Transactional Beliefs, pt 1
I don't identify as a Christian but rather as an objective analyst juxtaposing claims and incongruencies against the rational axiom of how beliefs work. The Bible truthfully documents how furiously fucked up fast life becomes when we humans don’t believe in ourselves. It’s instantaneous — snap! It should be retitled, “The Book of Beliefs” or “The Lies We Believe” since people believe the lies they were told about it.
What Jesus did was perform miracles large and small.
The top of what Jesus said was 1) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 2) Love your neighbors as yourself.
There’s no hierarchy for miracles. All were such flabbergasting, never-seen-before events that people couldn't perceive that all miracles temporarily suspend the laws of known physics.
My first thought upon discerning what miracles have in common with each other was the dichotomy separating science from religion is arbitrary. Both are describing the same thing, both are belief systems, both use language specific to their respective beliefs, both have a hierarchy system in which at the top sits the Pope, and select physicists at their top of the field.
At the top of religion’s hierarchy is a belief system about an invisible being called God. At the top of science’s hierarchy is a belief about an invisible force called Gravity. Each hierarchy claims to know it all works. “Do this, don’t do that,” from Religion, and “E=mc2”, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, from Science. Both are describing what one side labels God, and the other side labels as the primary force in the Universe, including Earth. Both have beliefs at their core.
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All beliefs are binary in respect to how we interpret what we can’t even see, and go to war over what we do see.
The Catholic Church is responsible for starting the war on science. It began with Galileo having to defend his logical, rationale explanation for the Church’s belief that the Universe revolved around the Earth which God made. How dare someone going against beliefs over 1,200 years old.
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All beliefs work in the same way: they agnostically self-reinforce instantaneously, creating feelings, thoughts, and actions which themselves create even more of the same.
We sow and reap by our beliefs. We manifest the invisible things we hope for. But if we don’t understand that anything is possible for those who believe that anything is possible, then they manifest scarcity. That scarcity begins and ends with “just a few things are possible, but first you have to do this”.
There isn’t a religion without that aforementioned condition of fulfilling prerequisites in order to trigger God’s blessings. When I looked at what Jesus used to trigger God’s blessing, I couldn’t find any. What I did find was nothing more than a belief that something had to trigger the physical manifestation of the things they didn’t believe were possible.
Disbeliefs work the exact same way as beliefs: they self-reinforce instantaneously, creating feelings, thoughts, and actions which themselves create even more of the same. Note that I omitted the word “agnostically”; it’s redundant in the context of disbeliefs, and misbeliefs.
Thus it comes as no surprise that those who believe in scarcity of any kind always manifest scarcity. The Bible is complete with stories scarcity, not enough of this, not enough of that. Those who believe in scarcity cannot help but manifest scarcity and are blinded by their rejection of Jesus unconditional reassurance that all things are possible for those who believe that such is possible.
Faith is the art of being mindful of that anything is possible when you let go of your disbeliefs.
Letting go begins with your feelings. Whatever has made you feel bad about yourself is what you need to let go of first. You know you’ve let go when negative thoughts and their associated feelings no longer control your thinking and feeling.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of beliefs, because regardless of your beliefs’ leaning into a binary (one or the other, but not both) insistence that it’s always been either or, you will manifest exactly what you believe. Because most don’t believe that to be the case, they manifest accordingly and don’t recognize it. Yes, this aspect is confusing.
Plato Mansplains
Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ describes the above dichotomy as people not being able to recognize objects from their shadows. Shadows occur when a solid object comes between light and a surface. The allegory functions as an allegory about beliefs. Our beliefs are the objects, the manifestations are the shadows.
Did the shadow manifest independent of the believer’s beliefs? No. Did the shadow manifest anyways? Yes. Is the shadow what the believer hoped for? No.
If the answer is ‘no’, it’s because one has misbeliefs about how beliefs actually work. The primary misbelief is ‘there must be a way to trigger God’s blessings’. The primary trigger is and always has been ‘be morally pure as possible’. Being morally virtuous in order to receive God’s blessings is conditional love. It renders God as transactional in nature: If I do this, God will do that. Deus ex machina.
Do you see the temptations of Jesus in their proper light? That scripture is not transactional? Satan knows scripture better than you and on par with Jesus and his fellow Rabbis. The difference between Jesus’ interpretation and Satan’s is Jesus’ boils down to 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. As you do it unto the least of among you, you reveal what you think about who or what God is. Satan’s interpretation is transactional: perform an action in order to receive what is already yours.
Hey, if it's in the Bible it's legit. Quoting scripture in order to manipulate another person to conform to your beliefs is just as evil as doing nothing while your neighbor suffers. See: Jesus heals the paralytic at Capernaum.
