Belief Systems are deeply personal.   Many feel very passionately about their belief system.   Too often people get stuck in the dogma and they do not change and grow.  In Religious people, I see that happening all to often.   In many cases it is the traditions that keep thing the same.   As the (insert Religion here) grows it moves further from the original intention of the creators.

Facebook is useful sometimes.   Someone posts something that spurs me on to write.   Recently Celeste Elliott posted this:

I’ve come to the conclusion that belief systems are like computer operating systems. They should be updated frequently, checked for viruses, and compatibility with the tools you use most frequently to get through life. When all else fails… switch brands.

It made me pause.   She got a lot of likes/loves over 70 of them and several comments.   It started me on a path of thought about Spiritualism as a Religion.    I have to believe coming across this statement earlier this week wasn’t an accident:

The King James version of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England.

There were (and still are) no original texts to translate. The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last apostle died. There are over 8000 of these old manuscripts, with no two alike.

The King James translators used none of these, anyway. Instead, they edited previous translations to create a version their king and Parliament would approve.

So, 21st Century Christians believe the “Word of God” is a book edited in the 17th Century from 16th Century translations of 8000 contradictory copies of 4th Century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written in the 1st Century.

That’s not faith. That’s insanity.

Belief Systems or Religions

My mentor Jack Rudy reminds me that Spiritualism is not a religion, it is a way of life.   Perhaps that is where Spiritualists have gone wrong.   The attempt to put Spiritualism into the same box as other belief systems because it is the context that they could be understood at the time of creation of Spiritualism.  Or was it formed this way because they too could take advantage of the tax structure?

I want to believe that it was meant to grow with further knowledge, we were to be encouraged to question and explore new truths.    What happened?    Why did we stop growing?

All the major religions seem to stagnate as they try to mass produce, to gain numbers of followers and prove they know better than any other religion.   Really where Religion goes wrong is when there is profit involved.     I was raised Catholic and converted to Judaism in my early 20’s.   Today I am a Spiritualist minister without a Church per say.   I am a member of City of Light Spiritualist Church — for a lack of better terms my home church.   Yet I serve at churches throughout the region and attend more services at other churches than my home church.