Neighborhood Church

Christianity is OFF if You Think You Will:
- find power to make the various events in your life “go better” OR
- find the truth, so that you will have the tools to straighten out other people OR
- find answers to all of life’s questions.

The Spirit offers us personal change, quite literally taking on the character of Jesus (God Himself), as we leave behind our merely natural way of living.

God is happiness by His Essence… Happiness is called man’s supreme good.
Thomas Aquinas

The golden rule is a weird, weird thing… but the universe, somehow, seems to be constructed this way. The most selfish thing you can do is to forgive people. The most selfish thing you can do is to give money away. The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people. You’ll ‘get’… that’s weird…There’s a paradox that is core, the universe is built on this weird logic… The most selfish thing you can do is to be self-less… I think there are probably evolutionary reasons as to why this works, but this is so reliable, I am guessing there is some other reason why this is so reliable.
Kevin Kelly

You are not able to easily connect with Higher Realities (divine love and goodness) when your primary focus is on pleasing your body.

1. If you are tempted to overly indulge, know that your being is hungry for God.

2. If you are tempted to look down on those who struggle with self-control, know that you are lacking a different form of spiritual self-control.

3. If you are tempted to simply avoid the world all together, know that this can easily backfire on you.

1. fasting from food
2. fasting from speaking
3. fasting from media

The more I… try to live on my own… what I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts….“Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself… Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideals, I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained.
C.S. Lewis

You have this fantasy, that you… just choose whatever you want freely… In reality, many of our choices, our desires, they are influenced by: cultural factors, political campaigns of propaganda, by biological processes in our body.
Yuval Harari