The Trauma of Toxicity

 

Toxicity that is Overt is called being Mean. 

Toxicity that is Covert is called Hypocrisy.

Covert toxicity is much more destructive due to its two-faced deception.

Not only is it more hurtful to those around us but it is more destructive to oneself.

The toxic stress from this upside down world brings me to my knees as I feel so deeply the the undertow of the current politics of hate, fear, and rage pulling me under, submerging me, and making me so weary.

Over the past 5 years, 

Toxic Politics has broken my back and

Toxic Religion has broken my spirit.

Toxic People have broken my heart.

I don’t think I’ll ever recover.

I don’t think our country will ever recover. 

I don’t think Christianity in America will ever recover.

I know that I can no longer, in good conscience, identify with this toxicity as I learn to guard my heart that is precious, gentle, tender, and so vulnerable.

In a culture of war, everyone loses.

"We do not become less human by purging toxins from our emotional life but rather more nobly human. Abandoning greed, hatred, and delusion at every opportunity, we are still left with a rich, nuanced, and healthier emotional life."

(Andrew Olendzki)

"It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read."

(Thomas Jefferson, 1816)

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
(Dalai Lama)

I’m weary of seeing smiling people that profess that they are true believers 

but are hypocrites, fuming with toxicity, hate, judgement, fear. 

Offering acts of kindness as they stab in the back 

their neighbor, brothers, sisters, strangers, the most vulnerable. 

Often we don’t realize that how we vote is a stab in their backs, 

revealing the fruit of whatever type of tree we are. 

By our fruit we reveal our true self, our true religion, our true politics, our true compassion, our true kindness, and our true unconditional love.

We forget that a

Good Tree = Good Fruit. 

Bad Tree = Bad Fruit. 

It is the way of all of creation.

It is human nature.

It is the way we are.

Unless we choose otherwise.

Matthew 7: 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Good Fruit: The fruit of the Spirit, found in Galatians 5:22-23, is made up of the following nine qualities or gifts: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

IF I am going to live a life of compassion, then compassion MUST be seen in my actions.

IF I am going to live a life of love, then love MUST be seen in my words and actions.

IF I am going to live a life of acceptance, then acceptance MUST be seen in my words and actions.

IF I am going to live a life of kindness, then kindness MUST be seen in my words and actions.

IF I am going to live a life of peace, then peace MUST be seen in my words and actions.

Too often I see people living lives of judgement, rejection, hate, fear, resistance, exclusion, while speaking words of kindness and love with a smile. Their actions demonstrate something very different than what they think they are, than their thoughts, than their beliefs, than their religion, than their politics.

You tell me who you are and I say, show me.

You tell me what your values are and I say, show me.

You tell me what you believe and I say, show me.

Show me by your words and actions, politics and religion.

"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." -Gandhi.

Too many people say they follow a religion of love and compassion and yet their actions are to turn away and their politics seek to cut support for the most vulnerable Americans.

Too many people say they care but their actions and their politics show a total lack of empathy. 

It is too easy to forget that except for Grace, there go I. 

I am no better than the worst of the poor and downtrodden.

I am no better than the worst of the worst.

If it was my child or my aging parent, 

what would I say, what would I do, what would I believe, how would I vote?

Democracy or Hypocrisy

 BEWARE: we are all deceived to some extent; and we are all unaware of the extent and depth of our own conditioning

“This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is very, very important in life. If you want to end up wise, heavy ideology is very likely to prevent that outcome.” {Charlie Munger]

“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.” (Jesus, Matthew 7:5)

 

There is a balance that we must strike between self-examination and self-esteem. Just because we feel good about ourselves, does not mean that our minds are not playing tricks on us.

 

Don't believe everything you think.

Don't believe everything you say.

Don't believe everything you hear.

Don't believe everything you read.

 

Like it or not, believe it or not, we have all been brainwashed since childhood by cultural conditioning through constant automatic downloading of external messages. Everywhere we turn, there are messages from media and marketing, politics and preaching, education, consumer society, and the powerful conformity of culture telling us

what to think,

how to think,

why to think,

what to value,

what to believe,

who’s right,

who’s wrong.

 

This conditioning is sustained by its own invisibility and familiarity.

"As long as I don't see my own thinking errors, then 'I'm right.'" (invisibility)

"As long as those around me think like me, then 'I'm right.'" (familiarity)

This is part of the lies we have been fed since childhood.

And now there are even more powerful lies being spread like a virus of the mind through social media and propaganda.

 

Social Conditioning: the process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances.

 

This became more and more clear to me as I began to notice that one of the best predictors of human values and beliefs, including politics, religion, prejudices, beauty, ugliness, righteousness, evil, and even “the other’s” worthiness of life or death is something as concrete, tangible, predictable as a person’s zip code. This is true all around the world. And yet we thoughtlessly proclaim our absolute truth and rightness while damning you and your absolute wrongness.

 

We are not born human. We are born as a label. We then spend the rest of our lives doing one of two things: confirming that label or becoming human.

Sold Out

Sold Out. Souled Out. Hollowed Out.

From my perspective, Evangelical Christianity has been sold out to power and politics, or maybe “souled out” is a better term. 

Hollowed out also comes to mind quite often.

What I see is a form of
Christianity that has traded

righteousness for power,

character for politics, 

the hard, dirty work of compassion for the easy way, 

the essential issues at the core of Christianity for distraction issues that are nonessential, fringe issues.

“How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.”
― Christopher Hitchens

Immigration, homosexuality, and abortion as political weapons

It is of great concern to me that these political issues seem to have emerged for political convenience and power which included mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Bible. Could it be that the Bible has secretly lost its authority, inspiration, and inerrancy in order for it to be so freely weaponized for political gain? And the absurdity of it is that it is the "Evangelical Christians" that are trying to hang on to their precious inspiration and inerrancy while at the same time weaponizing the sacred book for the sake of their precious politics. They are going to have to prioritize soon because the rest of us are catching on and they are losing their integrity and credibility. 

No one can serve two masters.

Respectable Religion?
"Following Jesus is not a respectable religion, and I suspect it was never meant to be. It is a call to truth, justice and liberation for those oppressed, excluded and disempowered."
Diarmuid O'Murchu
Source: Catching Up With Jesus

FOLLOWING THE EASY WAY

Originally, Christianity was never meant to be the easy way. Then it became seduced with power by becoming an arm of empire (which has been for most of its history). Currently, it has again been hoodwinked and hijacked by the power of empire.

It is so interesting how easy it has been to forsake the essentials of Christianity for the sake of politics, money, and power.

Essentials are those basic, central characteristics expressed in words and actions and reactions that prove a person is a Christian:

• Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Loving God and Neighbor, which includes our enemy, the alien, the stranger, and all of those that are different from us... unconditionally.
• Do to others only what you would want done to you.

Apart from these things, 

there is no faith, 

there is no love, 

there is no Christianity.
"Faith without works is dead." (James 2:14-26)
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, 

because God is love." (1 John 4:8)

"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35)

It is so much easier to focus on nonrelational, impersonal, political, nonessentials that were not emphasized by Jesus, the Bible, and 2000 years of Christianity. I see this as yet another prime example of worshiping the gods of comfort, security, and certainty or a compartmentalized religion that has no demands except possibly on Sundays, holidays, and voting day to do one's duty.

Behold, a new American sanitized, sterilized, pasteurized, homogenized Jesus emerges creating the easy way, a pipeline to heaven, where right belief expressed in fear and hate rather than right living is the fruit of the spirit. A nice imaginary Jesus has been created for our own convenience in America. Christians no longer have to "love their neighbor" or be a "friend of sinners" or care for the "least of these" because it is too hard and inconvenient and dirty. Behold a new story in the heads of well meaning Christians, as they sit in their easy chairs and padded pews. No wonder the gullible are gobbling it up.

These nonessential issues are safe and easy; issues where nothing needs to be done, no one can touch your heart, and you can't touch others, allowing us to escape the hard work of compassion, avoid the pain of empathy, and not get one’s hands dirty; secure and safe in one’s bubble. All that needs to be done is to rail in judgement or hate against people on social media (our self-made echo chamber), sign petitions, and donate money; nothing personal, nothing face to face, no compassion needed, no relationships necessary. Those that are affected as victims by these issues are unavailable to one’s touch, words, and actions; arms length, safe and easy. No care, no compassion, no service except lip service from a distance. 

Christianity in America has sectioned itself off and segregated itself from those that Jesus said he came for; the outcasts and despised, the poor and downtrodden, the week and the weary, the lowly and forgotten, the unseen and unheard; THE SICK NOT THE HEALTHY. A friend of mine told me a story that she was in an adult Sunday school class and they had started a new topic, studying what the Bible says about the poor. When it was discussion time, they all turned to reach other and said, I don't know anyone that is poor, do you? The answer was"no" all the way around the room. Following what Jesus said and did or what the Bible says to do no longer matters. Just vote from the safe, secure, comfortable bubble. Incidentally, I have noticed a very distinct growth of the War on the Poor and Advocates for the Rich over subsequent years. I think they ceased to study the "poor" in the bible. It is easier. 

Vote for nonessential, unbiblical issues like anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, xenophobia, and homophobia. 

American Christians don't even know what the bible says about their own issues (?? just keep reading).

Primarily, I see that we have gutted (hollowed out) the real work of Christianity for the non-issues or anti-issues of abortion, immigration, and LGBTQIA equality. Currently it seems that Christianity is defined more by what it stands against than what it stands for. Rather than pro-life, it is anti-abortion. And may I suggest that those in power do not care about those issues? These issues are simply tools of manipulation to get a vote and maintain their base of support. Sometimes they end up being against the needs of the people unless there is multiple perspectives making those decisions. Here is an unfortunate example that is bad for both pro-life and pro-choice advocates.

Recently, a high court decision banned employers from being forced to provide birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Rather than being thought through, this seemed to be more of an anti-Obama move; and he isn't even president anymore! But that made it a victory, albeit thoughtless and mindless. If this would have been thought through for the sake of politics, anyone could see that if women use less birth control, then they will have more unwanted pregnancies; which in turn will almost guarantee more abortions. So this action of the administration works counterproductive to the goal of no abortions. Not very wise.

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
― Audre Lorde

True Pro Life = Advocating for Life

The belief that all life is sacred and deserves to be protected. One who is truly pro-life will oppose capital punishment, war, poverty, and all forms of physical or mental torture, domestic abuse, police brutality, and gun control. Such a person will see abortion as a tragedy for all involved, not a "reproductive right" to be celebrated - and will work to end abortion, not by force or intimidation, but by working to change the social and economic conditions that lead people to be so desperate as to have no choice but abortion.

It seems quite hypocritical that people might think that because a person identifies as pro-life, they would support such atrocities as capital punishment, pre-emptive war, racism, or violence against women.

The institution of Christianity was birthed in 313 AD in the womb of the power of empire and sustains itself in that same power as an arm of empire; progressively merging religion with the power and authority of politics as the power and authority of religion is trumped, stifled, and rendered meaningless. This struggle between revival and empire has continued for 2000 years. That's why America was founded. The founders fled the tyranny of religion in England so that they could be free to worship or not worship, believe or not believe in America. Check out the latest statistics of those that are religious and those that are no longer religious (the nones) in America and throughout the world.   https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ 

Recently I was checking some statistics about American Christianity. In 2015, the country was 75% professing Christians. By 2019, it dropped to 65%. You may say, only 10% during Trump's presidency? And I say, yes, over 30,000,000 people have left Christianity in America. Not just the church, but these are people that can decidedly no longer identify as Christian. Who can blame them?

Following are the main three nonessential, fringe issues that Christianity has sold itself out to along with the misinterpreted scriptures that are being used as propaganda. These are fringe in the bible, in Jesus’ teachings, and in Christianity for 2000 years. But these are issues that powerful political players have been manipulating into the evangelical mainstream, not for the sake of these issues being important but for the sake of getting a vote. 

Immigration, Homosexuality, and Abortion

A Biblical and History Perspective

Keep in mind that in the bible, when there is something that is clearly against the Law of God, then there is always a commandment stating that. But there are no commandments stating:
1. Thou shalt build a wall to keep out the immigrants and the refugees. Fear them!
2. Thou shalt discriminate against homosexuals that are law abiding citizens. Fear them!
3. Thou shalt not commit abortion. Abortion is murder!