Say NO to
"Original Sin / Atonement/Hell"
FreeChristians

"If God can not forgive us unless Christ pays our debt, then he does not really forgive at all. If a debt has been paid, then there is nothing to forgive. Atonement and forgiveness, therefore, are mutually exclusive" R. Brinsmead

"God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor." -William C. Easttom II

The Christian Chamber of Horrors

Original Sin, Atonement and Hell. Nothing more evil has ever entered the mind of man. Australian theologian R. Brinsmead calls these religious ideas as "a chamber of horrors". The good news is that the Jesus of History, the real Jesus ( Joshua Ben Adam "Son of Man" ) had nothing to do with it! But before we get to that we must deal with these cruel religious ideas.

First of all I highly recommend the following reading material and links to all those who are troubled, ( and rightly so! ), by the various Christian messages that make God look like an ogre:

- The Absurdity of Original Sin and Salvation by Kenneth Harding. Why the idea of original sin, and our subsequent "need" to be saved from it, doesn't make sense. 

- Christ’s Death To End Sacrifice by S. Mark Heim The work of the cross is the work of a transcendent God breaking into a cycle we could not change alone. ( religion online )

- Reading the Creation Stories Again by Marcus Borg: The term "the fall" does not occur in the Genesis story of creation. As a description of the events surrounding Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise, it is largely a Christian label; Jews typically do not speak of "the fall."…

- Why Did Christ Die? - by A.P. Adams - The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ has captivated the entire world. This article reveals some new insights as to the real "Cross of Christ" and its significance ( source: www.tentmaker.org )

- Understanding the Cross - Vicarious Atonement vs Christus Victor

- The Incoherence of Original Sin and Substitutive Sacrifice By Philip Kuchar ( source: The Secular Web )

- The Book of Hebrews, the Cross, and Discipleship by Andrew Baker
Examines the Book of Hebrews and shows that this book does not support penal atonement theories in which God required the death of Jesus to pay a penalty for the sins of human kind. It shows, instead, that God does not desire death, certainly not Jesus' death, but "to do His will."

See also why Judaism rejects the Christian "gospel" of atonement: Does Judaism Believe in Original Sin?   What Does the Bible Really Say? , Sin and Atonement & Could Jesus' Death Atone for Any Kind of Sin? 

The reading material and links recommended in this article are both from Christian and non-Christian ( even anti-religion ) sources. Like all things, the Christian faith must pass through the fire ( even the fire of questioning and criticism ) so that whatever is true may remain. In this respect, the critiques made by atheists and non-Christians are invaluable. Only the arrogant Christian will ignore or not take seriously the questioning of his/her faith by others. In every respect, it is with great joy that every Christian should give up all these nefarious ideas about God and reality. They are "out of date by 2000 years" anyway! 

The trinity of evil Original Sin/Atonement/Hell has caused unspeakable suffering and anguish throughout the troubled history of Christianity. It is about time these three "unclean spirits" are "exorcised" from the Universal Body of Christ. Thank God for all these non-religious intellectuals who had the moral integrity and courage to lead the way in exorcising the religious 'demons' that have plagued mankind for centuries! Thank God for books like Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark. The light of reason by all the great skeptics and secular philosophers has dispelled the darkness of religious superstition in a big way. In the Greek language, the word for superstition is deisdaimonia, ie "fear of demons". This is the very same word that according to the Book of Acts, St. Paul used to describe the practice of being "religious"! Any religion that bases itself on fear of any kind is a superstition. This includes Christianity, which has turned God into the greatest DEMON of them all, forcing millions of people to fear this dreadful  entity. Misguided religious ideas like "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" have damaged for centuries now the mental health of millions of Christians. There is still a lot of darkness left in the "demon haunted world" of Christianity. The problem is that the average Christian will not consult the writings of those who criticize his/her faith. Thus the need of Christian exorcists. R. Brinsmead is one such exorcist. He has successfully identified several "demons" in the Christian Church. Of the "Christian chamber of horrors" he writes:

"The Fall, Hell and the Atonement by blood sacrifice are the outline structure of the Christian religion whether Catholic or Protestant. Each of these three elements is a recycled pagan myth. Each has pay-back justice at its heart. Together the parts form one structure. The Fall is the beginning of the story. The story has a Hell of an end. In the middle is Atonement by means of a blood sacrifice. From beginning to end it is a Chamber of Horrors. It is totally incompatible with the life and teaching of Joshua ben Adam ( Jesus, Son of Man )."

