Understanding the Conflict &
Confusion within Western Christianity:
Observations & Antidotes
by Keith Hensley

Why the concept of Blood Atonement destroys Christianity

  During the years I have lived within the mainline Christian religion I have spent many years trying to unite conflicts within a (theological) system based on concepts like blood atonement, yet there always remained the haunting sense that something was amiss. I had no idea just how to accept this substitute, or sacrificial offering of Jesus who was said to have died for my sins

  However, at those times it seemed that everyone but me was getting this, so I thought that there must be something inherently wrong with me. This was before I realized the element of dishonesty within the system and that neither I nor anyone else could reconcile and unify the internal contradiction that this God of vengeance who required blood justice could also be the same JUST God who extends unconditional LOVE.

  All the uncertainty and disillusionment eventually opened me to the possibility that there might be a better way and I am grateful to those who dared to think and help guide me into a better understanding…

  One seeking truth does not usually immediately strike upon a final finished product but must still learn to “separate the chafe from the grain.” The process is, however, much more refreshing than the dead and stagnant, fearfully uncertain and apathetic, finished product that Christianity has become. Jesus the teacher has been reduced to Jesus the blood idol.

 We don’t allow for Jesus the teacher do we, for haven’t we have assigned him other purposes? When he is referred to for moral guidance it is just a secondary sideline thing for the idol is still the thing we prefer. Who cares to make paramount what he teaches, we have him on a cross for our own selfish personal salvation and are determined to keep him there.

  If salvation is accompanied by pain to anyone (Jesus) then it does not come from a totally loving source. If painful atonement is true, God is either split between love and retaliation or else there must be more than one God. “Choose you this day who you will serve,”… you can not have it both ways at the same time.

  There has been no deeply meaningful reformation in Christianity. The preferred core doctrines of Protestantism remain exactly like those of the Pope (God created me but I am not like Him and require reparation) and are sure to lead into confusion, with the lingering uncertainty of personal salvation. A God who would retaliate upon the innocent to save the guilty might yet “repent of this mistake.” It is sad when a life long Christian evangelist states his lingering uncertainty as to his sure and certain good standing with his God (as per a certain recent statement.) This is caused by the belief in an unstable and self conflicted God, based on misuse of faulty scripture exegesis. In this lingering and uncertain darkness, God may be declared to be absolute yet He absolutely cannot make up His mind. Those who insist on following a conflicted God remain themselves conflicted.

  The broad-front problems that shake present Christianity basically relate to and hover around its (fore stated) central fallacy. This leads to the difficulty involved in dedicated commitments to a clearly focused, sure and certain direction when the direction remains divided and unclear. No one can pledge total allegiance to a forked message and at the same time intentionally dedicate himself to a clear and certain path. Split directions can not be clearly unified. Yet, this shaking is a present invitation for much needed and meaningful change and places Christianity at a great crossroad of potentiality.

  To view any thought system from only within its own confines makes it seem logical. The church can not simultaneously afford to view it’s God of retribution along side it’s God of love, but attempts to keep both authentic by expounding each at separate times or resorting simply to defining “retribution as love.” A thought system open to expanded thought will extend its comprehensions. One that is not open will either become stagnant or simply disappear because it offers no fresh “daily bread” (no present inner communion).

  Those who have knowingly and intentionally vacated Christianity have not done so out of faithlessness but because of the realization that the teachings are amuck. We have seen what happens to those who dare speak out for imperative change. The church may think to expel seers (heretics) from its darkened realm but it has no authority to kick anyone out of God. We may as well go ahead and recognize this religious intolerance to be the same spirit that put Jesus (he who called for open brotherhood) onto that cross and not some so called “glorious plan” by God for a “glorious salvation” through blood atonement.

  If Jesus were to appear in outer form today and join one of the blood cults and teach again the exact same message as before, the all-knowing system would shortly dis-fellowship him as being un-Christian. In fact, based on its present stance it would be perfectly justified in doing so. The reason being that the church has elected a direction exactly counter to his message of free forgiveness and open Christ brotherhood.

