Thursday 31 July 2014

In Time

Time is loose in tight sort of way
Today, after yesterday
Lunch, after breakfast
Waiting for today
Remembering tomorrow
Before yesterday has had its way
Tired in anticipation
Of what last week held

Its Monday already?
But it seems like it was just Tuesday!

I could walk to straighten out time
Steady steps pace my mind
Each breath reminds
Sequence, consequence
I am divine, but waking still
And listening to time
This moment that is no point in time
That cannot be called now in time
Because it has slipped in time
Before it can be named

Fluid time, never still, never sleeps
A roller coaster dragging precipitous inclines
To be released with screams
Into quantum dreams
Looking for a cat in the box
And a black hole full of worms

Another slip into sleep
And tomorrow will be today.

Saturday 26 July 2014

Mighty Israel, Part 2

I had a lot of interesting feedback from my last blog and noticed one very consistent thread with all of the comments: none of them spoke of the the God that Jesus loved - none of them spoke of his most basic teachings. None of them spoke of Paul's declarations of unconditional love. All their comments were based on Old Testament scripture. I made this comment on a Facebook thread and thought it may help expand the issue somewhat.


I feel I need to make very clear my views on the Old Testament, especially in relation to Israel's national psyche - it's religious paradigm that governs all of its moral judgments.

Again, I am not judging individual people. Your average Israeli is just like you and me, caring and loving, wanting the best for their friends and family (hopefully).

The problem for me was always the gross discrepancy between the character of God that Jesus and Paul portray and the God that the OT displays. I totally understand the traditional viewpoints about the purpose of the Jews etc, but ultimately I simply couldn't correlate the psychopathic horrors of a god that would demand others to commit genocide on a massive scale. I also simply cannot get my head or heart around God picking one barbaric tribe to be his "chosen" ones and make a bloody covenant with them based on performance, adherence to complex rules and regulations, and a fear that we could accidentally offend him and get zapped.

I have studied and read deeply as a christian for over 40yrs, even went to bible college, all in an effort to understand all these complexities. The only real answer I ever got, after endless questioning and digging, was that His ways are perfect and we have to trust His sovereign purposes - God is God and in the end he can do what He wants, we just have to have faith that He has our best intentions.

In the end, however, that just doesn't cut it. You see, to make it all "work", to give consistency and integrity to Gods character and heart, I had to turn my brain off, and abandon rational thought, logic, compassion, heart and the very essence of love that He has put deep in my heart - the love that Paul describes in 1 Cor 13.

I began to see that the entire OT was simply one particular ancient tribe trying to make sense of life and spirituality. They are writings of struggle, power plays, loss, victory, hatred, self justification, barbarism, cultic practices - all wrapped in a deeply held belief that they were the only nation on the earth that God had any interest in - that God actually despised every other person he had ever created and demanded that this one tribe annihilate the rest.

No matter how much I tried to work through the analogy, metaphor, the hidden purposes of God and the deep mysteries that point to Christ, the glaring facts remained - if the stories in the OT are true, then that God is the most horrific psychopathic monster imaginable, and we have been brainwashed to believe He is loving and caring.

So for me, we have been utterly duped, slowly and inexorably over centuries, to believe in a schizophrenic God through the use of incredibly complex doctrines that are MAN MADE. We have created a god in our own frustrated, distorted image - fickle, angry, abusive, conditional, narcissistic, and yet somehow, who loves us.

I cannot with any integrity whatsoever believe in that God. If He is love (as New Testament points out), then the Old Testament is NOT God speaking to us, its nothing more than an ancient tribe justifying its crap. Sure there are some great bits in it that actually do express His real heart, when those people caught the occasional glimpse of it.


No, the Old Testament is NOT God speaking to us, its NOT His holy word, its NOT the expression of His character or heart.

I now find it completely and utterly offensive to the very core of my being to think that God commanded ruthless, brutal murder and genocide - no matter how much theology you care to wrap it up in.

God IS love - if what we read doesn't fit that, then its not God - end of story.

