Going to Prison for Others?

Going to Prison for Others...

“I was struck most of all by the purity, sincerity and strength of their faith. They, like myself, were not involved in searches for theological doctrines, but in striving to live in keeping with the spirit of Christ-to live in truth and kindness, in continual oneness with Him, to live in light and love..."

"One hundred sixty-seven Quakers petitioned Parliament to be sent to prison in the place of 167 other Friends who had been suffering in prisons for a long time already, and who were tired and sick, and missed their families."

"That level of sacrifice simply amazed me. The history of our country is full of imprisonment and mass repression, but I had never heard of people voluntarily asking to be sent to prison in order to free their friends.”*
--Tatiana Pavlova





When reading this, a question burst out of my deepest inner self:
How many followers of Jesus, now, would offer to trade places with innocent persons
who are currently imprisoned around the world?


Asia Bibi, a 42-year-old Pakistani woman from the village of Ittanwali, is the wife of Ashiq Masih, and their family is one of only three Christian families in a village of 1,500 families. She has been in prison for three years, separated from her husband and two young daughters.

Her crime? Witnessing of her faith in Jesus, in contrast to Muhammad and Islam. She was convicted of violating subsection C of Pakistan’s 295 blasphemy law and was sentenced to death.

Asia’s conviction and death sentence have brought international attention to the country’s blasphemy laws.*

Will anyone step forward and take her place—literally, or even figuratively, by being a witness to Jesus as early Friends did, as did followers of Jesus in the Book of Acts?

Behnam Irani, a 42-year-old pastor from Karaj, Iran. Officers from the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (MOIS) raided Irani’s house church on April 14, 2010, and assaulted him before taking him into custody.

When Irani voluntarily began serving his sentence in May 2011, he was prepared to spend one year in prison. But he received a letter in October stating that he must now serve five years from his previous sentence.

For the first few months of his sentence, Behnam Irani was held in solitary confinement in a very small cell. Afterward, he was moved to another small cell with other prisoners.

The hot room was so full, the prisoners were not able to lie down to sleep, so they had to sit all day and night. Pastor Behnam is now in a normal cell, but authorities have asked for him to be beaten regularly. All his hair has turned white...

Behnam Transferred to Prison Hospital - July 2012
Within the last week, Behnam Irani became so sick that he lost consciousness. As a result, he was finally allowed to be transferred to the prison hospital.

Please pray for his wife and two children as they wait for him to return home.*

Will anyone step forward and take his place—literally, or even figuratively, by being a witness to Jesus as early Friends did, as did followers of Jesus in the Book of Acts?

"Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple...3 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:26,33


For many years my wife and I have written letters to oppressive governments requesting the release of innocent individuals who have been wrongly imprisoned.

Millions of others work for human rights. Thank God for that.

But, I admit, I am not yet that committed to the Light that I would go in to prison to replace a prisoner of conscience, that I would petition the government of Pakistan or Iran to volunteer to replace Asia Bibi, Behnam Irani, or one of thousands of others who suffer in prison.

When will we modern followers of Jesus truly seek to be like him, to “empty” ourselves for the cause of Truth, Goodness, and Lovingkindness?

As did the early followers of the Way in the Book of Acts, as did the early Friends of Truth in 17th century Britain.

In the Light and Love of God,

Daniel Wilcox


*Tatiana Pavlova, a Russian academic on the Friends of Truth, a movement of Christ-followers in 17th century Britain
Interviewed by Johan Maurer about how she became a Friend.

Tatiana was born in Moscow. She studied in the history and literature department of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. In 1969, she defended her dissertation on the theme, The Second English Republic (1658-1660), Social-economic and Political Struggle.

Tatiana worked as a volunteer with alcoholics and drug addicts, and poor retirees, conducting Bible study classes. Before her death, Tatiana worked at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

--From Friends United Meeting, Quaker Life May 1999

* http://www.prisoneralert.com/pprofiles/vp_prisoner_218_profile.ht

Friendly Good News

God Is One.


God is creative, invisible, transcendent, eternal, and ultimate.

