Phase II: Establish salvation as a change of belief rather than a change of being.

The following speech was given at the Assembly of Antichrists, on the 23rd of October 2009. This is Part Two of the fourteen-part series, THE BIBLE 2: HOW TO BURN CHURCH.

(The speech began with the usual pleasantries. The speaker was introduced as ‘friendly,’ ‘wise,’ ‘knowledgeable in the Scriptures,’ ‘loving life,’ ‘blessed,’ ‘anointed,’ and ‘a powerful man of Beelzebub.’)

In a world where everything made sense, I wouldn’t need to give this address.

Our understanding of salvation would be directly affected by our understanding of sin.

Yet sense evades us.

Somehow, salvation can still mean being transformed into God’s design whilst sin revolves around a moral code.

But we’re not satisfied. Our purposes necessitate that we distort this dilemma even further.

Through the spread of the Law-Grace Hypothesis, a rare opportunity has presented itself.

We are now perfectly capable of making the meaning of salvation even less relevant to sin without anyone noticing.

Briefly summarized, the Law-Grace Hypothesis suggests that Israel and Christianity had and have two utterly divergent purposes.

So will be ultimately judged by two distinct criteria.

Israel was designed to stay away from the sinful world and strictly follow the law.

Christianity is designed to convert the sinful world and loosely follow the law.

The law matters less for Christians because God is now more concerned about being popular than having people obey him.

Therefore, God invented grace.

Grace means that it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you belief the right stuff.

This makes sense, because it would be very difficult to convert people to Christianity whilst it had very strict rules.

People like freedom most, which just so happens to be Christianity’s favorite slogan.

And the best part of the hypothesis – it suggests that salvation is now nothing to do with action whatsoever.

Israelites will go to heaven so long as they keep the law.

Christians will go to heaven so long as they keep their beliefs.

Brilliant. Let’s adopt it.

Let’s utterly crush every possibility that Christianity might have something to do with present change.

Salvation becomes the moment that the soul switches eternal destinies from hell to heaven.

The Christian life becomes the pursuit of that moment for every soul.

Fortunately for the church, that moment is achieved by accepting precisely the beliefs that strengthen the Institution’s status in society and therefore the status of its members.

Aided by this subtle persuasion, the church would potentially lose all focus of its restorative purpose.

It is even possible that if this plan is executed, the phrase ‘salvation is God’s work, not ours’ could even become ‘orthodox’ doctrine.

Wow.

Picture a hospital where the doctors do nothing but point to the Chief of Staff and say ‘healing is his work, not mine.’

Christianity could become so beautifully ironic.

By merely defining its success by the number of people who join it, we have the ability to mold the entire movement into one that uses all the same words with completely contrary meaning.

The death of a movement is the moment it concerns itself with the number of people who constitute it rather than the change that it effects.

What could be a more genius method of sabotage than suggesting the purpose of a movement to be the pursuit of its demise?

Now that we have the method, we need to decide on a game plan.

Let’s start from the beginning – right at the entry point to Christianity.

We need an initiation rite.

We’ve got to make people do something that immediately conditions them to perceive Christianity as being primarily concerned with beliefs.

Something that distracts from themes of earthly restoration.

Here’s an idea.


God, forgive me. I am a sinner.

I want to stop sinning.

I don’t want to feel guilty anymore.

Thank you for dying on the cross and making everything okay.

I accept my immortality as accomplished by faith and belief in Jesus.

I accept you as my final authority, as defined by the church.

Come into my heart.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.


Faith and Belief.

We need to say those two words together so often that people forget that there’s any difference.

Phase I: Establish sin as breaking a moral code rather than being broken.

The following speech was given at the Assembly of Antichrists, on the 16th of October 2009. This is Part One of the fourteen-part series, THE BIBLE 2: HOW TO BURN CHURCH.

(The speech began with a sadistic ice breaker that only an antichrist would appreciate and thus cannot be put on Facebook. I have edited this out)

Our brilliant subterfuge begins at the over-arching concept of life.

Brokenness.

All of creation now bears varying amounts of dysfunction, some level of imperfection.

Not only does all creation die, but none of it ever achieves its full potential.

Every layer of reality is permeated with digression from design.

The church’s imminent purpose is to restore creation.

Yet for the last millennium at least, the church has continued to fail.

In fact, for the last millennium, the church has been slowly, excruciatingly killing itself off.

All we’re going to do is put it out of its misery.

We begin with a touch of genius.

All we do is change a definition – the definition of sin, Christianity’s famous nemesis.

Instead of dysfunction, we just call it something else.

They’ll never notice.

Our sources report that they wouldn't change their vocabulary to save the world.

Whenever anyone insists that a word they use means something different, they tend to shout and scream for while but eventually they go along with it.

