Dogma & Child Abuse (Deconstructing Religion)
Happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. If you might as well go to church. Isn't that what we're supposed to do on Sundays? Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's more keeping up the hits with the eighties and nineties. You got? Oh, life is bigger. It's bigger than you. You are not me.
Speaker 1:That's me in the corner. That's me in the spot like losing my religion. So losing our religion. But because obviously we met. I say we met in high school, because that's sort of true, but actually that's that's not completely honest because we met before I was in high school.
Speaker 1:I was in eighth grade. True. And you were in ninth grade. I was in junior high. You were in high school where we met was church.
Speaker 1:Church. Yes, we did. We met at church. And after twenty seven years of marriage, that relation our relationship has always at least been affected by our relationship with that church. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The religion, right, our parents' religion. And so much of our marriage now has has certainly been a part of deconstructing religion. And you know, just having a conversation with a good friend, We just recently connected with high school friends. Had a thirtieth Plus one. Reunion, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And since we're in high school together, we did a joint kind of thirty and thirty one year reunion and saw a few friends and it was interesting. To kind of reflect on who you were, who you are, and then how you were perceived. That's something that the reunion kind of kind of gave gave me anyway, I shouldn't speak for you. But there was during a conversation with a good friend, a person I adore.
Speaker 1:Of religions always comes up with high school friends because they at least knew us to be a part of that church, that religion, and so they're always interested. So we were having a conversation and then it became, there was a word that kept getting used, which was belief. Belief in God, belief in God. I realized at one point, my friend and I weren't having the same conversation because we don't have a shared concept of what belief and what God is. And it's so annoying, right?
Speaker 1:It seems like so legalistic. Well, it depends on what the meaning of is is. But with words like believe and God and religion, church, Jesus, it matters. Explain that? Right?
Speaker 1:And I told him because he asked about my beliefs. Well, beliefs and you, I said, I don't I don't have beliefs. That's that's kind of where you and I, differ. I don't really believe in things. I have ideas.
Speaker 1:Some I thoughts. I've worked out a few things. I have some suggestions. I have some hypothesis. I have some submissions.
Speaker 1:But it's it's my favorite. As I said, at one point, my my god is Alanis Morissette because in the movie Dogma, she's she's God. She's God, quite literally. Please God. You know, just one more myth in the in the in the Christo centric, multiverse.
Speaker 1:That is Christian Dumb and Jesus and the carpenter and the storyteller, right? But it's there's a scene in it where the Chris Rock character is explaining Jesus and he says just this. The dude listened and asked questions more than preached. And that he was interested in ideas, not beliefs, because beliefs are something that you die for. Beliefs are something that you kill for.
Speaker 1:Ideas can be expressed. Ideas can be changed. Ideas can be altered. Ideas can be added to. And do I have a belief in God?
Speaker 1:I don't understand the question. I have a belief in deconstructing religion. I have a belief in deconstructing Gods. But the deconstruction isn't to maintain this, be an atheist, prove atheism because I'm not an atheist. It's a search for God.
Speaker 1:That's what deconstructing religion is. And something we did, I think is we were it was easy to say, okay, where is God not? Yeah. Where does not God reside? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then it was easy to pivot and say, okay, not that. That's easy, not love. Yeah. And then as we pivoted and moved on to different philosophies and different lifestyles and different cultures different people, we saw the same issues. And a friend asked us, an old high school friend, so why did you leave your parents' religion?
Speaker 1:I said, honestly, it's the least interesting topic. It's the least interesting thing about me. It's really, oh, no, I think it's very interesting, right? Because they care a lot about this group of people because they have a lot of influence. Takes over identity.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of combat, right? Social, emotional combat amongst these groups. And I said, well, you become an adult and you start to learn that an organization identifies as religion. It's very theology and its practice is to tolerate child abuse and to cover up for the child abuse. And so when you see the group to which you belong does that, it's really important to know that whether or not the God that they say is God and that if you don't follow their rules, that God will punish you to hell or reward you with heaven.
Speaker 1:You go ahead and you they call it Pascal's wager. Right? Well, bet that there is a God. You go ahead and bet there is a God, and I bet that's a God. So in order to do that, I have to judge whether or not your God is who you claim it is and whether or not that the creator of the universe, the cosmic arbiter of all, the great and then, you know, unfathomable.
Speaker 1:Is he cool with the way you guys deal with child abuse? Yeah. Turns out my search led me to nah. This this benevolent god that are in these stories, in these books, these these these new testament, old testament, and others turns out was real, real, real, real clear on the topic of child abuse. In fact, every story is really and should be viewed towards filtered through a lens of duty to children.
