1/8 At the deepest core level, peeling back the layers of all our ills as human beings, we are collectively, generationally traumatized by bad religion, through which an abusive, authoritarian, arbitrary picture of God has been imposed upon the world.
2/8 Of the 7.8 Billion people on the planet, 1.2B are Catholic, 1B are Protestant, 1.8B are Muslim. This means that 4B humans have been raised to believe that God predetermines who is saved and who is lost and that the lost will be tortured in flames for all eternity.
3/8 Approximately 800 million people are either atheist or claim no belief in God, many of whom are unbelievers as a trauma response to the above mentioned picture of God. They don't believe in God because they find God to be intellectually untenable and emotionally unattractive
4/8 One half billion people are Buddhist, which is a religious form of atheism. Buddhism does not believe in the existence of a personal God. 1.2B people are Hindu. Hinduism believes in the existence of 33 million gods ranging in character from good to evil.
5/8 What people believe about the nature of ultimate reality dictates their relational dynamics, political positions, economic practices, and the social systems they create or condone. Said another way, we all act out our picture of God or what we believe about ultimate reality.
6/8 If God is perceived to be controlling, coercive, and violent, there is no superior ontological reference point to operate as a standard for us to behave otherwise. If God is not morally and relationally beautiful, there is no rational premise or power for us to be.
7/8 And so it is that at the foundation of all our individual, interpersonal, and institutional problems, there exists an ugly picture of God dictating our ugliness toward one another while giving us the intoxicating illusion that God is with US against THEM, whoever they may be.
8/8 Jesus said it like this: "Father, the problem is that the world does not know You as You really are, but I know You and My mission is to reveal Your true character to them, so that the very love with which You and I love one another may be in them." John 17:25-26, paraphrase
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