Category: Message Series

A Letter From Jesus To The LGBTQ Community

I love you,

My dreams are made of you—from first light to the setting of the sun.

All that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender—radiant shades and gleaming colors of the human tapestry—in every way, beautifully and wonderfully made. The stars, dull in comparison to your splendor.

To those special souls who bear these children, conceived by the moving of My Spirit bringing forth life—not just a life, but Light for all to see, exposing and revealing truth with every breath they breathe. Be it forever known in crystal clarity, you parent not just flesh and blood, but a cosmic awakening, pulsating from My creative majesty. Each one, a birthing from the throne so universe shaking—the mere truth of their divine being chases religious hearts out of deep-seated shadows, setting free poets and prophets of true love and Grace in waves the size of eternity. Yours is an honor bestowed, a high privilege—the threads of Mary and Joseph spooled and weaved into the adornments of your calling.

All that are gay, all that are lesbian, all that are bisexual, all that are transgender, all of every shade of heaven in between—My dreams are made of you.

You are My smile that extends as far as the east is from the west. You are the joy the Father graciously sets before My chest.

You are the laughter that can’t be contained from the depths of My belly.

You are warmth of a winter’s fire, the breeze of a summer’s shower.

You are the echo of my voice through a river of mountains. You are the stream of sheer jubilation, welling up from My eternal fountain.

You are the delight that sends Me love-drunk into the streets. You are the pulse moving through My veins with every heart beat.

Forever and ever and ever I say—My dreams are made of you.

I know the hurt, the skin melting pain, the soul stripping floggings of condemnation. When I was ridiculed and rejected by My own bigoted family—there I was thinking of you. When I cried over Jerusalem, begging to be understood and simply accepted—there I was living as you. When I was in the garden, on bended knee, begging for divine reprieve, my cup flowing over with doubts and hopelessness—there I was scared, just like you. When I was left to die on a religiously conspired cross, murdered in body, mind, and spirit, crucified to death by ignorance and hate, and even good people who remain silent and unengaged—there I was dying as you.

There has never been a time you have ever been alone.

You are not the forsaken.

You are not an abomination.

You are not a sin that needs reformation.

You owe no apology, no explanation, no verse, nor spiritual transformation.

This is your time, this is your permission, this is your affirmation, this is My decision.

Be you, be fully you—for My sake, for my Name, for my Fame throughout all the universe—be you, unashamed.

Everything I am, everything I make—everything that is of mine is forever and freely yours. You are the diamonds from which dreams are made—extravagantly, specifically, and intentionally created.

Bend your ear, release your soul, I’m shouting from the heavens—from the edge of My seat, the tip top of My heart.

Listen to the cry of My trinity, Three in One wrapped in infinity.

My dreams are made of you.

My dreams are made of you.

My dreams are made of—you.

 

Love,

Jesus  (he/him/she/her/they/them)

.

Grace is brave. Be brave.

 

Check out Chris’ latest book, Stupid Shit Heard In Church available on Amazon (link below)…

What people are saying:

“After reading just a few chapters, I had to schedule an appointment with my therapist, it’s that good.”

“This book is changing  the world.”

“Profound, life-changing; that says it all!”

 

Conservative Evangelical Christianity, The Death Of America

There’s an unsettling of the Spirit moving across the land—the culmination of years of religious Christian corruption. Good people everywhere are sensing it deep within. What for many has been a growing source of suspicion is now becoming a for certain certainty.  A time of emerging clarity is upon us as the curtains are drawn open and the true Wizard is revealed. Yet, there will be no clicking of the heels to save us now. For the American dream is being diabolically hijacked into the Conservative Evangelical scheme—God help us all.

In fact, in my estimation, there is truly no greater evil being wielded upon the earth. The false gospel of Evangelical Christianity has long been eroding our society, creating spiritual junkies, and asserting a white male heterosexual imperialism and privilege into every segment of our living. Its prescriptions for sin management only serve to further increase it, leaving good people spiritually strung out, hypocritical, self-righteous, and addicted to the poison, not the cure. With an insistence upon believing that God is angry, vengeful, and condemning of a sin-ladened humanity, followers spiritually justify a self-deputization to police society as they live out their perceived calling to convert the world to their privileged ideology, lest we all burn in hell. No matter the nobility of some with their good intentions and heart, the true aspirations, pursuits, and passions of much of conservative Evangelical Christianity are not true freedom and equality for all, but religious power and control for them. In their minds and hearts, the ushering in of the Kingdom of God is in reality, the ushering in of a white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical dominance in all places and things.

