NETWORKING GOALS
The ultimate goal of the Religion Detox Network is to help people successfully transition from being Old/First Covenant religionists to New Covenant disciples. To be successful, they must completely extricate themselves from their old religious practices and relationships while making new friends who are on the same kind of journey or are contemplating it.
To help people make these radical adjustments, the Religion Detox Network has the short term goal of helping individuals gain some level of comfort with the fact that God has engaged them in a very unique process that is the same for them as it was for Abraham: Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you.
But God is not telling people to leave their physical country, relatives and house. Rather he is telling them to leave their religious heritages, families and friends that they have known and cherished and go to a new, unknown place which is fully spiritual and not religious.
As we said in Freedom, leaving religion is a very scary thing to do because it is full of uncertainty about what lies ahead and about the way those who are left behind will react. Many who have already detached from religion have already experienced the pain of rejection that accrues to those who dare challenge and reject religious leaders and doctrines. Those who contemplate leaving their religion do so only after carefully calculating the costs of broken relationships. They may have already observed scorn and rejection that others experienced when they left religion and they can easily imagine how they will be treated when they leave. They are beginning to understand God’s warnings about a man’s enemies being family and friends in their religious community.
Only God can help overcome these uncertainties as he gives wisdom along the way. But the journey can be made somewhat easier for people who learn about the journey from someone who has already started out on the journey and/or make the journey with someone who also struggles to keep traveling despite the uncertainty and fear. Going with someone on a journey like this proves the merits of the proverb in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12:
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. 10 For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. 11 Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? 12 And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.
This proverb is about living in community. In these modern times we call it fellowship. In the Religion Detox Network, we call it Networking.
In the Religious Detox Network, we have tried to provide a vehicle for people to identify fellow travelers on the same journey. After that it is up to each traveler to make connections with other travelers so they can make the journey together. That is the purpose of the networking features of the Religious Detox Network.
Having made those network connections, Religious Detox Network members can then pursue the long-term goal of becoming New Covenant disciples who live in freedom from bondage to religion. It is not an easy goal but it is possible and will be accomplished if people do not weaken in the face of challenge of overcoming religious giants (i.e. religious leaders) just like the Israelites were challenged to do in the wilderness, and of utterly destroying powerful religious enemies characterized as the nations of Canaan that occupied the Promised Land before Israel arrived there.
These are very real challenges (God calls it warfare) that are difficult enough when fighting alongside others and all but impossible to do when fighting alone. The networks that are created are the little armies of New Covenant disciples taking on the prevailing Old/First Covenant religions that currently occupy the religious landscape. They are the
USE THE NETWORK
Members of the Religious Detox Network can find others who are on the same journey by creatively using networking tools available in the Religious Detox Network. Here are a few of the benefits of networking:
|
Moderator’s Note: We don’t like using the term “members” to identify people who join this network because it sounds too much like religion where people become members of a church or synagogue, attend regularly, and contribute financially to the organization. We don’t want to reinforce that kind of behavior because that is what we are trying to get away from.
Nevertheless, we use the term “member” here because the software used to create Religion Detox Network compels us to do so.
People who choose to become members may do so with confidence that Religion Detox Network will not exploit their member status in any way. They will not receive advertisements for products or solicitations for money. There will be no invitations for members to attend Religion Detox Network conferences or to subscribe to other publications. Members completely control the kind of communications they receive.
CAUTIONS
If you don’t want to make this journey alone, you will probably need to take some chances and get creative about making connections with other fellow travelers. Remember, anyone, even those who are Still Religious can become members of the Religion Detox Network.
When you report more than your first name in your “Profile Details” in your membership account, you create the risks of identifying yourself as someone who is different from the way that friends, family and other religious people have historically thought about you. If you have not already shared some of your thinking about religion with them before, they will probably be shocked, and perhaps even angry or betrayed to learn these things about you. Therefore, be prepared for some adverse responses from these people because you pose a threat to their religious security.
With these cautions in mind, you might want to be careful at first to report too much about yourself in your “Profile Details.” Remember that you can come back any time and change the things you report there and the visibility of each profile field (i.e. from All Members to Everyone.) All you need to do is click on “Change.”
The trade-off here, of course, is that the more you report about yourself in “Profile Details,” the more information other Religion Detox Members in your area have available to them to help them evaluate you as a potential candidate for networking.
POSSIBILITIES
On the plus side, disclosures you make about religion might open some doors for discussion about sensitive religious issues with people you do not know. On the other hand, you might be criticized and/or challenged to explain why you think the way you do by people whom you do know. Knowing that, you will want to be prepared to support your opinions with scripture. Who, knows, you might open the eyes of others to understand the Bible more clearly also.
Another good thing that might come from making your feelings and attitudes about religion known is that you open up the possibility that others who have been hiding their feelings and attitudes about religion will be encouraged that they are not alone. This opens up the possibilities for development of new relationships that might replace old relationships that could suffer because you do not think and feel about religion like your family and friends do. It also opens the potential to engage in serious Bible study with new, like-minded friends.
A common caution these days is to always be careful and use discernment when making connections with strangers. It is a sad commentary on the world in which we live, but bad stuff can happen when we are not careful with private information. So use common sense when opening yourself up to new relationships. Anyone who finds that someone who has subscribed to Religion Detox Network is misusing it in any way should advise the Moderators who will take action as necessary.
When members reach out to connect with other members, the network has the potential to influence the entire world of religion for good. Who knows, there might be people around the world who would benefit from the insights and experiences posted in Religion Detox Network forums. And who knows how they might be encouraged to make their own breaks from religion when they observe how many others are doing so successfully.
DON’T GET RELIGIOUS ABOUT NOT BEING RELIGIOUS
It seems to be true that people in all cultures in all eras have an irrepressible tendency to create religion. In doing this they create gods, make rules for worship and elevate leaders who can speak to their gods for them and speak on behalf of their gods to them. This has been and still is a problem for Judaism and Christianity like it is for all other religious cultures.
It is an unfortunate reality that the tendency to create religion will also be present to some degree in people who are attracted to Religion Detox Network. They may claim to have no religion or be done with religion, but when they start networking with others who think like them, they are susceptible to creating another religion to fill the void that religion previously satisfied. This tendency to create religion has been a problem for God since the beginning and still is a problem for people whom he has delivered from religion.
A big part of the problem is that the only way people know how to relate to God is through religion. That is how they were raised and that is how they see everyone else relate to God. With this paradigm firmly embedded in the minds and hearts of ex-religious people as well as currently religious people, there is great risk that even ex-religious people will back-slide into religious habits once they start networking through these forums and other groups that they might create.
The caution here is to be very mindful of this tendency. It is possible to make a religion out of being non-religious. This can happen whether alone or in relationship with others, but is much more likely to happen when relationship groups grow. As the number of people in a group increases, logistics become an issue. And when there is a need to plan and organize, someone in the group will usually emerge as a leader to manage whatever needs to be managed. Soon there will need to be rules for when to meet, what to do while meeting and so on. It may all happen in a home with only a few people instead of a church or synagogue, but there is always a danger that any group will sooner or later come to function as religion. And whenever a gathering becomes religious with rules and leaders, that gathering begins steering away from what God wants to what people want.
All the stuff of rules and leaders is the stuff of Old/First Covenant religion. God understands that because he inaugurated that covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. But that covenant was only a temporary covenant on the way to the Promised Land where the New Covenant would be established.
There is much more to say about these covenants that ex-religionists would do well to study. In the meantime, they would do well to consider these scriptures:
Jeremiah 31:31-34: “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
1 John 2:27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
Galatians 3:1-5: You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? 2 This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain -if indeed * it was in vain? 5 So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?
Galatians 5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.