God’s expression, his “Word,” his visible presence (the Incarnation) is in Jesus the Messiah, “The Word became flesh and set up his tent among us.” Jesus is the Image of God who is invisible. Jesus is our friend, ruler, leader, and deliverer.

The “Chosen One” came so we might experience and understand that God is ultimately and everlastingly love. “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Scripture also says, “Mercy triumphs over judgment."

God’s immanent, creative presence and influence, his “Holy Spirit,” convicts all of us to change direction and seek God. God’s Spirit lives within our spirit, and guides, communes, and comforts us as believers.

God loves the whole world, every human who has been born and every human who will be born. God is not willing for any to perish.

God is leading all of creation toward and to final perfection.

The ultimate glory of God is love—creating, giving, sharing, communing…


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Judas Kiss

The Evil of Religious Double-Talk

I really hate religious double-talk, especially the kind whose end results are horrific.

Gangsters and gang members who strut their malign beliefs are abhorrent, especially when they openly prey upon the innocent and the young, but they can be faced and dealt with.

They wear their intentions proudly blazoned in garish tattoos and brazen behavior. Police know where they are at and can deal with them.

But the really insidious and diabolical are the serial crooks and abusers who wear sheep’s clothing of respectability, who carry out their crimes under the appearance of goodness and light. Who often aren’t caught, or not until long after their actions have hurt and destroyed many innocent people.

Isn’t this why traitors and spies are so despised? Humans oppose their enemies, though sometimes respect them even despite great destruction and killing. The most famous example of this is the meeting between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.

However, in contrast, spies such as Civil War soldier, Will Talbot, got hanged.

Most people can’t stand foes who sneak around trying to appear as their friends. Benedict Arnold was one of the great heroes early in the American Revolution, but his name is not famous for his soldiering.

The Judas kiss isn’t a hateful allusion for nothing.

An obvious disease is treatable; a hidden cancer which destroys and is found too late leads to death. A really bizarre cult is at least “good” in the sense that its malignancy is so obvious.

What is very dangerous is the Christian message which appears so good, but has hidden horror and destruction within.

I must admit that is why, in a strange sort of way I do prefer hyper-theological determinists, the so-called ‘high’ supralapsarians of the Christian world. Not that, they are easy to face. I still remember the first speaker I encountered at a church Bible study on Philippians when I was in my late 20’s.

The spokesperson claimed every rape and murder is planned by God! That God actually has foreordained the eternal damnation of most of us humans. And later I learned that they believed God even planned the Jewish Holocaust for his “own pleasure and glory”!!

Whew! Needless to say, I was shocked and doubly horrified, having been raised in the loving Good News of Evangelical Christianity as preached by leaders like Billy Graham and Charles Finney and John Wesley and Menno Simons and St. Francis and Justin Martyr and Polycarp; and in fact all of the early Church Fathers!

When I became aware of my own sins and guilt, I accepted Jesus as my Savior because of the overwhelming love of God for us--for all the billions of us, every last one of us, and that God forgives us in Christ, that God is like a father who dearly loves every single human he has ever created, even those of us who have made so many wrong ethical choices.

“The wonder of it all” (to quote a famous revival hymn by George Beverly Shea) that God would have sent Jesus to lead the way to the Light for only one of us, even for me, even if I had been the only wrong-doer in the whole world! Joy unspeakable and praise to the glory of our wondrous God of love.

So I did fight against the horrific theological determinism of a rape-and-murder-planning God with all of my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. This was overt brazen, twisted Christianity I could fight and did.

But then much later I discovered other great leaders of Christianity, who I admired, actually, also, believed in this same horrific vision of God, but they hid their religious betrayal within religious double-talk.

For example consider some of these very good statements: "I say every man who comes to Christ shall be saved."

"Every man that comes shall find the door of Christ’s house opened—and the door of his heart too. Every man that comes—I say it in the broadest sense—shall find that Christ has mercy for him...every man who believes shall be saved—that every man who comes shall find mercy.

...I tell you all that come—aye, if they were as bad as devils, Christ would receive them; if they had all sin and filthiness running into their hearts as into a common sewer for the whole world, Christ would receive them…good news from God for sinners is like cold waters to a thirsty soul."

