Monthly Archives: May 2021

God, new writer, Newfrontiers

Biblical Untruth

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When I went to a charismatic, Bible-believing church, we were taught, and I believed, that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God. God the Holy Spirit had inspired men to write down exactly what God wanted them to say and so, as it says in 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” I have only recently come to understand that the “Scripture” referred to here is, as in the other fifty cases where the New Testament writers use this word, referring to the Old Testament. We were taught to understand, probably on the rather weak basis of 2 Peter 3:16, that the New Testament was also Scripture and therefore God-breathed and inerrant. Hence, everything written in the books of the New Testament in our Bibles was authoritative.

When you are ignorantly living in a sect, you accept such propositions as the truth since you love and respect you leaders, dread the rejection of your friends and fear God’s wrath lest you become ignorant and unstable and distort the truth to your own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). However, once you have escaped the sect and research topics that were never even touched on by its leaders, teachers and preachers, you soon see the incredible inconsistencies.

First of all, the decisions that were made during the 300 years (!) after Jesus’ death as to which books and letters should be included in the canon of the New Testament are such a chaotic patchwork of human arguments and uncertainty that it is impossible to maintain that God Himself infallibly determined the contents of the canon. If, as a compromise, you were to believe that God guided the early church inerrantly through this chaos, then the church takes on a higher status than Scripture itself, leading us to the Roman Catholic papal position, which has been considered heresy by Protestants since the day that Martin Luther placed the apocryphal writings in a separate part of the Bible.

Secondly, as Erasmus (1466-1536) knew from his exploration of scriptural texts, the Christian church had for over a thousand years a version of the New Testament which contained very considerable errors and omissions. How are we to square the circle of the Bible being the inerrant Word of God that is to be followed faithfully by all Christians, yet these Christians have the wrong Bible?

Thirdly, in the sect to which I belonged for twenty years of my life, there prevailed an arrogant certainty that “our” interpretation of the Bible must be correct. The historical and cultural context that would unquestionably assist the interpretation of any text is not required by us since the Holy Spirit, who wrote the text, will endow our preachers with an equally God-inspired, flawless interpretation. If the Bible recounts events at Pentecost in which believers are baptised in the Holy Spirit (e.g. in Acts Chapter 10), speak in tongues, interpret tongues, effect miracles and prophesy, then this is unquestionably to be the norm for every Christian church until the day that Jesus comes again. Those who preach otherwise are either misguided or heretics, such as the entire Baptist Church. I actually believed this. Seriously. Yet never did I question why women did not have their heads covered in our sect ( 1 Corinthians 11:6) or why they were allowed to speak and even prophesy when the Bible says that “women should remain silent” and that it is “disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14: 34-35).

These same inconsistencies are applied to the interpretation and application of passages from the genuinely God-breathed Old Testament too, further undermining the position of errant arrogance that in the end always comes down to an abuse of authority in such conservative circles. For example, why do fathers no longer present their disobedient sons to be publicly stoned to death? Why are women on their period not regarded as unclean and banned from church gatherings? Why are practising homosexuals not annihilated in the same way as the men of Sodom and Gomorrah – even though the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah has absolutely nothing to do with homosexual relationships and identity?

The Bible is an awesome piece of inspired literature and may even be a revelation of God – at least for those who choose to believe that. But those who use its unproven inerrancy in order to wield their interpretative arrogance and self-appointed authority should be ashamed of themselves for the division, pain and deaths they have caused for three hundred years since the birth of Jesus Christ.

“When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” – Desmond Tutu

Education, God, health care, meditation, Newfrontiers, society, war

Personifying Anxiety

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In the last few weeks I have started using the Calm app in order to meditate. I can recommend it for anyone who is looking for guided meditation. I’m very new to mediation, though, and got into it as part of enjoying the Ayurveda way of life in recent months. When I used to pray, the focus was always either on worshipping God or praying for other people. In meditation, you get to focus on yourself, not just out of selfishness, but also with the aim of being in a better place to serve others.

This morning, the app’s very gifted Canadian main author and speaker, Tamara Levitt, encouraged what was effectively the personification of anxiety.

While I was sitting in a quiet place, first focussing on my breathing, she then encouraged me to think about a situation that causes me fear and anxiety. She prompted me to locate where in my body I could feel this anxiety, physically manifested, as it were. Once I had found it (it could be in your jaw, forehead, chest or gut, for example), I was encouraged to describe for myself its size, its shape, its colour, its intensity and so on. That’s why I’m calling it personification. I acknowledged it without judging it, giving it space and room to manifest itself as a genuine concern in my life – yet all the time aware that my anxious thoughts do not necessarily correspond to reality. I spoke to my anxiety, giving it genuine recognition, saying that I would address it at a future moment, but for now letting it drift away, like the leaves floating leaves on a nearby stream. At the end of just ten minutes, I felt so much more peaceful and even assured that the challenging situation I had been thinking about would one day be resolved. If there is one certainty about any situation in life, it is that it will not stay the same.

A clearer head left me better equipped to start work … at least until a different kind of anxious thought came into my head that would not leave me alone. Hence today’s unplanned blog.

