No longer abiding (and other stuff)

The tiny Abiding Church of God is apparently no longer abiding, given that its website is down and its FB page hasn't been updated since last year. The group first came to public notice just last year as a splinter from Dave Pack's Restored Church of God (RCG). Maybe the webmaster just gave up, or perhaps the whole mini-sect has imploded. Does anyone care? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

If you haven't already seen it on Gary's blog, there's an excellent interview with Dennis Diehl available on the Ra-Men YouTube channel. Gotta say it, Den does an exceptional job. The interviewer is "Amon-Ra", who recently took Pack's idiotic take on creationism apart (one largely shared by other COG bodies) one bleeding chunk at a time. Great questions, great responses. The presentation lasts just under an hour.

What's happened with the Painful Truth blog is a bit of mystery. There are only three current posts up, then everything seems missing till it starts again back with May 2011 posts. What happened to everything in between? Douglas?

Note: the Abiding website is up again. Whew, what a relief.

What if...

"COGers, Armstrongists, WCGracies, Papists, Defectives, Sinners and Loons.

What if..."

Guest commentary by Dennis Diehl

The purpose of most religion is to make us "better" than we currently are. The Biblical premise is that all human beings are fatally flawed, not good enough and in need of vast improvements and control of their "human nature." Without this ongoing overcoming of the evil self, growing towards a better kind of person and change, one runs the risk of being so not good enough that they will spend eternity, for their inability to change over a rather short lifetime, in a punishing hell. Scripture goes out of its way to remind us all that our fundamental human qualities are deceit, wickedness, jealousy, anger, lust and greed. I find that personally to be one of the most unhelpful and controlling lies ever foisted upon human beings by religion. Of course that is how we can act, but that is not who we are by any real means when given the freedom to be authentic and feel safe in being so.

We are called "worms" and less than nothing in this great book of encouragement. Even the early leaders, prophets and apostle-types knew that they had to degrade themselves as less than human in order to show they understood they were not worth anything as an unregenerate human being. Only when one realized they were a piece of poop, could they lead the people who were really poopy people. If you could not utter the words, "I am not worthy," you would never be a Bible CEO. The Apostle Paul noted that he was "the least of the Apostles" and that "the things that I don't want to do, I do and the things I should, I don't." He made his problems everyone's. He concluded he was simply a wretched human being, and so should everyone else. He reminded others that they were blind, miserable, poor and naked of heart and spirit. He even said he had to beat himself into submission, lest after preaching to others, he should flub up himself and be a castaway. Seems he didn't have the confidence "in the blood," to make up the differences in what he was and what he felt he needed to be.

Jesus is also said to have said that humans are to become "perfect, even (in the same way) as your Father in heaven is perfect. The word means "complete" not "perfect.' There is a huge difference. What if are complete already? What if we were born right the first time?

How did we get this way? Well, of course it was due to the "fall" where Adam and Eve, our really true and actual first human parents, created by God out of mud and ribs, flubbed up and ate the forbidden fruit. We can only take comfort in that the story finds it's origins in Sumerian Mythology.

We have all been blamed for this event and must spend our lives coming under a blood sacrifice of a more perfect human/god being and then continuing the struggle to be "better" until we die. It's then we find out if we understood being bad enough to be good enough to live forever. Redemption of humans by blood sacrifice and execution have always been the preferred solution to the depravity of man. Membership in the club usually cost ten or more percent of your material income and membership in the one true of many churches. I am not being disrespectful to the life and teachings of Jesus, but few understand how that has been woven into a tale that Jesus himself would have cringed at.

