Patrik Olterman
Oh no, religion!
Read more: Oh no, religion!As I was browsing the interwebs I came upon this cartoon depicting how the secular society looks at christianity. It is true to a large degree. In todays society it is ok to quote Buddha, the Dalai Lama or Ghandi but to quote Jesus or the bible is somehow offensive. Of course the reverse is…
Death as a gift
Read more: Death as a giftWhen you read fantasy (as I do) there are many different races. In classical fantasy the elves are gracefull and artistic, the dwarves are tough and inventive and all the races live long. But what about humans, humans are mortal. In the fantasy setting the great advantage of being human is our mortality. That hardly…
Redeeming Sex – Book review
Read more: Redeeming Sex – Book reviewI just finished reading “Redeeming Sex” by Debra Hirsch. I was so excited when I picked this one up and I was hopeful that someone had finally published a book that dared to deconstruct and reconstruct sex from a biblical perspective. And it started out great showing the important and beautiful link between sexuality and…
What’s the controversy?
Read more: What’s the controversy?This Sunday I talked about the sacramental life at the corps. It was a nice service with good worship (Thanks Boris) and the teaching flowed nicely. As I am preaching my way through my “Life is my religion” teaching we where talking about life as a spiritual practice and apart from sacramental living we got…
The return of the blog
Read more: The return of the blogAfter a sorely needed hiatus, I have decided to reopen my blogs. I write these blogs because I need to work through my journey in writing and because I really need the feedback I get from doing this in public. Some people think I like to provoke on purpose (to a certain degree it is…
Prophetic vision
Read more: Prophetic visionToday I want to talk about transfiguration, it is a big religious word that ranks right up there with eschatology and soteriology and yet, I think, should be part of our daily practice as Christians. Transfiguration, from Latin transfiguratio, is primarily a religious term, and refers to the experience of momentary divine radiance. The most…
The mind is not infallible
Read more: The mind is not infallibleWe live in a society that has for centuries prioritised the mind. We have listened to Descartes who said Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am and so we believe that we are the sum of our thoughts rather than the sum of our being. God gave us the mind to protect the heart,…
I am the truth
Read more: I am the truthIn the Christian world we continuously repeat the mantra: Jesus is the answer, Jesus is the truth! Vi repate it over and over again and it most often seems to mean that outside the person of Jesus there is no truth. We seem to believe that Jesus statement means that everything else is untrue, lies.…
Feelings are not dangerous and unreliable
Read more: Feelings are not dangerous and unreliableIf you have been raised in church or spent a longer time as a member of some sort of church, then I am sure you have been told not to trust your feelings. I was certainly told time and time again that feelings are a roller coaster, they come and go and cannot be trusted.…
Shameless!
Read more: Shameless!A while ago I wrote about the importance of self love and how self love is the first step to loving others since you can only love others as much as you love yourself. Now we know we should love ourselves, and we hopefully feel that it is ok to love oneself. The question then…
Self actualisation is not self-worship
Read more: Self actualisation is not self-worship“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self … Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering…
Seeing the divine in all things is not heretical
Read more: Seeing the divine in all things is not hereticalLook around you, what do you see? Are you not surrounded by grace? By walking talking miracles gifted with the gift of life and love? How is it that within the Christian church, it has become heretical to see and to point out the divine outside of the confines of our little community, outside of…
As you love yourself
Read more: As you love yourselfWhen the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,…
Loving the earth is not satanic
Read more: Loving the earth is not satanicIn the beginning when god began creating the heavens and the earths manifestations of god’s self of gods love, and god saw that it was good. And god created humans as embodied manifestations of gods consciousness, god’s glory and god’s love. God charged humanity to be stewards of the earth, to love it and care…
Tattoos are not evil
Read more: Tattoos are not evilIt is funny how a single verse in the bible can become so important to some people, important enough not to read or understand the context. You shall not eat anything with its blood. You shall not practice augury or witchcraft. 27 You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of…
There is no us and them
Read more: There is no us and themSomeone once told me that all dichotomies are false dichotomies. And maybe this is the most sinister but also the most widespread of them all. The very idea that there is us and them, the idea that we are somehow different *better” that them, whomever they are. In what may have been one of the…
The world is not without hope
Read more: The world is not without hopeI don’t know about you but I hear a lot of hopelessness out there when I put my ear on the wire. The internet is buzzing with naysayers and doomsday prophets telling us that it is too late, that there is no hope left. We might as well just hold on and enjoy the ride…
Life is not a warm-up for heaven
Read more: Life is not a warm-up for heavenThe whole idea of heaven, while hope inspiring, often corrodes and hollows out our everyday life. It is interesting to note that Jesus rarely spoke about heaven. To him, it seemed much more important and urgent to deal with life here and now. Heaven in the here and now. “Repent, for the kingdom of god…
Sex is not filthy
Read more: Sex is not filthyIT’S TRUE!! Not even when it’s really good! Not even when it’s long or loud, wet and rowdy. Sex is not even filthy when it is public or outside or taped. Sex is not filthy when it is between two men or two women. It is not filthy no matter what clothes we dress up…
Falling upwards or sin is not that bad
Read more: Falling upwards or sin is not that badSo this week we are talking about sin. It doesn’t happen a lot around here. I abhor the notion of sin, not because of what it means but because of the cultural baggage that we have attached to the idea. Let me just say outright that the whole concept of a catalogue of sin, certain…
Science is not secular
Read more: Science is not secularWe live in a secular society, which for most people means separation of church and state. We have this idea that church simply should not be political or involve itself in matters of state. In the same way we have this notion that church has nothing to do with science and that science have nothing…
Love
Read more: LoveSo let’s talk about love. What could be easier, love is after all the foundation of the Christian faith right! Love is the cornerstone, Love is the air that we breathe, all you need is love! Then again for as long as humans have walked the earth we have tried to define love and make sense of…
Autocorrected
Read more: AutocorrectedThe text was supposed to read: I Love you! But in It’s infinite wisdom my smart phone decided to autocorrect it to: I live you! At first it frustrated me, it happened over and over again in all kinds of texts, updates, blog posts, the word love corrected to live. And then the point began…
What did you expect?
Read more: What did you expect?I have been a Christian on and off since I was 14 years old. I have prayed thousands upon thousands of prayers. Some deep and heartfelt, some pleading, some angry and demanding answers and some, I must confess, simply by routine. I think that is why I stopped saying grace (praying, giving thanks for my…
Why are we so afraid?
Read more: Why are we so afraid?Those of you who have heard me teach have probably heard me say that joy is the Christian trademark, well that and or grace. While there are a lot of really awesome teaching in most of the world religions, the idea of grace, the completely undeserved, unconditional gift that inspires a no holds barred kind…
