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Jesus, An Alternative History
"Faith, Hope and Love Abide, but the greatest of these is Love." (I Corinthians 13:13 )
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"Faith, Hope and Love Abide, but the greatest of these is Love." (I Corinthians 13:13 ) ⋆
About This Project
This project exists to help as many people as possible encounter a deeply positive life changing message. The heart of this message is that YOU TRULY MATTER. You belong to this universe. Your experiences, your feelings, and your personal empowerment are all essential ingredients of a unified whole. We all live in one world, and you belong here. We hope to show you that there is no separation between the immediate circumstances of your life today and the sublime realization of divinity we find in all the world's religions. The ideas provided here will apply to anyone, regardless of their religion or non-religion. This is for everyone.
Our approach here is to promote the ideas of radical humanism drawn from world religions, prominent philosophers, and a diversity of lived experiences. This form of humanism is radical because it supposes that our priority should always be to put people first. This sounds so very simple, but it can easily become difficult and frustrating. We rapidly hit the iron walls of doctrine, dogma, tribalism, and ideology. We get the idea that some supreme being on high, or some divine leader down here is required to lead us where we need to go. Experience has taught us that supreme leaders usually only lead people to themselves, and a doctrine of separation between heaven and earth leads to a doctrine of depravity in which earth languishes while an imaginary world of divinity prospers and shines. We believe that doctrines of separation and supremacy belong to our past, not our future.
As human beings in human consciousness we are ONE. As one being, we will find that this thing called human consciousness holds all the mysteries and all the ancient secrets of divine revelation. We offer a radical re-interpretation of three Hebrew words to justify this interpretation of all religions and all philosophies. The words are: Im Annu El. (Isaiah 7:14) These words say “With Us God,” or “God is with us.” In the later formulation of Pauline Christianity, these three words became one word, Emmanuel, (see Matthew 1:23) and from there this good news of liberation came to be locked up again in the dungeons of dogma. Our task here is to show you where the keys are to unlock those iron doors of doctrine, dogma, tribalism, and ideology.
By creating the essays and videos presented here, we have tried to draw threads of deeper meaning and value from a wide range of ancient texts. These are the golden threads of liberation. We invite you to draw these golden threads for yourself, and with them to weave your own tapestry of liberation, joy, empowerment, and blessing.
Spiritual Welfare
Any amount of financial support will help us to continue this mission of validation, empowerment, and liberation. What we are trying to do here is to help ordinary people, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or nationality to apply the timeless principles of faith and philosophy to help solve problems in daily life. We live in strange times, with various “truths” and various forms of “information” competing for the attention of a stressed, worried, and confused population. We seek to offer clarity in the form of non-doctrinal, non-denominational humanistic guidance.
We are actively engaged in debates and discussions as new information illuminates basic questions about early Christian origins. Our belief is that these basic questions have been largely ignored by the mainstream church and misinterpreted by many evangelical leaders. We are trying to do our part to set the historic record straight.
We also believe that the events that transpired in the Roman Empire in the first century CE laid the groundwork for many tragic events which would occur in later years, including the horrors of antisemitism, European colonialism, racism, and slavery. We believe it is time for us all, inside and outside academia, to hold rational discussions regarding these historic realities. Denial will get us nowhere. Division and side taking will only make things worse. Unity will help us solve common problems.
If you share our vision and our hope, we invite you to contribute here to strengthen and encourage our work.
Any amount helps.
Thanks!
Blessings & Peace
Pastor Steve
Personal Consultations
Retirement from teaching and from full time ministry has afforded me the opportunity to work to address a few issues I perceive as long neglected. I wish to make myself available to assist individuals or groups who are struggling with existential dread, religious conflict, spiritual or philosophical confusion. I have four decades of experience in the problem solving work every pastor is called to do every day. The gift I have to offer comes from my discovery that things work better when we let go of our attachments to the doctrinal and dogmatic paradigms we have held for so long. I am a well informed humanistic and humanitarian problem solver. I wish to make consulting services available to whomever is in need of the skills I can offer. Costs are adjustable according to your comfort level and ability to pay, so let’s talk. Email me.
“At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.”
― Carl Sagan
“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
― George Eliot
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin
