I got an email today that triggered this. I need to ask that those of you that get my blog in their email to please post their comments on the blog site and not email me please, I will have to go back and post them and it is a lot of work to do so. You need to also understand that these views are my own and I stand behind them so if your going to try and start an argument that I should not be this way please understand this is from years of having to deal with the feelings, so lets try not to go there in your comments. With that said lets get started, (note that for some reason I can get the font from the email to change and it is going to look weird) and we start with the email I got in my email, and Thank you Pat for sending it to me and keep them coming, they are great, I was going to send this to just you but then I felt it better to post to my blog, and thank you for this as it gets some spent up feelings out of the way.
Now this is the Living Bible:
His name is Bill.. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans, and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of college.
He is brilliant.. Kind of profound and very, very bright. He became a Christian while attending college.
Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative church. They want to develop a ministry to the students but are not sure how to go about it.
One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his T-shirt, and wild hair.. The service has already started and so Bill starts down the aisle looking for a seat. The church is completely packed and he can't find a seat. By now, people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything.
Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet.
By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.
About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward Bill.
Now the deacon is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair, and a three-piece suit. A godly man, very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying to themselves that you can't blame him for what he's going to do.
How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?
It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy.
The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man's cane. All eyes are focused on him.. You can't even hear anyone breathing... The
minister can't even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do.
And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers himself and sits down next to Bill and worships with him so he won't be alone.
Everyone chokes up with emotion.
When the minister gains control, he says, 'What I'm about to preach, you
'Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read!'
His love is always with you, His promises are true, And when we give Him all our cares, You know He will see us through.
I wish that I could find a church near us like this, but we have been to every church here and because we cant tithe, or cant dress the way the people here do we are treated like we do not belong there, it is a sad day when I have realized that the only way for me and my family to have our faith and not be treated like we do not belong in their churches is to do what Jesus did and that is to spend the day with family and friends that feel the same way.
No wonder more people do not go to churches, someone once told me that the churches are full of hypocrites but I did not believe them, but now I do, guess that is why Jesus said in Mark, Mathew and John, "do not pray in the churches, and synagogues, as the hypocrites do but pray in private in a closet" this is stated with the Lord's Prayer. Which by the way only the Catholic churches sill preach is the only prayer you need to pray. I am not saying I am catholic, because I am not, I am a biblical religionalist meaning that I believe in the way that Jesus did it and that is with family and friends in my home. I choose this belief because of the way I have been treated in the churches. I also will stand and tell anyone who askes me the truth like I did saturday to a woman from the church that we were members of, I was treated badly at the church and I saw racialism in the church, and I can not attend a church that allows it to go on, I spoke with the elders and the pastor of the chruch about it and was told and I quote "he is one of the most highest tithing members of our church, we let him act the way he wants to" I told them that is hypocritical and I would never come back. and this brought about the changes in my life to become a biblicalist as I like to call it. So this brings me to my next point, that helped make these changes as well.
Not once have I ever heard a minster speak the facts that Jesus stood up in the synagogues and spoke against the taking of money, but I do hear the story of the person that God struck down in the church for not giving everything they owned to the church. It is my belief that God does not what our money but wants our love and faith and nothing else. It is time that the people of the world realize this, I say this as my example, there is the smallest country in the world and it is the richest as well, and the money is horded in banks not used for what it should be used for, and that is the caring of our neighbor, this country is the Vatican City, in the middle of Rome. the money the churches take in are meant to be used to help our neighbors, not grow our churches but that is what it is mainly used for. This is true for all churches they take in money and hoard it in banks but not help the people that they are required to help. all of this money is suppose to help the people in your communities, not meant to be horded in the banks to draw interest and make the churches wealthy. and my next point is that a true minister of God does not get paid to speak the word of God but is a volunteer of the word that he or she is putting out there. A true church of God survives by the people that are in it giving the things that the church needs to build it, the lumber, the electricity for its heat and lights, not the people or the church paying for it.
You know that I find it amazing that people can stand and say their atheist but then say they don't believe in god, there is only two people in this world that have said that God does not exist, and they are my ex-wife and George Carlin. These are the only to people that I have ever heard say those words allowed in public. George Carlin did it during one of his shows, and he said "I tried I really tried to believe in a supreme being but I just could not", and my ex-wife stood in a catholic church and did it, and that afternoon they excommunicated her. The strange part of this is they both were raised catholic, and that I just find strange. You will never ever hear me utter those words, but you will hear me talk of the Creator or the Great Spirit all being God, because I am also an American Indian, and not a Native American, (I can not handle the political correctness that they try to force me to use) and there is a miss conception among the American people, that is why the called us heathens, it is not and I'll save that for another time.
I guess there comes a time in every mans life that he has to stand up and say why he believes in the things that he does, and this is just a peice of they way that I believe in one of the things I do. As it is said in the bible, We are to believe in God in our own ways and this is my way of beleiving in God.