Have you ever considered the fact that you and I may have been born right the first time? What if the most simple and spiritual goal a human being has is to become your own genuine, authentic self? What if our purpose in life is neither to jump through the hoops set out by others, who think they know, nor to struggle and strive to improve yourself dramatically over what you are? People don't change much over a lifetime no matter what their religious affiliations, and while it's an improvement to stop killing one's self with sugar, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine along with other assorted body killing habits, it's ok to just be yourself.
Is it easy to be yourself? No, not in our culture and certainly not in many others where not being a mere cog in the tribal wheel can get you killed in really bad ways. One of life's simple truths that most humans have long since forgotten, or never knew, is that all of us are one and the same and all smaller parts of the one single thing. I don't pretend to know what that is, but let's just say we are all one in the same conscious awareness stuck in a limited five sensed carbon based wet suit for now. As Mike Adams said in a recent article on the discovery of DNA variability, holographic blueprints and the symphony of life... "We are, in fact, an expression of the very phenomena we are attempting to understand, and if we read the poetry of DNA correctly, we will realize that life itself is not about the accumulation of wealth, or stuff, or power over others, but rather the discovery of self. And "self" does not exist in isolation. We are, in every way imaginable, intertwined. We are all made of the same stuff, wrought from the same patterns of nature, and in fact, formulated from the same musical notes played out in five billion unique but compatible tunes. With this discovery, Western science has concluded we are all more different from each other than previously thought, but I believe it is evidence that we are all just unique verses of the same universal poem."
That's a far cry from humans being merely wretched, miserable, poor blind and naked worms that need major rehab at the hands of prophets, priests and pastors who are just as, if not more, flawed than the congregation or the nation. Saying we are born right the first time and not in need of being born again or reborn goes against the meme, which is the mind virus we all got taught as kids. Our parents had it taught to them and their parents before that. It is the idea that we are all flawed at birth by a non-event in the lives of our first not-literally-so parents Adam and Eve. It's the idea that even if you are a pretty ok person, you are filled with vanity, jealousy, lust and greed that, unless paid for by a perfect blood sacrifice, demands you spend eternity in hell burning forever, cut off from God, or permanently dead. It's also not true and is not what a genuine human being, in reality needs to become the monkey on their back over.

What liberation it is to simply recognize that we are all one and the same smaller parts of the one big thing. It is every bit as difficult to live an authentic life as it is to live a life of false compliance to the will of others. It is easy or not easy depending on the need to please everyone or appear to agree when you don't, to be true to your self - and by self, I do not mean ego. I mean true to the conscious awareness that abides in the container we all too often mistake for the self. You are not your body. That is merely transportation and a container for a short time. You are not your brain. That is a receiver of information and memories that may, in fact, arise from outside of a bigger you and I than we can imagine. You are not your mind, which is that thinking brain that spins in the angry past or projects itself into the anxiety filled future when it has nothing better to do in the present.

How much misery and struggle to be all that one can never really be religion has heaped upon the faithful. Not many will leave the warmth and comfort of the boxes they were born in by happenstance and explore ideas that are not acceptable to the tribe or the church. But some will. They might be labeled "heretics" or perhaps more benevolently, "ahead of their times." In the past, those ahead of their times tended to be burned at the stake. Leaving the box of religious dogma is difficult and often one leaves it alone and on their own. Those in the last box don't often follow. You can be your authentic self as it comes to you and risk a lot but gain a lot, or you can put on your mask and be more comfortable by scarfing down antidepressants the rest of your life. That seems to be the road to the fact that being oneself is the most simple spiritual truth there is for a genuine human being.

Don't label yourself as belonging to this or that group. Don't label others for belonging or believing or thinking or even not thinking. We are who we are. NOT ONE PERSON I EVER KNEW WHO TAKES THE TIME TO PARTICIPATE ON AW HAS UTTERED THE WORDS, "THANK YOU, I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT AND I AM NO LONGER GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE NOW OR BE WHO I NOW AM."
The joy and the challenge is in the journey not the ultimate find. Be yourself and consider that you might just have been born right the first time.

Dennis Decodes the Decalogue

If you haven't found it in the comments section yet, here's Dennis Diehl's take on the Ten Commandments/Decalogue.

The Big Ten are responsible for more carnage in the lives of real people at the hands of the righteous as any document could ever be. Everyone is just sure they know their eternal and universal truth. Most don't consider the cultic and polytheistic culture they spring from.

1. No other god before ME. There were many other gods literally believed in and obeyed. This Israelite cultic God is a jealous God and wants no competition from Israel. This God does not say there are no other gods, he just says don't mess with them or you and your kids will be punished for three or maybe four generations into the future. This God is unaware of his onlyness. The religion of Abraham is hardly monotheistic, but evolves. God is EL, derived from previous Cannanite concepts and now expanded.

