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Cutting the Gordian Knot

What is it about us that has this terrible need to rely on the experiences of others, real or imagined, to define our own internal world? 

At birth, we come in a nice box , constructed by others before us , full of beliefs, ideas, truths, perspectives and of course, the full true knowledge of who and what God is and what on earth he is doing. Now it may have a Catholic, Protestant, Adventist, Methodist, Lutheran, Mormon ....ad nauseam, twist , but it is what we are expected to follow. To not follow it is to endure the disapproval and guilt/shame tactics designed to bring us back into the box, so others feel good. How you feel is irrelevant. 

Why is the concept of thinking for oneself and not relying on the past lives lived, real or imagined, for our information and beliefs so strong in us? I would think that the price of thinking for oneself with our current up to date information on the past may seem too high, and there is comfort in letting others do our thinking for us. We all did it and many still do. Most still do. After all, if it turns out badly, we can blame them and not take personal responsibility for our own choices. 

Sheeple need shepherds it seems. Sheeple need authorities and don't trust their own still small voices that say "how can that be" or "that seems evil", or "I simply don't see it that way", even if the authority lived thousands of years ago in times when what was said, or alleged to have happened, is highly debatable. Having had this rather ridiculous at times and at other times horrific experience with the Worldwide Church of God and ALL it's offspring hierarchies, works, organizations and churches should make one question the whole premise if it can so easily be changed, manipulated and reversed. I have had to note with embarrassment that every thing I told members of WCG could not happen or would not change, did happen and did change. I did ignore that small voice in me that said ..."be careful, these guys are reinventing the theological wheel and everything is up for grabs in their Bible-reader form of religious leadership. They are going to make a fool of you." And through it all, the Sheeple just kept the rage inside, hoped for the best and eventually got the worst. Theological doubt, skepticism and depression set in for many, fear for some and confusion of spirit for most. But the Sheeple live on jumping from one true Shepherd to another until one can once again avoid thinking for themselves and go into denial over what has occurred in their spirit and the damage they have suffered at the hands of foolish, reckless, possibly sincere (but who knows) men. 

It is humorous to me that UCG is still struggling with to vote or not to vote and desperately seeking "God's" true view on the topic. In their paper you can see the stretching to find some permission in a book that will really not give it. It's like looking in Taliban literature for some glimmer of permission for women to tell their husbands that they are complete idiots and they aren't taking their bullshit anymore. The part where the woman gets a bullet in the head overrides any hints of such freedom or permission to think for yourself. Trying to find permission in an Eastern minded hodge-podge of conflicting ideas and extremes to vote in a Western, culturally evolved society is a ridiculous pursuit, unless you are a god-haunted Sheeple in need of someone to find the one true answer for you. There is NO one true answer we can apply in our culture to this. You don't have to consult the ouija board of ancient biblical texts, of which the ones we call the Bible are only a small number, to simply THINK FOR YOURSELF. If you pastor seeks to punish you for this, vote him out... :)

Those who think that there is a God who will punish you, now determined by the "authorities " to be in the most foul, cruel and controlling concept ever invented by men, Hell, for expressing a democratic preference for one kind of human perspective in leadership over another should just relax and cut the Gordian Knot. God won't hurt you. God won't punish you if you make a "wrong choice" because you will never find out it was a wrong choice. It's just a choice, and a personal one at that. The answer is not in the Bible, it's in your gut. If one feels they want to vote, then vote. It is not the business of your church or your pastor. It is YOUR business. God will not appear in the night and scold you and he certainly won't chuck you into the a Lake of Fire or deprive you of some eternal reward for picking a man or woman to organize the governance of a country. Personally I think Presidents are selected long before they are elected, but I spare you. 

Think for yourself. People don't need Shepherds, but Sheeple DO. Sheeple need WCG, PCG, LCG, RCG, and SCG (Sheeple Church of God....which is the original True Church).

Sheeple rely on others to think for them on all topics because they don't wish to do or be the wrong thing. Don't worry, you can't screw up God's eternally positive experience for you. She won't let you :) You can't be anything but yourself, unless of course you want to be someone else's mind clone but that will just be the fear, guilt and shame based you. If you want to give your brains and reasonable thinking processes to a Rod Meredith, Joe Tkach, Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry, Benny Hinn or the Pope, that's your choice, just know you are Sheeple material and they will welcome you with open arms. Shepherds take lots of their energy reminding the Sheeple that they must stay support the Shepherd and HIS (it is HIS) work. And please don't risk sheepleship to question the Shepherd. Thou shalt be mightily sheered! 

If you want to be the kind of Bible reader that can't see ONE glaring error (and only one will undo the inerrancy of the Bible) ,textural contradiction, misquote, historical mistake , scientific impossibility, faulty reasoning, evil behavior on the part of "GOD" and his "servants" ( Killing Ananias and Saphira for not paying up comes to mind...don't worry, it didn't happen) or the retelling of very old story in the human psyche, so be it, but you then become one of the Sheeple, unable or unwilling to think for yourself. Organizations don't want free thinkers. They want group think as defined by the Grand Poopa who does not want your input. You can't herd cats and a cat won't always send money for every lame idea Shepherds can come up with for them. Shepherds want sheep not cats. They certainly don't want women who refuse to let middle eastern men, thousands of years dead, ill informed and simply wrong in their biological and human perspectives to contribute. No compliant women ever make history and the women in the Bible who simply could not be controlled get grudgingly acknowledged. This is not because the men approve, but on occasion there are those rare women in all culture, even dangerous ones, who simply will not take the SS (Sheeple Shi...) of the men.

Read the papers on UCG's site as to IF God would want a woman to pastor, they are hilarious and ignorant. Desperate and contradictory attempts to search the scripture for the answer to a question no one in the approved scriptures would ever think or need to ask. Believe me if Peter, James and John could have voted Paul out of the picture they would, as would have Paul them. But since it was every man for himself and the biggest Peacock wins as it still is today in religion, it never came up as a way to insure order and consistency of belief. Consistency of religious belief usually came at the expense of the self activated thinker. 

Sheeple desperately seem to have a need to go back to the experiences and opinions (I don't permit a woman to speak in the Church" ... Paul ) of others for the authoritative and eternal truth of the matter. Who cares what Paul thought! He was wrong on a few other things along the way, why not this? How refreshing to have some other more free thinking Apostle type say "well maybe Paul doesn't, but I do"! What balanced perspective can a female fearing, never married, zero significant other , guilt and shame ridden , self appointed , theologically confused and uncooperative "apostle" have? How many of you would have loved the kinder, gentler right brained compassion of a female pastor than the left brained kick your butt out of the church if you don't straighten up types. A hug is only about fifteen inches from a kick in the butt, but truly the worlds longest journey for most men. The best pastors are men who think more like women than men. The worst pastors are men who are manly men and think the way to help you is to humiliate you, punish you and point out your sinfulness using whatever scripture fits the current drama. The worst pastors, and churches play off fear, shame and guilt and they do it well. 

LONG before who and whatever the Israelites really were came along, women were the Goddesses and females were the Priestesses. Human and family rights were benevolent and all the children of the Goddess and all her biological children were known to the woman, and shared her property. The Bible was written to destroy Matriarchy and install the dominance of men over women. The OT Patriarchy was designed to dethrone women and laws forbidding men to marry outside the laws of the Israelite god were designed to hold onto Israelite property and not risk loosing it to the liberated women types in the surrounding nations. Free thinking women are the scariest thing on the planet to men. They confuse men and cause men to simply resort to hitting back and stepping down harder on the neck. Women became property and not objects of respect and adoration. If you can't see that in the first three books of the Bible, you are simply in denial, a mere Bible reader, or most certainly male. And since the OT informs the NT belief in these areas, it never ends. 

That nagging voice you have had in you since a kid about how cruel "God" seems, or how nasty it was for Lot to offer his daughters for the town fathers to rape, but not his guests, has been killed off by Shepherds, who themselves have been stripped of their ability to think for themselves. Raped women in the OT have to marry the rapist with no divorce. Raped women who don't cry out loud enough get stoned as not yelling loud enough for help raises the possibility that they enjoyed it too much. Women caught in adultery get stoned...not men , even if caught "in the very act" (if you have never conceived of a stoning, male or female, you can find video on the web from modern day Iran... I don't advise it.)

Ask your minister why the man was not a sinner. If he says because men could have more than one woman as long as they were not the property of another man. Women could only have one man so paternity could be always proven and if it was ever in doubt, well stone her, or banish her to die in the desert. He's a pretty informed minister. If he gives you some line about the man getting away and being dealt with later, he's full of SPP (Sheeple Poo Poo) 

After a FOT sermon where I alluded to the FACT that Matthew was reaching for his virgin birth prophecy and suppressed telling them that he misquoted, misunderstood and misrepresented every "proof " he ever gave from the OT about Jesus being prophesied, and that we should all know where babies really come from, a minister approached me at lunch and said "gosh,  you actually say the stuff I think." I take that now as a great complement! Paul's idea that women cannot speak in church because women come from men and not men from women , or that women "sinned" and not the men is biological and theological SPP. 

Sheeple don't see a cruel God in the OT who changes his mind, gets angry, is vengeful , insecure in the worship other god's can get , and even uninformed until given information. Sheeple don't think twice about a rule allowing God's armies (we've really had enough of them in history) to save the good looking virgins (Num 33) and kill only the obviously experienced women. What I see are normal men, sent to kill everyone (men, women, children cattle) and not being able to hack fine looking young girls to death in front of their parents and stay sane. Conveniently "God" makes a nice rule that says "Well , ok, you can save the lookers for yourselves." Uh huh.....

If you think women should only be saved in painful childbirth and to say "yes sir" to men, you are Sheeple material, depending on mythology to inform your real and current life. (Episcopalians can still not bring themselves to call their female Priests a Priestess) WCG had a few token women but they were and still are of no real allowable influence. Women are come-alongs if you must in most COG offshoots. Would to God some brave wife of a few not to be named Minister types both then and now had come forward and said.. "Sweet Muffins..., where do you come up with this stuff? That is the most stupid thing you could say to these people , or one of the most idiotic ideas about the Bible you have ever come up with, and if you put me in the position of having to defend your reckless foolish perspectives, , I won't and I will make it clear i won't. You are on your own. " Could have saved a lot of heartache i would imagine. Women don't know the power they have.. because they too have been Sheepled. 

So back to the original question. Why do we have to reach back to the ideas , experiences , rules and perspectives of others to define ourselves today? Because we are used to doing it. We have been brought up to do it. We have been brainwashed to let others do our theological thinking for us. We let others tell us who and what God is and what He/She is like or not like. They tell the Sheeple what the rules are and what they no longer are. Every rule , except those on giving bucks, is up for grabs depending on one's need and perspective. What you do today, you might be relieved of tomorrow if you wait long enough, or what you don't do, you can do and should do now because we had a meeting and decided , thru prayer that we can now do what we prayed we'd never do at the last meeting. Because now we see that some people are beginning to think for themselves and realize that they don't want to just be Sheeple following closed minded Shepherds. Some are even educating themselves about topics the minister couldn't handle even if they could see it because they are Shepherd Sheeple and the Grand Shepherd will smite them at the next Regional Conference, and mightily so that this spread no further.

People don't need Shepherds, Sheeple do. Thinking for oneself is painful because what you will learn will force a shift away from tribal thinking to personal belief and trust in your own ability to see through your own eyes. If you can survive "every man did what was right in his own eyes", "the thoughts of man are vain", "there is a way that SEEEEEEEEEMS, right....but it leads to DEATH", "The thoughts of man are foolishness with God".....and "the heart of man is deceitful above ALL things and desperately wicked...who can know it" you will discover that what you see, and what you feel and what you know are not so wrong after all. You'll be able to see the crowd control that the above scriptures and many like them were intended to be and that they do not reflect reality or in any way represent a healthy mindset toward personal growth and real truth in life. They are stones to be thrown at sincere people when they begin to think for themselves and challenge those who believe that they are to decide what the truth is for us....something that can never really be done for a genuinely awake human being. They are Sheeplisms ....designed for Sheeple who need Shepherds to tell them how to think....until the next Regional Meeting when we might have to give it a different spin. :)

"Just what are you................I am awake"