Christianity Without Religion

By Joshua Powers

For hundreds of years we have learned and accepted Christianity in the format of our various religions. But you will see in this book that God has a different viewpoint for how His people are to live.

This book starts off with the various malodies of Christian religion and the harms that these malodies caused. If Christians will ever once again rise to the kind of spiritual levels enjoyed by the first century Christians they must cast off religion.

To do this each individual must have the tools and the ability to go to the scriptures to seek out true doctrine straight from scriptures without filtering it through one religion or another. This book shows you how to do this.

Is the King James Bible hard to understand? With the right instruction with the right reference books to help you, minus religious influence, the King James becomes easy to understand in most of its content.

This book does not dictate doctrine to the reader. This should not be the objective of any book written about the Bible. The Bible is the book that the searcher for truth needs to read and study in order to find spiritual truth. However this book sheds light on some false doctrines opening the way then for scripture to teach true doctrine.

This book isn't for everybody. As I state in the dedication it is for those who are searching for spiritual abundance. May this be you. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462802340

Joshua Powers

Joshua Powers grew up on a farm in Northeast Kansas. He found early in life that his spiritual knowledge was lacking even though he attended an evangelical church regularly. He took some Bible classes from a source outside mainstream Christianity and saw a vast improvement in his spiritual life. From that point on his life became a quest for knowledge, purchasing books and videos for study. From this and years of experience he pieced together the information in this book.

Book preview

Copyright © 2007 by Joshua Powers.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Dedication

"My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness;

and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips"

Psalm 63:5

To all who yearn for an abundant spiritual life with God.

Chapter 1

Personal Religious Experience

I grew up in a rural community where the religion of choice was Lutheran. Growing up in the Lutheran Church one learns all the Lutheran doctrines; the ten commandments, the sacraments, etc. As I matured I became increasingly frustrated with this church because there seemed to be no substance to it. I was not taught the lessons of life that I dearly needed to learn. Was this my parents’ fault? Was it the church’s fault? or both?

I cannot blame my parents solely. They were the product of their upbringing. And this I’m sure had been going on for many generations. I learned mostly what not to do because I was punished when I did something wrong. It was more important to punish me for doing something wrong than to teach me how to do what was right.

Let’s list some items of deficiencies.

1. Manners and etiquette. Only a basic set of manners like: please and thank you were taught. Etiquette was all but non-existant.

2. Social skills. How to make introductions. We didn’t learn how to do this except for a once in a blue moon mention of it in our perochial school. But we never practiced it. How to treat people as ladies and gentlemen. Dating was very confusing because I didn’t know how to act with a girl on a date. And what I heard from other guys on how they treated girls on a date disgusted me. Social skills should be taught from little on in childhood. This also leads into the next item.

3. Sex education. The basic birds and bees lessons were never taught. This whole subject was considered taboo. Decent people don’t talk about these things, certainly not decent Christians. We were brought up with Victorian attitudes on this subject as well as other subjects.

4. Work training. This one is mixed. Growing up on a farm we certainly were put to work. But many principles of work we had to learn from experience, sometimes bitter experience. Bitter experience in that if you made a mistake you incurred the wrath of your father. Once again it seemed more important to punish a wrongdoing than to teach how to do it right. Work was also simply something that had to be done, not something that you could enjoy. Choosing a profession in life then becomes confusing because in your heart you enjoy doing one thing but it doesn’t seem like work so you choose something else because well, one is supposed to work for a living.

             Work was worshipped. The proverbial mid-west work ethic is lauded to the skies, put on a pedestal for all to admire and aspire to. Many heads of families in our community were workoholics. I know one individual, the oldest son in his family who joined the Army when he reached his 18th birthday so he could get away from his father’s 24/7 dairy farm. He loved the Army, it was like a vacation for him. This was an issue in my family as well. Many social activities that myself and my siblings wanted to do had to take a back seat to the farm work. This then added to the lack of social skills developement for us.

5. Business training. Learning how to work is one thing, learning how to run a business is another. I never learned how to run a business. Dad never taught any of us how to manage money, plan business ventures, track expenses and profit margins, etc. Only if you would join dad’s farming enterprise would you learn some business principles.

