Tag Archives: religion

214- Deep Christmas

“Whose tired of people asking about the real meaning of Christmas?”

The Grinch proved a long time ago that Christmas has a deeper meaning than driving up revenues in Q4 through gift giving. In this post and pod-cast I go a step further and prove that depth comes neither from gifts, nor from tradition or religion.

Join me now as we see beyond the surface experience of Christmas and dive into what makes it so transformative. Learn how Christmas is the power to liberate our lives rather than bury us in stress and debt. 

201- Fasting NOT Performing

“Have you ever met someone who admits to being a hypocrite?”

Of course not. Hypocrites are always other people, right? In today’s podcast and post we examine yet another way Jesus calls religious people hypocrites; through fasting. Fasting in our modern world is usually employed for health and dietary benefits, but historically it has been a religious practice.

Join me now as we see beyond fasting at the real problem behind our hypocrisy and I offer a fasting challenge that will allow us to see that hypocrisy is not someone else’s problem, its ours.

199-Praying NOT Performing

“What does it mean to pray like a hypocrite?”

If we’re honest, how often is prayer something we have to endure? How often do our minds wander? How often does praying make us uncomfortable? We’ve encountered prayers so long and verbose they have sermons within them. We see demonstrative prayers, sometimes standing in circles at restaurants, or bowing on blankets in airports, or threatening with a loud speaker in public venues. To whom are such prayers directed; God or everyone around? Jesus calls it hypocrisy. 

In today’s post and podcast we continue Jesus’ deconstruction of religious acts of righteousness and see beyond praying as performance. Join me now as once again we enter our hidden place where God dwells but religion can never come.

181- Your Monotheism may actually be Atheism

“Have you ever had a satisfactory answer to the question of why each religion think it’s better than the others?

How many millennia will we go on arguing about whose god can beat up another god?  This framework is typified in the story of Elijah and Baal, but I believe we missed the point entirely.  It started by Elijah asking the same question I just did: “How long will you go on limping between two opinions?”

In today’s podcast, I will not answer this question by suggesting that all religions are basically saying the same thing, rather I will argue that they are all missing the same thing. Join me now as see beyond what we think is a monotheistic believe and I reveal how it is simply a modified atheism.

169- Live like Sinners

 

“What does it mean to live like a sinner?

All religions have names for those they see as outside their religious tribe: Isalam calls non-Muslims Infidels, Christians call them unbelievers, Hinduism and Buddhism call them unenlightened, and Jews call them Gentile Sinners.

In today’s episode we will see how the Gospel freed religious and non-religious people from compliance to religious law and rules. This freedom caused them to be seen as living like sinners

Join me now as we explore what that means and why this is a central theme of Paul not only to the church in Galatia, but throughout the New Testament. It just might be that living as Paul describes “like a sinner “. is the ability to See Beyond Everything.

168-Clear as Mud

 

“Does my teaching style create more questions than answers?”

I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback from our recent series in Galatians and I’m really excited about that. I have noticed that a lot of the questions seem to come from the same place within your minds.  After thinking about my responses to you, it occurred to me that the issue is not about the content, but the frameworks of understanding that differ between us. It’s a sort of epistemological language barrier.

In this post and podcast, we are going to take a brief pause, to clarify what I’m trying to do in this study since so many new people are tuning in. My goal is to help you understand why we have so many triggers that create dissonance in our thinking, why I always seem to be picking on them, and how we can learn to See Beyond Everything!

154- The Illusion of Spiritual Practice

 

“Do you have a spiritual practice?”

That question is like asking if you like your pet.  In spirituality, people slip into one of two ditches: Taking spiritual practice way too seriously, or not taking it seriously at all.

In today’s podcast I share my experience with many diverse spiritual practices and what I’ve learned through my quest. You’ll be just as surprised as I was to discover that every spiritual practice creates an illusion that must be overcome, or the practice becomes void.

Join me now as we learn what is beyond our spiritual containers, to understand our connection to their divine contents.

To those who can hear the tune…

 

“Have you ever struggled to find words to describe something that is ultimately indescribable?”

 In today’s podcast I’m going to take a poetic approach in an effort to get at the heart of this online ministry.  From my first post in February of 2013 my blog and now my 152ndpodcast has served to help people look critically at their frameworks and ask the hard questions of faith, religion, and belief systems in the modern age.

As consciousness increases, the old wineskins and frameworks can no longer contain what is growing inside and new ways of understanding the old Truth must displace the familiar forms.

Join me now as I share the metaphor of following a sound to help us tune into our own inner experience and follow the liberating path of the Exile.

Meeting God…

 

“Do we have to die in order to meet God?”

In today’s broadcast I show how all religions offer a framework that is supposed to allow us to “meet God.”  But many times we get enamored or distracted with the container and end up missing the contents. I’ll prove that meeting God is not something that requires religion and is something that should never be used as a threat.

Join me now as we see beyond our theological frameworks and look closer at the everyday experiences with God that we call something else.

2- I see you are Religious

 

”What does it mean to be Religious?” Ever notice how the world looks at all the religions and concludes that they are all basically the same? From the outside looking in, it’s not so easy to tell them apart. Today we are continuing our look at Paul’s sermon in Athens because he’s laying the foundation for what religion is and how faith is different. Paul proves that faith in Christ was not intended to be another competitive religion, but something totally different that puts everyone into the conversation. By learning about our own frameworks of religion we will learn to see Paul’s framework much clearer and that enables us to See Beyond Everything.