2. No graven images. Not much obeyed in any Hebrew or Christian culture. The Temple was full of them. Moses made bronze ones and Aaron made gold ones. No fear of El here obviously. Megiddo was littered with Israelite graven images when I was there.

3. No name in vain. Not so much cussing as respect, and this God of the Mountains had better not hear the name of Baal, Astarte, Her, Him, Molech or Osiris. Remember, I am a jealous god. Not being held "guiltless" was not a good indication of one's longevity and you fall outside of the rule that we don't murder around here. Please, no nuances of meaning between kill and murder! The weak are always murdered by the powerful who define it as killing. Some people need killing is their motto. Our killing still obeys not murdering... uh huh.

4. Keep the Sabbath because I literally made all life in six days and had to rest myself, so you will too. Of course, this is not literally true so one has to decide if mythology can be a good reason to enforce a literal behavior. It's certainly no way to categorize people as the chosen or unchosen.

Like Paul who enforces the woman's role in church based on the mythology of a literal sin of a woman named Eve, and the "fact" that "for men don't come from women, but women from men."

Don't get me wrong. I always enjoyed sabbath. Who wouldn't. I enjoyed Sunday as a Presbyterian growing up. But as a tool to judge someone's obedience and spiritual worth to the jealous God, not so much. The implications of enforcing literal behaviors based on mythological events is staggering to an open mind.

5. Honor mom and dad. Pretty universal admonition here in all cultures. Certainly not invented by the one true God as if others could not come up with this. How this is interpreted in the OT is interesting as not doing so means, "then kill the kid and mom has to not cry about it." It's a command in Israel with a big "or else" attached. Well they all are.

6. No murder, killing etc. This in practical fact meant "each other." Everyone else is fair game if they get in the way of God's chosen people. It also meant nothing to the kings of Israel or Moses, who when bringing the Big Ten down the Mountain to begin with, got pissed at the crowd's thinking, after 40 days missing in action, ordered "every man to slay his neighbor and in that day about 3000 perished." What a guy! "Here, let me put these tablets down and murder a few thousand more of you."

7. No adultery. Mostly for women and Kings that God told if he had only asked, God would have given him more women and stuff. Women were property, that's why you didn't covet them. Adultery might cast doubt on paternity and inheritances. No adultery in this culture was not a love thing, it was a legal thing so the wrong kid did not get the wrong daddy's stuff. It was birth control with a kick... death for the woman and no mention of the guy for the most part. Even in the NT, the woman was caught in adultery, not the man so much.

8. No stealing. Well ok, you can plunder stuff and the young chicks and their booty of those you have been asked to slaughter in my name, amen. Good thing this was not in place when you guys plundered Egypt on the way out. How much stuff can you drag in to the waste howling wilderness (and you'd think we could find some of it strewn along the sands of time).

9 No lying. Unless you are Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, David, all the prophets and the priests. Other than that, don't do it. In the NT, Peter "kills" Ananias and Sapphira for saying one thing and doing another. This, the man who said one thing to Jesus (I will never deny you) and did another (fled). Of course, Luke was telling that story in Acts to make fun of Peter who was not on Paul's list of potential church leaders for his denials. No, two church members were killed and buried by the church. "Hey Pastor Peter, my parents didn't come home from church, what gives?"

All this to say, the Big Ten were written for a cultic society and translated as meaningful for ours and all humans, which for the most part they are. They weren't born in a vaccum however and we get so used to reading them as moderns, we fail to identify their cultic origins. Besides, the Bible can't agree on whether there were Ten given that day or many many more. Depends on which book you read and what "is" is... :)

10 No coveting wives, oxen, asses (the animal) or stuff. Good way to live too but throwing women in the mix is cultic and patriarchal to the max. For women, this is a control issue by men. Some women wish they were coveted and cherished by these guys.

In reality, humans love to break the rules. The more rules, the more breakage. Evangelical Christians have the highest rates of divorce, adultery, stealing, lying and eating out on the sabbath :) The Baptist church has the highest rate of minister turn over, due to breakage of the big ten. Pentecostals tend to have the highest rates for adultery and sexual deviance due the emotional nature of those that are Pentecostals. I guess if death was the penalty, we'd have more compliance, but "obey me or I'll kill you," seems rude.