Zion, IL

By A.B. Dada

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In my previous article, Thank God for High Gas Prices, a few readers had left some comments that I felt I had to respond to as best as I can.  I appreciate comments, both positive and supporter and negative and critical, as it helps me form a stronger opinion or even catch my own error.

Christopher said the following:

You have an interesting perspective. I appreciate you tying in the writings of Isaiah, as I think they are very applicable to us in our time. I would like to comment on your introductory comments on religion. I thoroughly understand where you are coming from on this whole group think mentality. However, don’t you think that there is a way to be involved in a religion, believe everything that the religion teaches, and yet be able to keep yourself aloof from the hypocrisy of the other members? I certainly hope so because I agree with your complaints, I simply do not choose to come to the same conclusions you have come to. Yes, there are hypocrites, but the prophets tell us to be in the world, but not of the world. I think that a person like you could benefit a congregation immensely, but if you hide your light under a bushel, you show you are ashamed of your testimony of Christ.

I do believe that many Christians are adamant in their adherence to their basic testimony of Christ, but I feel so many of them, the religious as I call them, act as ill reminders of the love that Jesus brought forth from God for all people.  Christ had little to do with groups, even though He actively formed his own unique group (the Apostles, as we call them today).  His reprimands on others went to individuals and to groups, so I don’t think He hated groups, but I do believe he shunned the idea that faith had anything to do with groups.

I do go to “church” regularly, and have quite a strong connection with hundreds of congregations around the country due to my Christian printing ministry.  I don’t think the Church is active as Christ envisioned it, though, especially within the mainstream Christian movement.  When I go to “church,” I’m often asked why I won’t join in prayer, or pray for revival, or pray for healing, or pray over my food.  The simple answer: Christ showed us that God abhorred group prayer.  Christ was very specific and particular about this.  Prayer is a completely private, secret act done between a believer and God, in a private and secret place.  There is no debate here, because most Christian — I’d almost say all Christians — are wrong about how to pray.  Instead, when Christian join together to pray, I chuckle inwardly, knowing their prayers are not what God is listening to.  Why should He, when the Messiah was adamant that prayer in public, in the Temple, was a wasted, sinful effort?

And that’s just one area where Christ was strongly opinioned agains group-think.  Time and again we read the words of Jesus in disturbing the groupthink of the Pharisees, the Saducees and many other groups.  He even castigated his own family (a group) for their reliance on the group itself.  Groups are unimportant when it comes to being a beacon of God’s love for the world.  In fact, I would heartily say that it is groups themselves that disrupt the love of God for the individual.  We are to be beacons, individually.  When I shrug off the title “Christian,” I am no longer at fault for those who say “All Christians are hypocrites” or “All Christians are warmongers.”  I want people to see me for ME, the individual proclaiming God’s love and redemption for all of mankind through the cross.  I don’t want people to say “That Christian Dada” or “Dada, the Christian.”  That’s not me.  I’m “Dada, a man created by God for specific purposes, with particular strengths and weaknesses.”  I don’t sell myself as perfect or imperfect, but as a person with great strengths and weaknesses, both.

The prophets, to me, are not the people to be listening to.  Christ Himself denounced the prophets for not understanding what He was speaking.  It is obvious to me that the Scriptures repeatedly display the faults of the prophets (old and new testaments), with Christ downplaying their knowledge of what His Truth was, and would come to.  They didn’t even really fully believe or understand what was going to happen there in their very generation.  When the Scriptures show disconnect between what the prophets themselves believe they saw, and wrote about, it is obvious that the prophets can not be trusted.  Only Jesus can.  Only His words are truth and bond and guarantees, not what simple, sinful, error-prone men believed.  They portrayed a lot of inane falsehoods that conflicted with what other prophets did and said, prophets who were all alive at the very same time even.

Religion, to me, is lost.  It is worthless.  It is fruitless.  It bears nothing but frustration for those who want to try to be faithful to God.  Every religion, Christian or otherwise, tries to hold to basic truths that are not even consistent between the denominations of the same religion!  How can a Christian hold up Scripture as “the truth” when few Christians agree on how to read and live that truth?  Simple answer: you can’t, because it isn’t Scripture that is the Word of God, it is Jesus Himself who is the only truth.  So when groups unite, and try to sell a product, the only product you’ll notice, generally, is the differences between those selling the product, not the similarities. That’s why I shrug off religion, and shrug off groups.  When I do work with groups, I am really just working with individuals who I hope can see their own strengths to being a beacon of God’s love for others, for the world, for everyone.  Yes, they still use my products and services as a group, but over time I’ve noticed that my care for the individual trumps all the work that the individual does as a group.

I’ll try to explain myself better in a future series of articles, but feel free to comment or email me if this makes little sense.

Another reader, juenger1701, said:

so where does that leave the rest of us who actively avoid government and have a hard time remembering when we’re “supposed” to vote?

This is an excellent question.  What does one who is either anti-state, or non-statist, do?  The simple answer is: speak out against the state, when you notice it is doing wrong.  Work against the state’s manipulations when you see them.  The dollar has weakened almost every year since 1913; why do you hold dollars?  The buying power of the government’s currency is obviously falling, so why take part in trying to use it as the standard of your savings?  My gas is still 25 cents a gallon; yours can be, too.  It’s as simple as not accepting the dollar as a store of wealth, just as a transfer agent to your pocket, at which point you convert it to true forms of money or assets that you can use for profit rather than loss.

Related posts:

1. Thank God for high gas prices: Praying at the pump?
2. A response to a Christian’s view on Intellectual Property
3. Forming a just and loving response to public figures who err.
4. In response to Day without a Gay comment
5. A response to avoiding teamwork
6. Christians who vote are Christians who support murder, theft and slavery
7. The Early Christian Attitude to War, by Laurence M. Vance
8. What do Preterist Christians think of the Israel / Gaza conflict?
9. Chafing at the “word” of God
10. Defending Religious Persecution