Tag Archives: keven winder

56- Is God mad at you? Part 3

 

We’ve now explored how we came to believe that God is mad, and we have also seen why so many people need to have an angry God. It all comes down to our understanding of JUSTICE. In this weeks post and podcast, I share Jesus’ parable on the workers in the vineyard and how this is a metaphor that explains the justice of Heaven. Restoration and retribution are two very different forms of justice and Jesus explains that the closer you are to one, the further you are to the other. This throws a huge kink in our religious systems if we don’t have the pieces to sort it all out. Fortunately, Jesus give us those in next weeks post.

 

55- Is God mad at you? Part 2

 

We continue this series and explore why some people want and even need an angry God. In this podcast you’ll be shown how we take our dualistic approach to the world and create either/or, binary systems that pit us against each other instead of move us toward oneness. We hold tightly to our distinctions because we believe deep down that God will be mad if we hold them otherwise. This has a debilitating affect on our own spiritual growth and on the entire world.

54-Is God mad at you? part 1

 

 

The subject of whether God is mad at us is highly divisive. People feel very strong about their perspectives. Is God angry with us? If so, why? In this post I begin a short series where I take on this subject by examining the implications of having an angry God, namely that such a being requires appeasement. Appeasement=religious practice. If we then look at substitutionary atonement in the Christian faith, we need to ask a sobering question: “If Jesus bore the punishment for all our sins, how can God still be mad at us?” Our answer is a gauge telling us how deep we are within a culture or institution of fear.

53-Thristy People

 

 

Thirst is potentially life threatening. It is a form of physical suffering that requires the satisfaction of water or we will die. A thirsty person is never at their best. In this podcast I show how thirst is a common metaphor for our souls. Like physical thirst, our soul-based thirst puts us into dire situations, where we seek satisfaction from things that won’t cut it. Perhaps seeing people as thirsty is a better way to view others than seeing them as stupid. Thirst is the suffering that happens when we skim over the depth that is our life. Fortunately, for all of us, there is satisfaction.

52-Estrangement

 

 

We all live into social tribes, groups, bands, and families. These social groups give us an identity and a sense of belonging and acceptance. But what happens when, for one reason or another, we find ourself on the outside of the group? What is next? 
In this podcast and post I share that while this experience feels so bad, it is actually a really good sign that we have outgrown our formative containers. We just might be graduating to another community that has also been called out from the herd. I will show that this is the spiritual path as we leave behind our small, external identity and find our true self in God.

51-Quantum and other kinds of Entanglement

 

Quantum mechanics forces scientists to employ an entirely different set of rules in order to make sense of their findings. Newtonian physics and the laws of our physical world do not comport in the quantum universe. While science may not have categories or terms for non-physical based reality in the quantum sciences, they are striving to find them.

Spirituality on the other hand is precisely the category for non-physical reality where the laws of physics, time and space have no bearing. Despite these discoveries, science and religion are still not necessarily agreeing with each other and it has to do with the entanglements that both hold on to.

50-Striving and Limping

 

 

We all face countless headwinds in our lives. Nearly everything we do is met with some sort of obstacle, hinderance, or difficulty. When it comes to our suffering and wrestling with things in life, there are a lot of unhelpful ideas, namely that such struggles mean that God cannot exist or that he/she has forgot about us. In this post I explore the renaming of Jacob and how we can find true beauty and meaning right in the midst of our striving. Our struggles are not the absence of divine grace, but the very means of it.

49- What is the Point?

 

All of the things we enjoy are loaded with frustration, headwinds, disappointments, and expense. Have you ever got to the place where you wondered, “What is the point of all of this?” If so, then this podcast is for you. I will explore both the lower and the higher motivations that keep us coming back for more. If we lose sight or have never been able to identify our higher motivation, then our pursuits will bog us down, distract us, and even depress us. But if we can keep an eye on the wide-angle lens, then our pursuits enroll us into a form of spiritual satisfaction, and that is a gateway into a very fulfilling life.

48-Duty is deficient.

 

I know that our world really loves and honors a sense of duty, but I think we can do better. In this post I share why I strive never to do anything out of a sense of duty. I have learned that duty is a deficient motivation for any action. I will share how we can access the single greatest motivator in the universe, the law of love. If we are able to access love, all of our obligations transform into pleasures. Duty creates a begrudging prison for us, while love frees us and compels us to do the same tasks on an entirely different level. If your life is a living hell of obligations to everyone else’s agenda, then this podcast is for you.

 

47-Lazarus: Historical Jesus or Cosmic Christ

 

 

This is a blog post from 2014 that discusses a very important nuance. If you aren’t a “religious” person, don’t dismiss this post too quickly. You see the story of Lazarus exposes two assertions about Jesus and the power that raised a dead guy back to life. In this post I’ll show the two assertions that emerge from stories like this and why the most common way to view this creates roadblocks for modern people to access resurrection language. After this, you’ll be able to move resurrection from an unprovable assertion after you die, to an an disputable global reality within the life you are presently living.