Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- transformation:church [2025/07/04 17:16] – naptastic
+++ transformation:church [2025/07/05 16:37] (current) – that's not a useful thing to say naptastic
@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 > "Religion: It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." Jon Stewart
-=====Inauthenticities=====
+=====Deconstructing Church=====
 What is inauthentic about church?
-====Asceticism====
+  * Asceticism
-FIXME
+  * Kingdom-building: The pretense of building "God's" kingdom, where the reality is what is being built is many little kingdoms of man.
+  * Authority: Pretending that the authority of a church is divine; it actually comes from the consent of its membership, just like all other organizations.
-====Kingdom-building====
+But mostly, it's judgment.
-The pretense of building "God's" kingdom, where the reality is what is being built is many little kingdoms of man.
-====Authority====
-Pretending that the authority of a church is divine; it actually comes from the consent of its membership, just like all other organizations.
-Gossip is a sub-set of this inauthenticity. Gossip is speaking a complaint such that nothing can be done about it.
 ====Judgment====
@@ Line 28: / Line 21: @@
 Anything having to do with the idea of "sin" is almost certainly a judgment. (Grandpa Sterling told me there's no sin except for judgment. Chew on that for a while, lemme know what you come up with.)
-===Guilt===
+==Guilt==
 Churches will evolve towards stronger anti-sex messaging because that's where the selective pressure puts them. As long as the goal is "asses in chairs" or "dollars into the collection plate" church leaders will be more "successful" if their members feel guilty. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and shame is a powerful tool for manipulating people.
@@ Line 34: / Line 27: @@
 Almost everyone has sexual desires, and //if you get to them early enough//, you can make sure they feel guilty for masturbating for //decades//.
-===Sanctity===
+==Sanctity==
 The early-warning sign of judgment is losing your sense of humor. Most churches have a set of things you're not allowed to laugh about. They call them "sacred," and they become slaves of the sacred.
@@ Line 45: / Line 38: @@
 The concept of worthiness has been made one-way, and that's not how it should be. Institutions need to be worthy of their members. Churches have failed to stay worthy of their membership, and look how damned they are.
-=== Right and Wrong, with an emergent quality ===
-(I do not remember what I meant by this)
 ===Society Is Falling Apart===
@@ Line 61: / Line 50: @@
 As the world progresses, and people have their needs met, societies turn away from religion, church, and belief in general, in part because this attitude doesn't ring true to them at all anymore. (If society collapses, will people turn back to religion?)
-====Anti-intellectualism====
+===Anti-intellectualism===
 Opposition to the teaching of evolution was only superficially about "this goes against the Bible." Biblical literalism is a modern failing. Why did it come into existence?
 Churches, as an emergent being, recognized the potential threat from humans learning what evolution does. Right now, evolution selects for profitable churches, at the expense of other concerns, like behaving ethically. The Emergent Church decided it would do everything in its power to stop the teaching of evolution so it could continue doing the harmful things it does while still making more money.
-=====Structural Dishonesty: What Church Is Made Of=====
+====Structural Dishonesty: What Church Is Made Of====
 A church exists in two parts: Judgment, and Justification for Judgment.
-====Judgment / Justification Within Yourself====
+===Judgment / Justification Within Yourself===
-===Guilt===
+==Guilt==
 If your faith tradition believes in salvation by works, you probably live in a balance between things you do wrong or fail to do right, and what you do right or at least keep yourself from doing wrong. You hope that, when you stand before God, you will come out justified.
 If your faith tradition believes in salvation by grace, you probably live in a balance between the fact that we're all born sinners, and accepting Jesus as your personal savior and being saved.
-===Relief===
+==Absolution==
 So, on the one hand, you judge yourself a sinner, and if that bothers you at all, you justify it with either the possibility of good works saving you, or the possibility of Jesus saving you because you accepted him into your heart.
@@ Line 82: / Line 73: @@
 //A church will cease to exist if it doesn't offer people a potential escape from judgment, while at the same time keeping people from escaping.//
-=== Justification for inflicting that on people ===
+==Justification for inflicting that on people==
 At the same time all this is going on, there are those rare people in churches who believe the basic tenets of their faith and somehow manage to not live in judgment of themselves. (Expand.)
-====Judgment of Others / Justification====
+===Judgment of Others / Justification===
-===Something's Wrong With You===
+==Something's Wrong With You==
-===You're Doing It Wrong===
+==You're Doing It Wrong==
-===Priority Inversions===
+==Priority Inversions==
 Of course, for a church to be a church it has to have some rules, guidelines, cultural expectations and taboos, and if you violate any of these, you're sure to be judged by at least some of the members of the church. If I had a dollar for every time someone's told me it's the people, not the church, or it's the culture, not the beliefs, I'd be a rich man. Well I've got news for you: it IS the church. It is the nature of a church to cause that kind of judgment among its adherents.
