life is my religion
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.…
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…
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…
Peace is not a circumstance
Read more: Peace is not a circumstanceMost people have had this thought, I know I have, If I could just find some peace and quiet, then I could sort out my issues and get on with it. Most people wait for the circumstances to be right, or work frantically to make the circumstances right to achieve peace. This need for quiet…
Love is not a theory
Read more: Love is not a theoryWe talk about love a lot, we say that: God is love! The scriptures say it over and over again, they even say that unless you are in love, saturated with love, bubbling over with love, you are not with god. And so we realise that love is necessary, it’s a fundamental part of our…
Sinner is not our identity
Read more: Sinner is not our identityI have heard it often spoken in churches, you are a sinner! We most often base this on a handful of verses out of scripture like the famous “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of god”. And so we fall into the trap where we think that we are what we…
Our humanity is not the enemy
Read more: Our humanity is not the enemyIt’s been around for a long time, the notion that the problem we have as humans is that we are in fact human. We call it the human condition. And so we aspire to be more than human, to be ‘spiritual’, to somehow leave our human existence and become something else. The problem is that…
Women are not inferior
Read more: Women are not inferiorThe title should be enough, that should be the end of discussion. However, since we are prone to get stuck in patterns based on fragmented readings of scripture we have to go deeper than just this statement. We have gotten stuck on a handful of bible verses about submission and male dominance instead of letting…
Art is not carnal
Read more: Art is not carnalThis is a blog post that should not need to be written. Art and artistic expression has been part of the church since it’s inception. And while art often is a physical expression (but not always, for example poetry) it is not carnal as defined by the false dichotomy of carnal/spiritual or materialistic as in…
Ministry is not a program
Read more: Ministry is not a programMinistry is an interesting word for many reasons, the most important reason is that it does not mean what most people assume it means. For me as a Swede it has double significance as it is one of the Christian buzzwords that do not exist in the Swedish language. The closest we get to the…
Grace has no exceptions
Read more: Grace has no exceptionsGrace, it’s such a beautiful concept. Grace an (undeserved) gift freely given. We read in the scriptures that god loved us before we knew about god, before we saw god, before we had our first god experience. God’s grace is scandalous, outrageous and completely free, for EVERYONE. There are NO exceptions! There are no…
Community is not a meeting
Read more: Community is not a meetingThe holy grail of church planting in my opinion is the building of a community. The way we traditionally do this is by planning activities in our church buildings and we put on meetings. That is we create structured environments in which people can meet and greet. I am not saying there is anything wrong…
The Bible is not a book of doctrines
Read more: The Bible is not a book of doctrinesAnyone who has seriously read their bible knows this is true. There are no clear doctrines found in the bible. If this was the case then all churches would adhere to the same set of doctrines but as we all know the universal Christian church has split into countless fractions all over tiny (or sometimes…
Church is not an adress
Read more: Church is not an adressIn evangelical circles we keep saying this, Church is the people not the building, but do we really understand it? The word church comes from the german kirche which in turn comes from the greek word kurios meaning lord. So the word church means “those who belong to the lord”, well you could of course…
Christianity is not a checklist
Read more: Christianity is not a checklistIt’s not! Ask yourself this, are you a Christian? If so, why are you a christian? Is it because you believe certain things? The right things? Is it because you do certain things? Or are you a Christian because there is a divine reality of love and you live or at least wish to live…
Jesus is not a religion
Read more: Jesus is not a religionWhile one can assume that Jesus may have been a religious man, Jesus himself is not a religion. He did not come to start a religion, he did not found a church and he did not write a sacred text nor did he ask anyone else to do so. I think if Jesus had intended…