Friday 25 July 2014

Mighty Israel


I'll preface this blog by saying emphatically that I'm not dissing Jewish people.  They are all wonderful individuals uniquely created and loved just like us all. This blog concerns a deep national paradigm. All nations have some sort of national mind set or paradigm that overlays individual paradigms, creating very clear national identities and stereotypes. 

Some of my comments here are very provocative, but I feel they are worth the observation. Again, not as an insult to individual Jews, but as a very clear rebuttal of the Israeli mindset over military actions.

It is of course, entirely possible that I'm sprouting crap, but its how I see it, and I think it has a lot of merit.


Despite protestations from many that the nation of Israel is a political entity these days and religion doesn't colour their attitudes, Prime Minister Netanyahu and many members of his cabinet make no secret of their belief that "the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers." In his speech to Congress on May 24, 2011, Netanyahu emphatically stated: "This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god... no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.

The Torah very clearly states that Israel obtained this land through complete and utter annihilation of every previous resident. Apparently God instructed them to commit genocide on a massive scale, and even punished Israel if they didn't kill off every last man, woman and child.

However we try to colour this with theology and doctrines, we end up with the fact that they absolutely believed they were God's one and only true chosen nation and they must occupy those lands as laid out in the Torah by whatever means.

This has been the central issue ever since. They are a nation whose history is steeped in merciless bloodshed and genocide - something that is laid out very clearly in their writings.

So here's the problem... When they were tortured and killed by the millions over the years, by many nations, and yes, especially Hitler, its not really surprising, considering their own actions. I absolutely abhor any murder, and Hitler's actions were amongst the worst ever known, and I feel sick when I think about the horrors so many innocent Jews suffered.

But as they say "karma's a bitch". Harsh you say? Anti-semitic? Why? Its a simple fact, that once again, even their own writings would agree with - there are numerous scriptures about reaping what you sow.

So obviously, my main point is about Gaza and the Palestinians. Ultimately, Israel are forever reaping what they sowed. The nation founded in horrific bloodshed in the belief that a psychopathic God told them to do it, is getting upset about another nation who is simply sick of their never ending arrogant assumption that the land is theirs.

You can interpret all their scriptures in mystical allegory about God's perfect ways, holiness and righteousness, stories of how evil those other nations were and the lessons God was teaching us through those actions, but like it or not, it all comes down to the fact that their God told them to commit massive, ruthless genocide.

Let's stop supporting this attitude, just like we condemn any other nation that acts inhumanely. Let's love every individual Israeli - show them the true nature of God - unconditional love. The sooner they realise this, the sooner they will stop reaping the consequences of their heritage. And I would lay odds on that the Palestinians will respect them for it.

Love wins, always, without fail. ALL middle east nations seem to be very lacking in this simple piece of wisdom.

Sunday 13 July 2014

An open letter to Africa

This is not a racist post, so please don't take it that way!

Nigeria, Uganda and all the others - you know who you are.

Shame on you - Yes, SHAME ON YOU!

You who were ruthlessly abducted into lives of slavery - 10 million of you!
You who were tortured, beaten, murdered, neglected and abused.
You who were dragged away from your native lands - your homes - your roots.
You who were treated like scum, unloved and not even human.

Those who did this to you had a biblical mandate.
There are many scriptures that irrefutably proved God endorses slavery.
There are no scriptures that say men should NOT have slaves.
God saw that your race was inferior. The bible says so.
White men were doing God's will by keeping you in slavery - it was where you belonged.
It was your lot in life according to scripture.

So what changed?
What did those brave men use to convince the religious and state powers they were wrong?

They used God's unconditional heart of love.
They used basic human morality.
They appealed to the heart of love and compassion that is in all of us.


Love won, and you were freed. It was a long hard battle, and it still is for many.
Thank God for His precious love despite what the bible says.

So tell me,
Why do you judge and condemn LGBT people, when you have known the depth of God's unconditional love already? You experienced God's incredible mercy, despite what the bible says.

LGBT people face the same issue!

You say the bible supports your views. That God hates LGBT people, they are abominations, less than human. Sound familiar? It should! That's what they said about you!

So make your choice - extend the same love that was shown to you, despite what the bible appears to say, or be prepared to confront your own hypocrisy, because confront it you will, eventually, whether you like it or not.