15+ Fundamental Ways the Religion of Christianity Has Twisted Our Understanding of God

In 2015 I finally had enough.

I finally got sick and tired enough of the friction from what my mind had been taught about God that was in contradiction to the deep knowing of my heart.

The yearning of Spirit overcame the fear of being led astray and deceived that religion had taught me.

That’s not to say I didn’t start out with much cynicism, suspicion, and paranoia…

I was still very afraid of getting it all wrong. I was just desperate enough to dig deeper.

The Bible became what I filled every possible sliver in my time with – as a passenger in the car, on the toilet, even listening to an audio version in the shower or while I slept.

As I sought, God started bringing me teachers to answer the questions in my heart, and it was in some of the most roundabout ways – one even came through a brand deal for this blog that I almost missed in my email.

With each teacher and each step toward greater revelation and understanding, my heart became freer and braver to believe in God’s love and goodness in a way that doesn’t need religious excuses like “his ways are not our ways”, or some twisted, psychotic definition of “goodness”.

As I became steeped in the truth of the love of God, even that religious fear of getting it wrong started to dissipate. Slowly, slowly, my mind becomes renewed. The neural pathways of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that were such deep grooves continue to be replaced with fresh pathways of thinking from the Tree of Life that was calling to me all those years ago in my heart.

This list will probably continue to grow over time because there’s so much more, but the first 17 are what God brought to mind this morning as I was inspired to jot down some of the foundational shifts that have taken place for me in the past 8 years.

Believe me, I understand how many of these can sound on the surface. All sorts of seemingly contradictory verses will probably come to mind if you’re very familiar with the Bible. They definitely did for me! But these are bullet points that represent decades of study from many teachers explaining layers upon layers of context, culture, translation, and the beliefs of the original “church” – basically, there’s a lot more to it than can be dug into for those who are curious.

1. The Bible is true – truth about God AND truth about lies that man believed about God.
2. The law was not given by God, but by “angels”…
3. The Bible ≠ The Word or the 4th person of the Trinity that it’s been treated as many times – the Word is Jesus and the Bible needs to be read through the lens of Jesus, not law.
4. Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil made an issue with God IN OUR OWN MINDS (Col 1:21) – it didn’t change God’s mind about us, but our minds about God.
5. The Prodigal Son gave a confession that his father never asked for nor believed about him – that he was not worthy to be called a son.
6. God’s holiness has never had an issue being around sin, the same way Jesus didn’t – because Jesus IS God.
7. Jesus didn’t come to save us from God’s wrath – he came to reveal the heart of our Father that man got super duper twisted.
8. The cross was not about making a way for God to forgive us – Jesus was doling out forgiveness prior to the cross to people who didn’t even ask for it.
9. Religion introduces people to an identity as sinners – the very first prayer people are taught to pray is an identification with sin. That’s a messed up set up, which again, is not something we can find Jesus doing at all. You could say he was almost flippant about sin compared to how much religion loves to revel in it. He seemed pretty unconcerned and dismissive of it, really, if you stop to consider his interaction with “sinners”.
10. Jesus never publicly taught “salvation” – his gospel was about the Kingdom.
11. Jesus didn’t go out lonely and forsaken on the cross – he went out a badass, literally winning the rabbi version of rap battles with the line he quoted from Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”.
12. The “last Adam” had the same kind of effect on mankind that the first Adam did – all died and all were made alive…it’s simply a matter of awareness and identification.
13. Hell has been greatly built up by religion into something Jesus never taught.
14. The majority of Revelation already happened. We’re not waiting on the world to get worse – we’re going from glory to glory and of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
15. We aren’t made to die – death is not some kind of salvation that gives us access to heaven and everything available to us there………….and we already died IN Christ anyway.
16. People aren’t going to stay in “heaven” anyway…heaven is a dimension that is meant to be integrated with the physical one.
17. God didn’t make us to sit around worshipping him in the traditional sense we’ve understood worship – he is love, love is creative, creation will continue to be part of his nature and ours. Infinity. Worship is coming into alignment and identification with Truth, which creates a resonance of gratitude and celebration that harmonizes with Love in an unstoppable creative force.

My prayer is that this list sparks hope or ignites a curiosity in your heart that leads to the joy of the discovery that is the privilege of kings. I’m not generally the type to retain all the nitty gritty details of explanations at front of mind, but feel free to connect if you want help being pointed in a good direction 🙂

By the way, take note of who you are and where you (U) are located as illustrated below…