the Motive to my Madness

Jun 11, 2008

The Motive to my Madness
When you love someone with the love of God, you see inside their heart. You become extremely sensitive to what they are feeling and how they hear and understand. You can literally go inside of them and when things are spoken, you can hear through their ears, see through their eyes and understand things from their perspective. If someone says something negative to someone you love, you can decipher exactly what they heard, how they took it and what feelings they have because of it. It's not as though you see it from a distance, you actually experience it with them because your heart is woven tightly to theirs. Real love takes you outside of yourself and allows you to enter and meld with other people's hearts. The love of God is all about the heart.

Parents can tell when their child is showing off or embarrassed or insecure in front of a group of people when no one else in the room has a clue. If a person says something to one of my children, I know exactly what my child heard. I know if they understood what was said to them or if they took it wrong. I know immediately how my child felt about what was said, because I feel it with my child. I can usually predict their response. I see these things because my children are the "objects of my affections." When they hurt, I hurt. When they are sad, I feel that same sadness sweep over me. When they laugh, my heart laughs with them because we are one.

People constantly ask me why I preach the things I do. I've been accused of trying to come against everything in the Christian religion. Some people have accused me of purposefully trying to stir up controversy. Others have suggested that I like going against the flow of what everyone else is doing. I've been called a heretic, a deceiver and even a wolf in sheep's clothing. I've been called godless, rebellious and a hater of authority. Some people think I say the things I do because somewhere in my life I was deeply hurt by someone in the Church and I'm retaliating in anger. Others are convinced that I'm doing it for the attention. Many have suggested that I like debating and many more think I'm completely off my rocker.

You have to understand that when I first started loving people, I began to hear through their ears what we were teaching them. Suddenly, for the first time, I felt what they felt and I could see exactly what the traditional Churchey message was doing to their hearts. I could see destructiveness in the religiously-manipulative things that people flippantly said without thinking. For the first time in my life, I could actually see and feel what was going on in their hearts when the preacher said things such as, "You have to be in your Bible every day in order to know God." I could become as one with the feelings of shame, hopelessness and personal failure that each person in the audience felt when subjects like spiritual warfare, fasting and speaking in tongues were gloated about publicly. When the worship singer puts on that over-accentuated happy mask while singing through the offertory, I could experience firsthand the spiritual insecurity and lack of confidence in the people who were watching. Because I loved the people, I was in tune to the part of them that sheepishly compared themselves to that "victorious" person singing on stage, and I could sense their spiritual disappointment in themselves.

I think what defines religion is when people say things they've memorized and learned, but have never stopped to think about what was said or how it affects the people to whom they said it. I remember gasping in disbelief at the heartlessness of certain things that were spoken from the stage of my Church. The sad thing is that there is almost no truth at all to the things that are commonly stated in our religion. Most of the time we are just saying things we've grown up hearing people say.

Christianity is full of clichés and hook lines that people mindlessly quote when they don't know what else to say. Stuff like, "Give it to God, Brother," or "You need to be in the Word, Sister," effortlessly flow from our lips, but rarely do we stop to consider how the person we said it to was affected. That part doesn't matter to the religious person. All that matters to them is that they got an opportunity to say something they've heard others say. If it hurts people, they are not to blame; after all, sometimes the truth hurts. They crush the spirits of everyone around them, all in the name of religion. Let me be the first to say: it's heartless!

My deepest desire is to defend the hearts of people from this spirit of religion. This is why I come against the things I do. It's because these things have been used to oppress, manipulate and basically beat the hell out of honest and sincere people. If you read every one of my blogs, you will find one common denominator: they were written for the purpose of freeing people from a certain teaching that either put them in fear or spiritual and emotional bondage. This is why I wrote the "Spiritual Warfare" blog, "Bible" blog, "Fear of the Lord" blog, two "Worship" blogs and every blog on this website.

