Jesonian … September 4th, 2018

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3885)

The religious system: a baffling, befuddled, faulted and failing attempt to turn the beauty of faith into a well-funded organization.

It contains two erroneous, if not evil, ideas:

1. Material that was written four thousand years ago doesn’t require any updating in the Spirit whatsoever.

2. The Spirit of God and the lives of believers can be capsulized into a corporate worship experience.

It is restrictive.

It is selfish.

It denies individuality in favor of blind compliance.

It turns Jesus into the sacrificial lamb instead of extolling his true measure as a Good Shepherd.

It wants its children to become advocates for printed material which comes out of old-fashioned boardrooms, ushered forth by spiritually vacant suits.

They envision their young children having a conversation similar to this:

 

Yet truthfully, children were never meant to contemplate the actions of impotent, aged patriarchs. They were intended to have life and it more abundantly. So actually, Sunday morning in America more resembles the following:

Although it would be impossible to limit the message of Jesus of Nazareth to one strain of thought or one stream of consciousness, it is undoubtedly true that he was the champion of children and the Great Equalizer when it came to women.

Because his message was visual and filled with stories, the children flocked to him. And because he refused to teach a Gospel that was just for men, the ladies came his way, bringing their money to support his work. That’s what it says in the gospel of Luke.

How will we know that we’ve escaped the religious system and have begun to be a household of faith once again?

When the children eagerly gather and the women are given their full rights as human beings.

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Dear Man/Dear Woman: A Noteworthy Conversation … July 2nd, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(2990)

Dear Woman: Premise: Six couples on a ship, cruising through the Caribbean, participating in a couple’s retreat…

 

Dear Man: What are you talking about?

 

Dear Woman: Just be patient. Follow the premise. Do you see the six couples?

 

Dear Man: Are they squabbling?

 

Dear Woman: Each one on the verge of divorce. So they have all decided to take this last step in an attempt to save their marriages, even though all six are pretty well convinced it’s over.

 

Dear Man: So why are they on the cruise?

 

Dear Woman: Propriety. Maybe it just sounds fun to go on a cruise. Who knows? But they’ve agreed to do the therapy for three days, mingled with daiquiris and fresh crab.

 

Dear Man: OK. I can see it. So what’s the point?

 

Dear Woman: In the midst of the journey, the ship, although a pretty large yacht, is struck by a tsunami.

 

Dear Man: Wait. There are no tsunamis in the Caribbean.

 

Dear Woman: Work with me here. Let’s say there are. It’s huge. The tsunami, I mean. It destroys the ship and all the crew and counselors are lost except for these six couples, who wash on the shore of a desert island.

 

Dear Man: Is one of them named Gilligan?

 

Dear Woman: No. There’s no Professor or Mary Ann, either. Just six couples who went on a trip in an attempt to save their marriages–kind of.

 

Dear Man: You got my interest. So what happens next?

 

Dear Woman: That’s the point. Suddenly six couples who were fighting and arguing discover that they are marooned and in need of cooperation.

 

Dear Man: Don’t you think they would just keep fighting?

 

Dear Woman: Not if they want to survive. You see, I think that’s what keeps the gender wars alive in America–the luxury of laziness. Because we have so much time on our hands, and we’re not trying to raise crops and fight off Indians, and keep the drought from destroying the cattle, we have all this extra energy that we spend finding reasons to dislike each other.

 

Dear Man: That’s a little weird.

 

Dear Woman: Maybe. But think about it. If six quarreling couples suddenly found themselves trapped on a desert island, needing to interact to live, would there even be any discussion about who’s spending too much time at work or who needs more space?

 

Dear Man: Of course not. They wouldn’t even talk about man and woman issues at all.

 

Dear Woman: Here’s where it gets exciting. I think four things would immediately come to play. First, what do we really need? Not “what do we want?” or “what can we complain about?” What do we really need to make it through this day and maybe tomorrow?

 

Dear Man: I get it. Can I do a second one? I would want to know what you can do. After all, we have suddenly gone from being six couples to twelve people. So what can you do?

 

Dear Woman: And you would want to know about yourself–“what can I do?” Which leads to the fourth point: “What can we do together?”

 

Dear Man: So you’re saying, as men and women, we are much better off when we’re in survival mode instead of arguing about Netflix and PTA meetings.

 

Dear Woman: Absolutely. If our lives revolved around “what do we really need, what can you do, what can I do and what can we do together?”–we would embrace compliance.

 

Dear Man: Because on a desert island there is neither male or female. You are either a contributor or you are a drain on resources.

 

Dear Woman: Well said. So what happens if we simulate this in our everyday lives and look at each other as contributors instead of competitors?

 

Dear Man: That could be truly amazing.

 

Dear Woman: And amazing is exactly what we need to survive.

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