Letter to a friend
By Donat Gniezdzinski ~
Here is the letter I have written to my friend Jerry:
Hi Jerry,
A lot of changes in the way I perceive the world and I am much happier now. All my life experiences with regards to 'church life' or even simply 'my life' or life in general start making perfect sense if one acknowledges a simple fact: life, as it goes, doesn't contain any unnatural events. Everything in life is natural, so there is nothing supernatural or paranormal. And it simply comes from observation. And a bit of thinking.
People tend to believe in weird things, like demons or angels or try to work out 'rules of life', which often end up as belief in superstition, or invent different gods and try to spread faith in them. You and me, we both fell prey to these invented believes, which were rooted in Judaism, in the OT and then later in the NT, which was based on hearsay and contain stories, which never took place.
We fell prey to believing that there is 'god', like many millions of human beings before us. Countless gods, goddesses, deities invented by humans for the sake of explaining and regulating life or comforting people in sickness or death.
We fell prey to believing that there was once a man called Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, walked on water, healed the sick, changed water into wine, was killed, returned to life after being dead for a couple of days and bodily went to heaven, which obviously is 'up'. Nothing of this sort ever happened. Probably, this 'Jesus' never existed. And, funny enough, if you look at some other gods, you can easily find out that if you invent gods you want to invent heroes with spectacular lives; virgin birth, death and resurrection, miracles and no, I am not talking about Jesus, I am talking about a couple of other deities before Jesus' times whose lives go through very similar plots. No, Jesus isn't the first to be thought of being born of a virgin and so on, people before invented the same events regarding other gods.
We fell prey to believing that there is a spirit, which is called 'Holy Ghost', who can communicate with us and guide us. When I look at my 'church' life, my personal way with my imaginary personal saviour or life of other Christians or history of different churches, everything starts making a perfect sense if you acknowledge one simple fact: there is no such being as a Holy Ghost. There is no spiritual guidance; it’s all in your mind.
We fell prey to believing that if we adhere to the teachings of the Bible we would grow spiritually. Well, almost nothing of Jesus' teachings is original and the, so called, 'golden rule' is much older than Christianity. Did we grow? Of course we did. Because we had a good learning environment, we progressed. But there is nothing 'spiritual' or 'supernatural' about our growth.
We fell prey to believing that God can do miracles through us and that he answers prayers. No, miracles do not happen and there is no-one to answer any prayers. We believed that evil spirits can dwell in humans and that we can drive these demons out for the sake of the 'possessed' people. No, there are no demons. We just experienced an absolutely natural phenomena of people having different mental or medical conditions. Answered prayers is coincidence. And healings? Not beyond statistical probability of natural remission of the sickness, plus a bit of motivational boost of prayer, people involved, atmosphere of the church worship and so on. Absolutely natural. Nothing supernatural, not even one miracle!
We fell pray to believing that our religious convictions are unique, true and original. The same as people of different faiths or believes. This is an interesting feature of the Bible, whoever reads it is able to prove anything they want, well, to the satisfaction of the people involved. The Bible would draw for us a clear division; ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘the saved’ and ‘the lost’, ‘the saints’ and ‘the enemies of the saints’, ‘us who wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world’ and ‘those who fall under influence of the rulers of the darkness’, which is pretty everyone outside your local church or denomination. It is a clear manipulation of those who use the Bible to control the people in the church. This ‘imaginary battle’ with the ‘imaginary spirits’ affecting people inside and outside the church, the battle which is already won with the help of ‘imaginary god’. This helps the saints keep their eyes peeled.
We fell prey to the Bible verse cherry-picking by the Christian pastors and speakers we heard, manipulating and being manipulated by their denominations and Bible colleges and so different from the cherry-picked verses in the church across the street. And you can see that this is just human nature, how teaching regarding different issues would change in different Christian churches and denominations throughout the history (e.g. beliefs in saints, position of women and men in the family and church, manifestations of the Holy Spirit and miracles or slavery and burning the witches etc) not to mention erroneous Biblical statements or what was wrongly deduced from the Bible with regards to geography, physics or history. These are facts dangerously easily disregarded and shrugged off as ‘unbiblical’ or ‘not coming from the Holy Spirit’ by the former generations of Christians. New churches are built, new Christian fellowships started, slightly different truths are revealed or presented in the ‘right’ biblical light only to be different and sometimes utterly opposite to the ‘right’ beliefs and convictions of the Christians from the church across the street, who know that they got it right because their pastor told ‘them so’ and that ‘they live in God’s will’ because ‘the peace they have in their hearts and minds comes from the Holy Spirit’ who confirms that they are in the right. And that the others are in the wrong.
When we look at the Bible and its varied importance to different denominations, how it was manipulated by different Christian churches, abused by Christian cults and twisted by evil pastors and when we look at errors contained in the Bible and fraudulent biblical message of love and forgiveness offered by a fictional character ‘Jesus Christ’, whose message and life was not so much different from other mythical characters.
We wanted to build our life on the truth. The confirmation of the truth you draw from ‘within’ and from your thoughts you think you are exchanging with ‘God’ is erroneous. This ‘spiritual thought process’ is initialised and augmented by reading of the Bible, your church life and your own feelings. It’s all in your head.
The only world there is the world we can see. The life we have is the only life there is. And the life is pretty livable as it is anyway, even without imaginary beings.
