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Do not preach to me the Kingdom of God. For to often it is a kingdom devoid of good people. If your Kingdom is filled with hate, inequality, fear, domination and violence, then it is not a Kingdom of God. It is a dictatorship.

The Kingdom I long for is described by Christ in the Beatitudes.

When your Kingdom reflects these, I will listen with an open ear and a heart filled with gladness.

Strive not to be worthy of the Kingdom. You already are!

Try instead to be a kingdom person.

Blessed be

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Standing proud in the presence of street preachers.

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how Jesus rescued me ❤️

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Me: "I'm deconstructing my Christianity!"

Random Ppl: "Oh, so you're an atheist?"

(bad) Christians: "You were never a real Christian! You are straying from your faith!"

Me: "No... I'm finally disowning a misinterpreted, mistranslated, out-of-context Biblical view of a God who hates me for who I am, and slowly replacing it with accurate Biblical view of a God of unconditional love. I am rediscovering the God I used to love but lost sight of, who made beautifully queer."

Written by @storythecat

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“The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this. (DBWE 13, 285)”

—

Bonhoeffer, as quoted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945 by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen

I’m in.

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Paintings of the story of the Assumption of the BVM

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Rachel Held Evans on "reading Scripture with the prejudice of love"

The truth is, you can bend Scripture to say just about anything you want it to say. You can bend it until it breaks. For those who count the Bible as sacred, interpretation is not a matter of whether to pick and choose, but how to pick and choose. We’re all selective. We all wrestle with how to interpret and apply the Bible to our lives. We all go to the text looking for something, and we all have a tendency to find it. So the question we have to ask ourselves is this: are we reading with the prejudice of love, with Christ as our model, or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed? Are we seeking to enslave or liberate, burden or set free? If you are looking for Bible verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to honor and celebrate women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, there are plenty. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, there are plenty more. If you are looking for an outdated and irrelevant ancient text, that’s exactly what you will see. If you are looking for truth, that’s exactly what you will find. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not, What does this say? but, What am I looking for? I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

If you want to do violence in the world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm. With Scripture, we’ve been entrusted with some of the most powerful stories ever told. How we harness that power, whether for good or evil, oppression or liberation, changes everything.

—Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, p.56-67

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God is too close to us for our eyes to notice. The problem is not that God is absent but that God is so intimately present.

Martin Laird O.S.A., An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation

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“Few, if any, Quakers see the Bible as the Infallible Holy Word of God – we see far too many inconsistencies in it for that – rather, it is a collection of words about God. For many it is an important and divinely inspired collection, and for some it remains the most important set of writings about God available to us. By and large, Quakers hold to what theologians call ‘continuing revelation’, meaning God didn’t start talking to us with the Book of Genesis and stop talking with the Book of Revelation, but rather God has also spoken, and continues to speak, to us over time through other writings, whether significant religious texts such as the Qu’ran or the Bhagavad Gita, or through other spiritual writings such as Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, or through music, painting, sculpture, poetry, or even mainstream theatre or film.”

— “Quakers, the Bible, and other holy books”

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The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by its finality in the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment.

• Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ

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Somewhere in me is a still point where finite self touches infinite God. I do not know the way; if I look for it I cannot find it. If I wait for it, sometimes, it will find me.

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~Tolerance of evil is not a Christian virtue~

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Nearly everyone believes God is loving, but there is considerable debate over the width, length, hight and depth of his love. For many, God's love is limited and conditional, offered to some but not others... Grace is God's commitment to love us regardless.

If God is Love by Philip Gulley and Jame Mulholland

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For he will not be able to merit the mercy of God who himself has not been merciful, nor will gain any request from the Divine Love by his prayers, who has not been humane toward the prayer of the poor.

Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Works and Alms (5:2a)

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The Sins of American Christianity

These are some of the sins of the cultural Christianity widespread in the United States:

Promoting American Exceptionalism – when Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be the last and the servant of all.”

Promoting injustice toward the LGBTQ community in the name of religious righteousness - when Jesus says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”

Promoting the Prosperity Gospel – when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.”

Promoting Rugged Individualism – when Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard where all workers receive the same wage no matter how many hours they worked.

Idolizing the Second Amendment – when Jesus says, “whoever lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

Denying unconscious, systemic racism – when Jesus says, “Stay awake!”

Baptizing consumerism – when Jesus says, “Do not accumulate treasures on earth.”

Promoting public prayer – when Jesus says, “When you pray, go into your secret room.”

Promoting Christian religious freedom at the expense of the religious freedom of others – when Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Using the Word of God as a weapon – when Jesus says that all God’s words are summed up in one word: love.

The sins of cultural Christianity have driven people from church.  They have driven people from the Bible. They have made people ashamed to be associated with Christianity.

But there is hope for Christianity.  It is the Spirit of Jesus within those who claim to be Christians, empowering them to see the truth and follow in his way.  It is the voice of Jesus calling to those who have left Christianity to do the same.   

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