Sunday In House Gists - RELIGION.

"There are 8 billion people are on the planet, and about 2.5 billion of them are Christians. 

Christians claim to have the only-true-God connection and view themselves as the only qualified ones called to minister the truth to save humankind. They believe that privilege is theirs because they are the Bible experts. There are 41,000 different Christian denominations around the world, and close to 450,000 international missionaries mobilized abroad.

The Roman Catholic Church is considered to be the largest financial power on earth. Evangelical Christianity isn’t doing too shabby either. A top Christian televangelist lives in a $10 million house with a private jet, another one drives a $350,000 Bentley, and a recent Megachurch teacher was hired for $22 million a year. Another megapastor has a net worth of $760 million. No, that's not a typo - an annual salary of $22 mill and net worth of $760 milk. 

One megachurch meets in a sports stadium, draws close to 50,000 people for a worship service, and has an annual budget that exceeds $90 million. Speaking of budgets, 82 percent of the average church budget is used to cover the expense of buildings and salaries. Considering the number of people, buildings, and dollars, Christendom is quite an impressive empire on planet Earth.

But for what? What has this shiny, lucrative Christian empire actually accomplished? 

What do we have to show for it? We haven’t made even a dent in the suffering that plagues humankind and our planet. But I’ll give us one thing—you sure have to admire the sheer size of this discordant monstrosity. However, Jesus, as a homeless man with a handful of confused followers and no budget, had more of a revolutionary impact in three years than the entire Christian church has in three centuries.

Jesus was a revolutionary. Christendom is a business. Following Jesus once meant speaking truth to power. Modern Christianity is budgets, buildings and bank accounts.”

7 ways to wage inner anarchy:

1. Unlearn something
Our heads have been programmed with all kinds of false and disempowering beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that are ruling us from within and running our lives, and it's time to identify and ditch them one by one.

2. Switch sources
Stop conceding to external sources of authority and living your life on the basis of the "shoulds" and expectations of others, and claim responsibility and authority for your own life, and start by listening, following, and expressing the truth you access within yourself.

3. Stop doing something
The current system and order that espouses ego, greed, materialism, vanity, and self-absorption only has the power we give to it through our participation; divest yourself from that old order by refusing to play the game.

4. Question everything
Don't accept any rationale or justification for the status quo, but dig into it and make it legitimize itself to you on the basis of critical thinking, direct experience, and your highest truth.

5. Educate yourself
Ignorance is one of the biggest obstacles, but the antidote is to take the time to explore beneath the surface and understand what's driving the way things currently are in our world.

6. Make powerful alliances
Rather than running with the herd, find and connect with others who are serious about living life differently and consequentially.

7. Go deeper
The "self-help" movement is often pedaling gimmicks, quick-fix schemes and formulas, superficial change, and symptom-management; go deeper than this by addressing the root causes of your chronic unhappiness and disharmony in life.

Inner Anarchy By Jim Palmer is Available on Amazon