Life is good.
Best regards, Don
Here is the letter I have written to my friend Jerry:
Hi Jerry,
A lot of changes in the way I perceive the world and I am much happier now. All my life experiences with regards to 'church life' or even simply 'my life' or life in general start making perfect sense if one acknowledges a simple fact: life, as it goes, doesn't contain any unnatural events. Everything in life is natural, so there is nothing supernatural or paranormal. And it simply comes from observation. And a bit of thinking.People tend to believe in weird things, like demons or angels or try to work out 'rules of life', which often end up as belief in superstition, or invent different gods and try to spread faith in them. You and me, we both fell prey to these invented believes, which were rooted in Judaism, in the OT and then later in the NT, which was based on hearsay and contain stories, which never took place.
We fell prey to believing that there is 'god', like many millions of human beings before us. Countless gods, goddesses, deities invented by humans for the sake of explaining and regulating life or comforting people in sickness or death.
We fell prey to believing that there was once a man called Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, walked on water, healed the sick, changed water into wine, was killed, returned to life after being dead for a couple of days and bodily went to heaven, which obviously is 'up'. Nothing of this sort ever happened. Probably, this 'Jesus' never existed. And, funny enough, if you look at some other gods, you can easily find out that if you invent gods you want to invent heroes with spectacular lives; virgin birth, death and resurrection, miracles and no, I am not talking about Jesus, I am talking about a couple of other deities before Jesus' times whose lives go through very similar plots. No, Jesus isn't the first to be thought of being born of a virgin and so on, people before invented the same events regarding other gods.
We fell prey to believing that there is a spirit, which is called 'Holy Ghost', who can communicate with us and guide us. When I look at my 'church' life, my personal way with my imaginary personal saviour or life of other Christians or history of different churches, everything starts making a perfect sense if you acknowledge one simple fact: there is no such being as a Holy Ghost. There is no spiritual guidance; it’s all in your mind.
We fell prey to believing that if we adhere to the teachings of the Bible we would grow spiritually. Well, almost nothing of Jesus' teachings is original and the, so called, 'golden rule' is much older than Christianity. Did we grow? Of course we did. Because we had a good learning environment, we progressed. But there is nothing 'spiritual' or 'supernatural' about our growth.
We fell prey to believing that God can do miracles through us and that he answers prayers. No, miracles do not happen and there is no-one to answer any prayers. We believed that evil spirits can dwell in humans and that we can drive these demons out for the sake of the 'possessed' people. No, there are no demons. We just experienced an absolutely natural phenomena of people having different mental or medical conditions. Answered prayers is coincidence. And healings? Not beyond statistical probability of natural remission of the sickness, plus a bit of motivational boost of prayer, people involved, atmosphere of the church worship and so on. Absolutely natural. Nothing supernatural, not even one miracle!
We fell pray to believing that our religious convictions are unique, true and original. The same as people of different faiths or believes. This is an interesting feature of the Bible, whoever reads it is able to prove anything they want, well, to the satisfaction of the people involved. The Bible would draw for us a clear division; ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘the saved’ and ‘the lost’, ‘the saints’ and ‘the enemies of the saints’, ‘us who wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world’ and ‘those who fall under influence of the rulers of the darkness’, which is pretty everyone outside your local church or denomination. It is a clear manipulation of those who use the Bible to control the people in the church. This ‘imaginary battle’ with the ‘imaginary spirits’ affecting people inside and outside the church, the battle which is already won with the help of ‘imaginary god’. This helps the saints keep their eyes peeled.
We fell prey to the Bible verse cherry-picking by the Christian pastors and speakers we heard, manipulating and being manipulated by their denominations and Bible colleges and so different from the cherry-picked verses in the church across the street. And you can see that this is just human nature, how teaching regarding different issues would change in different Christian churches and denominations throughout the history (e.g. beliefs in saints, position of women and men in the family and church, manifestations of the Holy Spirit and miracles or slavery and burning the witches etc) not to mention erroneous Biblical statements or what was wrongly deduced from the Bible with regards to geography, physics or history. These are facts dangerously easily disregarded and shrugged off as ‘unbiblical’ or ‘not coming from the Holy Spirit’ by the former generations of Christians. New churches are built, new Christian fellowships started, slightly different truths are revealed or presented in the ‘right’ biblical light only to be different and sometimes utterly opposite to the ‘right’ beliefs and convictions of the Christians from the church across the street, who know that they got it right because their pastor told ‘them so’ and that ‘they live in God’s will’ because ‘the peace they have in their hearts and minds comes from the Holy Spirit’ who confirms that they are in the right. And that the others are in the wrong.
When we look at the Bible and its varied importance to different denominations, how it was manipulated by different Christian churches, abused by Christian cults and twisted by evil pastors and when we look at errors contained in the Bible and fraudulent biblical message of love and forgiveness offered by a fictional character ‘Jesus Christ’, whose message and life was not so much different from other mythical characters.
We wanted to build our life on the truth. The confirmation of the truth you draw from ‘within’ and from your thoughts you think you are exchanging with ‘God’ is erroneous. This ‘spiritual thought process’ is initialised and augmented by reading of the Bible, your church life and your own feelings. It’s all in your head.
The only world there is the world we can see. The life we have is the only life there is. And the life is pretty livable as it is anyway, even without imaginary beings.
Life is good.
Best regards, Don