Religion Schmeligion: Pizza for Passover

Catholic guy: "Aren't you going to eat some pizza?"

Jewish Guy: "No, it's Passover, we can only eat certain foods, but not pizza."

CG: "You're jewish?"

JG: "Yes, and I've told you this like a thousand times before."

CG: "Aren't Jews the ones that dress up like Ninjas and pray?"

JG: "No, I think you're thinking of Muslims, but they're not really Ninjas..."

CG: (interupting) "Aren't all Jews Muslims?"

JG: "Um... you couldn't be more wrong."

CG: "But tell me this. Jews and Muslims: they're all still Christians, right?"

JG: "I don't even know how to answer that."

—Submitted by Mike Routier, 2006-04-24 12:50:29 Syndicated from Religion Shmeligion, on Overheard in Chicago

Catholics | Jews | Muslims | Ninjas | Overheard In

Jehovah's Witnesses called "hate group"; raided in Russia

A Jehovah's Witnesses prayer meeting of 200 worshippers was raided and broken up by Moscow, Russia, police officers on Thursday.

In June 2004, the Moscow City Court barred the denomination from engaging in religious activities, citing a law that bans religious groups deemed to incite hatred or intolerance.

Read more....

"Jesus Loves Porn Stars"

The L.A. Times and other outlets are reporting that a Bible publisher has refused to print XXXchurch.com's "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" logo on 10,000 Bibles the ministry has paid for. The Bibles were intended to be given out to adult film festival antendees.

Pastors Mike Foster and Craig Gross say they typically give away 1,000 copies of the New Testament at each weekend festival they attend.

The American Bible Society rejected the pastors request to print the words on the cover of the 10,000 copies they had already printed. Barbara Bernstengel, the executive in charge of standards at the nonprofit Bible publishing company, wrote in a letter to the ministry that "the wording is misleading and inappropriate for a New Testament."

The guys at xxxchurch.com are also sponsoring Porn Sunday in churches all over America. Look for it at a church near you.

The company reported made other suggestions for the cover imprint, but the ministers remained steadfast.

Gross said that the imprint would not be misleading: Jesus does love porn stars, as well as every one else, he said. The words do not indicate that Jesus likes pornography.

"But that's why we're putting the Bible in [the porn stars'] hands — Jesus is not OK with it," he said. "The publisher is hindering the Gospel going forth."

Maybe the guys should get JC's Girls founder Heather Veitch to ask the folks at American Bible Society to re-think their position. I think most men who do just about anything she might ask of them.

Jesus Christ | Jesus Love Porn Stars | XXXChurch | Bible | Sex | Mike Foster | Craig Gross | Heather Veitch

The Jesus Flickfest

If you happen to be in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on April 14 and 15, be sure to head over to the Knox Centre and enjoy the Jesus Flickfest.

You can see two full days of Jesus movies of all genres, from 1905's silent La vie et la passion de Jesus Christ to the musicals Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ to Monty Python's Life of Brian, plus 14 more. Makes me wish I was Canadian, ay?

Details...

Jesus Christ | Easter | Canada | Winnipeg | Jesus Flickfest | La vie et la passion de Jesus Christ | From the Manger to the Cross | Il Vangelo secondo Matteo |Parable | Jesus de Montreal | Black Jesus | The Gosepl Road | The Miracle Maker | The Passion of Christ according to Saint Matthew | The Passion of the Christ | Godspell | Jesus Christ Superstar | The Cotton Patch Gospel | Hill Number One | The Last Temptation of Christ | Life of Brian | The King of Kings | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | The Newfoundland Passion | Jesus

Jesus Christ, the Musical

Sometimes you just gotta kick back and laugh. Enjoy the movie.




Jesus Christ | Jesus Christ the Musical | I Will Survive | Video

The Dalai Lama interview

The exiled Dalai Lama, who was the first Dalai Lama to visit the West, recently gave an interview to the London Daily Times.

Of fundamentalists he said: "Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world."

He was speaking of Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, but his words would apply to any other religious fundamentalists, too.

Of Westerners he said: "It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences — yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours.

"I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice — which brings no real freedom."

Buddha | Buddhism | Dalai Lama | Tibet

God or the Girl?

Now "reality TV" brings us God or the Girl.

Four young men ponder entering Catholic priesthood... or should they keep their secular lives...?

To help them think it over, one young man "goes on a pilgrimage with no money or food, relying completely on the kindness of strangers to help him get to his destination — a religious center in Niagara Falls."

Another one builds an 80-pound cross and carries it 22 miles. One runs off to help the poor and needy in Guatamala, and the fourth moves to a convent to live with nuns.

Or maybe they should just stay with their girlfriends?

All four major networks turned down the offer to air this show, as did the WB. It debuts on the A&E Network on April 16, Easter Sunday.

Read more, if you care....

Photo: Mike Lechniak reads the Bible while he ponders his future.

Catholic Church | Priests | Reality TV | Jesus Christ | Easter | God | Television | God or the Girl

God's Five Steps to Peace

Here's an excerpt from a recent article at The Burning Taper, which quotes God as he appears in Neale Donald Walsch's "The New Revelations: A Conversation with God," about the Five Steps to Peace:

God doesn't just speak through ancient texts. If He was real then, and was "inspiring" mere mortals to write down His Words, then chances are, He's still doing it.

Neale Donald Walsch has presented the world with a series of books called Conversations with God. In 2002's The New Revelations: A Conversation with God, we are told by God that all our problems, both personal and planetwide, are not political or economic or military in nature, but are spiritual.

He tells us that none of our spiritual or religious beliefs are necessarily wrong, that we should not necessarily discard them, but that to solve our problems we should transcend them!

God says:

Transcending means to go beyond, to move past. It does not mean to completely reject or totally destroy. You do not have to destroy a thing in order to move past it....

"Transcending" does not mean always being "other than," it means always being "larger than." Your new, larger belief system will no doubt retain some of the old — that part of the old belief system that you experience as still serving you — and so it will be a combination of the new and the old, not a rejection of the old from top to bottom.

Can you see the difference?

God continues:

...Stop your resistance.

Rejecting completely your present beliefs would be to discredit so much of what has been taught, so much of what has been understood, so much of what has been done — and so much of what has been good.

It would make too much of the world feel "wrong." It would make ancestors "wrong," it would make entire scriptures "wrong," it would make present-day lives "wrong." People would have to admit that all of the spiritual aspects of the human experience have been a mistake, a misunderstanding.

This is more that most people can acknowledge. It is more than they should acknowledge, because it is not true.

In fact, you don't have to declare that you were "wrong" about anything, because you weren't. You simply didn't have a complete understanding. You needed more information.

Transcending current beliefs is not an outright rejection of them; it is an "adding to" them.

Now that you have more information that you can add to what you presently believe, you can enlarge your beliefs — not completely reject them, enlarge them — and move on with your lives in a new way.

A way that works.

Stay with Him, folks. God has more to say. Why didn't He speak this clearly 2,500 years ago when Isaiah and Jeremiah were proclaiming His words?

You are facing now a new and startling danger — a danger posed to your entire species. A threat to your very survival posed by the combination of a split in ideology and an advance in technology, which makes it possible for you to seek to resolve your differences with tools of human destruction unlike anything you may have heretofore dreamed of in your worst nightmare.

There are five things you can choose now if changing your world, and the self-destructive direction in which it is moving, is what you wish to achieve.

1. You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
2. You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
3. You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, an understanding that could produce a new way of life on your planet.
4. You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine this new understanding, and, if it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system to include it.
5. You can choose to live your lives as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them.

These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything on your planet.

Behavior cannot be changed, unless there is a change in beliefs, "because beliefs create behaviors."

Artwork: "The Birth of Peace," an oil painting by John WorldPeace.

God's Words quoted from "The New Revelations: A Conversation with God," by Neil Donald Walsch.

God | Neale Donald Walsch | Conversations with God | The New Revelations: A Conversation with God | Five Steps to Peace