About this site

 

If you are Christian, I welcome you. Name the denomination I don’t care if you are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, evangelical, post-evangelical, mainline Christian, I welcome you.

If you are Muslim, you are also welcome. If you’re Jewish you too are welcome (I don’t care if you are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and yes, Messianic too!).

 Also a big welcome if you are Hindu, Buddhist, Confucionist,  Zoroastrian and even Atheist, Deist,Agnostic or an Apatheist (Bill Maher this means you!). Gay, straight, bisexual—welcome.  If you are American, Canadian (like me), Australian, Russian, Ethiopian, Chinese—welcome. In a nutshell for those who come here with peace, love  and understanding in their hearts welcome to the home of My Own Generous Orthodoxy.  For those who have been following my fanbase will remember this blog entitled Post WCG Life and Theology or it’s alternative title some chose to use  Life After the WCG which I began on blogger.com in 2005(archives still exist) and continued on until September 2007 when I decided to move to WordPress.com.  This mid-April of 2009, I decided to have a name change which is now My Own Generous Orthodoxy which is based from a book called A Generous Orthodoxy from Brian McLaren who is one of the prominent leaders in the Emergent movement in Christianity. Just for the record,  while respect Brian McLaren and others like him to make Christianity more relevant in the modern age, I do not walk in lock step with him or anyother religious leader. I take very seriously independent thinking. There are many religious leaders who want docile, seal-clapping, lap-dog type of people and trust me I am too old for their nonsense!

Many readers of this blog know that I am a former member of the Worldwide Church of God (now called Grace Communion Fellowship). I was a so-called “Second Generation Christian” in the group.  In my family, I was the last to leave the WCG in 1998 (brother left in 1988, mom left in 1997) after an agonizing decision during one of the church’s massive upheavals of that time which originated in 1995. It was a church I felt that may have gotten rid of it’s cultic doctrines but felt there was “systematic cultism”  still around and also important, I felt that the leadership had a peverse joy on thriving on the confusion of the members. This is simply not a mentally healthy way to live , despite some objections from those who expect themselves and others to “stay in the church no matter what!”  I made my decision in late 1998 and have never looked back. Frankly, with apologies to J of Shadows of WCG, I was recapturing true sanity.

Where do I stand now in my faith? Like the late Jesse Ancona (of Lying With The Truth e-book fame) I consider myself a Christian with a Judaic perspective but frankly I don’t want to stop there. As I have said before, I have some things of the Emergent movement to agree with, Eastern Orthodoxy, some theology in evangelical Christianity and so on and so on as I get older and wiser in years. People have need to define people in neat little boxes and that is pity. Complexity of a person’s beliefs should be embraced and not seen as a threat. I feel that there is a supernatural being out there but I am at the same time growing impatient with organized religion in general as they become reactive (instead of being proactive) and out of touch with reality and on the other hand they have allowed themselves to be overcomed by the world as opposed to overcoming the values the world offers (eg. the organized church is becoming like a corporation and that is simply not healthy).

Also this blog is for those who want address their grievances from a high-demand restrictive religious movement. This includes the WCG (now GCI) or it’s splinters. It is not limited to Armstrongism but all cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Oneness Pentecostalism and even the excesses of the modern charismatic movement. It is irrelevant of how many years ago it was. It could be 50 (if you’re still alive)—30—20—10 years. It could be the last 10 months, 10 days or 10 minutes. We at My Own Generous Orthodoxy will never say to you, “That was a long time ago, just move on!” An injustice is stil an injustice.  Darkness must be exposed as it is. To simply be in denial about it is a sickness. People need to talk it out and trust me it feels a heck of a lot better. There is no such thing here as a `Can`t talk“ rule here. Yes, there are religious bullies (which I firmly believe who have mental health issues unresolved and need to be restrained) will attempt to silence any grievance but they will not get any far here. They are very manipulative, they play mind games in every word they speak but at the end of the day, I am the moderator and if they or anyone else can`t conduct themselves properly, they have absolutely NO RIGHTS here! NONE! I even apologize to `the church ladies“who may be reading here but the fact is that I hate bullies and I am not going to take shit from ANYBODY! Sorry to some about the language, but you cannot be polite to these people (ask Russell Miller of the Holy Mighty Atheist blog and he’ll be glad to verify that fact). These people have hate, condescension, arrogance, prejudice, polarization and do not seek to understand anybody else besides their own narcissistic selves. They are simply beyond reason and therefore do not have a home here at My Own Generous Orthodoxy. Plain and simple.

We at My Own Generous Orthodoxy want to welcome all want to escape the rigid and narrow binary thinking of all kinds fundamentalism and engage in civil but passionate debate about religion, spiritually, theology, monotheism and Christianity, to share big ideas among ourselves and most importantly to think critically about these things also, I extend a warm and long welcome here.