I have been using these introductory posts to really get a handle on how I want my new writing series to evolve. With the personal subject matter I will be covering I know that it will be impossible to ignore discussions of “faith”. With that single word comes the usual assumption that I am talking about religion. While the reality for me is that because of my own experiences with faith I have for some time known that religions do not live by faith.
Religions ask us to suspend our disbelief and to have blind faith in them (and them alone) for the answers to the larger questions of life. Why are we here? Is there a God? How should I please that God? When the reality is, if there is a higher power, then they presumably can reach anyone, anywhere, regardless of religious affiliation or a lack of personal belief in such things.
My wife recently said it best when they said they were surprised that religious are quite willing to accept things that are unseen. They accept the existence of a God. Christians accept that a carpenter named Jesus turned religious teacher performed miracles, raised the dead, and was himself raised from the dead to live for all eternity. That’s quite a stretch for most people, so I am not here to debate whether or not that is true.
However, religious people cannot accept that someone like me (for whatever reason) was given insight into a coming catastrophe as well as guidance for their own life through something that they would call “the Holy Spirit”. They cannot accept that God is working outside of their churches. They cannot accept that, just maybe, God does not approve of the church’s bigotry and hypocrisy.
Christians are happy to believe in a Messiah from ancient Israel and that their personal belief is the correct one. They are less comfortable confronting the realities that others see in religion. They are also unlikely to accept that rather than bringing more people to God – they actually drive people away from Him.
I used my faith and my gift from 2018 to publish a special “travel warning” directed at Australians in particular. I called the post “Return to Oz” and in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, it was advice that would have been helpful. I also published a “final warning” in my Orange Series of creative writing, just prior to Covid-19 becoming a problem worldwide. However, nobody was ever going to take that advice. I knew in my heart something terrible was coming, and my creative work was the only way to warn people.
This is despite knowing that nobody would listen to me. I guess I wanted to take the faith that had helped me so much in my life and make it visible. Put it on display. Not for bragging rights, but to genuinely help people. I also wanted those who are turned off God by religion to see that He is also not a fan of religion or the religious.
The bible puts it this way:
He said, “Go and tell this people: “’Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Isaiah 6:9
For me, I have always seen things and said things that didn’t always make sense until later. Once I remember yelling out “phone!” at home very loudly and then a few moments later the telephone rang. Likewise, I went through a life-altering experience some 20 years ago and I have kept faith in what I was shown that night. Which, for reasons I can’t explain, was a vision of the future. A vision I did not understand.
I do not go to church because Christians are happy to listen to charlatans and bigots come into their congregations, but someone like me with a genuine experience and gift with what they would call the Spirit is not accepted. My testimony is not accepted by them. My faith is not acceptable to them.
They live in a prison of rules that they confuse for faith. Because of my own experiences in faith, I do not have any doubt about the existence of God (or the “Heavenly Father”) I have had that personally confirmed many times in my life. My doubt is only in religious people and also in myself.
I am starting this project knowing I am already a subject of mockery. Seen as somehow broken and rejected when instead, I have been blessed. I am blessed to be sitting here working on this project, just as I was shown 20 years ago that I would be.
That is faith.
So I hope you will explore this, and my other works, while keeping in mind that I despise religion probably as much as you do.
Religion is, after all, for those who cannot hear the Heavenly Father.
Thank you for visiting my series, I will be writing some sample chapters for you all to explore when the Spirit allows.