"The first piece of good news that I have to give you is, that God has not forgotten you. You are a lost sheep, and you have almost forgotten your Shepherd; perhaps, you have altogether forgotten him; but your Shepherd has been counting over the number of his sheep, and he finds that there is one missing, for there are only ninety and nine where there should be a hundred, and he is deeply concerned about the one that has gone astray."

"God has not only remembered that there is such a person as you but he remembers you with pity."

"You have nothing to do, sinner, but to give yourself up to the leading, guiding, directing, assisting, quickening of the blessed Spirit of God."

Aren’t these words of wondrous Good News?

Don’t they sound like the glad tidings of the Gospel?

Aren’t they blessings of joy, showing the great love of God for everyone?

No, they are the Judas Kiss!

For this famous Christian leader, Charles Spurgeon, (like so many other famous leaders) actually means the exact opposite of his direct statements.

Spurgeon doesn't think any sinner "can give yourself up to" the Spirit of God. On the contrary, elsewhere he states (like all real theological determinists) that a human must first be regenerated against his will.

No one has any choice; every infant is born totally depraved, evil.

And Spurgeon declares that God has predestined only a limited number of humans to be rescued.

To hell with all of the billions of us other humans.

His book on salvation and a number of his sermons, his “Gospel” is nothing of the sort.

No "good news" at all.

It's obscenely horrific news.

Spurgeon's speeches are a Judas kiss, are a horror to behold, nothing more nor less than
the worst of the worst covered over by double-talk.

The Judas kiss.

Let Spurgeon clarify his real meaning with his own words:

“Another says, ‘I want to know about the rest of the people. May I go out and tell them—Jesus Christ died for every one of you? May I say—there is righteousness for every one of you, there is life for every one of you?’ No; you may not.”

What?!!

But then this famous preacher of so-called good news speaks of the “Doctrine of Grace”: “There is no soul living who holds more firmly to the doctrine of grace than do I.”

Well, isn’t that good? Grace is wonderful, right?

Isn’t that another word for God’s love for everyone—that we can’t do enough good to be acceptable to God, but “God was in Christ reconciling the world until himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19 and John 3:16)?

No.

The famous preacher doesn’t mean “grace” in that sense at all. Instead, what he later clarifies is that he means this: TULIP—a systematic acronym for John Calvin’s statement:

"They again object, Were not men predestinated by the ordination of God to that corruption which is now held forth as the cause of condemnation?
If so, when they perish in their corruptions they do nothing else than suffer punishment for that calamity, into which, by the predestination of God, Adam fell, and dragged all his posterity headlong with him. Is not he, therefore, unjust in thus cruelly mocking his creatures?"

"I admit that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into that state of wretchedness in which they are now involved; and this is just what I said at the first, that we must always return to the mere pleasure of the divine will, the cause of which is hidden in himself."
Chapter 23, 4 Institutes of Chirstian Religion
John Calvin

Then Charles Spurgeon goes on to say:
“There is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else."

The twisted tulip of Calvinism

When Spurgeon says, “I say every man who comes to Christ shall be saved. I can say that as a Calvinist, or as a hyper-Calvinist, as plainly as you can say it"
one has to decipher his double talk because according to his Calvinism, the vast majority of humankind was foreordained to eternal damnation by God before the beginning of Creation.

Double-talk, how hateful and destructive it is. How insidious!

According to Calvinism, God has willed for most of us to be lost forever, eternally pre-damned from before time began, for the “mere pleasure of the divine will.”

Lest we missed this hidden point, Spurgeon adds: “I do not serve the god of the Arminians [John Wesley, Charles Finney, George Fox, Menno Simons, Arminius, etc.] at all; I have nothing to do with him, and I do not bow down before the Baal they have set up; he is not my God, nor shall he ever be; I fear him not, nor tremble at his presence...”

Finally, no more double-talk like his earlier fake evangelistic words.

Just the horror of no hope for most of us humans because we were foreordained to eternal damnation, created at conception by God as evil sinners and incapable of repenting. God didn’t send Jesus for us and doesn’t send his Holy Spirit to change us...