Now, this part of the plan was amusing, because it became quickly clear how many deviating concepts there are to select from, ranging from suffering and separation to wrong, disobedience, and evil.

Sadly, not all five are usable for our mischievous purposes.

The most debatable option is that of separation from God, but unfortunately that carries with it too much of sin’s original meaning.

It does have some potential.

We could use it to suggest that sin is nothing to do with fixing the present creation and is entirely about getting people to heaven.

But it works too well metaphorically.

Sin is separation from God’s design.

Preferably, we want something close to the original meaning (since that makes it easier to deceive our victims), but not that close.

Another option is suggesting that sin is disobeying God.

Because this is the kind of language that Sunday School teachers use to simplify concepts for children, it sounds so beautifully right.

You scarcely notice that sin has just been narrowed entirely down to what humans are at fault for, and completely ignored creation’s state of suffering.

The brokenness within every relationship of society.

Or the inherently flawed communication between all creatures that exists with or without the help of humanity intentionally disobeying God.

It ignores the plane that gets hit by lightning and crashes, killing hundreds of people.

Or the shark that tears apart a scuba diver’s limbs.

It ignores the married couple who fall out of love with each other and break their child’s heart.

We can’t blame humanity’s disobedience for all the suffering that exists in this broken world.

Theologians have tried for decades to do somersaults over this by invoking the story of Adam and Eve and blaming them for the tragedy of sin.

Always the fanciful lot for utilizing wondrous leaps of logic.

Whether or not the story of Adam and Eve is pure mythology, and even if sin was in fact originally caused entirely by disobedience…

We don’t know and can’t know and don’t need to know.

All we do know is that there is now a state of sin outside of our disobedience.

The Christian must strive to fix that sin as much as they must strive to stop creating more of it.

But it’s much more convenient for the church to confront only the sin that makes them uncomfortable.

And a fair amount of sin does not come into that category.

Obesity and environmental deterioration, for example.

Sin being defined as disobeying God works well for our purposes.

It sounds perfectly correct whilst being suitably misleading.

Yet we can go one better.

Instead of disobeying God, we’re going to define sin as disobeying a moral code.

We’re going to take God out completely.

We’re going to replace the Divine with the concept of right and wrong.

It’s beautiful.

No concept could be much more opposed to the Kingdom of God and yet you can rest assured, the church will adopt it without a second thought.

Instead of perceiving design and dysfunction, they will judge the world according to their specific moral code.

Instead of broken people in need, the world at large will be seen as the Christian’s enemy.

Incredible, isn’t it?

A single definition has the power to sever the relationship between the world and its medic.

Try to picture what this is going to look like.

Imagine doctors began assessing diseases only according to the patient’s actions that caused it.

The only solution that could be given would be to stop doing those actions.

If the patient remained ill, the disease might be declared a ‘consequence’ of the patient’s past mistakes – a deterrent for those who might also fall prey to the action.

Never would it cross their mind that the dysfunction that infects an individual is broader than their choices.

Broader than their mistakes.

A moral code – the concept of right and wrong – smoothly distracts them from an understanding of design and dysfunction.

When the individual’s problem has nothing to do with the individual’s actions, the moral code is ineffective.

If the moral code were the only known possible cause, more often than not a moral cause would be ‘found’ anyway, leaving the dysfunctional with guilt and shame.

Imagine church done like that. Imagine the chaos we could create.

Imagine Christians being incapable of helping broken lives because they genuinely can’t perceive a cause beyond the individual’s actions.

They wouldn’t be able to see how to help the drunkard or fornicator who break their moral code except to keep pushing it.

The church would perceive no obligation to the mess that surrounds the dysfunctional.

Only an obligation to make them aware of what a cesspit they live in, in the hope that they might sort themselves out.

It takes a single definition to sever the world from its medic.

The moral code will burn church. We’ll make sure of it.

(Five minute interlude whilst the antichrists debate the nature of sin)

There is now only one threat to our ultimate victory.

The risk is minimal, but we must respect all possibilities.

It is the rise of the old mentalities.

The understanding of them has all but diminished, but there are a few who carry them by oral tradition.

Even worse, there are those who are discovering them merely by practical thinking.

This will not be tolerated. They must be contained.

If rumors of sin as dysfunction got leaked to the church at large, the results for our genius plan would be catastrophic.

Merely understanding the sinner as broken rather than evil may create the most impenetrable compassion known to humanity.

Even if we were to contort and pervert every other philosophy of Christianity, this one philosophy would leave those few Christ-followers who would yield enough love to keep the church alive for centuries.

Their homes would become orphanages, homeless shelters, pharmacies, hospitals, schools, job centers, rehab centers, and headquarters for recycling associations, breeding doctors, lawyers, teachers, care workers, counselors, and politicians with a head and heart for restoring a broken world.

We can’t afford to let that happen.