Awakened Paradigm

 God is not impressed by the Christian label itself. This is because there is a form of Christianity in which religious identity, group belonging, public performance, political influence, and the pursuit of power can all become substitutes for actually undergoing the genuine inner transformation that is supposed to reshape a person’s character. In this distorted expression of Christianity, people profess faith, immerse themselves in religious community, and publicly identify themselves with Jesus, but they become cruel, prideful, hard-hearted, and oppressive while believing that they are righteous. So, when it comes to their faith and the religious life that they participate in, none of that actually changes the way that they live. Instead, they use those things to reinforce the very attitudes, behaviors, and corrupted uses of power that they would be moving away from if their faith in God were genuine and it was actually transforming them in the first place. And when Christianity ...

 In toxic community systems, if we want to understand why we may be experiencing, or have previously experienced, collective hostility, social exclusion, scapegoating, humiliation, or the recruitment of multiple people into treating us as though we are somehow the sole problem among an entire community of people within a system that is inherently dysfunctional at its core, where we are made to feel as if having healthy boundaries, maintaining our personal agency, or refusing to participate in unhealthy dynamics is somehow what makes us the problem, it might be due to group narcissism.   While narcissistic traits can exist within all of us to varying degrees and can express themselves differently from person to person, group narcissism can develop when a community, organization, or social group becomes so invested in its own image, superiority, righteousness, or special status—that protecting the group’s collective ego becomes more important than honest self-examination, being ...

 When a community system comes together to unfairly target someone as a group—to isolate them, intimidate them, or otherwise coordinate harmful actions against them—what they are participating in can cross the line from ordinary interpersonal conflict into a civil conspiracy against that person. A civil conspiracy, in the context of a community, institution, association, or organization, generally involves multiple people reaching an understanding or acting in concert to accomplish an unlawful objective, or to accomplish an otherwise lawful objective through unlawful means, resulting in harm to another person. It is therefore not simply about several people independently disliking the same individual. The deeper issue is coordination: people sharing information, reinforcing one another’s actions, recruiting others into the hostility, concealing what they are doing, or deliberately using their collective influence to bring about a harmful outcome that would be more difficult for any...

 If you grew up in a religious environment, experienced trauma at the hands of the people within it, and consequently rejected God, part of your shadow work may be to integrate your own belief in God and sense of spirituality into a genuine and embodied expression within your life—the part of you that was buried, disowned, or pushed into the unconscious because your experience of the Divine within that religious environment became entangled with fear, shame, control, and spiritual abuse. This does not mean returning to the same religious system that harmed you, excusing what was done to you, or forcing yourself to believe in God exactly as the people within that system did. It just means separating God from the distorted image of Him that those who harmed you imposed upon your mind, so that the people who wounded you are no longer allowed to remain the final authority over your spiritual life. This means that your healing from a harmful religious environment may involve reclaiming ...

 Christians are not called to dominate society in a way that is coercive, authoritarian, or contrary to the spirit of Christ. They are not called to impose their beliefs through political power, to use the machinery of the state to force religious conformity, or to sanctify worldly systems of domination and control in the name of God; they are called to undergo the inward transformation of their heart, soul, and mind. Even Jesus himself criticized rulers who lord their authority over others and made it clear that this was not to be the pattern among his followers, whose influence was meant to be expressed through the transformation of their own character. Things like the rejection of inner transformation in favor of external control, the corruption of faith into an instrument of worldly power, the subordination of Christian faith to nationalist ideology, and theocratic authoritarianism are all expressions of a reprobate mindset, and that is why it is so difficult for people to awak...

Never trust Christian communities that use “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” as though the mere presence of a group automatically proves that God approves of their attitudes, decisions, or treatment of others. People can gather in the name of Jesus while still being driven by underlying spirits, beliefs, and practices that are contrary to the inward transformation of the human heart, soul, and mind. For example, when Christian nationalists gather together, they may invoke the name of God while being driven by the pursuit of political power rather than by the transforming spirit of Christ. This means that their collective religious confidence does not automatically make their cause righteous, especially when their unity is being used to justify loyalty to worldly power, harm against those outside their group, and the dehumanization of people whose dignity, rights, freedom, and well-being they are willing to sacrifice in the pursui...