So much for the “good news” of the Judas Kiss!


Next time the really GOOD NEWS of Jesus…

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

My Last Philosophical Will and Testament

No, I haven’t died physically yet. Though I sure feel my age, of late, as my body parts fragment earlier than expected.

Rather, this article deals with the crisis I’ve experienced mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. The substance-- lines and examples came to me a couple hours ago as I swam laps at the health club pool, and I wrestled with the modern torrential waves of theological and Atheistic determinism.

Or viewed alternately, what occurred was a crisis meeting, somber party of Albert Camus and George Fox;-) and others, laying a game plan to defy the wiles and brilliant horrors of determinists of all sorts.

And then, suddenly, the breakthrough answer came to me…

But let me back up, and provide a bit of perspective before shouting out my Will and Testament.

It’s been a tough spring and summer. The evangelical minister and theologian John Piper started it off by claiming that 90 tornadoes that wreaked havoc and killed at least 40 people in the American Midwest in early March 2012 were actually God raking his fingers across the landscape. And that Jesus ruled these winds, the tornadoes were his.

Really comforting to the grieving families! who lost loved ones including a baby infant throw hundreds of yard into a corn field, left to suffer in agony until it finally died after being rescued. How wonderful of Jesus. (sarcasm a few hundred millions miles long)

I would still like to punch Piper in the nose for his words. (emotional hyperbole, not literal for those who wonder if I’ve given up my dedication to nonviolence).

Then nearly at the same time out came Sam Harris’ shocking essay that humans have no free will, that we are only an effect of previous natural causes, that we can’t reflect and make creative decisions but are only acted upon by causes within our unconscious and previous forces of past existence.

I still can’t believe he wrote such an essay and a book of the same name, Free Will, which came out mid-March. Several years ago, when I read a couple of his books for Atheism, I thought he was a voice of moderation compared to the other New Atheists. Guess not.

Anyway, let’s cut the words. What came to me as I swam--in the midst of a mental, spiritual, and emotional crisis--was a defiant insight!

I remembered reading Atheist Albert Camus’ tragic existential novel The Plague years ago. In the powerful book an individual fights against a decimating disease killing thousands (it could be millions); he has no hope of possible victory but defiantly fights against the plague and for individual humans anyway. And Camus, emphasizes that even though, according to his understanding, there is no meaning or purpose to Existence, no hope—yet he still acts to fight against destruction, and for the good as he understands the good to be.

And a world away, 300 years earlier, of an opposite life view, George Fox, a spiritual seeker, totally disillusioned with the Christian churches of his time and the materialists too, feeling drowned in an ocean of darkness, finally experienced an ocean of light. And said, “When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.

Well, I can’t say I am leaping for joy…

But by the time I finished swimming I did realize I don’t care, ultimately, whether Sam Harris and his kind can show materialistic determinism is true or Christian theologian John Piper (or Thomas Aquinas or Sunni Muslims or Spinoza, etc., fill in the blank with your favorite fatalist)
can show theological determinism is true…

Ultimately, even if it were proven we humans are incapable of decisions (of free will), I choose (like Camus and Fox) to defy “the stars.”

Even if there are no ethical truths, there should be.

Even if humans matter not at all, they should matter.

Even if there is no free choice, there should be.

So maybe we will go our ordained way as chained galley slaves of the indifferent cosmos or some sadistic sovereign god. Maybe our lives are condemned by fate.

But let us go defiantly contrary, refusing, opposing, against that destiny.
Let us choose the Light no matter what.

Let us follow Jesus all the way to death. Let us rescue the perishing no matter what.

In the Light,

Daniel

The World Perspective versus the World Picture

Recently, I’ve read more tomes of scholarly disputation on the Christian religion and the Bible. Like many of the debates and dialogues on the Internet and at universities, there seems to be so many beliefs and views on which Christians disagree and on which they write endless books arguing their own doctrine and denomination are the only true one.

Do Christians ever agree on anything, even the nature of God? Apparently not. There are over 200 different denominations of Baptists in the world alone. Even the tiny Society of the Friends can’t agree, even, whether God really exists!!

In my frustration with all this, a point raised by a professor years ago came back to me—of the climatic difference between a “world perspective” versus a “world picture.”

Immediately, I saw the deep insight of these two very different ways of living Christian faith, for the latter one is where so much of current (and historical) conflict in Christianity comes from.

“World Perspective” is a term emphasizing the over-all themes of Christian faith and Scripture.
For instance:

God is. God creates. God created humankind in God’s image. Jesus in his words and deeds represents God, is the image of the invisible God—God is love, goodness, truth. Humans are responsible to seek God and to live good lives through relationship with God. Sin is a reality we humans struggle with and we reap the result of our choices.

In contrast, “World Picture” deals with all the details and knowledge of the first century view of life versus the 21st century and our current knowledge of the world.

So I can trust in Existence as having Ultimate Meaning, as being personal, as ethics being of supreme importance
BUT
as a Christian I don’t have to take an ancient picture of the world as true—that the cosmos was literally created in 6 days (“and there was evening and there was morning the 1th day”) or that the cosmos is only 6,000 years old, especially when all scientific evidence shows it to be billions of years old.

OR

I can trust and hope Existence is going (however slowly) forward toward perfection. God calls all humans into this movement away from our instinctive wants and egoistic choices and nationalistic goals.
BUT
as a Christian I don’t have to think in literal 1st century apocalyptic terms of millions of soldiers meeting soon in the near future in a valley in northern Israel to slaughter each other or that the European Common Market probably is of the Anti-Christ.

OR

I can think government as a form was instituted by the Creator to limit the evil inclinations of humans,
BUT
I don’t have to agree with the Apostle Paul when he says all governments have been established by God. Other passages of Scripture offer different views.

OR

I can believe the ultimate purpose of existence is ethical and spiritual—egalitarian relationships of love in relationship with God who is Love
INSTEAD
Of thinking many of the specifics (often eternally false) of the Old and New Testament are to be followed. There are so many but here are a few controversies which have caused so much evil and confusion in the name of Christ over many centuries--the institution of slavery is to be obeyed, women are to be subservient, people should slaughter their enemies, and are “blessed” if they bash their enemies’ infants to death on the rocks, the 4th Commandment is to be taken literally, doing no work on Friday night and Saturday, we are to give others a holy kissing in greeting, false religious teachers are to be executed, clothing worn by religious leaders if it is used to touch sick persons will heal them, God hates some people and creates them for evil, women must wear veils because of the angels, etc.

If some people complain that such a thematic perspective instead of a literal perspective is “picking and choosing”—cafeteria-style religion, we need to remember Jesus was accused of this as well and guilty as charged. For he chose the great truths of God and held them against other specific parts of Scripture which were not to be followed. The most famous case, of course, was when he disagreed with the literalists concerning divorce, explaining to everyone not to follow the Law of Moses!

To be continued

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

My Faith at 65

Faith in God, the transcendent, ultimate Reality

That despite all the chaos, evil, suffering, and pain observed, the ultimate nature of existence, God, is essentially Love—relational, giving, kind, good, patient, forgiving, humble, truthful, trusting, hopeful, meek, generous, peaceful, faithful, protecting, rejoicing, unselfish, honorful, courteous, enduring…

Jesus, the Chosen One, came to proclaim the Realm/Reign/Way of God and when rejected, endured the cross of excruciating pain and suffering for the joy set before him, in order for humans to see/experience how much God loves all of us, every last one of us, and loves his creation. (The pronoun is used in the generic sense and is not asserting God is male. For God created Human, male and female he created them in his image.)

*I suppose in a starkly objective sense this view of ultimate reality is an impossible dream--to think Love is essential, is ultimately true, when millions of years of natural and human historical fact claim/show the contrary, and often the major religions deny by theory or their contrary behavior.

But great minds from Plato to Whitehead, from Paul to Henri Nouwen/Martin Luther King Jr. have looked at the brute facts and still rationally averred that ultimate truth is greater than cruel fact, love greater than hate, creativity greater than destruction, good greater than evil, mercy greater than judgment, eternity greater than temporality.

