The Carnage, The Horror, The Freedom!

Last updated on: August 22, 2007 at 5:55 pm by David Hayward

The Carnage, The Horror, The Freedom! 2007-08-22T17:55:47-04:00 David Hayward

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To require people to live according to scripture creates admirable human beings, but it does not create free human beings. To insist that people live by the Bible appears to advance the development of the human being, but it is really just a religious form of bondage. It is not only unhelpful but dangerous to say that the Bible should be our guide. When we use the word “guide”, we think of a manual or instruction booklet. This approach to the human being only creates fear of failure and punishment and leads to arrogance if one succeeds or condemnation if one fails to live up to the instructions.

Freedom is the healthiest condition of the mind and heart, and it is the happiest place of humanity. If you read the scriptures, they must inform that reality of freedom and testify to our momentary liberation. Somehow, scripture must act like a fertilizer that percolates our minds and hearts with the freedom that the Spirit brings. The bible is not to be used as an instruction booklet on how to follow the proper steps to salvation. It is like a document from a free land that announces to us that our bonds have been broken and we are free indeed.

The sudden attention I received from Slice of Laodicea. and Apprising Ministries a couple of weeks ago didn’t bother me because they are only what all religion is, including Christianity, except on steroids. They are like many people I already know, including myself at times, only ramped up. They are only higher-paying passengers on a higher deck of the same sinking ship. But even though that kind of religion and Christianity produces exceptional people, the whole enterprise is nevertheless misdirected and doomed. We are not free, but enslaved under our traditions and scriptures and religious guidelines. There is a freedom that is presently available to us all right now, but the carnage that would be left of our religious lives and selves is just too horrible to imagine, and we shrink back from the freedom that is rightfully ours.

The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Mark Hemmings, and is from his mannequin series.

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