Why You Should Deconstruct Your Beliefs
I was inspired to write this by Dan Foster’s article about the asinine, seminarians who insist on perpetuating the original deception template as written in Genesis 3. I call it the lie template, the world’s oldest business model, and the root of all suffering. Want to know why so many religious leaders get wrapped up in scandals? Short answer: they keep perpetuating lies and call it evangelical christianity. Long answer follows.
I used to believe what I was told from the bully pulpits about Adam and Eve: that because Eve sinned, we’re all born sinners; accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior to receive eternal life.
4+ years ago I decided to deconstruct it:
1) A talking snake told Eve she wasn’t like God.
2) She was told that if she ate the fruit, she would be like God.
3) She believed, ate the fruit, and instantly felt vulnerable, like something bad was going to happen.
4) God shows up and deconstructs for her benefit what had just transpired:
4a) Where are you?
4b) Who told you?
I refined that deconstruction with the assumption that each human is created in God’s image, and that that is true:
1, 2) A source external to Eve’s heart/awareness told Eve she wasn’t like God, perform an external action to receive what she already was/had.
3) Instantly Eve felt naked and afraid.
4) Who told you that because Eve made a mistake that you’re doomed to repeat that mistake?
We’re told that sin is a ‘moral failing’ and moral failings are the result of disobedience. Here’s the problem: Eve believed. Ever since people have created laws ad nausea and claimed that obedience would result in God’s blessings.
Moral failures are natural symptoms of believing the wrong things about yourself. If you believe that you weren’t born AOK the first time around — that’s to say that you believe that you weren’t created in God’s image — then you believe the wrong things about everyone and everything else.
When discussing the Bible, and really any other modality that promotes its perspective about life, you’re actually discussing beliefs. What do you believe? Why do you believe? Why do you believe in God? What would happen if you didn’t believe in God?
The latter question is the heart of the issue of deconstruction as put forth by whoever. Deconstructing ‘faith’ is actually asking the question of ‘what do you believe and why do you believe it?’
Here’s a professional tip: replace the traditional definition of sin as ‘moral failing’ with ‘wrong beliefs about yourself’. For example, when Jesus tells the slut to stop sinning, he’s telling her to stop believing the wrong things about herself that cause her to feel, think, and act in ways that do not benefit her. And before that, “let he who has never believed the wrong things about themselves — and thus others — be the first one to cast stones.”
That’s just another variation of deconstruction that you read after Eve believed. “Where are you?” asks the all knowing God who knows perfectly well where you have hidden yourself and why. You’re afraid. What are you afraid of exactly that makes you feel and think that if you hide yourself — fear! false evidence appearing real, indeed! — that things will work out?
Answering the question requires one to examine what just transpired.
Who told you? God seems to have a way of keeping things super simple and it’s very effective. Oh, umm…a talking snake told me. God seems to wants people to use their God-given intellect to figure things out because a better question would have been, “Why in fucking hell did you believe anything that a talking snake said!?”
The reply would have been, “Because I’m new here?”
You know you’re believing the wrong things about yourself when you feel feel fear and it hijacks your thinking about your fear-induced perspective and it causes you to do things that go against yourself.
The life of Jesus was all about deconstructing the causes of moral failure. Jesus deconstructed the bullshit out of everything including the so-called religious authorities and their bullshit, 3 ring sideshow of seminary circus freaks who couldn’t and wouldn’t lift a finger to help their fellow man in spite of pointing it out in their Torah via Leviticus 19:9–18.
The miracles of Jesus bear witness to the power of belief versus the power of misbelief. It’s all about what you believe. The choice is yours: you either believe that you were created with the the power of belief, or you were born lacking.
Take a look at the paralytic of Capernaum. Jesus heals him by telling him the wrong beliefs about himself are forgiven. The Rabbis present think Jesus is committing blasphemy because they’re stuck in their epigenetic belief of moral failings whereas Jesus was constantly telling them that believing the wrong things about themselves is the issue, and that if you would just talk honestly and directly with your neighbors, help them out no matter what, that that would prevent the corruption that had taken hold (and continues to take hold of every modality) of the Pharisees and Sadducees alike.
Jesus asked them what’s easier: to tell this man who is paralyzed by the wrong beliefs that you Rabbis have been teaching for thousands of years that his wrong beliefs that paralyzed him are forgiven, or just to tell him he’s healed without ever telling him about the root causes?
The answer is both: “Your wrong beliefs are forgiven, get up and get the fuck away from these poisonous brood of vipers. Now! Run just to rub it in their faces, I don’t care!”
Scandals happen only when someone believes the wrong things about themselves. Everyone sows and reaps whatever they believe. Everything external follows this pattern: perform an external action in order to receive what is already possible; it’s already possible by virtue of you being created in God’s image which is the capacity to believe that all things are possible.
Too often people are caught up in the impossibility of something, that is they believe nothing can be done about it, they shove it back to God which is essentially doing exactly what Eve did: I don’t believe I was created with the power of belief. I don’t believe miracles are possible. I believe that I have to believe in God in order for a miracle to happen, and even then I don’t deserve one.
All of these fake reasons why something can’t be done, never able to realize that in order for something to be impossible that it first had to be possible. The root of all suffering is believing the wrong things about one’s self.
