Ron and I have launched an essay contest and an on-line magazine to showcase it. And here's the gold key: It pays! $100 first prize.
The topic is "Echoes of The Right to God." What that means is we want to hear stories that reflect our God-given right to walk with God. You don't have to read our book to enter the contest. Come on! We have no way of tracking who orders our book, unless they order direct from the author. But we do want essays that get it, if you know what I mean.
The whole contest has multiple purposes. It's to promote our book, sure, but it's also to promote the entire concept of having God's love, and using that as your launch point in life, instead of struggling with the many "rules" put on us by people who have something to gain personally from us buying into their rules. But here's where it gets tricky, and here's where you have to get it. We're not anti-church. Far from it. Original Christianity is beautiful and liberating. It seems ironic that returning to a liberating, spiritual state is actually considered renegade Christianity by some.
Be fair warned! We've already been told some of our beliefs are outside of the mainstream of Christian thought. So be it. We believe it's completely Biblical, but when you read our book or our on-line journal, that's why we encourage you to look up every verse. See what it says around it. Pray on it, and see what you think. We've also been told by other Christians in the mainstream that they completely agree with our views. One close friend confided that she had a crisis of faith about a year ago ---I'm sorry I didn't pick up on it. Part of that crisis was some of the teachings that she just can't reconcile.
Our on-line journal is going to take on some of those topics, those hard questions dividing Christians. We're not out to attack anybody. We're after respectful discussion and insightful thinking. Christians are whispering that they're divided on issues. Worse, some of these rules and thought lines are creating a place where some people believe they're too bad even for God.
The other day, I heard someone speaking on the radio about a set of rules laid out in Ephesians that are inviolable. The speaker was spelling out the hard rules, the big daddies, where you have no tolerance for other opinions, and beneath that were soft rules, where you had your beliefs but could have tolerance for other thoughts. I've read Ephesians, and I didn't remember these rules, but, hey, I'm no Bible scholar, so I looked the verses up. What I found was that the author, Paul, was talking about fruits of the spirit. He didn't call them rules, couched in threats. They reflected God's love growing in us, not the other way around, where we prove our love to God.
So many of the current thoughts subtly ---sometimes not so subtly--- encourage a belief of 'good Christian', 'bad Christian.' But C.S. Lewis said it best in Mere Christianity when he said good Christian or bad Christian is a myth. Christian is a noun. You are or you aren't. It's not a measurement, but a definition.
We're out to undo some of the misconceptions pushing people away from God, away from Christianity, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of greed. Agree with us or not, why not join in?
Here's our site. There's a link on the first page to the essay contest and on-line journal. www.RightToGod.com.
Welcome aboard. Let's have fun.
