The Good News

The Good News is that Jesus gave his life in one great final sacrifice - ending animal sacrifices and scapegoating - sacrificing the only life he had a right to sacrifice - his own.

He did this in atonement for the sins of the whole world, for all peoples in all times, past, present and future. His was a transcendental sacrifice. By doing this, the world was finally liberated from the pagan cyclic world of life, death and rebirth - from fatalism, karma, magic and neuroses - from false, human-devised paradigms that are only pale imitations of the complete reality. If we let our pride fool us into investing belief in such false models of the world, they will rule us through our fear.

All we have to qualify for this grace of atonement is be genuinely sorry for our shortcomings and strive to overcome them. We need to put our remorse into action - as James put it "faith without deeds is dead". A meaningful apology leads to a permanent change of behaviour. If no change follows, we were not sorry enough. Confession can heal the soul, knowing that God forgives you and loves you anyway however many times you fail. We need to know that He is endlessly forgiving so that we never give up on ourselves - we never believe the lie that it is too late for us. It is never too late.

I know someone who contacts me who is immersed in the Occult. I spedn time trying to help him in any way I can but of course he is totally closed to Christianity - it is "anything, ANYTHING but that" for him. Such revulsion is so very telling if peope could only see it. He feels he is under constant attack from spells, targeting his chakras and making him ill. I sometimes wish he could divert the magic that he feels is pointed at him and his so-called chakras and have it pointed at me instead where it could not take root, for I have no chakras. Like when people send a chain letter to be destroyed by someone who doesn't believe in bad luck.

A friend of mine in America has had people try to "disrupt his qi" and all that nonsense and it has had zero effect, the excuse being either that he has too much or too little qi. From my friend's perspective, he has never spent a moment cultivating qi - he doesn't believe in it. Consequently, he is unaffected by it. I've heard time and again qi-believers admit that a student has to be conditioned to be able to feel their "Master's qi" - they have to be conditioned into being qi-sensitive. They give themselves over to that hypnosis because pride tells them they are becoming special, deep, internal, elite, whatever... really they just willingly let down their guard and allow the brainwashing to commence.

A book I found genuinely useful on suh matters was "The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan, the only rather large snag being his atheism. I also watched a TV programme by Richard Dawkins and found myself agreeing with 95% of it. He was focussing on the new-age alternative health culture. But he felt that he had to throw in digs about religions too which were out of place and wholly unnecssary. Crucially they were just not relevant.

In a sense I do think atheism is a natural progression of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Prophets like Daniel and Elijah were the qi-busters of their day. But by rejecting God as well, people revert quickly back to pagan self-absorption. Without a sense of the objective benevolence - the greatest good of all - without a sense of purpose people once again allow themselves to be sucked into blind orbits of despair and fatalism. In such a world, self-gratification becomes the only thing a person lives for. They have ironically forgotten that how unimportant the individual is. Even self-loathing and suicidal thoughts are just self-absorption. Faith so lifts the heart that it must be True - the Greatest, Truest Truth of all. Faith works where atheism doesn't. We need to reject hopelessness, superstition and fatalism but we must replace them with faith, hope, charity, love...

That's the Good News, from my perspective.