I am referring to the battle raging between Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel as I write. I can’t stop placing myself in the minds of my fellow human beings who are living in an overwhelming fear of death. Back in 1997 I spent the night in Belfast and a bomb went off at the end of the road where my hotel was situated. Before the flight home, we all had to get off the plane and identify our suitcases that had been removed from the hold before we could take off because they suspected that we had a bomb on board. The tangible and unforgettable fear I experienced was existentially unsettling in a scary, new way for me, but it was nothing in comparison to what the people in Palestine and Israel must be experiencing right now, especially the children, elderly and infirm.

I’m tempted to take sides at this point, but that won’t help. You can guess what I think anyways. Plus the fact that we don’t have much of a right to say anything, since our countries are benefitting from the enormous wealth we have made by selling Israel and Palestine the weapons they are using to annihilate one another. What we can say, however, is that these war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide are being perpetrated because of the revolting and fatal division created by religion, or belief in a different, superior God. How many lives and despicable tortures would never have taken place, if , instead of a primitive, selfish belief in a non-existent God, human beings recognised their beauty, complexity and racial unity with one another and the universe. Even or especially when wrongful political decisions are made.

“If there is an omnipotent God – in the sense of a Creator of the universe, then he / she / they must surely be capable of communicating in a credible and unambiguous way with the entire human race. The absence of this reality, together with the culturally and geographically different accounts of who God is, is ultimately evidence that God is a human creation, invented in order to to justify oligarchical laws and to promulgate tribal superiority. The concomitant racial hatred results in division, untold suffering and unnecessary death.” Beyond Redemption – a shorty story by Nigel Dutton

This religious division does not start at the national or inter-faith level, but already within one and the same faith and ultimately in individual human hearts. When I was a member of the Newfrontiers sect, our church was invited to join in on certain ecumenical activities promoted by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches across our town. Our church never joined in on the basis that we could not possibly be united with churches that did not believe the gospel and preach the Bible. My former mentor and pastor, whom I still fondly respect and admire, would say to me and even to the other church leaders, “Why would I want to put my race horse (referring to his church) along side your cart horses (referring to their churches)?” If such theological arrogance can exist within one faith, it becomes easier to understand how divisive fanaticism caused by such hateful division between different religions can lead to the appalling suffering that it happening right at this moment between Muslim human beings and Jewish human beings who live in the same street.

Faith really is, as Nietzsche said, a refusal to believe what is true. My hope and intention is that, as the world becomes more enlightened, religious differences might one day be put aside and that people will look first and foremost to the miracles that unite them.

I’ll end with probably one of the deepest lyrics on this subject ever written:

But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you’re bound to get irate, yeah

Madness is what you demonstrate
And that’s exactly how anger works and operates
Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love, y’all, y’all

Black Eyed Peas

Post scriptum: today is Ascension Day, a day on which we remember that the resurrected Jesus Christ ascended into heaven in bodily form and now sits, still in his resurrected, new-order, imperishable human body on the throne of eternal heaven, ruling the world and the universe and sovereign over the control of the thoughts and actions of every single (even unborn) child, man and woman.

I think Nietzsche can probably rest his case.

Ayurveda, Berlin, health care, plant-based lifestyle, vegansim

How it all began

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In August 2020, I fell off my bike by hitting a high curb on a bridge in Prenzlauer Berg and injured myself badly. A young Indian student was passing by and went to get lengths to help me. When I insisted on carrying on my journey to visit my daughter, he gave me his cell phone number and asked me to contact him in the next few days in order to let him know that I was alright. When I wrote to him a few days later, he invited me to visit his research centre in Berlin where he is writing his doctorate on the subject of DNA sequencing. It turned out to be a very impressive, central location and even the main staircase of the building was designed in the shape of the double helix (see the above photo).

Our conversation on the roof-top café led on to health in general, and it was on that warm, late summer evening that I first encountered Ayurveda. I subsequently read a few books on the subject and was particularly interested in the overlap with plant-based nutrition and veganism.

If you would like to know more, I can definitely recommend the following two introductions: “Ayurveda” by Sahara Rose Ketabi and, for German-speaking readers, “Wie neu geboren durch modernes Ayurveda” by Kulreet Chaudhary.

Since the beginning of February this year, I have tried to follow the 4 – stage detoxification process recommended in Chaudhary book and these have been the results so far:

  • I have lost 7 kg in weight (I wanted to anyways)
  • My previoulsy off-course LDL cholesterol has decreased to an acceptable level
  • My pre-diabetic level of glucose has receded to a non-diabetic level
  • My blood pressure has normalised and I have stopped taking my medication for high blood pressure (under my doctor’s scrutiny)
  • I feel fitter and healthier and my VO2 level has increased to 47.8 (apparently very high for my age)
  • I have generally gone off foods and drinks that are not good for me
  • I feel calmer and more at peace with the world.

The down sides were a phase of unpleasant body odour, skin rashes, a boil on my leg and a nasty bout of gout in my right foot. I can’t prove that these were a result of detoxification, but I think so.