Existence, the Cosmos, nature, the visible world is in creative process. God is wooing the visible to become the eternal in a relational dance of love. Evil, chaos, suffering, and pain...are the demonic, the Satan (Hebrew: “adversary”) over/through which Goodness and Truth and Love must suffer to vanquish.

To live the Good News, to participate in the “Kingdom of God” is to long for, to change, to create toward becoming…eventually to perfection. This is a cosmically long process, not understood in depth by the NT writers who thought Christ would return within their life-times, how the writer of Hebrews understood prophetic truth that the “end of the ages” had come then. “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Hebrews 9:26 ESV

Yet 2,000 years later we seem only a little bit closer (and sometimes not when one sees the horrific world news). But we don’t look to this present age, not at its tragic evil. No matter how many thousands or millions of years last, we look to the future, to God’s realm “..we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18 ASV

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Plugging the Spiritual Sieve

Growing up in fundamentalism and evangelicalism of the Christian religion, we were continually warned about the “slippery slope of doubt and liberalism.”

My subsequent trials and steep learning curve of a university education at the University of Nebraska and Cal State Long Beach, and the many 'travailed'-roads of a spiritual journey
through lots of theological and scientific tomes and evangelicalism’s too many ‘easy-isms’—all that, has brought me too close to the dangerous cliff of a faith'd demise.

Which shows the question of the truth of that fundamental “truism” is both yes and no.

Slip and slide...

However, this short blog reflection is based not so much in the slippery slope metaphor,

but more in other striking images,
that of the “spiritual sieve” of Christianity--

How so much of religious faith is drizzling down through millions of small holes.




Or that of a wide funnel
and the eventual swirling down
at a hectic rush of all that used to provide
security and hope.





Or it's like an individual who runs around in his upward-bound basket of faith,
trying to patch the balloon above to keep the helium of his beliefs from leaking out
all the puncture wounds caused by secular learning.

Or like the boy in Holland who stuck his finger in a hole in the dike to keep out the flood of the sea.

But here in the bulwark of Christianity, tragically, there are thousands of holes to be plugged in order to keep the flood waters of fact and rogue waves of speculation--yes, the ocean of doubt, evil, and nothingness from drowning everyone.

And every thinking believer needs to run around constantly sticking his faith fingers in those endless holes, trying to stop dark gushing seawater from washing in and drowning us all.

A few of the Jagged Holes of the "Unholy" from the perspective of my childhood--

Evolution:
We were never "young earth creationists" in our family. My dad was a history major in college, and eventually earned 3 degrees. He considered Neanderthal and other ancient primates related to homo sapiens to be real, not the nefarious lies of atheistic scientists. So we accepted some form
theistic evolution.

But we strongly opposed natural selection. When I grew up, I constantly fought against Darwin's ‘unholy’ inundation; this ‘evilution.’

We Christians learned over and over again that Atheists held to this false ‘theory’ because of their sinful ways, that anyone could see there was no factual basis for Darwin’s concept, and it contradicted Genesis and the New Testament.

But in my first science class--Geology at the University of Nebraska, I quickly discovered, the whole issue was much more complicated and the evidence for secular science very overwhelming.

And I was totally turned off by the lame arguments that creationists used against evolution and for a world-wide Flood. After I completed my term paper on the latter, I was never the same, indeed, had moved into a modern scientific outlook.

Then came classes in anthropology, books on biology and many discussions. After years of intense struggle and a constant study of religion and science, I finally bowed the knee to objective fact, to the overwhelming evidence of geology, biology, chemistry, and physics.

So much for religious dogma, Christian illusion.

I did so finally because I could no longer deny hard evidence. I wanted to find out the real truth, did think that all truth is God's evidence. I no longer wanted to hang onto the security of questionable religious doctrine.

But believe me, I came kicking and screaming (to reverse a phrase from C. S. Lewis) into an acceptance of modern Darwinian evolutionary theory with its emphasis on "survival of the fittest" and random mutations.

It's very hard for religious humans to give up, essentially, their whole understanding of the nature of life.