  Had Christianity stayed strictly with Jesus’ teachings, it would be free of the internal conflicts that it suffers by splitting up the Christ brotherhood as it has done through stringent over emphasis of separately selected texts. Although it claims a totally new dispensation, it is forced to drag the old one along for that is where it got the idea of scapegoat atonement. Honor and loyalty have been maintained for old wine in old skins (or trying to stuff the new into the old).

  Thus, when the internally conflicted whole cannot be unified, selectivity for favorite parts becomes necessary if a semblance of sanity is to be maintained. New wine must not be put in old skins else both become lost. To follow Jesus does not require adherence to anything that came before, else his clear message becomes polluted with the past nor does it depend on following mistakes made by his immediate followers; some of their statements as well as quotes attributed to him are clearly out of line with the central context of Jesus.

  Western religion as it stands today cannot afford Jesus the teacher because his teachings, if made forefront priority, would be its undoing. It has claimed (or rather projected onto him) things that he clearly never claimed for himself and traded his wonderful friendship message for a pagan version of cheap salvation that has been used to fracture rather than heal relationships.

  Though it loudly cries Lord-Lord it is really Satan worship, thinly disguised, for it is Satan who is honoured in each grovelling statement that I am unlike my Father’s Son and in need of sacrifice.

  In substitution of the clear and simple “freedom that sets free” as in the statement “neither do I condemn you, your sins are forgiven you,” sinfulness is condemned, locked tight, and confirmed in this atonement through murder’s blood. Jesus clearly declares sin-guilt to be forgivable (untrue), yet this “holy” murder seeks to confirm him a liar and God Himself must now, also believe this lie. Scapegoat sacrifice may seem reparative in dreams of separation, differences, and angry Gods, but it is time that Adam wakened from his deep sleep and his frightful nightmare that he has become estranged from and different than his Source.

  Superimposing the blood idol into a place ahead of the working teachings of Jesus, it intercepts, discolors, and pollutes the best subsequent efforts to hear and understand his intent. Or stated thus, his message is polluted by the color of blood.

  It is not a sin to believe you murdered Jesus for your own salvation but if you believe you have accomplished this you yet confirm your own sense of guilt and thus contradict yourself (innocence through guilt) and fail to gain the free sense of release that “sets one free.”

  The Bible is not the “fact” that it is assumed to be. It is based on the experience of factions within one tiny segment of humanity and does not include equally as valuable writings. Some parts depict a petty infantile, tantrum throwing God while other parts more accurately describe the totally loving Father as Jesus states Him to be, as in the story of the prodigal son whose father’s treasure was the son himself.

  We might do well to remember that like us, this legitimate son of a loving father believed that he had sinned against and hurt his father but his father had no time for such insanity. He knew his son and his son’s acknowledgement of son-ship, as seen in his return, was all the thanks the father desired. The son entertained the insane idea that he had hurt his father but his father was not hurt and openly welcomed him back home. The son merely dreamed a sin that was not true. This story of a completely loving father is Jesus’ declaration of the way our Source Father is as well, He requires no sacrifice.

  How often do we stop and acknowledge our Source in simple gratitude without telling Him what that means or what we think we need?  Do we yet understand that this world of separate seeming wholes, each hell bent for self survival, is a sacrifice itself? Oh yes! We have attempted to make the ultimate sacrifice through separation and this world is the result. Thank God that we were mistaken and that it is not true.

Bibliolatry also destroys Christianity

We would do well to question the supposed infallible assumption that books, separate unto themselves and by distinct and different Hebrew authors seeking to express (often conflicting in outer form) personal understandings, can later be gathered together, given no declarative statement, bound in one cover and declared the word of God Himself.

 Broadcasting equal validity to what clearly contains varying forms of attempts to declare-God and hallowing the varying excavated forms themselves as authorized by God induces a belief in a God who is Himself internally conflicted.

  This is how this God, split within Himself, has come about and He doesn’t know whether He is a loving God or a God who is retaliating. But worse still, He doesn’t understand that the two will not mix. Truth is not now, nor will truth ever be a “kingdom internally divided.”

  Even if the Bible did possess this infallible nature that has been thrust upon it, there is still no justification for, or answer to the supposed, infallible, different interpretations of single texts that establish separate cults, each claiming to be the special narrow way.

  It is sad to say, but too many merely follow what some have termed Churchianity, where they are fed their minimal weekly nursing by those who were not taught how to think, but what to think according to their cult schools of limited, preset, final, and finished presumption. Few can logically translate what they claim to believe and if they study, it is mostly done still within the narrow confines of the system and not to insure their own understanding’s consistency that could be set forth in clear and non-conflicting terms.

  As to the discrepancy of whose understanding is most correct in placing the Bible or its parts in supposed proper order, I would add that Islam is just as fanatically certain of the correctness of its Koran. The real question is, “who is my brother?” God does not prefer a Christian above an Islamist unless it can be shown that He has now become “a respecter of persons” in which case I’m sure that who ever is the most obsessed with his own opinions would be the most correct in this brotherhood-splitting but otherwise meaningless debate.

  Random books, gathered together, some discarded, others selected, then bound together and declared to be the word of God; how absurd to build a case on this...

  There is certainly nothing wrong with the intent of sacred writings but only with the way they have been used. Jesus tries to transcend this problem by reducing them to their inner elemental relevancy.

  Concepts like “be still and know I am God” and “love the Lord your God” stem from an essential inner connection that enters awareness through this silence in which one knows beyond uncertainty: “I and my Father are one”. That’s really all there is to say for it is inherently evident that this is true for the brother as well as “the law and the prophets.” The outer forms in which the prophets spoke have no self contained inherent validity in themselves but only as they attempt to point to this.

  The Bible does contain some potentially beneficial ideas. Again, one of its most important lines states: “be still and know I am God”. This depicts (empty hands and open minds) a mind released from personal agenda; a cessation of attached, obsessed beliefs about itself, its brother, its world and its God. One who diligently practices this soon (or eventually) becomes aware of an inner connection that transcends all ideas of the world of perceived differences.

  The continuing confusion within western religion stems from the confused and confusing way the Bible has been seen and used. If it had received unified consistency it would have been better credited. It might be well that we do some serious psychological homework and get into perspective the fear that obsessively attaches reverence for the Bible at a status that clearly remains the effects of many years of mind conditioning.

  There is a simple way of understanding the Bible in historical context. It is simply as follows.

  At the heart of religion lays the consistent intent to transcend mundane    multiplicity. This is true of all world religions and this is why there is no lone, true, outer form of religion. You may think there is, yet had you been born in China, India, or Iran, you would naturally gravitate to local forms. Basically, forms are born when someone has an inner transcendent experience. He tries to share it by describing it in terms relevant to his own background thus it takes on that coloring. The resulting word description is not the experience, which cannot really be meaningfully described in any outer terms. Hebrew scripture is a conglomerate of such written experiences (mingled with much priest craft) which we have bound as one. The intent for inner transcendence is their lone abiding consistency, for the outer expressions vary due to individual background focal points. There is no need to force more than this on them or any of the world’s scriptures but let their usefulness remain in this context. Here is an answer that answers every scriptural debate there has been or ever will be. If sight of the inner intent is lost, the forms become glorified and what remains is what is found in present Christianity which compares to packs of starving wolves tearing at the outer forms and hurling the bones as weapons at one another. The Word of God is not written on a page but is the Holy Spirit that speaks of, and transcends all things of time. 

  No gain is made in simply pointing out errors, which would be interpreted as an attack to be defended against. We have specifically overstressed and pointed out some of the errors in present outer form religion. The purpose is not to attack and condemn but to stress the hidden danger of seeking only there. One who dedicates himself to seek salvation “out there” will hesitate to pause and seek it where it is and where it can be found. It is there in the quiet centre, what could it hurt to test and see…

The Satan idea

  There is little benefit in simply accepting a historical documents’ statement that there is a devil “out there somewhere” deceiving people. We need to get the Satan idea into a presently comprehensive working context in order to unveil its surrounding shadows.

 Remember that the Satan idea is the idea of separation taking form. Satan is not a male-violent entity somewhere “out there” but an idea, a present mind construct that still remains within our minds. Satan remains nowhere but within the mind that thinks him real and still upholds the idea of separate forms, separate states of being, and separate needs.

  “My kingdom is not of this world,” it is one unified whole. Yet, without forgiveness of the world we have made up, our harsh judgments of error “our own error” though projected onto others, will keep us blind to inner reality. “You who condemn your brother do the same as he” because it is our own projected error that we see.

  What remains truly whole cannot be fragmented nor has it been, yet it certainly can and has been believed to be so. Again, we have been invited to “choose this day who we will serve.” Here is an interesting and perhaps intentional choice of words; the invitation is not between God and Satan but God and mammon. We could perhaps take another clue from this as regarding our relationships and dealings with those (our equal brothers) who are perceived as lesser or greater.

  The religion of that time or even of present Christianity cannot conceive or practice “neither do I condemn you” due to its heavy investment that the dream is real and the behaviour of prostitutes (sinners) is what needs changed instead of a mind change about reality itself. If there is only one Source, to be or not to be a part of It is not optional, but a given.

  “Your sins are forgiven you,” awaken and be glad. Obsessive preoccupation with fixing the dream itself padlocks one’s mind in the delusory things of the world while only true forgiveness releases your brother and yourself and brings awareness that “my kingdom is not of this world,” there is no separation, my Father, my brother, and I are ONE. You may dream a Satan but you can give him no authority except in dreams and what seems to happen in dreams, doesn’t really happen at all.

The Great Brotherhood: All humans are "the Son of Man"

  We are in need of a deeply meaningful Christian reformation that unifies brotherhood instead of the alienation thereof. To do so, there would have to be a giant step in open learning and much ingrained tradition put aside, which has a basis only in selective exclusion, reinforced by so many years of force fed, self indoctrinated mind conditioning.               

  Is a totally encompassing brotherhood, not a lovely message? We have learned a very strange reversal in which conflict itself assumes the role of the message and a peaceful brotherhood that comes minus conflict seems to contain no message at all.

  Satan or Anti Christ is honored and worshiped every time the statement is made that God has only one son but I am something other and require reparation. To not be a part of God’s one Son means that you arrogantly assume authority larger than God and if you believe you could accomplish this you must also think yourself to be Satan. It is good that “God is unwilling that any perish” else all of us, who have attempted to believe such things, would have committed suicide.

  We would do well to recognize the awesome power of thought, remember “directed thought coupled with faith, can move mountains.”  Misdirected thoughts are as powerful in consequence as properly directed ones. In forgetting this power, we have misplaced the source of this world of separation, thinking it to be “out there” and therefore fail to realize that we are doing this by every thought we presently hold in our minds. Ultimately, there is no world “out there” but only in our minds. That’s why we need a mind change about reality itself. That’s also why we urgently need to know ourselves. My friends, you may be unaware of the power that you wield. It is so powerful as to even deceive itself. We also have the power to UN-deceive ourselves and forgiveness of a world that is not true is a perfect starting place for it calls the mind to return to unity.

  Those who insist on praying for others are often blind to the meaning of “the bearing of false witness.” It can be very close to the same false judgment that is used to justify proselytising and we know what Jesus said about that.  

 “If you had gone and learned what it means, I come bringing mercy and not sacrifice” you would not condemn your innocent brother nor exonerate puffed up self righteousness by praying for a brother who is equal in the eyes of God, based on the false judgment that was intentionally selected, that he is not an equal child of God.

  What kind of arrogant self authority is assumed in deeming your brother different and in need of your prayers (for conversion); give thanks and accept him rather as God created him and yourself along with him. True prayer for a brother contains no stipulations. It is no more than a good will blessing upon an equal. Realizing its own mistakes in comprehension, it doesn’t presume to know what is in the brother’s best interest but simply trusts that it will be met (no stipulations)

  There will be no all-inclusive brotherhood in earth awareness until the son of man (you and I) accepts the authority to forgive sins on earth. That’s the purpose in the instruction to “forgive seventy times seven,” but we need to learn the meaning of true forgiveness as Jesus teaches, else we may become unduly puffed up in artificial forgiveness.

The Kingdom is Within

  It is important to remember that the kingdom is within, so we need to test the spirits from within; if doubt and fear remain to hamper you, it is fairly safe to realize something is wrong in the message you may be trying to swallow.

  Those who accept the Father and the brother (Son) need not fear for their own self-defence or self-salvation. Truth itself needs no defence at all. Only the fearfully uncertain maintain that (their mistaken idea of) what comes from God need be defended. What does not come from God is certainly in need of much defence in order to maintain its delusion.

  The kingdom of heaven is within; God is within therefore and not without and if you seek God, you do not seek outside yourself because your SELF extends from Him. Seek the kingdom where it is for only there can it be found.

  It is difficult for weak knees and untrained minds to quiet down their own passions yet sincere effort will reap benefit that transcends mere belief. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” right here, right now and can be found right now.

  This experiential centre (kingdom) is not found in picking among the outer forms. No one is requested to, nor has responsibility to learn or know anything except him-SELF. This Self is the all-inclusive Self found at the quiet centre and not the clamouring, fearful, egocentric, self we have learned all too well. Everyone is responsible to know this Self and everyone will, at some point, do so.

  All That Is makes up One Grand Whole Completion and God is willing to leave no part of Himself to “perish” outside. You are part of that completion which will not be seen as complete with you outside. This is a promise based not on contingency for without you, God is not complete. Free will only means that we are free to make that choice NOW. Here again we have opportunity to overlook outer appearances in certain trust that the brother will make this decision to know himself. “The time will come when we no longer invite our brother to know the Lord for each WILL know Him in his heart.”

  The self we think we are is not our real SELF. It is a conditional self, based on a compilation of limited experience. Never having achieved all experience, this limitation becomes the sum total of this egocentric self. Yet the one whole and complete Self abides at that quiet centre and can be found there. We find Him when we become willing to go there. At times of self-forgetfulness, we have all somewhat touched upon this experience.

  Remember, the idea of separation is the Satan idea. Is that where you prefer to place your loyalty? Do you really believe there to be a power within all-embracing encompassment that can assume authority to usurp the throne of God and thus madden Him into retaliation? Has God Himself also become insane, believed the lie, and allowed it to tell Him what He must think? The all embracing brotherhood of Jesus is a factor which unifies the seemingly broken, fragmented, and scattered parts of what must remain One as it was created by God.

  Take Jesus down from that fear-induced, hatefully selfish cross, take him down and let him teach again. “Your sins are forgiven you” was spoken long before there was an “old rugged cross.” Let what is alike remain the same and let imagined differences disappear and recognize the real meaning of God’s One Son for He must include you and your brother. “Today is the day of salvation,” and “your sins are forgiven you” projects nothing to a future sacrifice nor need it wait for a, projected to the future, “second coming,” yet, awaiting a second coming denies the present day of salvation.

  Those who remain unaware of the present kingdom within would hardly relate to a future one coming from without. The without cannot be forced to become the within therefore “take up your bed and walk.”

  We are all in this together and as long as a single slave remains in mental bondage, our release into full Son-ship will not be fully realized though it is right here, right now. We could take better care of our brothers through awareness of their true reality and not reinforce illusions by joining in sympathy for the dream.

  When the essential inner connection is lost to sight, the resulting strain calls forth all sorts of far fetched doctrines and pat clichés until they so “fly in the face of logical reason” as to call return to inner seeking of those with ears to hear. If the kingdom is within there is no need to delay its realization with fancy plans and strained concepts but simply seek and find it where it is. The home of true forgiveness is where the essential inner connection is realized. From that point of present confidence, one knows of nothing left outside. There is no doubt of the brother’s equal status within the love of God. One who attains this quiet certainty becomes aware that ineffectual mistakes (sins) can alter nothing here. He comes to a state of self abandon where the concern for personal salvation is meaningless to him and he can thus easily afford to let his brother off the hook.

Walk therefore in peace and in confidence.

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Keith Hensley (July 1, 2003)

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