The Useful Thinker

      In my previous blog post , I wrote about a well-known theory of how we got the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. It was something I was aware of, even when I was still a Fundamental Christian, but did not really open my mind to. As someone who is supposed to be writing about Spirituality and Taoism, I hope that I have not lost you along the way. There's a reason I keep making excursions into Christian territory. This is my background, and as such, I am compelled to reinvestigate it with a higher mind. A secondary reason for my meanderings into old scripture manuscripts is because I think it may help someone else who may have also grown up in the church.     I want to address some objections that have been raised to the JEDP theory . Personally, I don't know how much of it I hold to. According to the late Dr. Alan Cairns 1 , a Free Presbyterian scholar, the idea that the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deutero...

      I grew up Baptist. Not just Baptist either, but Independent, Fundamental, Separated Baptist. I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour at the age of five and was baptized a year later. It was one of the few times I allowed myself to be dunked underwater completely because I had such a fear of putting my head underwater at that age. Growing up like this meant, of course, that I was raised to believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God. All of the stories are true. All of the instruction in the Bible is good for doctrine and practice in the daily life. Nothing was to be questioned, and it contains all of the answers you could possibly ask about life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where do I go from here? All of these questions are answered in the pages of the Bible.     In later years, I lived a year and a half in Utah and zealously argued with the Mormons, trying to convince them of the error of their ways and to trust in Jesus Christ ...

    Not long after my spiritual awakening, I contacted a Taoist and Qi Gong practitioner who was kind enough to talk to me for a while as I tried to figure myself out. At one point, we discussed how I had gone to believing the Protestant Christian view of the world was the only correct viewpoint to now being able to see nearly every point of view. He said something that has stuck with me since then. "When you look at different religions, don't look for the differences. Look for the sameness." Since that point, I have come to realize that, as Stuart Wilde once said, "the spirit world has a nice way of making everybody right." 1     There are many religions and philosophies the world over, and many of them are quite dogmatic. In the past, Christians persecuted other groups and each other. I have a friend on the other side of the world whose whole family converted from Buddhism to Protestant Christianity, and they were persecuted by the Buddhists. I once met a man ...

      Growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian home, and living most of my life as an orthodox, Fundamental Baptist, I grew up believing that church history happened a certain way. I clung dogmatically to my belief, which was well researched, and well thought-out. I believed strongly that the Bible was the literal truth and that all events in the Bible happened literally. You can even purchase a chronological Bible that arranges all of the books of the Bible in a chronological fashion to help feed the belief that all of it is true, happening within a certain timeline. Moreover, I believed that after the death of the apostles, the truth they taught continued on as the Bible spread throughout the known world. Even after the Roman Catholic Church began to change the truth of the Bible (so I believed), there were still people who dissented and taught the Gospel down through the ages until the Reformation brought the Gospel truth back into focus on the world stage. Therefore,...

Photo by Jben Beach Art from Pexels       When I was still a super-charged, Fundamental Baptist, fully unconscious and fully believing that my convictions we're correct because they were based on a book I believed to be infallible, I wrote a book. It was over five hundred pages. It was the culmination of years of Bible study. It was also the product of a lot of negative thinking due to a negative mindset I didn't know I had.      It was titled simply A Systematic Theology, and it had all the answers for everything. This is because all of the answers were Bible-based, and when you place all of your faith into a book that you believe has no errors, it wraps all of life up in a neat little package. No loose ends. Exactly what I always wanted.      If you are not familiar with Protestantism or Christianity altogether, I should explain why most theologians do not publish a systematic theology until they are very old, and have lots...

     After several grueling years of missionary work, I had finally established a Fundamental Baptist church in Southern California. I had the truth and I knew it. I wanted everyone to hear it, and I preached the Bible with authority from the pulpit. The next thing I knew, I had undergone a spiritual awakening and I had discovered not only how opinionated and judgmental I had been, but also how much bigger God was than I could have ever imagined.      Let me back up a little bit now. You see, the awakening came little by little, but as it happened, it completely changed me. You might say it healed me. And all of this happened just because I went to the gym one day.      Yes, you read that right. A spiritual awakening happened because I went to the gym. Along with pastoring, I also worked a full-time job managing and driving for an overnight delivery company. Constantly driving, I ate a lot of junk from gas stations and fast food joints, so I ...