In spite of enthusiastic affirmations to the contrary from fans of Ayurveda, the scientific proof that it works is almost non-existent. Nonetheless, I can without a doubt say that it has worked for me, albeit in tandem with a fairly strict sports regime. Therefore, in the next few blog articles, I’d like to share some tips and experiences from Ayurveda that I have found especially helpful, even, or perhaps especially, during the restrictions caused by Covid-19. Maybe you’d like to give it a try?

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” Aldous Huxley

God, new writer, Newfrontiers, plant-based lifestyle, politics, society, vegansim, vision

What can we learn?

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Since my last blog entry, I guess we could say that a few things have happened. Some of them continue to dominate our daily life and will continue to do so for generations to come. Given that every crisis is an opportunity for improvement, I’d like to ask what we can learn from recent events. How might we behave differently in the future?

The Curse of Covid

Whatever opinions we hold about this virus, one fact cannot be factually disputed, namely that it occurred as a direct result of human selfishness and irresponsibility. A blatant disregard for our essential interconnectedness with the whole of the planet. Our treatment and consumption of millions of animals per year causes unimaginable suffering to sentient beings as well as wrecking the environment via climate change.

The mass of animals raised for slaughter on earth now outweighs wildlife by a factor of 15-to-1. For example, for every person on the planet, there are approximately three chickens. Meat and dairy specifically account for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Why do we need to eat meat? The answer is: we don’t. Social conditioning, underpinned by effective marketing and together with a lack of information, leads many of us to believe that we need to consume many kinds of meat – and fish too. Yet now we know otherwise. For those who believe that they can’t live without the taste of slaughtered animals, there is an alternative for pretty much everything.

Given that the climate impact of plant-based foods is typically up to 50 times smaller than that of animal products, it follows that switching from a largely meat-based diet to a vegetarian or vegan diet would reduce green house gas emissions significantly and help to reverse climate change.

When I stopped buying meat a few years ago, I was surprised by how much less I spent on food. I recommend spending some of the savings on buying organic produce too. Not so much because it is far better for your mental and physical health, but because it is so much better for the environment. Organic farming practices reduce pollution, conserve water, reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and use less energy. Farming without synthetic pesticides is also better for nearby birds, frogs and other animals as well as people who live close to farms.

Politics

The political landscape since my last blog post has changed for the better and for the worse. I am so delighted for the US people that they have jettisoned the divisive, racist caricature of a politician and the worst president in my lifetime. Sadly, his twin brother is still at large in the UK, lying, dividing and grooming his endless narcissism. As the UK erroneously believes that it will be better off as an island of service industries, the only thing the British can currently be proud of is that they have taken part more swiftly than any other European nation in the largest drug-testing experiment in the history of the world. I had much higher hopes for the opposition under Keir Starmer, but it seems as if he is not a leader after all. He offers no alternative vision to inspire the inhabitants of the sinking isle. Further afield, I remain heartbroken for the plight of my fellow human beings in Syria, Yemen, Brazil and India – to name just a few countries – and I am hoping for political solution to come soon. Let us do everything we can to support this.

God and the church

The charismatic church in particular has struggled during the pandemic. Although awash with many gifted prophets (apparently), none of them saw Corona coming. In fact, many of them were busy buying and renovating large, disused warehouses – large “barns” prepared for bringing in the enormous harvest of souls promised by their prophets back in 1993. Yet we don’t need a prophet to tell us not to buy a large building. The Bible is good enough for that. The New Testament teaches that the church is not a building, but Spirit-filled Jesus-worshippers who gather in one another’s homes. And there has still not been any honesty from the leaders of such congregations, explaining why the promised revival never came, let alone apologising for the irresponsible untruths and ensuing delusion. On the contrary. In a sermon I heard just two weeks ago, one of these leaders was again telling his poor sheep that a massive harvest of souls was coming at the end of the Corona period and that the church needed to get ready. He longed for another so-called outpouring of the Holy Spirit too, since the current younger generation has never experienced people falling over, laughing out loud and in their drunkenness signing more large cheques to pay for the new barns that they won’t be needing. Still, at least we can all now see what “charismatic renewal” means: establishing a superior sect that steals Christians from well-established churches > lunatic gatherings in the name of the Holy Spirit > exciting prophecies about national revival > a massive increase in offerings > ignoring the facts, managing social projects and propagating spiritual boredom. And once the generation who has experienced this renewal has either left the church, died, is demented or living in the sect’s obedience and amnesia, the whole cycle starts anew.

What really matters

On a more hopeful note, the virus has taught many of us to focus on what matters most: family, relationships, health, the environment and looking for positive ways out into a better future.

When I was meditating the other day, I was reminded of a scene from Winnie-the-Pooh in which Piglet asks Pooh, “Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when were underneath it?”

“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this.

In some of my upcoming blog articles, I’m going to share with you some of the comforting things that I have enjoyed during the last twelve challenging months in the hope that we might learn from our mistakes and make the world a better place for the generations of people, animals and plants to come.

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”  Albert Einstein