Month: March 2017

Fishing for faith

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One of the few things God Seeker Guy understands about the story of Christ is the fact that he was interested in fishing. Some his followers were of course fisherman, that makes them okay in GSG’s estimation.

Fishing, if done right, gives us time to think, time to slow down and consider our place in the universe. A trip up county to an isolated lake or river, surrounded by giant fir trees, fast flowing rivers and cool clean air offers a place to connect with our surroundings, a place to clear our heads. GSG is often accused of being spiritual despite his agonizing struggle with God. If he ever gets close to adopting a religion or embracing some kind of god , he will achieve it in the open where God can find him.

Churches over the past years have not been successful at gathering together those in need of focus for their life. A former post noted that “A four-day conference convened to examine the viability of the United Church in Canada didn’t have much to consider. If the Church has 3,400 congregations and a membership of 558,000, as reported, that works out to 164 God-fearing souls rushing to each congregation” obviously something is amiss.

“GSG is often accused of being spiritual despite his agonizing struggle with God. If he ever gets close to adopting a religion…”

It seems God if having difficulty being heard through the commotion and distractions of the city. It is said that God is everywhere but many are finding it a struggle to locate him, if he does indeed exist he needs to find a good social media consultant.

We are at a stage in human evolution when we’re absolutely obliged to question the absurd demand of attending a gathering in a half empty building. We are asked to listen to an out of touch ecclesiastical diehard attempting to protect a job no longer in demand by a new enlightened generation of YouTubers and bloggers. In fact many of GSG’s readers use their blogs as a platform to talk through their issues and feelings with numerous online parties. While such communication may be suspect, blogs—immediate and instantly available—may well become the church of the young, who knows?

It has been said that Christ had no church, he was the church. Many of us are now in the process of seeking out our own individual sanctuary. The future is going to be very different from the past in terms of how we connect with God, GSG will be on the river, listening and waiting, where will you be?

GSG (God Seeker Guy)

God’s bullies

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As the well-known matriarch of the Kennedy clan, Florynce Kennedy, once pointed out “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”

A recent catholic church edict announced that “…Pope Francis has given all priests the power to forgive women who have had an abortion, saying the procedure was a ‘grave sin’ but one that God’s mercy could wipe away for those with a repentant heart…”

Why are so many rules for women made by men and how is it only males are privy to Gods change of heart?

While God Seeker Guy has enormous respect for the present Pope and his efforts to humanize his church, why have so any women had to suffer terrible guilt for generations until the male dominated church once again changes its mind and gives the priesthood permission to forgive them.

“As long as religion constrains women and as long as the church is unable to deal with its abject fear of female competence…”

The issue here is not the hotly debated subject of abortion, but the fact that women have lived for centuries in misery and guilt as result of male instigated religious tyranny.

Author Jack Holland notes “Eve’s curious mind and audacious spirit proved to be unsettling to many. Ever since the famous fall – all the world’s major religions, and most of the world’s renowned philosophers, have regarded women with scorn.” Aristotle saw women as “failed males” and thirteenth century Catholic Philosopher Thomas Aquinas saw women as helpmates and suggested that women were “a necessary object needed to preserve the species and provide food and drink.” Not their finest moments, even considering the times.

To keep the ladies in line, Holland observes: “the ever resourceful church developed the concept of purity for women. The virgin myth has been employed ruthlessly to show women just how shameless they really are”.

This attitude of course is no longer acceptable to half the population of our planet. Surely it’s time for the churches of the world to finally accept that women are an equal creation of their Gods, women should not be held a prisoner of their physiology.

As long as religion constrains women and as long as the church is unable to deal with its abject fear of female competence, women will continue to be at the mercy of religious bullying.

GSG (God Seeker Guy)

Impossible things!

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Faith is a wonderful thing in many of its forms, faith in yourself, faith in others and faith in the human condition. However blind faith in an unseen God, promoted by religious elites with a vested interest in maintaining their dwindling flocks, is perhaps no longer applicable in the information age.

The young in particular have thousands of years of informed thinking at their fingertips and they should be asking lots of questions about God, religion and the religious prognosticators. Sadly, more time is spent keeping up with the latest escapades of movie stars, pop stars and YouTube lunatics than is spent seeking out personal truth. To be fair, such a tragic waste time is not limited to the young.

You’re the smartest generation in the history of the planet, use your intelligence, use your powerful tools to find your own answers. Those who demand you follow a centuries old line of belief barley understand that Twitter, as you know it, is not the sound a sparrow makes in spring when it’s trying to mate.

“You’re the smartest generation in the history of the planet, use your intelligence, use your powerful tools to find your own answers.”

Get mad, demand accountability from those who ask you to believe in impossible things, impossible because you have access to the truth and refuse to live in a medieval world with medieval thinking handed to you by religious dinosaurs refusing to accept that their time has passed.

People are not animals, we have the ability to reason, that is what separates us from the beasts. Why then, do we follow religions blindly, almost by instinct like salmon swimming upstream to die because that is what they have done for millennia.

Generally we’re born with a faith, follow it and abandon it only when we stop breathing. In the mean time we live in abject fear of what comes after life because religions have determined what awaits us.

The universe is very big and we understand little of how it works, but we must know by now that the stories of heaven, hell and an ark filled with animal waste, are merely uninformed efforts to science.

GSG (God seeker Guy)