But, especially, after Francis Collins (a Christian evolutionist) and other scientists finished the Human Genome Project which again showed the high probability of common descent of humankind from primates, I realized I had lived in a delusion based on faulty, and at times, ludicrous arguments.

Better late than never, though I wish I could have gotten there years earlier.

Many anti-evolution Christian books were so weakly reasoned and so missing in substantive factual evidence. Some even put forth ridiculous views such as claiming God had hidden dinosaur bones in the earth to mislead modern scientists! At least my parents had never believed in that!

If I hadn't seen horrific ethics displayed by non-religious individuals at university, I probably would have changed sooner (but that's another article to be explained later).

Inerrancy:
It was at 11 years of age that I first encountered severe doubts about part of the Bible. The story of Elisha and the 3 Bears;-) Well, it was only 2, and it wasn't cute or funny--because on order of God, the bears mauled 42 kids (2 Kings 2:23-25)!

We were taught this story in Sunday School. I remember becoming very upset, and telling our teacher and the other elementary students so.

How cruel and unjust! All that the boys had done was only make fun of Elisha's bald head.

And the fact that the Bible repeatedly defended and condoned slavery also troubled my mind as I entered the teen years.

Still, I remember saying (when I was about 13 or 14), I would quit believing in the Bible if one comma was missing from the text. But then I discovered to my chagrin that punctuation was only inserted into Scripture in the late Middle Ages.

Later textural study opened huge wide holes in my spirit and mind.

And I learned scriptural transmission, literary interpretation, history, etc. until my balloon of faith in the Bible became one droopy stretch of plastic in a pig sty of natural slime.

In so many portions, there are horrific immoral, unethical, unjust stories like in Judges, Joshua, Samuel and Kings.

Theological Determinism:
Denial of the Good News for most humans by Augustinian-Reformed theology. Original Sin, Evil Infants, Predestination, Hell...

The first time I encountered a Calvinist was at a high school Bible study when the adult leader claimed that sometimes God would order us to commit immoral actions! And he told me personally that I should be willing to do what is immoral for God. Whew!

Then there was a famous Bible leader's almost obscene claim. That happened, when as a young adult, my friend and I visited a Presbyterian church.

The leader lectured the assembly that “every murder and every rape are planned by God” and that God only wills/predestines for a limited number of humans to be saved.

I became extremely upset and utterly confused! That was the first death knell for me of secure, simple Christian faith and the beginning of a death battle that has lasted through many years. I’ve survived, but at times I actually no longer wanted to live.

Obviously my faith changed drastically as I studied Christian history and learned that most Christians believed in determinism and that God had created most humans to be foreordained to eternal damnation for his own glory!

And that the Good News I had heard and loved and admired as a kid was a heretical aberration of orthodox Christianity!

When I read a large volume on the creeds of the Christian religions, I was horrified by their immoral ethics, and totally skeptical of their theological abstractions.

What did any of these complex, convoluted, despairing statements have to do with the Good News?





But after having already checked out Hinduism, Buddhism, and various forms of Atheism, and found them worse, I stayed with a form of liberal Christianity associated with Anabaptism, Quakerism, and the Enlightenment.

And I still experientially had inner trust in Jesus like when I had met him as a young person, the night I “asked Jesus into my heart.” Back then we were taught God loves everyone and Christ died for everyone.

But not a day passes now but which I need to do battle against the despairing determinism which is being promoted by famous Christian leaders of “limited atonement, unconditional election," and other such ilk which inundates modern Christianity.

This horrific hole is as vast as a galaxy.

A cosmic sieve into the abyss...

More unholy holes next time...

But for now, the wholly:-) Good News…

Despite the countless punctures which have emptied Christian doctrine and theology,
my experience of Jesus,
my trust in God, the Ultimate Reality,
my faith in ethical truth
my hope in human rights, justice, equality, compassion, honesty, fidelity, and so forth
are alive and well.

It’s not the holes in human religious constructions which count, but the whole Truth.

Thanks to life struggles and extensive learning I've gained a deeper, more complex faith in God.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox