Preface and Warning: I'm not actually proud of this, but I'm including it along with others like it, later, for the purpose of presenting the views of an angry, conflicted, and for lack of a better word, back-slidden person who would rather not have found his way back to the Lord, thank you very much. Of course, all of that has changed, as my blog will attest.
So, just in case it went over your head, the peculiar title is derived from the Trix Fruit Flavored Cereal artifice; "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids." Duh.This was written some time ago, from the perspective of a man struggling with the issues inherent in having avoided his own Christianity for the most part, denouncing religion in favor an amorphous spirituality, hating denomination and, if not hating their adherents, at least disrespecting them.
Fair warning. These pages are rough, angry, and for some, may be difficult to tolerate without feeling anger in response, so if you are easily offended by the criticisms and arguments against your religion and faith by the angry ramblings of those who lack any feeling of connection to it, who feel no sense of piety or reverence for it whatever, and who do not share your certainty, you may want to avoid reading it. On the other hand, I might encourage you to read it anyway for that very reason. Why would you not want to know how your detractors feel about you? There might be value, if not for you, for THEM in understanding. If your faith is challenged by it.....well...do I have to say it?
For those who like the practice, let's parse this. There are only four important words. You may note my disdain for the modern denominational church. I hope you are offended. I hope you are offended enough to quit the organization and put your effort into developing your own personal understanding and relationship to the meaning and intention of the words Jesus spoke, and stop taking the words of other people about God. There is no reason whatsoever to continue to support these human defined social clubs and insane hierarchies called churches.
There never was any intent or instruction to organize into anything like what passes for Christianity today. You have the right to stop supporting the evil and selfish aspirations of the liars and thieves who created their "denominations" and "organizations" and those who continue to use them for reasons Jesus never intended, and for reasons that served only the so-called leadership, both upon inception, and now.
Silly:
By my estimation, nothing could be less useful to God than human defined and imposed denominations, doctrine, and dogma. If there is but one Truth, there need not be divergent points of interpretation, contention, and disagreement as to the particulars of the faith. The word Silly was used here, to avoid the more abrasive, and more correct words STUPID, PIOUS, DECEIVED, SELF-RIGHTEOUS and LAZY, among others.
Denominations:
I am speaking solely of "Christian" denominations, not the Judeo Christian tradition, not the Abrahamic religions as a whole, not the "Many Paths, One Truth" point of view, although I would be quite interested in that conversation, for purposes of showing the idiocy of that particular useless, non-committal, lump of lukewarm farina soaking in cold used dishwater as well. For the moment, we'll assume the historical fact of the existence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as the baseline belief. Religion, (invented by man) almost immediately diverges into non-spiritual denominational chaos from that point on anyway, so there's almost no excuse to try to identify the so-called "common" thread.
Rules:
Meaning all the various doctrinal divisions and denominational dogma imposed by the various sects, and I mean that in the most pejorative sense possible. I happen to abhor the differences, since they indicate to me either a failure of these "churches" (you may infer a kind of spitting inflection) to comprehend the message, and to ravage its simple beauty, or an intentional desire to bastardize it for human purposes. I'm not sure which I detest more.
Fools:
The misled and misdirected for short. Those unfortunate adherents controlled by the doctrinal and dogmatic morality police agenda of those who are little better than politicians, mostly men, preferring to bend the message as given, in favor of gaining and maintaining control and money, and to have or create agreement with their own faulty, or worse, intentionally manipulative interpretations and ideas. I assert a desire on their part to differentiate and control the people under their influence for nefarious and selfish reasons, at their inception, and in their continuation for the purpose of controlling POWER and MONEY. the threat of hell is a pretty good stick to beat you with, don't you think? Almost as effective as keeping you ignorant.
Take for example the Seventh Day Adventist's sabbath "requirement", or the Catholic requirement for the "confession and absolution" of priests, the other "absolutely required" doctrinal mandates, like, speaking in tongues, NOT speaking in tongues, submersion vs. sprinkling baptism, infant baptism, handling snakes and drinking poison, etc... among all the other highly contentious differences of opinion. Some are trite, and more a matter of style than substance, and some so fundamental as to cause adherents to view other SECTS as wrong, and hell-bound for their perceived error. The whole point of the new covenant was the elimination of these legalistic, cultic, and constrictive barriers between believers, not to even mention the mess the church is making of science and politics.
I erased everything I originally wrote past this point. It was an even angrier indictment of the current state of the church, a condemnation of the self righteous, pious blindly accepting the blatant stupidity that passes for "religion". TO my mind, there is either a single true faith, or there are a variety of self serving, differing opinions, lies, and gross self-deceptions. I tend to think it's the latter when so-called church organizations are are involved. For the moment, I'll also leave out the evils of combined church and government.
