Tag Archives: christianity

Feeling Lost in Your Spiritual Life?

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I have some posts that may help you if you find yourself not sure where your life is going, or where it should be going. These posts may be what you are looking for?

Feeling Lost Because You Are

Accept or Change your Life

Want More Out of Your Life

Feeling Lost In Your Own Life

Life Plan 101

If you are looking for general help with your life, one or more of these posts will help you get your life where you want it to be. One thing I have never touched on in these posts is feeling spiritually lost in your religious life. I wrote a post called: Dark Night of the Soul, an overview about going through the process of finding ones spiritual self, mainly through ego destruction you may be interested in.

An area I glossed over about until now, is feeling lost in your spiritual life from a Christian perspective. Feeling spiritually lost happens easily. With so many people telling you how, and what to believe it gets very confusing. What makes it more confusing is they all come on like midway Carnies at the County Fair. Step right up folks, I have what you are looking for. If this is why you are reading this post looking for an answer, perhaps this is a good post to find direction for problems of this type.

At first the new church is fun, then the finish starts to tarnish and the cracks start to show. At some point listening to what they say, it becomes apparent, this is the same song with a different melody.

Instead how about reading one thought what is important to being a Christian? The central theme of being a Christian is not about being pure or donating money. It is not about volunteering to clean your church. Those are important things, and should not be ignored, but are not one of the best reasons for being a Christian.

If you are or wish to be a Christian, the one fundamental reason you want to be a Christian is because you believe there is a God who is good and just. Because you know and accept there is a God, you also must accept that there is an anti-God named Satan who is the opposite of God.

That is what you should know before you consider anything else about being a Christian of any type. Knowing this, and keeping it forefront in your religious thinking is why you are living this moment as a Christian. Everything else in your life is secondary. Christian churches may merge or disappear. You may change churches yearly, or decide not to go to church at all. One day a fire might wipe out the building that was your church.

You are a Christian because for all your life there has been war fought between good and evil. Like it or not, you are a very important part of that war. You may not feel like you are a good Christian or a Soldier. You do not hear any gun shots, see any bombed out building, or dead bodies laying in the streets.

The war going on is for this world, and you must believe this above everything else about being a Christian. If you think there is no war, think about the poorest sections of your city. The gangs, drugs, the violence, and the hate. The burglaries, car thefts, and violent acts around you. You are a Soldier in this ongoing, never ending battle.

You think you are not any of these labels. Your friends are not any of these labels. Chances are your family do not fit any of these labels. So why are those other people, like you, but across the street or across town so destructive? Because of the battle for this world. Whether they actively chose sides, or are ignorant of their actions, they are part of the war. If they are the gang members, drug dealers, pimps, thieves, etc, they are not on your side of the war.

I am not a fan of preaching, and this sounds awfully preachy to me so that is all I will say about it. If you have not known before, now you know why you are a Christian. You were created to fight in the war. Everything else is in life is secondary to the battle.

What you do or do not do, and whether you are successful or poor is not important in the spiritual world. The only thing that matter is you do what you know is right for yourself, friends and family, neighborhood, and city. That is how you do battle in this war. The balance constantly shifts. We move closer to, and then a step away from destroying ourselves, and the earth.

Now you know why, and what you should be doing. When you get to the other end of your life, the question, ‘Did you do your part to make the world a better place by resisting evil?’, is the only question that matters. Sometimes answers come from surprising sources.

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America, Christianity, and Marriage

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John Meunier’s blog in this article, makes a case for the distinction of traditional Christian marriage, and other forms of union or marriage. You may read his thoughts here, “Forsaking All Others [is] Necessary For Marriage”.

As adults in America we have the right to choose how to live our life. We are the proverbial butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers – and everything else under the sun, moon, and stars. We all have differing interests and passions in the living of our lives. Sometimes our beliefs, passions, and endeavors merge, and at other times we and our interests are tangential.

Some people view marriage differently than those holding a traditional view. Unless one lives in isolation, I find it hard for anyone to imagine alternative relationships, whether one chooses to call them marriages, unions, or shacking up, were invented in the last few years.

A few facts and thoughts:

According to Divorcereate.org , the divorce rate for first time marriages in America is a fifty percent.

From what I read at ReligiousTolerance.org, the percentage of population in America that can be classified as Christian was 76% in 2008.

I think it is safe to assume that a majority of first time divorce claims are filed by Christian couples.

The divorce rate does not concern itself with those people who stay in failed marriages because for whatever reason they do not feel they can not end the Marriage.

Unfortunately this does not leave a lot of wiggle room for the Christian community unless one allows that while Christianity tries to take the moral high ground, the moral high ground is a slippery slope wholly attainable and sustainable by very few. Most of us are mere fallible mortals doing the best we can with what we have to work with.