 The justification, of course, is that it's not "supposed" to be that way, and hey look, there are people here in this church who aren't judgmental. Go make friends with //them//. Or, come sit with us. We'll be friends with you even if other people are judgmental.
-===But Some People Don't Judge!===
+==But Some People Don't Judge!==
 Yes, and you keep them around to justify the presence of those who do. These are held up as "proof" of "it's the people, not the church, who are the problem."
-====Abuse by Authorities / Justification====
+===Abuse by Authorities / Justification===
 Churches with rigid hierarchies sometimes abuse their parishioners. The abuse arises from the judgment we already mentioned, that you shouldn't be the way you are, or do the things you do...
@@ Line 101: / Line 92: @@
 It's all bathwater. (Expand.)
-====Abusive and Judgmental Churches / Loving and Accepting Churches====
+===Abusive and Judgmental Churches / Loving and Accepting Churches===
 Justification: For the church in question, X. Within other churches, justification is Y.
-====Abusive and Judgmental Ideologies / Loving and Accepting Ideologies====
+===Abusive and Judgmental Ideologies / Loving and Accepting Ideologies===
 In different parts of the Bible, God says both "thou shalt not kill," and "thou shalt utterly destroy." These cater to different ideologies people have; different ways of viewing holy writ, so as to fit their own personalities.
@@ Line 120: / Line 111: @@
 The only reason churches do good things is to justify the terrible things they do, and always have done, and always will do. They exist to enable very bad people to continue If the churches stopped doing good, we wouldn't allow them to exist, and if they stopped doing bad, they would cease to exist.
-=====The Ultimate Inauthenticity of Churches=====
+====The Ultimate Inauthenticity of Churches====
 Judgments frequently rest on faulty underlying assumptions. Each of these judgments rests on something that isn't so. FIXME Elaborate.
@@ Line 129: / Line 120: @@
 I don't believe in "God". I don't believe in "Not God". I don't believe in "It can be known". I don't believe in "it can't be known". With the question, "God", I simply don't engage. Why? Because for the building of a World That Works For Everyone, all possible answers, responses, or questions inside that conversation are at best useless; usually counterproductive; sometimes deadly.
-=====How To Not Solve The Problem=====
-Don't resist church, don't fight church, don't attack church, don't try to take it down. And don't kill anybody!
-In a few decades, religion will be entirely irrelevant in the first world and mostly irrelevant in the rest of the world.
 =====A New Church=====
-Let's redefine a few things.
+====Structure====
+The new church has a top and a bottom, a front and a back, a beginning and an end, and many, many sides. The church
-Since I'm not leaning on anything we know can't be known, I don't assert that you have a spirit. I use the word "spiritual" to refer to the //experience// of feeling connected to something larger than yourself, //even though you're not//. It's a unique, powerful, and positive experience. Church activities, when they're done right, produce this experience //reliably enough// that people will keep coming back for the spiritual experience. Not because they feel guilty, not to be judgmental of others, but to feel that connection.
+====Worship====
+Since I'm not leaning on anything we know can't be known, I don't assert that you have a spirit. I use the word "spiritual" to refer to the //experience// of feeling connected to something larger than yourself, //even if that connection is an illusion//. It's a unique, powerful, and positive experience. Church activities, when they're done right, produce this experience //reliably enough// that people will keep coming back for the spiritual experience. Not because they feel guilty, not to be judgmental of others, but to feel that connection. We call this "worship".
-====Shared "Spiritual" Experiences====
 What triggers a spiritual experience in someone varies. A well-designed church service will push every button it can to try to elicit a spiritual response. Most important is that these experiences are had together. That thing we're not actually connected to, but are trying to feel like we are, is partly each other.
-====Helping People Be Better====
+It requires investment, and a commitment to excellence. Production values matter. Secular people just do not have the same drive for it as believers, so if the worship team ends up being all atheists, you're in trouble.
+====Personal Work====
 Repentance / transformation / recovery / self-improvement / whatever you want to call it.
@@ Line 154: / Line 143: @@
 (Aside: the Simple Church formula is Values, Activities and Outcomes. Values are defined as those thing the church community agree to hold; I'm thinking that some clever and meta definition of service should be at the center of this. Activities include what I've already speculated about: singing together, telling stories, and the process of transformation. Outcomes: the world starts to work for everyone.)
-====Building A World That Works For Everyone====
+====Service====
 An authentic church will not object to this mission. It won't have any 'if's or 'but's. An authentic church will look at that phrase and say "yeah, that's basically what we're trying to do."