Rembert Truluck. Update for June 14, 2004 Steps to Recovery from Bible Abuse http://www.truluck.com Thank you for passing this on to others.

GOD IS

God is always equally present in all things. God is Sovereign. God is with you now whether you are aware of it or not. You cannot run away from God! God is special and unique for you. Your God is whatever and whoever you imagine God to be. Nobody else can dictate to you or force you to accept a specific identity for God that does not really fit you.

As Jimmy Durant used to say when somebody would interrupt his television show: Everybody wants to get into da act! Far too many people who mean well but who are wrong want to get into your act and write and direct their personal script for you concerning God.

PAUL TILLICH

Many years ago, I went to Vanderbilt University with a group of my fellow seminary students along with Dr. Wayne E. Oates to hear Paul Tillich lecture. Tillich used his famous descriptions of God: Ultimate Reality and The Ground of Being. He decided to explain to us what he meant by those titles for God. I had never before heard a truly convincing explanation. Tillich simply said that unless God is ultimate reality and the ground of all being, God is not truly God!

How do you describe your personal vision of God? One person decided that God is a vague oblong blur. Many Christians follow the ideas in the first chapter of the Gospel of John and conclude that Jesus is God and that to see Jesus is to see God. The problem is that we seldom if ever catch a clear glimpse of the real Jesus either in the churches or in the doctrines and demands of the churches.

Jesus is reported by John as saying: If you have seen me, you have seen God. (John 14:9. Read all of John chapters 12-17.)

THE HONEST TO GOD DEBATE

John A. T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, published Honest to God in 1963, in which he challenged the traditional images of God. This book became a hotly disputed work that many scholars challenged in a subsequent book: The Honest to God Debate edited by David L. Edwards and published also in 1963. Later, in 1996, Robert W. Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, published Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a new millennium, which also challenged all traditional views of Jesus. (See links below.)

All three of these books are worth your time and energy, and I hope that you will read and study them and their sources, which include Tillichs Shaking of the Foundations, and the works of Soren Kierkegaard, including Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing and Attack Upon Christendom, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffers Letters and Papers from Prison. Become familiar with the Quest for the Historical Jesus, the New Quest and the works of Rudolf Bultmann and his followers dealing with de-mythologizing the Gospels.

All of this is a reminder of two sayings of one of my favorite seminary professors, Eric Rust: You cant put God in your pocket! and God is not found at the end of an argument.

WHERE DID YOU FIND YOUR GOD?

What is your earliest memory of God or religion? Long before you were able to make your own decisions about anything, your parents and teachers filled your mind with images and descriptions of God. Perhaps your God was the fundamentalist vision of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, as Jonathan Edwards proclaimed during the so-called Great Awakening, which actually was The Great Mistake or we could also call it The Great Heresy that clouded the image of God and Jesus in a fog of judgmental legalism that remains with us today in every major Christian denomination (over 300 at latest count).

How logical and objective is traditional religion today in America, where over 300 Christian church denominations each claim to know and teach the truth about God and each also teaches that all of the others are wrong! These obvious contradictions dont seem to make any difference to the radical company of the committed that dominates the religious environment of our world.

Accompanying the religious contradictions is the publication of hundreds of different translations and versions of the Bible that devoted believers claim are the literal words of God. These contradictions may seem obvious to you, but the ludicrous illogical foundations of contemporary church religions seem to be an accepted fact of faith for millions of people. The Bible says it. I accept it. And that settles it! Or does it?

FAITH INCLUDES DOUBT

Tillich wrote a very helpful little volume on Dynamics of Faith, where he showed how doubt is a part of the faith process. The only person without any doubts is a Hitler shouting his views from his balcony with no thought of questioning or allowing anyone to question his truth, which consisted of lies so often spoken that people began to believe that the lies were true!

Contemporary religion is a mental illness that includes suspicion (paranoia) and schizophrenia (obvious contradictions that are accepted as true) along with a heavy dose of manic/depressive behavior, co-dependency and unresolved anger at the traditional God and at yourself for failing to measure up to the requirements and standards of legalistic judgmental religion, which are rapidly becoming part of the air you breathe and the culture that you feel obligated to obey and defend. What a mess!

THINK FOR YOURSELF

Most traditional religions do not try to teach people to think for themselves. The aim of the religious system is to convince believers to follow the spiritual leadership of the designated clergy, teacher or bishop authority who can dish out your spiritual truth as though one size fits all! Church has become an elaborate hog trough where the religious slop is dumped out by the spiritual keepers and then is swallowed and digested by the faithful. If that image of religion is offensive to you, why do you keep coming to the legalistic trough every Sunday? Is it because you enjoy the company of other pigs? Or is it simply a disgusting habit that you cannot face and discard.

I doubt that you are enjoying this update up to this point! Most sick people so not like the idea of undergoing major surgery to remove a malignant tumor. But most people who face their unhealthy condition and seek relief from the pain and disfigurement caused by a physical or spiritual tumor gladly and gratefully accept the surgical skills of the medical team and are glad to be rid of destructive obstructions and life threatening conditions.

A LIFE OF UNLEARNING

I just received a gift copy of A LIFE OF UNLEARNING: Coming Out of the Church: One Mans Struggle by Anthony Venn-Brown, who lives in Australia and receives my updates and has frequently been in touch with me on the Internet. A Life of Unlearning was published this year, 2004, by New Holland Publishers, 14 Aquatic Drive Frenchs Forest NSW 2086 Australia. This timely book is a powerful personal coming out story that will encourage and inform you. (See link below.)

IS YOUR GOD TOO SMALL?

Biblical translator and scholar J. B. Phillips wrote a helpful little volume with the challenging title: Your God Is Too Small. Read it. Brother Lawrence gave us another brief classic of practical Christian devotion in his slim volume: The Practice of the Presence of God. Read it. Learn from others who have had the the courage to be (another short study by Paul Tillich) and to think for themselves.

You will learn far more from others who have discovered the gift of thinking for themselves than from all of the religious experts and know-it-all biblical scholars who dare to dump their own undigested slop into your trough.

To follow Jesus is to think for yourself.

Rembert Truluck http://www.truluck.com