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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: The Myths Of Christian Fundamentalism The Myths Of Christian Fundamentalism By Ken Adachi Editor - Educate-Yourself.org 3-1-8 Normally, I would not expound on this subject. I don't believe in wearing your religious beliefs on your sleeve and I don't approve of trying to push your convictions upon others, however, I feel it's necessary to expose teachings -delivered within the framework of religious instruction or Biblical instruction- which are untrue and ultimately lead to harm for those who subscribe to them. I'm referring to the myths of Christian fundamentalism. A belief is not the same thing as knowledge. A belief is an idea that we are conditioned to believe is true, yet we possess no concrete way to know or prove to ourselves (or to others) that it is true. In order to accept a belief as true, you must first possess faith we are told. But all faith is blind faith by definition and that's the rub. All victims of belief manipulation are first convinced that they must possess faith in order to be 'saved'. But faith in what? Faith in whatever the preacher says is the "Word of God" while holding up one of the 650 different versions of the "Holy" Bible and declaring it to be the unchallenged written Word of God. I can get you to believe inanything, if you will first surrender your intellect and common sense and allow me to supplant them with a firm conviction in the notion of "faith." That's why preacher-propagandists spend so much effort touting the supposed virtue and desirability of possessing "faith" and will repeat well-worn Biblical mantras like "Oh ye of little faith" or "doubting Thomas" to reinforce the idea that blind acceptance-based on faith- is a good thing , while entertaining any sort of doubt (meaning questioning the validity of what's being shoved down your throat) is a bad thing . How reprehensible it is to treat people in this way, yet that is the mind wash that's being pushed upon a very large group of people in America who refer to themselves as "Christians." But are these self-described Christianstruly followers of Christ and do they emulate His example and adhere to His teachings? I don't think so. If anything, they are grossly unaware of the true teachings of Jesus Christ. They are mislead by false teachers into deception and calculated manipulation. They may refer to themselves as non-denominational, or charismatic, or evangelical Christians, but ultimately they are fundamentalist Christians and they are the most duped people on the face of the earth. . Being a fundamentalist anything is undesirable because a fundamentalist is a zealot-and zealots can be dangerous. A zealot believes in a set of acquired postulates and will go to extremes to coerce his beliefs upon others. The false postulate that the fundamentalist Christian has an obligation, or duty, or mission to "save" other people on behalf of "God" or Jesus is an affront to the free will and self-determination that every soul in God's creation is entitled to-and no one has the right to try to impose his beliefs or will upon others. I recently saw a documentary on Mormons on public television. It may have been Frontline or The American Experience, I can't remember, but it was a revealing expose of the underside of the Church of Later Day Saints and their evangelical 'mission' to brainwash young men into giving up two years of their young lives to go to a far-away place and engage in the very sort of un-welcomed coercion that I'm describing here. One disillusioned ex-missionary remarked that after two solid years of daily accosting, haranguing, and 'evangelizing', he had not succeeded in obtaining even a single convert (what a surprise!). Had this individual retained the capacity tothink for himself and not allow himself to be blindly brainwashed, he would have recognized that Jesus never engaged in 'evangelical' behavior. The people who listened to Jesus sought Him out, not the other way around. Jesus gained followers by example and the wisdom of his counsel, not by any form of coercion (if even one self-described fundamentalist Christian reading these words acquires an understanding or realization that's it's fundamentally WRONG to try and force your beliefs on others-the very core of "evangelism"- then I will have succeeded in serving humanity with this article). Evangelism, however, is not the only false postulate that Christian fundamentalists embrace. There are many destructive notions that are seeded into the fundamentalist psyche that cause him to engage in behavior or hold beliefs that lead to strife and conflict. These include the concepts of "judgment", (whether against others on the earthly plane, or the judgment that they assume they will face when they arrive at the Pearly Gates) and the concept of "sin", which carries a debt of guilt and the need to atone in some punishing way. That atonement includes the idea of burning away in Hell for eternity (or burning for a time in the halfway house, Purgatory) which is offered up to impressionable youngsters in order to scare them straight so they in turn will pass the Fear torch on to their children ( and on and on it goes in a continuous Merry-Go-Round of pulpit-inspired deception, generation after generation). At the heart of Christian fundamentalist myths is the idea that man is a lowly sinner who must be "saved" by the grace of God (or Jesus) in order to obtain salvation and buy a ticket to Heaven. This concept (which includes the myth of Original Sin) is erroneous and leads one to think of himself as being separate and detached from the Creator We are not detached from the Creator. We are part of the Creator and therefore we possess the capacity to create. It riles the Christian fundamentalist dogmatist to no end to confront the notion that his lowly, unworthy "sinner" is possessed of a divine nature and can create himself, but this is exactly what Jesus told us when he said "you can do all that I have done, and more." Is that not so? Therefore, we have a divine nature, since we have God dwelling within us at all times, whether it appears that way or not. Every single human being possess a divine nature and we are ALL sons and daughters of God-without exception. Yet, consider the rank hypocrisy of Christian clergymen everywhere who refer on one hand to their congregation as "children of God" while in the same breath declare that Jesus in the ONLY Son of God. You can't have it both ways. (By the way, Jesus never said He was the Son of God. He referred to Himself as the "Son of Man". The Roman emperor Constantine decided that Christ was the "Son of God" in 323 AD at the Council of Nicea). What we see in the mirror is a reflection of a fleshy garment which we wear while on the physical plane, but it is not the essence of who we are. We are an immortal consciousness, a Being of Light, who is temporarilyhoused in that fleshy garment while on earth to learn spiritual lessons. Besides the skin we wear, we also have other "bodies" nested within our form like layers of an onion. We have a sensual 'body' that can be so captivated by pleasurable sensations that it can lead us to addictive and obsessive behavior such as drug addiction, alcohol addiction, sex addiction, or food addiction, if allowed to run unchecked and uncontrolled by our inner consciousness. We have an emotional 'body' that can respond wildly to the stimulus of emotions and especially to the dictates of the ego unless we recognize its influence and can learn to contain it. This is the 'body' that is most manipulated by Christian preacher-propagandists who employ the use of charged emotions (the fired-up emotional delivery of the preacher, the power of music toemotionally sweep us off our feet, the powerful dynamics of group reverie (or pseudo-reverie) to suspend thinking and carry us along on a river of emotionalism) to install their Illuminati-inspired British Israel programming in their highly suggestible and pre-primed congregations. This is precisely what British Israel con artists like Benny Hinn, John Hagee, Paul & Jan Crouch, Rod Parsley, Jesse Duplantis, etc, etc., are doing with their congregants. They are using the facade of Christianity to install ideas and beliefs (E.g. Christian Zionism) that will ultimately lead to the destruction of Christianity and the imposition of the Satanic New World Order. Duped fundamentalist congregants are not going to be able to recognize or free themselves from this deception unless they begin to temper the hypnotic influence of emotionalism and start engaging their under-utilizedintellectual "body" to discern and examine more carefully what they are being taught as the indisputable "Will of God." They are being brainwashed and manipulated to serve the agenda of the New World Order and they don't know it. Thankfully, a few books have been published recently which address this issue head on and more Christian pastors-who still have their heads screwed on straight- are now beginning to publicly lambaste the deceptions being promoted by the likes of Hagee or Hinn, but much more awakening needs to take place within the ranks of congregants themselves. They are the ones who are funding and underpinning the very scaffolding upon which they will hang themselves. Ken Adachi
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#1. To: Zoroaster (#0)
OK -- first, if this guy thinks that Mormonism is some variety of "Christian fundamentalism", he is as confused as can be. Second, regarding evangelism: if he is gonna use his 'understanding' of Christ as a model, he might actually want size up His (Christ's) words. Matthew 28:19 19"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 15:18-25 "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.'[a] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me hates my Father as well. 24If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason." Those who make a case against Christianity frequently flub up when they cite their own ignorant notions about it. BTW, I *do* agree that Hagee, Hinn, et al. are abosolutely reprehensible. But not all preachers or evangelists are.
Excellent post Old Fud.
Thanks. I even made me a new word: abosolutely...
That's a good one. You can add absotively too. ;^) I can't take any credit for that one, heard someone use it a long time ago and never forgot it.
#16. To: James Deffenbach (#5)
Delicious.
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