6. Principles of life. Such things as honestly, integrity, respect for others, such aspects of life that are important were not taught properly for a child’s proper phsycological developement. For example: if a person does something wrong, say, steals something, this is a grave wrongdoing. Stealing is wrong, but one learns very fast that you need to avoid getting caught at all costs, even if you have to lie. But this builds a dangerous mental attitude in a person. If a person becomes overly afraid of the consequences of the wrongdoing this will cause him to never learn to own-up to the mistake. He builds a pattern of lying, pass-the-buck, and get out of it if you can.

From such lack of proper Christian training springs forth the common malidies of our society, such as:

1. Divorce. In the United States we have an overall average of 50% as a divorce rate. Some areas have as high as a 75% divorce rate. The divorce rate is not among non-Christians only, it is accross the board. I don’t have to leave my own family to see the evidence of this. I am one of six children of my parents. My two youngest siblings have each divorced their first spouses. I have numerous cousins who have gone through divorces. I have an aunt who has been divorced and remarried several times. All of these people are good Christians.

             The current pastor of the Lutheran congregation I grew up in says he has an agenda concerning divorce. I’ve never spoken to him about it, but it seems to me that he is the wrong one to do anything about our staggering divorce rate. This would be like having a lifeguard at the pool who doesn’t know how to swim. The Bible refers to this in Matthew 15:14 as: blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind shall lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

2. Poor relationships with elders. Adding to the divorce problems is our mother-in-law and father-in-law scenarios. The parents of the young married couple don’t know how to butt out. So the young couple may be forced to move away. Then when it comes time for these senior citizens to receive care in their old age none of their children want to take them in and they get sent to an old-folks home. You can’t blame the children for this. They are simply looking out for their own survival.

3. Financial difficulties. We can’t simply trust our public schools to teach our children how to succeed in life. I’ve been to seminars on this matter where the public education system is referred to as: teaching people how to fail. This is mostly true. The focus of public education is to teach people how to get a job. A truly good education teaches people how to live life. This needs to come from Biblical training, from perochial schools or similar schools.

Many people go to college to get a degree that will help them climb the corporate ladder. I’ve been to business college myself. The principles taught are based on greed. Climbing that ladder involves using other people as the rungs. Greed gets you to the top. It’s no wonder we hear these days about employee 401K plans being robbed from, CEOs skimming the company profits till the company goes bankrupt but the CEO retires wealthy. All manner of trickery is done in the name of greed and power and the good hard-working Christian laborers pay the price.

And then they all go to church on Sunday morning and the preacher tells them that all their problems are God’s will. He wishes to put these problems on them to humble them. As it is said: Religion is the opiate of society. It keeps the masses subserviant to greedy wealthy individuals.

Well I’m sure this is only a short list. We were sadly lacking in spiritual training as well. In my late teens and early twenties I could see that my church was either negligent or unknowledgable in this area. This is a trait that develops in religions and among religious people. After many years of church-going, they loose track of spiritual things and focus only on religious rituals and doing whatever it takes to keep all your people together.

So at age 23 I was starving in all of this. I prayed to God for help.

Then I was introduced to the Way Ministry. (Way International, Way Biblical Research, Teaching and Fellowship Ministry) I took many Bible classes in the next few years. The first couple of years were the happiest of my life. Not because all my needs were met and all my problems solved but because I was on the right track for getting all of this taken care of. I am truly thankful to God for these classes and for His wonderful scriptures.

Then I ran into the religion of the Way Ministry. I went on a missionary trip they call W.O.W. ambassadors. It was a one-year assignment. I literally thought, approximately halfway through that year, that I would die, on the WOW field as they call it, not even surviving till the end of the year. Die at age 25? Sounds incredible but that is what religious environments will do to a person such as myself. I honestly don’t know how so many other people suffer through religion for their entire lifetimes. It produces hardened hearts after so much exposure. I’ve seen it happen with other people and I felt it happening to me.

At the time of my WOW year I was young in the Word, as they say,and didn’t realize what was going on. But the problem was a ministry more intent on bringing more and more people into the ministry than on teaching the people they had. This coupled with being under an immediate leader who had prideful visions of grandeur made for an almost impossible experience to live through. She saw herself as the great WOW leader who whipped her subjects into shape and with them brought many people into the ministry. Herein is the religious influence: great numbers of people are more important than helping people build a relationship with God through a better understanding of scripture. It wasn’t till years later that I finally pieced this all together.

My personal studies in scripture have led me to the various conclusions in this book. I don’t claim to be infallible in my assessments but it is hard to conclude the Christian church condition differently after seeing many problems with my own eyes. We need to return to the purity that the first century Christian church had in its beginning days. With God’s help and guidance I believe each of us can attain this. It is with this hope that I set forth the following in writing.

Chapter 2

Man’s Version of Christianity

Ask a thousand Christians what being a Christian is all about and you’ll get nine hundred and ninety-nine who will talk about going to church every sunday or saturday. Then after that they will talk about all of the programs they are involved with in their church, like youth groups, men’s clubs and ladies aid, then the church-sponsored social events like pancake feeds and ice-cream socials, and finally sunday school and regular church services.

They don’t talk much about doctrinal issues unless you are unfortunate enough to meet up with staunch fundamentalists. The reason is because you will quickly get into an argument over one thing or another and everyone knows it and wants to avoid that. They would rather have just the pleasant general conversations about good and bad, gleaned from moral values that are common to most all Christian groups. This is nice conversation but this rarely gets to the heart of matters that people need true information, help, guidance and deliverance in for their lives. I personally have seen what get down to the nitty-gritty type teaching and in your face doctrinal learning from scriptures can do for a person’s life. People need precise, accurate truth in their lives as Christians to lead truly successful lives. Getting one’s toes stepped on, getting hit between the eyes with true doctrine once in awhile does one more good than harm. Toes and foreheads heal in time, the pain is forgotten, and the new stronger toes and forehead are much more appreciated than if the weaker ones were left alone. It is with this realization that I plunge forward into the subject matter of this book.

Why Religion?

Men will come up with all sorts of high and lofty spiritual reasons for grouping themselves into religious bodies. But the true reasons are not so lofty.

Men have grouped themselves together since the dawn of time. Politically there are advantages to grouping as many people together under one banner as possible. There is safety and power in numbers. It also aids in social developement among people. People like to interact with other people for fun, for finding a mate to live with, etc. Also many people working together can develope themselves economically. These are all good reasons for grouping together.

But what also enters in is the spiritual aspects of peoples’ lives. What happened alot among these groupings was that everyone had the same spiritual beliefs. There was a psychological advantage here. Not only was there safety and power in numbers but spiritual reassurance. If everyone else believes the same things I do, then those beliefs must be true. After all, how can so many people be wrong? This psychological motivation was and is a strong force causing man to form his various religions.

This is understandable and forgivable in pagan religions perhaps, but in Christianity? Christianity is supposed to be based on a person’s personal relationship with God. But I have seen in one group after another that people are more connected with other members of their group than they are with God. This has been the bane of religion and religious Christianity throughout the ages. People trust their group’s leaders and other members for spiritual reassurance more than they trust God and His Word. And it shows up also in their teachings. We will see this later on in this book.

Ignorant Christians

Johny’s parents enrolled him in what they thought was a very high academic school. He would be getting the best education from the best professors in the subjects of math, algaebra, sciences such as biology, physics, chemistry, archaeology, history both American history and world history, languages; english, french, german, literature classes and communication arts. He would also be learning practical application of all of this; how to use math on the job, how physics applies to doing, say, a construction job, how to use language and communication skills on the job. It would be a well-rounded education producing an intelligent contributing member of society.

Johny applied himself to his studies for he knew that to be successful he needed to learn all of these things and the better he learned them the more successful he would be.

All was going well throughout his four-year course in this school and he was looking forward to graduating perhaps with honors. He aced all of the final exams and received high marks in all classes. Now comes the graduation, or so Johny thought.

There was one final test that none of the students or parents of the students knew about; a test written by the Dean himself. Every student must read his personal views book, agree totally with his ideas and pass his test or they would not receive their diplomas.

The Dean’s list of views were as follows: 1: The earth is flat not round. 2: Math is not an exact subject, 2+2=4 but sometimes equals 5. 3: Language isn’t exact, tree can mean a tall woody plant or it could mean the plants that lawns are comprised of. 4: History dates and events are fiction. The truth is everything came into existence only 150 years ago. These are only a sample of the many ideas that the Dean had. Now Johny must pass this test or he would not receive a diploma and therefore could not get a job.

Sound incredible? Yet this is not unlike what many Christians are forced to live with. They learn many truths about the world, the earth that God created yet when they go to church they are asked to deny many things and accept what the church calls faith in order to receive salvation. They will not get to heaven and avoid hell unless they agree with church doctrine that many times does not line up with what is known to be true.

Even doctines that have a basis only in scripture are hard to understand and may