourself out.”
Abraham finishes building the altar and then to Isaac’s terror, Abraham binds Isaac with chords, places him on the altar and is about to stab him in the heart with a knife when suddenly the angel of the Lord appears. The angel grabs Abraham’s hand at the last minute, in typical Hollywood script style.
Apologists for Christianity and Judaism love to try to characterize this as the “mercy” of God…He had “compassion” and showed “grace” to Abraham and Isaac as a result of Abraham’s “blind obedience”, etc., etc.
REALLY?? Did Jewish parents back at the time this B.S. was written really have such difficulty even then, getting their kids to clean their rooms and do their chores, that they had to resort to this kind of terror tactic?
From then on, every time Abraham asked Isaac if he fed the camels, and Isaac gave him some excuse, all Abraham had to say was, “What was that God? What did you say?” and Isaac would immediately be out the door to feed the camels and clean the stable…Is that the idea for this man-made, terrorizing image of “God” crafted by the Jews who wrote those myths?
How sick indeed to teach such a story to children, creating such a fear-based image of God that has stayed with us for centuries and contributed in NO WAY to love, but in every way to major worldwide divisiveness and hate between mankind.
ONCE AND FOR ALL, I want to share with my readers the truth about the above scripture regarding that story of Abraham and Isaac. The truth is that this scripture was completely MISTRANSLATED.
The accurate story…the true facts are that Abraham DOES believe he hears the voice of God in his ear, telling him to ‘sacrifice’ his son Isaac for the Lord. And the truth is, like some kind of whack job (who probably fell through the cracks with “Child Protective Services” even back then), Abraham DOES act on this voice in his ear, and actually does intend to kill Isaac, simply because he believes God is telling him to do so.
It is also true that they get to the top of the mountain, and Abraham builds the altar, binds a screaming, terrorized Isaac with chords, and is about to plunge the knife into Isaac’s chest. In super melodramatic fashion, the angel of the Lord does show up at the last minute and grabs Abraham’s hand to stop him from doing so.
Abraham is angry at this interruption of “God’s will”, and he exclaims “What the Shiksta!” (Not sure on proper spelling…just insert expletive of your choice) “I distinctively heard the voice of God commanding me to sacrifice my son!”
To which the angry, irritated angel of the Lord replies, “No you didn’t, you DEAF OLD MAN!…He didn’t tell you to sacrifice him, he told you to CIRCUMCISE him!!”
The horrors we are seeing all around us are meant to wake us up and help us think and create in the right direction. They are the result of our thinking and creating in the WRONG direction for way too long.
We think in the wrong direction when we see our identity as number one, separate from what God is, and number two, separate from our diverse brothers and sisters. That is to say, too many of us put too much of an emphasis on being “Christian”, or being “Jewish”, or being “Muslim”, or being “Mormons”, or being “White”, or “Black”, or “Hispanic/Mexican”…the list of examples of divisions between ourselves goes on and on.
We need to wake up and learn how to value most our shared HUMAN CULTURE, not just identifying with dividing sub-cultures that have led to all the above I have described. Organized religion has been the primary cause of this. It has been nothing but “man creating God”, and in doing so, creating that God in his bigoted, elitist image in order to control people in certain sub cultures, using fear to gain power, etc. It isn’t AT ALL about “God creating man in God’s image”.
True spirituality is found in the understanding that we are all part of what “GOD” is. There is no division, no “CHOSEN PEOPLE” as is taught by Judaism, Islam and Christianity from the Bible and the Koran. THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT IS PURE BIGOTRY in the name of “GOD”…A “Chosen Race”…a “Chosen People”… that is clearly an ignorant, divisive man-made teaching at the ROOT of organized religion.
These horrors we see around us are trying to teach us this message that we have for so long refused to learn. ENOUGH ALREADY! The message we need to awaken to, in order to begin healing one another and stopping this worldwide terror and violent hate in the name of God and our various sub-cultures, is that we all SHARE the spirit of “God”. The HUMAN SPIRIT is not divided by culture, dogma and diverse belief. The HUMAN SPIRIT is trying to wake us up to our shared part in what “GOD” is.
We are the HANDS OF GOD that save each other and bring unconditional love and forgiveness to one another in this “bad dream” we are sharing, for lack of a better descriptive term for this experience. We are here for the purpose of learning to BE THE LOVE AND HEALING OF GOD that others need, and to do so with no connection to any form of condemnation or dogma…Just with the recognition that we are all an equal holy part of what is Divine.
We are here for the purpose of learning that one critical lesson. There is no excuse that we have taken this long and allowed this much hate and violence to continue, without yet learning it.
Connie Bryan
(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA. Check out all of her material on her blog at www.conniebryan.com)
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