"Ben Adam ( Jesus, the Son of Man ) totally demolished the world-view of his day. He removed pay-back justice from his vision for a new human society. There was no pay-back justice in his vision of God. His teaching was like new wine which, he said, must not be placed into the old wineskins. But that is exactly what happened. The church put the new wine of amazing generosity and love into the old wineskins of pagan myths and pay-back justice."

"In Christian theology the Cross and Hell are the two sides or the two stages of one reality. The Apostles Creed says that Christ descended into Hell. He took upon himself God's wrath against sin, the infinite sufferings of Hell, in order to save us from that punishment. Out of love God is said to have provided this bloody sacrifice of his own son to make an atonement (pay-back, compensation, payment) for human sins. Christ too was said to be one with the Father in becoming the bloody victim of atonement. The transaction is said to be substitutionary. Christ, the innocent one, was treated as we deserved that we, the guilty ones, might be treated as he deserves. God rolled on him the sins of the world and punished him as if he were every sinner."

"If it be asked, "Why was this atonement necessary?" the answer is that God could not forgive sin unless he satisfied his law or his principle of retributive justice. Anselm said that reparations or an adequate compensation had to be made to God's outraged honor due to man's sin. The real reason God offers the bloody sacrifice of his son and Christ offers himself as the victim, therefore, is not to save people but it is to justify the divine administration, to satisfy God's justice, to honor and glorify God, etc... If God cannot forgive us unless Christ pays our debt, then he does not really forgive at all. If a debt has been paid, then there is nothing to forgive. Atonement and forgiveness, therefore, are mutually exclusive." 

( see R. Brinsmead, "No Sin Except - The Roots of Blood Atonement", The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam, Part 4, Essay 1E VERDICT August 1998. Table of Contents: http://www.quango.net/verdict/index.htm )

Needless to say, Brinsmead's essays on VERDICT are a very good place to start for those who want to examine the root of the problem. The series of essays The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam, are a must read. Here is another sample: 

"The first Christians interpreted the meaning of the Christ event against the background of their cosmology or worldview. That was a very natural and human thing to do. We can excuse them for that. Theirs was a little matchbox universe. The world was believed to be four thousand years old. Father Adam had sinned and lost Paradise for all. The result was estrangement from God, suffering and death across the face of the world"

"Our age has got the Hubbell telescope. We can look back in time to see things, which happened twelve billion years ago. We can count at least four hundred billion galaxies like our own "Milky Way" galaxy. Joseph Campbell says: "In our day of course, the whole picture of all the major religions are at least two thousand years out of date". Myths to Live By p 215. What are the implications of this vastly expanded time/space reality? To start with, we know that millions of years before Adam was supposed to have sinned bringing death and destruction, there were enormous disturbances on earth with wholesale extinction of species such as dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers. And speaking of tigers, tigers never did have teeth suited to anything but tearing flesh. So there is no point going on with a theological scheme based on a Paradise which never was, a Fall of Man which never was, an estranged (offended and absent) Deity that never was, and then paying for all this damage by a blood atonement that never was. In short, a matchbox sized theology suited to that matchbox sized universe has all been blown to smithereens... In  the Scandal of Joshua ben Adam, we take up the challenge of re-interpreting the story of the greatest man who ever lived against the bigger picture of our bigger universe." ( The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam, Part Two, The Big Picture. See: http://www.quango.net/verdict/index.htm  )

Why Eastern Christianity has rejected Atonement

Western Christians would do well to consult the writings of their fellow Christians from the Eastern tradition. The Eastern Church never really liked the notion of atonement, and has in fact rejected it. Many early Greek fathers, taught that the whole purpose of Christ coming to earth was to launch the process of deification for the whole universe. They taught that 'Adam' had nothing to do with it, and even if the mythical Adam hadn't sinned, Christ would had come anyway, since the meaning of life is the deification of all things. No need for atonement therefore. The greatest Greek fathers repudiated notions like "wrath of God". See Is God angry? No He is not. 

This is what the great Eastern Orthodox teacher Nicholas A. Berdyaev wrote: 

"The Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and not the inner spiritual treasure.... At its apex, Orthodoxy understands the purpose of life as the seeking and the attainment of the grace of the Holy Spirit, as a means of the spiritual transfiguration of creation. This understanding is essentially opposite of the legalistic understanding in which the Divine world and the supernatural world is the law and the norm for the created and natural world. Christ's appearance has a cosmic, cosmogonic significance; it signifies somehow a new creation, a new day of the world's creation. The juridical understanding of redemption as a carrying out of a judicial process between God and man, is somewhat foreign to Orthodoxy..."

He adds: "It is closer to an ontological and a cosmic understanding of the appearance of a new creation and a renewed mankind. The idea of Theosis was the central and correct idea, the Deification of man and of the whole created world. Salvation is that Deification. And the whole created world, the whole cosmos is subject to Deification. Salvation is the enlightenment and transfiguration of creation and not a juridical justification. Orthodoxy turns to the mystery of the RESURRECTION as the summit and the final aim of Christianity Thus the central feast in the life of the Orthodox Church is the feast of Pascha, Christ's Glorious Resurrection. The shining rays of the Resurrection permeates the Orthodox world. The feast of the Resurrection has an immeasurably greater significance in the Orthodox liturgy than in Catholicism where the apex is the feast of the Birth of Christ. In Catholicism we primarily meet the crucified Christ and in Orthodoxy - the Resurrected Christ. The way of the Cross is man's path but it leads man, along with the rest of the world, towards the Resurrection. The mystery of the Crucifixion may be hidden behind the mystery of the Resurrection. But the mystery of the Resurrection is the utmost mystery of Orthodoxy. The Resurrection mystery is not only for man, it is cosmic. The East is always more cosmic than the West...."

And the punchline: "The spiritual basis of Orthodoxy engenders a desire for universal salvation. Salvation is understood not only as an individual one but a collective one, along with the whole world. Such words of Thomas Aquinas could not have emanated from Orthodoxy's bosom, who said that the righteous person in paradise will delight himself with the suffering of sinners in hell. Nor could Orthodoxy proclaim the teaching about predestination, not only in the extreme Calvinist form but in the form imagined by the Blessed Augustine. The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly - it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos..." ( THE TRUTH OF ORTHODOXY, by Nicholas A. Berdyaev, In " Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate "- Paris 1952: http://www.stphilaret.ru/orthodoxy.htm  )

Another Orthodox writer, Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros, is even more critical about the Western teachings on Blood Atonement: 

But why do men hate God? They hate Him not only because their deeds are dark while God is light, but also because they consider Him as a menace, as an imminent and eternal danger, as an adversary in court, as an opponent at law, as a public prosecutor and an eternal persecutor. To them, God is no more the almighty physician who came to save them from illness and death, but rather a cruel judge and a vengeful inquisitor. You see, the devil managed to make men believe that God does not really love us, that He really only loves Himself, and that He accepts us only if we behave as He wants us to behave; that He hates us if we do not behave as He ordered us to behave, and is offended by our insubordination to such a degree that we must pay for it by eternal tortures, created by Him for that purpose.

"Who can love a torturer? Even those who try hard to save themselves from the wrath of God cannot really love Him. They love only themselves, trying to escape God's vengeance and to achieve eternal bliss by managing to please this fearsome and extremely dangerous Creator. Do you perceive the devil's slander of our all loving, all kind, and absolutely good God? That is why in Greek the devil was given the name DIABOLOS, "the slanderer"... But what was the instrument of the devil's slandering of God? What means did he use in order to convince humanity, in order to pervert human thought? He used "theology". He first introduced a slight alteration in theology which, once it was accepted, he managed to increase more and more to the degree that Christianity became completely unrecognizable. This is what we call "Western theology"."

"Did you ever try to pinpoint what is the principal characteristic of Western theology? Well, its principal characteristic is that it considers God as the real cause of all evil. What is evil? Is it not the estrangement from God Who is Life? Is it not death? What does Western theology teach about death? All Roman Catholics and most Protestants consider death as a punishment from God. God considered all men guilty of Adam's sin and punished them by death... Augustine interprets the passage in Genesis "If you eat of the fruit of this tree, you will die the death" as "If you eat of the fruit of this tree, I will kill you"...."

"The "God" of the West is an offended and angry God, full of wrath for the disobedience of men, who desires in His destructive passion to torment all humanity unto eternity for their sins, unless He receives an infinite satisfaction for His offended pride. What is the Western dogma of salvation? Did not God kill God in order to satisfy His pride, which the Westerners euphemistically call justice? And is it not by this infinite satisfaction that He deigns to accept the salvation of some of us? What is salvation for Western theology? Is it not salvation from the wrath of God?..."

"Do you see, then, that Western theology teaches that our real danger and our real enemy is our Creator and God? Salvation, for Westerners, is to be saved from the hands of God!

"How can one love such a God? How can we have faith in someone we detest? Faith in its deeper essence is a product of love, therefore, it would be our desire that one who threatens us not even exist, especially when this threat is eternal."

"Even if there exists a means of escaping the eternal wrath of this omnipotent but wicked Being (the death of His Son in our stead), it would be much better if this Being did not exist. This was the most logical conclusion of the mind and of the heart of the Western peoples, because even eternal Paradise would be abhorrent with such a cruel God. Thus was atheism born, and this is why the West was its birthplace. Atheism was unknown in Eastern Christianity until Western theology was introduced there, too. Atheism is the consequence of Western theology. Atheism is the denial, the negation of an evil God. Men became atheists in order to be saved from God, hiding their head and closing their eyes like an ostrich."

"...Deep inside the Western soul, God was felt to be the wicked Judge, Who never forgot even the smallest offense done to Him in our transgressions of His laws... This juridical conception of God, this completely distorted interpretation of God's justice, was nothing else than the projection of human passions on theology. It was a return to the pagan process of humanizing God and deifying man. Men are vexed and angered when not taken seriously and consider it a humiliation which only vengeance can remove, whether it is by crime or by duel. This was the worldly, passionate conception of justice prevailing in the minds of a so-called "Christian" society."

"Western Christians thought about God's justice in the same way also; God, the infinite Being, was infinitely insulted by Adam's disobedience. He decided that the guilt of Adam's disobedience descended equally to all His children, and that all were to be sentenced to death for Adam's sin, which they did not commit. God's justice for Westerners operated like a vendetta. Not only the man who insulted you, but also all his family must die. And what was tragic for men, to the point of hopelessness, was that no man, nor even all humanity, could appease God's insulted dignity, even if all men in history were to be sacrificed. God's dignity could be saved only if He could punish someone of the same dignity as He. So in order to save both God's dignity and mankind, there was no other solution than the incarnation of His Son, so that a man of godly dignity could be sacrificed to save God's honor..."

"This paganistic conception of God's justice which demands infinite sacrifices in order to be appeased clearly makes God our real enemy and the cause of all our misfortunes. Moreover, it is a justice which is not at all just since it punishes and demands satisfaction from persons which were not at all responsible for the sin of their forefathers.  In other words, what Westerners call justice ought rather to be called resentment and vengeance of the worst kind. Even Christ's love and sacrifice loses its significance and logic in this schizoid notion of a God who kills God in order to satisfy the so-called justice of God." ( THE RIVER OF FIRE by Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros )

The problem with Eastern Orthodoxy 

Though Dr. Kalomiros successfully rebuts the western notions of Atonement and Original Sin, he fails to take his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, namely the Universal Salvation of all mankind. Following an old tradition of the Greek Church, that of the "doctrine of reserve" he maintains some kind of Hell for those who chose to hate God, since God, as he says, "absolutely respects the free will of His creatures". This however begs the whole question, because he had already proven that people hate the distorted views of God, and not the real God of love. It is time Orthodox teachers like Kalomiros give up the "doctrine of reserve" and come out and say the whole truth and nothing but the truth about God's great plan for His creation. Many Orthodox teachers have allready done this, especially in Russia, by theologians like Nicholas A. Berdyaev. See also "Father Lev Gillet, The Monk in the City, a Pilgrim in many worlds":
http://www.jacwell.org/spring

Because of the doctrine of reserve ( ie that some higher teachings like Universalism should not be communicated to the simple minded because they may take them as a licence to sin ), the Greek fathers kept in the Christian tradition the doctrine of Hell. This was a tragic mistake. Orthodox Michael M. Morbey puts it this way: 

"Rather than go into great detail here, I will do little more than offer a list of the names of some of the Fathers and leaders of the Early Church whose teachings can be cited with varying degrees of weight in support of the Biblical doctrine of Universal Reconciliation.  Of course, many in our day would insist that these respected Church Fathers and leaders were wrong. I hope these people will not attempt to cover over the evidence by recourse to instances of "the doctrine of reserve". Here are some names: Clement of Alexandria; Origen; Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch; Athenagoras; Eusebius, Bishop of Caesaria; Gregory of Nazianzus; Gregory of Nyssa; Ambrose, Bishop of Milan; Jerome (in his youth); Theodoret, Bishop of Cyprus; Theodore of Mopsuestia; John of Antioch ; St. John Chrysostom, who also specifically acknowledged "the doctrine of reserve". How can any Orthodox have minimal or negative regard for the "blessed hope" of such an illustrious company?..." 

"...Actually, the belief in apokatastasis and universal reconciliation was so prevalent and so unquestioned in the hearts and minds of so many of the major Church Fathers up until the fifth century, that it is hardly likely that Origen would have been singled out for attack specifically for his "tenderheartedness" (as St. Augustine might call it) in this area. Hints in this direction had already been set forth by Origen's teacher, Clement of Alexandria, who had complained about the introduction of "punishments after death" and "penal retribution by fire...pilfered from the Barbarian [Hebrew] philosophy both by all the poetic Muses and by the Hellenic philosophy", as expressed in Plato's  *The Republic*.  While his "Hebrew" connection may be questionable, Clement does seem to anticipate the astute observation of Hannah Arendt, that the (classical) Christian framework for Heaven and Hell is much more POLITICAL than Biblical, it being CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY, the accommodation of a fundamentally secular structure of coercion (the Platonic political myths of rewards and punishments) formally introduced by Church authorities as a means of social control not before the fifth century, but at the time the papacy emerged as a temporal power, and, I would add, long before the Church had split into "East" and "West"."... 

"What I find remarkable is the number of Orthodox commentators who continue to hold to some variation of this "Westernized" frame of reference for Heaven and Hell, seemingly so oblivious to the depths of illumination  of the subject experientially available in their own mystical tradition, which has retained at least something of the original hope. Perhaps the problem could be that a residue of the "the doctrine of reserve" still lingers on, i.e., the belief of some of the Fathers of the Church that "universal restoration" is a truth for the perfect only, while the untutored masses may still need a good scare to rein them in and set them on the way to Salvation."

John Wesley Hanson in his great classic Universalism in the First Five Hundred Years of the Christian Church dedicated a whole chapter on the issue of "doctrine of reserve". The full text is available at:  http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Prevailing 

No sacrifice needed for God to love and forgive us all

It is time for the Christian religion to give up all these cruel images of God ( Original Sin, Atonement, Hell ) and start from scratch in forming healthier teachings about the wonderful reality we call God. Otherwise its demise and death is inevitable. There is still time...

In spite of their errors and imperfections, the gospels have retained some of the authentic sayings of Jesus. These sayings, are so original and "real" that they couldn't have been the invention of the gospel writers. The authentic voice of Jesus demolishes the cruel worldviews of angry gods, of payback justice, of original sin, of bloody sacrifices, of atonement, of hell, etc. 

W. Krossa ( see his excellent essay "Angry Gods and lonely people": http://home.istar.ca/~wkrossa/kros26~1.htm ) writes: 

"There is an interesting story told by Joshua Ben Adam (the historical Jesus) about a son who took his inheritance and left home. Over the following months he wasted all his money on prostitutes and drinking. He ended up a wasted, down and out bum. On returning home, his father was so glad to see him that he called for a party. He wanted to celebrate. In telling this story, Joshua intended to illustrate, among other things, something of God's delirious joy at having humanity for his friends. Even though the son wanted to beg for forgiveness, the father would not hear of it- he wanted just to celebrate."

"This story illustrates God's scandalously generous attitude toward us. It also illustrates our misconceptions about God, his supposed anger, and our misconceptions about needing to cower before him and beg for his forgiveness. We tend to see God all wrong. Millennia of religious beliefs and myths have severely distorted our thinking on God and also messed us up psychologically and emotionally. Think of the long history of angry, bloodthirsty gods punishing hapless sinners, the guilty consciences of the Reformers, The Puritan writings on God's wrath and hell, Jonathan Edwards 'Sinners in the hands of an Angry God', and much more teaching of a similar vein. All of this groveling before a supposedly angry God is certainly out of touch with Joshua's view of God as joyously celebrating our company... These religious ideas of an angry God have deeply influenced Western society's thinking and practices in broad and profound ways, more than most people are willing to admit."

"...Ancient myths of having been forsaken by angry gods may be important contributing factors to the widespread sense of abandonment found in modern Western societies. One of the central myths in this regard is the myth of a Fall long ago. This Fall myth is found in both Western and Eastern societies. This myth states that God had revealed his will or law but ancient man was bad or rebellious and did not obey that law. God therefore became angry with humanity, rejected human beings, and left them. God went up into the heavens, far away. This most important person in any life- God, the Creator and Father of all- this person of more profound import than any parent, becomes angry with people, rejects them and there is nothing they can do about it in terms of appeasing or reconciling with the angry God... If parental rejection and abandonment is traumatizing- how much more traumatizing to find the Creator Father rejects and abandons you, and does so forever..."

"Around the basic myth of an angry God, further myths also arose regarding the requirement of blood sacrifice to appease the angry gods. This is where Christians invented the belief that Jesus' sacrifice appeases God's wrath for us. But the brutality of such blood sacrifice completely distorts any sense of forgiveness..."

"But far more traumatizing to the human psyche has been the religious teaching on hell. Not only are we abandoned by God for being 'bad' people, but far worse, we are threatened with the worst thing ever conceived by any human mind- eternal torture and burning in raging fires, with frightening demons to add to the torment. If earthly forms of punishment and torture are traumatizing to the victims, even while holding forth some hope of cessation and escape, then how much more traumatizing are these horrific beliefs in a future place of eternal and inescapable damnation? No wonder billions of frightened and traumatized people will subject themselves to religious authorities and do anything in order to find relief and some hope of escape from such an enraged and vengeful God. Threat of punishment is a powerful tool for dominating, manipulating, and controlling people. Religious authorities understand this well... This use of angry, punishing gods to coerce others is very common in all religions."

"Fortunately for all of us, there never was a Fall. It is a vital part of the Fall myth that before that catastrophe the world was a paradise, there was no suffering or death. But we now know that suffering, death, and misery were everywhere operative since the earliest emergence of life on earth some 3 billion years ago, long before humans entered the scene. There was never a catastrophic time only a few millennia ago when suffering and death began due to an act of human disobedience. The Fall is simply a myth. It never happened. Consequently, we can also conclude that God never became angry with us. God never rejected or abandoned us. Like the myth of the Fall, our ancestors made it all up. For many people afraid of an angry, punishing God, this may be the most profoundly liberating news they will ever hear. There is no angry God to fear and no punishment or hell to come."

"...Further information on life and the nature of reality also reveals the fallacy of God's anger and abandoning people. God has always been present as the life or power sustaining all in existence. God has never left as though he could be something outside of so-called physical reality. He did not create the physical world, wind it up, and leave it running on its own. Material reality does not run by itself. God is the energizing life behind all reality. Reality has no life or power of its own, or ability to survive on its own. And all reality is the same everywhere, both here and way out there. It was once believed by the ancients that God lived out in some separate spiritual place called heaven. This was thought to be up in the skies or in outer space. We now know that all space consists of the same reality. God is everywhere in the same way sustaining this reality. It is not true as the ancient myths stated that the earth and heavens were different"

"There are several important implications of this truth about God sustaining all reality. First, there is no periphery or center to God- a place where God is more than some other place. Also, God has never left anyone. He has never rejected or abandoned anyone. He has never left any place to go to some other place. His sustaining presence makes leaving any place impossible. We state it again, as modern information continues to undermine critical parts of these old myths, we can safely conclude that God was never angry with anyone. God never punished anyone with suffering, misery, or death. These things have always been part of life and not due to anyone's disobedience."

"And most importantly, there is no eternal hell or eternal torture. There is no angry, vengeful God waiting beyond death to damn people forever. We must realize now that we have inherited worldviews that are simply wrong and made ourselves miserable all these millennia for nothing. We have believed myths, lies. God has always been present. And God is not just neutrally present. He is present with intense love because that is his essential nature. The story Jesus taught about the returning son reveals a little of that generous love or compassion. It makes God celebrate with sheer explosive joy. What we sometimes feel in our lives is only a dim and minute taste of the reality of God's unspeakable and boundless love for all of us. It is love beyond all possible imagining or feeling."

"All the loneliness, frustration, emotional pain, isolation, the too often unsatisfying inability to connect intimately with or feel close to others, the misunderstanding and abandonment that we experience here, will soon be obliterated entirely and forever as we are all immersed in the intense love of God. While not wanting to limit the experience of that love to a future time, it is true that in our material dominated reality of the present we simply can not experience fully the profound sense of unity and closeness to God and to each other that is yet to come. However, the realization of the soon coming of such unity and love should energize us with hope and enable us to live in love while we are yet here..."

"Further, God has always forgiven us. There was never any need for a sacrifice to appease God. God was never angry with us. He never demanded blood. In fact, he stated in the Old Testament long ago that he hates blood sacrifice..."

"So relax. There is nothing you could have done anyway or need do to appease a supposed angry God. It was all a myth. There was no need to say prayers, to attend church, to go stand on a street corner to do your duty to witness. There was no need to give anything, no need to repent, to crawl or grovel before anyone, especially not before God. There was no need to endlessly flip beads or whatever else the religious bosses demanded. You can not earn God's favor, because you never lost it."

"And no one has more of God's love or favor than any other person. No one has better access to God because they are a better person, more committed, or more diligent, or because they know some secret truth or formula. No, we are all equal in access to and knowledge of God. It is absolute nonsense if anyone suggests any differently. There is nothing special to learn or do or pay to gain God. There is no where to go (no special places) and no special persons to submit to or obey in order to enter God's presence and favor. Are we getting a bit redundant here? We are trying to drill home the amazing truth that we are free, free of all religious obligation and slavery. We have always been free in God. There are also no difficult practices of the mystics that we must spend a lifetime learning, whether they involve long prayers, meditation, or other special techniques of straining to focus on an invisible person or trying to shut down the noisy, scattered images flitting about in our minds. None of this is necessary to enjoy God."

"God is found and experienced in the ordinary of daily life. When we work, love and share in daily life, then God is expressed, experienced and known. Such loving and sharing requires the power of God. When we do not retaliate, but turn the other cheek, forgiving as God forgives, then God is visibly present. When we refuse to dominate or control others, but instead treat all as equals, then God's humanity is seen. "He who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him" (1 John)"

"It should be clear now how badly religion has distorted God to us by continuing to propagate these horrible myths of angry and distant gods. Too often religion only imprisons people's minds with archaic myths that are simply out of touch with the reality of God as we now know him. And anyway, God has never been locked up in any religion to be dispensed in correct doses by religious people. No- he has always been everywhere in normal daily life. He has never been a religious or institutional God."

"The story Jesus told of the wasting son also reveals that you can not offend a loving God with human failure and imperfection. There is no need to grovel for forgiveness over human failure. God celebrates you and will not heed any groveling for mercy. He is simply overwhelmed to have you with him. God's love and forgiveness is not conditioned on returning or repentance or improved behavior (measured according to religious or moral standards which often have very little to do with real right or wrong which relates more correctly to what is human/inhuman or loving/loveless)."

"And one final note about God's presence. God is present not as any sort of superior, like a king or ruler. He is present as a friend or daddy (Greek 'abba'). Someone you play with and share common jokes with. God wants us to relax and to simply realize this amazing love and generosity. He has always been present and loving us intensely and we knew it not. We believed instead the lies that he was angry with us and far away above us. Consequently, we waste our lives in unnecessary guilt and misery..."

"When we realize the truth about God and his love then we are free to go out and show it to all others. We go freely, uncoerced, not threatened with punishment..."

"Most important, we have never been alone or rejected or abandoned by God. He was never angry with us. We have always existed in his awesome love. This truth deals profoundly with the deepest roots of alienation, loneliness, fear, anxiety, rejection or sense of abandonment..."

Well said mate!

Lets relax like Krossa advises us and let us all enjoy the wonderful reality of God, by living free from all those ideas that alienate us from one another and from God. Let us all live in love, and enjoy life because God is Love and Life!