The Useful Thinker

      Yesterday as I was driving, I was blessed to watch as a bald eagle took flight and soared right over my vehicle. This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, since moving to Iowa, this has occurred multiple times. I have taken this as a sign of good luck because the eagle is a symbol of the universe. In the folklore of the American Indian, the bald eagle is directly connected to the Great Spirit and is a representative. It has a massive wingspan that makes it the king of the air, but also strong legs for walking on the ground. In this way, it perfectly illustrates how we are to interact with Tao. The Eagle soars effortlessly with the currents of the wind, but also stays connected to the earth. In everything, it flows with Tao, never against it.     When the eagle spreads its wings and flies above the earth, it is perfectly still. You do not see it struggle to stay in the air. It rarely has to even flap its wings. It stays in the air like a kite, ...

      Today I feel like taking a break from the series I have been doing on my changing view of the Bible and going into topics more in line with the Taoist spirituality I am living now. Reflection on where we've been is good, and hopefully my reflections will be helpful, but too much reflection makes one forget where they are currently. The most important thing we can be is in the present moment.     Since my awakening , I have discovered myself to be on a spiritual quest. The practice of spirituality that has made the most sense to me is Taoism. However, my awakening has freed me from being narrow-mindedly focused on just one way, as I was previously when I was a Fundamental Baptist. Now, I have the freedom to explore many different belief systems and spiritual practices.     It is always good to open yourself up and experience more than one view on things. One thing I would recommend, especially for young people, is that you travel to another c...

      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...

       In a previous post , I wrote about my experience growing up believing that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and how that shaped my view of the world up until my spiritual awakening in 2020. I focused earlier at how I came to realize the book of Genesis contains two creatin stories, and the post focused primarily upon those stories.     I would like to take a step back now, and focus on the entire first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch (Pent-a-Took). For those of you who really don't fancy looking too deeply at the Bible, I'll follow it up with some spiritual lessons I have since learned from Taoism.     The viewpoint that I grew up with is that there was once a real person named Moses. This is believed by Fundamentalists, Orthodox Jews, and a shrinking number of Evangelical Christians, He lived somewhere back in the 4000s B.C. He led his people out of Egypt, but he also organized their culture, instituted a re...

      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,...

     November 11 marks the anniversary of the end of the first world war. In the United States, this was originally celebrated as Armistice Day, but sometime after the second world war, it became known as Veterans Day to honour everyone who wore the uniform in service to this nation.      Other nations celebrate this day as a memorial day, honoring those who died fighting for their country, but the US already celebrates this day in May. I personally have always been very patriotic toward my country, so I have previously celebrated these days with great pride in my nations and the individuals who have served in uniform to preserve the American way of life.      Now after awakening spiritually, there have been many choices before me, unfolding like paths in a mountain forest, winding along before me in trails that, once taken, will not intersect with the others. One such trail is pacifism, which seems diametrically opposed to wars, ...

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...

     Last week, my wife and I drove all the way across the great state of Iowa for a very special reason. Before leaving, we stopped at the library where I checked out an audiobook entitled The Tao of Willie , written by Willie Nelson (If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it.) We listened to the entire book along the way. Coming into a park situated by the Missouri River, we met up as planned with a couple of strangers who had a dog, dog food, dog treats, a leash, and a flat pack kennel in tow. Once she has sufficiently calmed down, the German Shepherd was handed off to me and we coaxed her into the back of our silver RAV4, which had been prepared with a blanked just for her. We talked to the couple for a moment, then waved goodbye as they drove away. We were now the owners of a hyper seven-month-old, gold and black bundle of hair and happiness.      Neither one of us is ready for the full responsibility of dog ownership, and for that reason I t...

     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 ...