Speaker 1:From Abraham, from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to Abraham to Joseph to all the prophets of the Old Testament to Jesus to the Gospels all the way to the garden and the cross. Now, I don't mess with Paul. That's that can that's another a debate for other scholars. Let's just stop with the Gospels and well supposedly the man said that dude was clear about child and that those that would dare speak for God, would dare claim to have knowledge about God, would dare assert authority in the name of God that they'd be pretty good at protecting children and and and at least stopping abuse and minimizing abuse. That's really what that scripture says.
Speaker 1:It's if anyone who is to offend one of these, do violence to, betray, commit a crime against, that's what that means. It wasn't just ignore, which is bad enough. The first thing, so as I tell people, that was the first thing turns out, the God of the universe isn't cool with child abuse. This institution really is. In fact, their theology, their pedagogy, their policies, their legal structure is built in a failure to minimize the abuse that children experience.
Speaker 1:So it was easy to say, that God either doesn't exist, but I'm okay to take them at their word and say, you know what, you have very spiritual experiences that prove the knowledge that you claim to have about this God. And when you understand divine story, you get that there are all types of gods and some of them are demon gods. So I accept that the God that is over the hearts and minds of the people of our parents' religion simply worship a demon God. Yeah, not that their God doesn't exist. I'm saying your God ain't cool.
Speaker 1:And he ain't cool. Your God, your God's a exploits women and abuses children and your system and allows for a secretive. Your system tends to justify it. So yeah, not that. Not cool.
Speaker 1:Not that. Yeah. And that's what deconstructing religion is. I didn't deconstruct God. I just pivoted.
Speaker 1:And then I pivoted like, okay, here's another religions with my friends, right? These are my buddy who, you know, do you believe in God? Which it was, I felt pity for him when he asked about evolution. Okay. Because I said basically, you know, science and religion isn't, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1:He said, well, if there's if there's evolution, then why did why are there man and still apes today? And I looked at him and I and I and he must have seen the the goodness. The shock. The reaction I said, no, but that's not how it works. I mean, you you went to like we went to school together.
Speaker 1:I remember like biology in early, like there's different classifications of animals. And then one of them is mammals. And we're within mammals and a bunch of animals, right? Dogs, for example, and canine. And they're like with wolves and stuff, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, was wolves that essentially evolved, changed, developed into dogs, right? Now, that's not a great example because wolves and dogs still exist. But if you go back, back, back, back for humans, see we're all in the ape family. So like the apes, right?
Speaker 1:Not monkeys, but apes especially, chimpanzee. These are all within our general family, we're not the same species. At some point, there was within the ape family Another thing that was, you know, Australopithecus and like homo. It must have been like a hump. Right, these words, right, like Neanderthals and these, right.
Speaker 1:And we know because we found them and we can see the progression of the brain. So when we say we descended from apes, what we mean is our cousins, who are a different species of ape, and us, we came from the same common ancestor back there. You must have blown his mind. Well, I was just he didn't have a retort. He didn't have it and I realized bro, we went to the same school as for you know, we're in our 40s.
Speaker 1:You're a relatively educated man. You went to college and you think about these things clearly because you had that one loaded. So I pursued then all to say, you know, looked, kept searching for God in different places and different institutions and among different sects. Yeah. And it turns out they all had a similar problem of tolerating child abuse.
Speaker 1:I see. And the ones that did better about child, here's what I learned in my journey and my search for God, because I feel like we found God finally in all this deconstruction. We found where there is there's a connection between tolerating child abuse and that connection is dogma. And the more dogmas that exist within a people, and this includes secular people, the more dogmas that exist, the more likely they are to tolerate child abuse within their people because it's their dogmas that matter more than the mind of a child. And so they sacrifice their children to their dogmas, to their beliefs, to their thoughts in their heads, just like Abraham did.
Speaker 1:And so these stories after deconstructing religion, realized a couple things. First of all, all divine origin stories are the same. Yeah. Right? Hindu, Buddha, classical, like Homer and the Greek and Roman gods, Old Testament prophecy, New Testament Jesus, Islam, Koran, Torah, all these stories, right?
Speaker 1:Especially of the majors. Yeah. They're all telling the same story. Same story. We don't understand the story too often because we're really bad with rhetoric.
Speaker 1:We're really bad with And we take things too literally and we take it too like piously. It's like, and it makes more sense. All these stories make more sense. If you view it through the lens of a comedy, like an absurdist story more and that's a form of a comedy, right? As an absurdist, it's so absurd.
Speaker 1:Right? The classic, if you're into your art, if you're into your literature, Orpheus and the Underworld is a great example of, you know, divine story that was about the classical period and the Greek gods and Homer's story. Think it's Homer. And it's a comedy. It's a little dirty.
Speaker 1:It's a little body. It's very graphic. It's like, it's absurd. And we just inject on like the Romans or the Greek, the classical period. Like they were all theists, mono, you know, theists like modern, postmodern Christian monotheism.
Speaker 1:And they're not. No. Hinduism, Buddhism, it's not theistic. It is, and from the beginning, the stories are meant to communicate deism as a philosophy, as a, a, as just a concept. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's what's lacking when you look at these stories, these stories of parenting, these stories of child development, which all great existential stories are, right? Don Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Beetlejuice. Yeah. You know, the reason why the character of childhood is so prominent. Luke, I'm your father.
Speaker 1:Right? These archetypes, there's only so many stories that can be told that are told that have been told. And it's a comedy and it's usually got a twist. So the people that you think are the superheroes or the super good guys, when you realize they're either the dorks, the cowards or the losers, and sometimes they're the bad guys. But a lot of times they're the dopes.
Speaker 1:The people that are presented as the good guys because it's It's meant to tell a story. It's not meant to spoon feed. It's meant for you to figure it out. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1:And so problem, so much problem with religious speech, with religious commentary and discussions is they have conflated God, deity, the divine, source, energy, love with ritual, with mythology, and with theology. And and and everyone is claiming ownership over divinity. Yeah. And it really just means they wanna control other people through their dogmas. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Through their dogmas. Yeah. And so we'll tell the story about what we deconstructed with specificity and the institution with facts and circumstances and names. But it's more interesting, think, start with what we found and what we found was God. And it was really easy, really for me as a dad, partner, as as a parent was to learn from my wife in how to parent lovingly with boundaries and nurturing and empowering.
Speaker 1:And so love is not my religion. Sorry. I said last time, I think that's Lenny. I meant Lenny Kravitz. For some reason, I thought it was Lenny.
Speaker 1:Right? It's Ziggy Marley. Sorry, Ziggy. Love is my religion. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Love. But love isn't my religion. Parenting became my religion. And so our children DMT, their initials, are both individually and collectively our God. Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's deism. Yeah. To say there is this being, Dee, this being, MT, and they are important and unique and have priority. And they're also this being together, children. And then there's this organism family and this organism marriage.
Speaker 1:And how do all these beings stay interdependent, say themselves, but still blend and bond Yeah. And communicate and connect. Yeah. And so when I say DMT is my God, I mean it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's literal. It's metaphorical and literal and it communicates something philosophically about love. Mhmm. Because as far as I can tell and going through all the religions and then going through all the philosophies and and systems of thinking, The best human expression of love that humans have is in the parent child relationship. They are where we experience our most acute trauma and suffering, and hopefully some of our most impactful feelings of connection and love.
Speaker 1:Ecstatic love. Yeah. And it impacts so much of our mind, our cognition, our metabolism, our gut health. It impacts it. So we'll look at child development versus child abuse and the systems of thinking that both empower, enhance and make accessible the development, the creative and those that cause disconnection, disease, and dissatisfaction.
Speaker 1:We can look at through a lens of parenting. Suffer the children. They come unto me. Or the children suffer. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So here's some practical stuff, parents, kids. It's the space between. We focus so much on the major events, the major emotions and the major successes and happiness, right? We're in this stage of where the only thing we fixate on is when there is high emotion, high feeling, high intensity, high stimulation. Life, relationships, health, wellness, longevity is in the space between in the boring times.
Speaker 1:And often kids, if you've got a lot of boring times, then that means you were pretty safe and pretty secure. So celebrate the boring, celebrate the space between. Now, here's some physiological space between, techniques. First think about that, think about the space between. Remember those experiences because usually those are positive too.
Speaker 1:And take care of the space between your teeth and the space between your toes. Too many people, not we're clean enough guys. Your hygiene sucks. Your parents have failed your children and helping them take care of their bodies. Okay?
Speaker 1:Boys, you have to wipe better. You just you just have to take care of your butthole. It's ridiculous what I'm hearing and what you guys think gay is and just stop it. Take care of your butthole, wipe completely. Okay?
Speaker 1:Floss, brush your teeth and make sure you're wiggling your toes and spacing your toes, especially as you get older. Your feet are collapsed and you're gonna have pain. You're gonna have neurological Your teeth impact your gut myomes, your toes, impact your nervous system, your nerves, how you feel, how you proceed to do those things, focus on the space in between because that's where the magic happens. Parenting is a yoga. Yes.
Speaker 1:I guess. Oh.