Isabel Allende

I just listened to Northern California resident, author, Chilean feminist and poet Isabel Allende share my heart's passion about life and meaning. I know little about her, but I will learn. She has met success where I have tried and tried. Clearly she has enmity with God, calling the earth God forsaken, and clearly she harbors enmity with men, publicly insulting her husband's ability to sexually perform. But nobody's perfect. And I like this woman. Here is brief NPR audio with her in their this I believe series. (To contrast, I do not agree with her ultra-feminist beliefs latent in all her writings.)

Wealth Transfer

Recently, the mini-sermons given at offering collection time have begun to annoy me.

They seeming to always focus on miraculous wealth transfer that ministers experience when they give to one another. The message to the congregation is that when you transfer wealth to me, God will make others transfer wealth to you, and this is preached as an immutable law, illustrated by ministerial experience.

I don't suppose it would occur to clergy that God's usual way is hard work and wealth creation, instead of wealth transfer?

Now I know a good man who has turned his life around, placing hope in God as Savior, who is standing on this Gospel of Wealth Transfer, expecting God to do it for him too. Maybe God will, and hallelujah if He does; maybe God won't. If God doesn't stand behind the Gospel of Wealth Transfer preached by Localchurch clergy, this soul will blame God. God should not suffer disrepute because of bad doctrine promulgated by the self-promoting.

God's way is work; God's way is wealth creation, in general. Business is a line of doctrine which is unfamiliar to churchmen, but, not the Bible. We need our "men of God" in the work world--perhaps with calloused hands or dirty nails--to insert some teaching here.

Babylon

I had a dream some years ago in which I saw Babylon the Great, a city that was beautiful but so very alien to the natural earth. The dream had a practical purpose, to warn my girlfriend of something so she wouldn't get hurt, but it was also a general revelation to me of how the world works. Babylon is built through exploitation, not cooperation or faith or fairness; people exploit people for purpose or gain, and that was building a city. I hated it, although I realized it was effective.

That is, generally, how the world works. And I've learned that it is generally how the institutional Church works too - especially the clergy. Fear, greed, envy, loathing, control, hate, lust, etc are how this world turns; religion is just another sector of Babylon. And if any genuine churchlife emerges which is not Babylonian in operation and spirit, religion will defame it and try to destroy it. In the name of God, of course.

Religion is so effective at this that anyone who does not play its game is considered a hippie, weirdo, heretic, or outcast.