Tag Archives: church

03.15.20
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Ding, Ding it’s about control

Back when I was all up into organized religion, I was ever reminded that whenever doubt crept in about what I was suppose to believe, that meant I didn’t believe enough. I totally bought it. I bought it because I already had a perfect score in domestication. My parents probably did the best they could bringing up little Nina by passing their own rigid rules and “because I said so” “never cross the line”. AND if you do cross the line or if you don’t live up to expectations then you are not a good girl. What is wrong with you.

So, of course, I internalized how bad I was, how different I was because I didn’t get it…didn’t believe at face value what everyone expected me to believe. I just didn’t have the faith that everyone else had, something was off with me, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME?

As I entered my middle age years, I stepped out…I quietly rebelled. I followed rules even when they made no sense. But, I Started gently balking the system. In my head I fought like a ninja to change the rules. For the most part I was polite and strategic and realized in my work and in my family and among friends that if I could put enough evidence out there that change was actually their idea, I succeeded. That’s when I realized I was manipulative. I had learned the art of manipulation.

It all came together for me when I put two and two together and figured out organized “religion”. That’s when I started seeing the flashing lights over the pulpit spelled out — Do as I Say, Not what I Do. That’s when I figured out that the rules and laws and the “interpretation” of the holy book was the way organized religion supervised the running of private lives. That’s when, ding ding, I realized that just because someone says it, just because someone else believes it, just because it’s someone else’s rule does not mean I have to believe it. And the BEST PART ….. I don’t continue day to day with the voices of doubt, the feelings of not being good enough. There is nothing wrong with me. I have choices. I am able to live by intuition. I am able recognize when something feels right and something feels wrong. I am learning to love everyone. I recognize that we are all the same but we haven’t all taken the same road to discovery.

Ding, ding. It’s really all okay until we think it is not ok.

07.12.15
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Random Sunday Morning

I’ve been all over the board since I was a teenager in my spiritual/religious life.  My volley on the right was being a believer in the scriptures as taught by the Grandview Park Baptist Church in Des Moines as a child and as taught by the Rising Sun Church of Christ as a teenager then on to Bible College – the best year of my life.  I tried to live the scriptures, gave a lot of lip service to the good and evil…as an adult, enmeshed myself in the Christian Church in Newton for several years…listened to both sides of the God argument, read, read, read.

What I found to be true for me was spiritualness.  I have problems with the bible.  I’m just going to put it out there…Today, at this moment, I do not believe that it is the inspired words of God.  More like I think it was written by some folks in order to control the masses, control women and inspired by fear.  Perhaps as an explanation of things they didn’t understand. A rule book?….compiled a few centuries later by a catholic leader.

There are far too many things going on in my head and in the universe for me to discount religion as a whole. There will be no blanket statements here…I refuse to criticize one “religion” over another and not opposed, at this point, to believing in a higher power.

I read an article this morning that President Jimmy Carter has left the southern baptist congregation.  Jimmy Carter’s article makes total sense to me!  I respect Jimmy Carter!

When we visited Ecuador several years ago, I was depressed about the deplorable conditions in which some people lived.  My experience was mainly along the coast…the fishing villages…when I said this out loud, my x-friend, Christa said that I shouldn’t feel sorry for them…this is their life…this is what they know.  I call bull shit on that one…It was a happy little way for her to justify.  It did, immediately, make me feel better about the difference in my social existence and theirs.  Once again, I call BS.  I think that it is just nice  way to say that one group of people is better than another group of people…so just let them be and live in their squalor.  After all, they don’t know any better….BS.  Hasn’t this chapter been written  over and over in several books?l

Wow…glad to get that out…it has been bugging me for awhile.

Huffington Post comedy posted a video of David Letterman coming out of retirement as a guest on a Steve Martin and what’s his name show in Texas.  He had another top ten list…this one about Donald Trump.  Wow.  It was great to see Dave being Dave again.

I have no compassion for ants!

Until next time…..

03.25.13
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My RRR Rutted Religion Road

I think it was female deacons in the church which sent me off the do-as-I-say paved road to heaven.  From my conservative christian church vision of how it should be, I tumbled and stumbled but it was the more mildly liberal church with their females taking up the “collection” and serving the communion which I mentally struggled with.  What happened to women taking the submissive role in the church. 

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 

The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

….and this was in the new testament.  So…do we obey the bible or do we pick and choose what we obey in the bible.

Yup…this was the beginning!

Until next time….