In contrast, a brown-skinned Jewish-born Jesus was crucified for bringing a scandalous message and manifestation of true Divinity that levels the playing field for all. For Grace is the great equalizer—none are better, only different—no matter your color, creed, orientation, gender, age, or status. Everyone is valued equally, all are given freedom completely, and no one is left condemned, unaccepted, or without affirmation, dignity, and community. Our best and worse performances are rendered powerless to sway that hands of God as our wholeness and purity before Her are irrevocably secured. Love is the very nature of God, and Grace is the only way of true Life. Faith is merely awakening to Grace by the power Christ’s faith within us. For Jesus came to destroy the ways of power, control, discrimination, violence, greed, and self-righteousness that empower the religious spirit who can so easily seduces us all—emptying Himself completely to reveal our true beauty and capacity to embrace what unites, heals, and connects us all—Love.

Sadly, as it was in the beginning, it is now most assuredly. The very same unconditional Love that brings heaven to the broken and emancipation to the captive, feels like hell to the religious, sending them into tailspins of furiously frustrated angst and rebellion—willing to crucify Jesus yet again wherever His truth threatens their evil empire. For the greatest menace to the conservative Evangelical Machine that seeks to overrun our planet is the emergence of true freedom and equality for all. That Jesus loves all, redeems all, embraces all, affirms all, and blesses all with heaven’s unlimited supply of equality and freedom is their greatest fear, trigger, and vulnerability—rendering their monstrous system of faith to be impotent, fraudulent, and devoid of true Life. That’s why nearly every conservative Evangelical interpretation of Scripture, personification of God, and assertion in society is desperately bent on diluting and covering up this revelation of Grace and its manifestation upon the earth, and quickly replacing it with a conditional religious self-righteous brand of believing—not because they are lovers of Truth, but because they are worshippers of power. For violence, hatred, bigotry, discrimination, greed, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and evil are not intrinsic to being truly human, they’re actually common byproducts of being truly religious—subhuman.

This is the real cataclysmic spiritual battle being waged all around us that is now infiltrating and threatening the future of our country like never before. For what is the greatest obstacle to the full fruition of white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical dominance? A nation founded and anchored upon the sure premise that true equality, dignity, and freedom is for all, by divine design and sanction. For no one desires to commandeer the American flag, hijack our constitution, and fashion Jesus into the hood ornament of their world bulldozer more than white male heterosexual right-wing conservative Evangelical Christianity. In fact, the truth is, “Make America Great” is Evangelical code for “Make America Ours.” And not just America—the entire world.

My friend, most everything you see happening is leading towards these ends. Open your eyes to see and your ears to hear. The underlying reason why racism still lives and thrives, sexism is still rampant, homophobia and transphobia increases, kneeling for the national anthem is rendered a deplorable crime, the drums of war keep pounding, public school systems are being undermined, human rights are being dismissed, churches raise the Christian flag above our national flag, wars on drugs are declared that end up disproportionately imprisoning the black population and using them for free labor, foundational Christian morals and values are conveniently suspended in order to elect a white, male, heterosexual, Evangelical supporting President, and conservative Christians are charged with the mandate to assert their faith and values into every sector of society in order to win dominance. All of this is for one purpose, and one purpose alone—the full fruition of a white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical Christian Empire, even to the destruction of America and beyond.

All this talk about sin, Jesus, morality, truth, biblical faithfulness, fairness, and societal health coming from the bloviations of right-wing conservative Christianity—don’t be fooled and bite from the dark fruits dangling off their tree. It’s all smoke and mirrors to disguise the real agenda hissing in the shadows. For if it were all about Jesus, sin, hell, and scriptural faithfulness, conservative Evangelical Christianity would be fully immersed and passionately engaged in all things opposite of what we see so many of them pursuing—and most of all, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, imperialism, bigotry, violence, white-privilege, greed, and self-righteousness would be rendered the greatest of sins and cease to be legitimized within American Christianity, resulting in it all becoming largely dismantled in our society.

Yet sadly, that day is not here, and likely not forthcoming. For the tenets of true freedom, divine dignity, and equality for all upon which this nation was birthed, are the ultimate obstacles to conservative Evangelical Christianity’s battle to take the hill and Lord itself over our country. For at the end of the day, what matters most is that true freedom, divine dignity, and equality for all is contrary to the conservative Evangelical agenda of white male heterosexual power and privilege. In fact, perhaps nothing is more repulsive to the Evangelical religious system than people living free to believe, worship, and pursue happiness outside of their control and without compliance to their creeds, especially those who in doing so would foster the dismantling of white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical power and privilege.

Connect the dots, look beyond the obvious, and engage the spiritual discernment the mind of Christ within you affords. Theological, spiritual, moral, and religious error, slight of hand, and brainwashing of this magnitude are never achieved unintentionally.

Grace is brave. Be brave.

Get Off My Back and Open your Ears, You Bible Thumping Jerk Weed

Ain’t going to lie, I have grown so tired of people getting all up in their Bibles in order to get all up in my face.

Pushers and pimps of their packaged prescriptions on what “the Bible says.” Facebook pics with font abusing, clever little sayings touting their position on what they are against, fresh off the leather-bound, name engraved, coffee table press. For Christ’s sake, clip art and sun ray scenes are so 80’s. Enough already, people. Enough.

Rubber hammer them in the knee cap with a theological thought outside the black and white… and bam… there goes another knee jerk, Christian shoe up in your crotch. Their Apollo 13 wired spiritual capacitors can’t compute, overrun with revelation that doesn’t fit their denominationally predefined algorithms. Brain sparks fly, neck veins flare, alarms sound, “Houston, we have a problem.”

Yes, we do have a problem, damn straight we do, starting with the fact that exhibit “a,” the Bible doesn’t “say” jack squat. Hello, hello, is this microphone on?  I think I recall Jesus saying repeatedly regarding the “Bible” of His time, “You have heard it was said, but I say unto you.”  Notice, He doesn’t declare,”it” said, he says, you “heard” it was said.

Why? Because the Bible doesn’t “say,” … it reads. The mistake being made (the only mistake being made) Jesus pointed out to those gathered, was in their hearing. Oh snap, I hate it when Jesus rounds third base.

So let’s get real Christian. In fact, here’s an example.

Throughout the New Testament, new experiences with people are the driving force that led key Christians to ask the question, “have I read this right?”  No, it’s not some scholarly, exegetical orgy of dissecting a text that leads to the reexamination of a life issue, but rather new experiences with life, relationships, and flesh and blood that lead people like Peter and Paul to deep, theology altering questions of understanding regarding “what the Bible says.”

It was a sad state of affairs that the Jews, who experienced Pentecost and were the first Christians, did not believe the Gentiles could even receive the Gospel. Talk about inclusion issues. In fact, the growth of the first church was exclusively of Jewish people.  So much that Peter had to have an experience with God where He was led to begin to reevaluate his reading of a Biblical text about clean and unclean foods, a metaphoric communication of deeper issues regarding Jews and Gentiles that was about to play out.

Enter Cornelius.

Cornelius, a Gentile, was led to Peter because of his rumored spiritual experiences. Peter could not begin to fathom, it was so way beyond his window of perspective, that Cornelius could experience God. But once their bumpers were in the same parking lot, face to face, relationship to relationship, Peter was blown away by Cornelius’ receptiveness and spiritually capacity. After picking his jaw up off the ground, Peter, going against his original reading of the Biblical text, shared the Gospel and “boom, there it is,” new life for Cornelius.

Let’s just make sure you are getting the picture here, until that experience, Peter adamantly believed, along with the Jews, because of the way they “read” the scriptures, that the Gentiles had no access to Jesus and the Gospel, and even withheld the waters of Baptism because so.

Oh and by the way, the Gentiles, comprised of like 99% of the rest of the world. Yes, the Gentiles are you and me. Thankfully, Peter, Paul, and others, had the kahunas to ask the question, based on new experiences, “have we read this right?”

Truth be told, the more time spent on your high horse riding people like mules, using the Bible to try to kick and whip them onto your agenda… the more your ears are closed, your heart is hardened and life experiences lose their Spirit-led capacity to hold you over the text, demanding you ask one of most important questions… “have I read this right?”

So, get off my back (and everybody else’s) and open your ears. Cause right now, you got “jerk weed” written all over your forehead.  Your ignorance is making a circus out of this Christian thing and missing the heart and the spirit of Jesus and His Gospel. Come down from your pride, get outside your “church world” fence, and actually sit at the table of the people you hate, and the issues they harbor that you are so against.

Maybe then, you can hear the megaphone of Jesus trying to break in and penetrate over the noise of your evangelical earphones… “you have heard it was said, but I say unto you.

© 2024 Chris Kratzer

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