I am astounded at how oblivious some people are to the hearts and souls of others, while simultaneously being perfectly "in tune" to each jot and tittle of their religion. When you find yourself fighting for your doctrine at the expense of people, you have crossed the line from loving to heartlessness. An astounding number of people in Christianity today don't care in the least if what they say is harmful to others. They care only about defending and upholding their memorized system of beliefs. Ironically, they don't actually know for sure if any of those beliefs are true. They feel as though they are true because they've heard them said so many times, but when push comes to shove, they haven't seen one shred of evidence proving the authenticity of most of the things they say. It's merely a sentence they've memorized and quoted all their lives and nothing more.

I have found that if I take every cliché and hook line in the Christian world that clearly hurts people, and hold it up to the light, it proves to be untrue. The problem is that most Christians don't have the guts to hold their "beliefs" up to the light. They're not even sure they are allowed. They secretly wonder if doing so might make God feel like we do when the cashier at the convenience store holds our twenty-dollar bill up to the light. It's a feeling of being accused of counterfeiting and interrogated undeservingly. Remember that we mustn't think that holding Christian teachings up to the light is in any way mistrusting God. He is the Light! If you are a lover of people, you will find that almost everything you hear from the pulpit Sunday morning does not pass the light-test.

I believe that most Christian clichés and hook-lines came into existence in the Church because LOVE went out the door years ago. You simply cannot say some of the things I hear said if you love people. You cannot stand in front of a group of people and tell them that they all need to be fasting in their lives or else they won't get closer to God. Most of the people in that audience haven't fasted a day in their lives and when you say that to them, you are condemning a majority of folks in the room. You can't stand up and boast about your 21-day fast that you and the prayer team went on while praying for the big outreach on Saturday. Why? Because that kind of boasting makes everyone else feel small and insignificant in their walk with God.

If you love people, you can't tell them that unless they speak in tongues, they haven't received the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit." When you truly love, you wouldn't allow something so hideous and heartless leave your lips. Lovers of people don't make loveless statements like, "If you have any unforgiveness in your life at all, God won't forgive you." Think about it. Every single person on the planet earth can find some point of unforgiveness in their heart if they look hard enough. You are essentially telling everyone in the room that their Father in Heaven will NEVER forgive them. When you mechanically tell a congregation that if they don't give ten percent of their income, they're "robbing God," you are putting about 85% of the people into a hole of condemnation.

You wouldn't say such things if you loved them more than you did your religion. No Pastor who loves the people in his congregation would tell them that ‘if they love God, they need to show up to next Saturday's outreach and help out.' Think about that statement. These statements put thousands of people under terrible bondage that takes a lifetime to overcome. Someone who loves people wouldn't even consider suggesting that their Father would turn away or abandon them completely. Yet this heartless heresy is preached all over America to millions of precious souls.

I stand adamantly against most of what is said in Churches today. I do so because I love people and I sincerely want to protect their hearts. If a man were to tell my children the same lies about me as I've heard Christians tell each other about the Heart of God, I would absolutely freak out. Imagine someone going to your child's elementary school and gathering all the kids together and telling them that if they continue to mess up and make mistakes, their parents just might leave them forever. How would that make you feel as a parent? Ironically, we don't think twice about saying these things to God's children. What if someone told your son or daughter that if they didn't pay you 10% of their paycheck, you would lift your hand of protection from them and allow the fires of hell to swallow them up? How would you respond if you found out that someone told your child that they are on this earth to be your servant and slave? What would you do if a youth counselor at your child's school told your baby that if he or she ever directly disobeyed you, you would douse them with gasoline and light them on fire? What if I told you that I have taught my children that whatever awards, ribbons or trophies they won in life, they must give to me and give ME all the glory, and I would never under any circumstances share my glory with them? What kind of a parent would you see me as if I thought that way?

I do what I do for one reason: I am a lover of people! Every time someone comes against the things I teach, they are almost always hollow in their hearts and full of religion. They are protecting a "system of beliefs" that has no concern about human hearts. I made a decision long ago that I wouldn't mindlessly say the awful things I grew up hearing. I would challenge those horrible things and hold them up to the light. In doing so, I have discovered that any time something is said or taught that makes people feel scared or condemned, you can bet your life that it isn't true. When you look deeper at any teaching that hurts people, I am convinced that you'll find that it's just something people say, but has no truth attached to it. This generation needs to be motivated by love and nothing else. Anything less will ultimately destroy the souls of people
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