There is a yearning in the heart of every human being who has confronted mortality, a yearning to somehow touch a reality that is bigger than the mundane survival existence that consumes our days. For most of us that reality has a name, God. For those who are aware of their yearning for such a realty, we have neither the time nor the space to argue the plausibility of God, He just is. The disbeliever is a mere annoying blimp on God’s radar who is destined for eventually surrender. Our yearning is matched in biblical history as well as in human history by those sparse moments when the voice of God somehow touches a human heart.
Every religion in the world, without exception, began with one man hearing the voice of God. Also, in every case, without exception, that man or his succeeding generations turned the voice of God into a human religion in an attempt to explain, interpret and thereby control the people. The religions of the world are as different as the men who first heard the voice and as different as the environment in which God spoke. Since my exposure to the religions of the world is limited, this word is about the Bible and the Judeo Christian religion both of whom have been entangled in four thousand years of human history.
Entangled is the appropriate word because at this hour we have hundreds of Judeo Christian religions, all of whom demand their uniqueness from the Bible. The splintering of the Christian religion is rooted in the prevailing opinion and biblical methodology that uses the Bible as a God given religious textbook. This purview is so fundamental that it is accepted by almost all adherents of the faith, no red flags go up and no questions are asked. The Bible is presented every Sunday as the authority behind the words of the sermon and justification for every unique dogmatism. The question that is not asked but should be asked is whether God preserved and protected these words for a religious purpose? Is God really about religion, any religion?
A religion is always a top down experience with the greatest authority lodged at the very top. The splintering of the Christian churches, particularly in the last 500 years does not change this top down dynamic. The splintered group only changes the top and again assumes all the biblical authority of the group from which it sprang. Every Christian religious structure operates day to day in this manner and they all claim that Jesus is the model. This is a fraudulent assumption because Jesus was not a founder of a religion but one who shared in an atmosphere of total freedom the voice of God. Jesus did not rule as the church rules, he treated others as God treats each one of us for he assumed all others to be a more worthy receptacle than himself to hear the voice. Jesus was so unwilling to bend to religion that he was willing to be judged by it and killed by it.
Satan did not do the deed, the Romans did not do the deed, the Jews did not do the deed, the religion of the Jews did the deed with the same kind of top down authority that rules every group of the splintered Christian Church. If we can place our heads and hearts into the life of Jesus, walk as he walked, think as he thought, we would know that this man was not a top down religion builder but one who wished to share and introduce the God of the galaxies to whomever would listen. Whether on a Judean hillside or by a Samaritan well, there were those who were eager to listen. There were and now are no qualifications only a willingness to listen for the voice, it may be today or it may be tomorrow but the Voice will sound.
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca
