Awakened Paradigm

 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...

 It's okay to stand up to church leaders and the congregational members who are bullies. In many cases, they are distorting the very purpose of faith and are using religion to cultivate the appearance of godliness, goodness, and decency while believing they have a right to mistreat the people around them without ever being held to account. They especially like to mistreat those of us who refuse to constantly seek their approval, who refuse to submit to their demands without question, who embody a more open-hearted understanding of the Divine, who live in a way that's not legalistic, institutionalized, or rooted in rigid religious conformity, or who simply appear to be easy targets in their eyes. The people who treat others in this way don't actually have a genuine connection to the Divine themselves and have a deep need for spiritual healing. This is because they remain disconnected from the inward work of transformation that God desires to bring about within the human hear...

 For those who feel like they are being led beyond the boundaries of institutionalized forms of faith, overly controlling religious environments, and community systems that seem only to inhibit their spiritual growth, and who may still be trying to make sense of those experiences, I just want to reassure you that it's entirely possible to still have a relationship with God outside of the church, and also outside of any other environment that may have become spiritually suffocating rather than spiritually life-giving. In fact, it is a normal part of the spiritual maturation process for our level of consciousness to evolve beyond the collective mindset of entire congregations, their organizational structures, and the pastors and other religious authorities who oversee them, into a place where our own mental, emotional, and spiritual intelligence can flourish in a way that otherwise wouldn't have been possible if we had stayed yoked to those soul-stifling religious frameworks...