People do marry or form unions for reasons other than love and fidelity. Some people marry or form unions for money, some for companionship, others for as many varied reasons as there are hobbies. Not all people need or want traditional marriages, and all the encumbrances that comes with it. Nor do all people want the stigma and isolation attached when a formal marriage fails.

It has not recently been openly acknowledged, or close to obvious in the recent past, but these types of relationships have been happening as long as there have been formal communions between men and women.

My hope is our thinking and tolerance is maturing. We in America have matured our opinions about women’s rights, children’s rights, animal rights,  and skin color.

We are maturing our opinions in other areas of life, such as caring about where our food  comes from, how it is treated, where our fuels come from and how they effect the environment, sustaining the earth for a few more generations, and trying to help the worlds poorest people without making their plight worse than it is now.

Is it really important how two reasonable adults choose how to form a relationship as long as they are not harming each other or those around them? Whose business is it how coupled adults spend their private time? Are we immature enough to believe same sex relationships were confined to the Mediterranean a few thousand years ago then recently, some deviants became activists and went public with their life style, contaminating a percentage of our population?

I have yet to meet any balanced, moral, ethical person who controls who they like, love, and what they believe when they have enjoyed exposure to the real world, and know why they think what they do. How wonderful it must be to be a real Christian, and know of no one who is not ‘normal’ like themselves,  their family and their friends.

I can not guess what God really prefers, but there does seem to be a prevalent thread that God does want us to be happy. God also demands we intentionally cause no undo harm to others. The Christian world, or parts of it, want God in all adult relationships as long as the same Christian world controls both the participants and the confines of those relationships.

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Shamanism, core Shamanism, Christianity, and what is that?

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I was reading a blog entry today about Shamanism which frustrated me. The writer of the blog definitely has their own ideas, and their own agenda. (No surprise there, I suppose.) Shamanism is not a religion, it is probably best described as one way of interacting with the world. Shamanism or Shamanistic practices is found in every major religion that I know of. So what has me riled up about the bog entry? Let me start from the beginning.

I am googling around, and I come across this blog as I said. I do not wish to attack the blog entry, or its author, so let me move the subject to a different topic, say Christianity? Just kidding, how about a card game, say some version of the card game Rummy? That sounds pretty safe to use Rummy for an analogy.

Okay, now you have to pretend you know, and maybe you do, that there are many variations of the card game Rummy. One day, an anthropologist with a fascination for the game of Rummy, decided to write a book about Rummy. The would be author finds many variations of Rummy. If they were all covered, the book would become so fractured and disjointed that no matter how it was written it would not be easy for the reader to understand.

After giving it some thought, the wanna be author finds a solution to his problem. The wanna be author will write about those parts of Rummy that all Rummy variations share. What a brilliant idea! Once the book is written there will always be a written core form of Rummy that is present no matter how it is played. If a Rummy game does not contain some of the core parts of Rummy shared in all other Rummy games, it is not a variation of Rummy, period.

This is a very simple and elegant solution to a complex problem. This same process could be applied to major religions around the world, how businesses are managed, almost anything that has more than one way of being done. All these things could be distilled down to basic parts that are common in the many parts.

Sounds pretty good having a book containing the core of something no matter how it is done? I thought it is pretty effective and quite smart too. So what is the rub? The rub is the same as it is everywhere, power and control. The blog author has decided that a book on core generic practices of Shamanism can not possibly be correct. What is correct in the authors opinion is Shamanism should only be practiced the way the blog author thinks it should be.

The details of this practice are a work in development, but contains little to no core Shamanism practices. If a Shamanistic practice does not contain portions of core Shamanism, then it is something else masquerading as Shamanism.

Christianity is a lot like the card game Rummy in some respects. Just like Rummy, Christianity has so many variations that I do not know how many variations exist. Each of these variations of Christianity feel they are the real deal, and the rest are some sort of knock off. But they all share some or most of the many core ideas found in Christianity.

So, Christianity can not be Christianity if you leave certain essentials like Christ out of the picture. The argument stating – the Shamanism the blog author is developing is correct, and any previous form of Shamanism is wrong – is clouded thinking. Just like Christianity, you can not leave out the core aspects Shamanism, and call it Shamanism. I see this author’s thinking as no different than entering a theatre in the second act of a play, stopping the play, and telling the actors they have it all wrong.

Whatever a person chooses to think, or not think is a correct personal choice. Once that thinking extends to what one, or a group of people claim is correct, and everyone else is wrong, is definitely wrong. Stating that core shared practices that have been used for thousands of years are wrong, and only a still developing system not using Shamanistic technique is right, is a different matter completely, and wrong in any format. This applies to Shamanism, Christianity, or any other major religion.

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