Believing that Jesus lived a sinless life is the mark of a transactional belief about God. Believing that sin is moral failure traps one into a transactional belief about God. There are Bible studies, worship sessions, prayer groups, and should you miss a devotional, well, you know, tsk, tsk.
Miracles are merely the physical manifestation of what Love does. The most morally virtuous person cannot manifest miracles, not because Jesus was sinless and there’s never been a morally perfect person, but because morality — by its very transactional nature — cannot perform miracles. What Jesus did in performing his miracles was manifesting the power of his beliefs and said that we will do greater works than he did.
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Jesus didn’t include a single requirement to perform miracles other than that one believe that it was merely possible! How is it then, that every single religion I’ve been exposed to says that I’ve got to believe in God when Jesus said that I’ve got to only believe that it’s possible!? To promote anything other than ‘Love your neighbors as yourself’ is to promote a transactional belief system focused solely on morality. God is Love, not Law.
Transactional beliefs are merit-based and thus are easily exploited. You do this, God will do that. Those who believe this always manifest shadows, not the the real thing that cast shadows. How could they see the real thing when they believe and manifest shadows.
The recipients of the miracles of Jesus did nothing to qualify for them. Sometimes they believed, other times they simply witnessed something far more different than they were accustomed to. The disciples were scared to death, pun intended, to see Jesus walking on the water during a violent storm. Peter musters up enough chutxpah to try it himself and immediately sinks. Why he sinks: his belief is transactional in nature. He doesn't really believe that anything is possible due the constant presence of death and fear. Jesus grew up in that same fear-saturated environment, where the religious authorities oppressed their fellow Jews by mandating obedience to whatever laws they put forth.
See, the Jews believed, like Eve, that obedience to laws would make them morally virtuous. And that by being morally virtuous they incur God's blessings. But read Genesis 3:1-5 and it's clear as day that God's blessings were already theirs; they merely believed otherwise. They believed a lie and instantly they felt just like Eve felt: naked and afraid. Vulnerable. And so they doubled down so many times with the whole moral virtue=blessings that they lost sight of the real thing: love your neighbor. Moral behavior is symptomatic of love...
...and miracles are a symptom of unconditional love. Miracles are the opposite of sin. When you believe the right things about yourself, there's no confusion about the power of belief.
Holy Honest Unbelief!
The man with the demon-possessed son has been so far past the end of hope for so long that he sobs, “Help me in my unbelief!” Jesus heals his son anyways.
Wow! right? But that isn’t what blows away the disciples. It’s the fig tree that Jesus cursed the day before that does. It was dead, withered up by its roots. Jesus was hangry, knew it wasn't fig fruit season, and curses the tree. That’s what excites the disciples. Not the trauma of a young boy writing on the ground in the grips of a epileptic seizure being healed. Nope, it's this dead fig tree, probably because they've seen one before. Nevertheless, Jesus uses it anyways to tell the disciples that they can do what Jesus never did: say to that mountain ‘be removed and cast into the sea’.
It’s telling that Jesus illustrates the power of beliefs with the most outlandish thing possible: tell a mountain to be removed. I guesstimate that more rationalizations have been made about this statement than any other miracle associated with Jesus. Nobody really believes Lazarus was raised from the dead. I know this because if someone believed with all of their heart, they would raise the dead and we would hear about it, and that would cause more people to believe and raise the dead and perform lots of other miracles, because now that this possibility has been done by many different people outside the hierarchy, it goes viral.
Instead we have been bombarded by transactional beliefs that the one thing, that the one mountain we desperately want removed, will never happen. Transactionalists will chalk this up as being a part of God’s plan. It was a prominent transactionalist Christian who wrote on paper and gave it to me, “The reason you are deaf is because you didn’t have enough faith.” But Jesus says if one believes with all their heart, it shall be done for them. If one believe with all their heart, the laws of physics will be temporarily suspended.
Love is the source of belief. Love bears, believes, hopes, endures all things. When you concern yourself with morality, and a sinless Jesus, you will manifest shadows. When you sow Love, you sow all things are possible and you manifest extraordinary things that are not possible by being morally virtuous.
Note: I’m a lifelong believer in transactional God. I prayed many times—as did numerous others—for my hearing to be restored. It never was. When I began accepting who I was, the focus shifted to becoming more of who I was born to be: insanely curious and deeply encouraging. I began to function socially better, and overall better without my hearing. Seven years after that began, I happened to discover how beliefs work. None of this would be possible if I had remained in transactional beliefs.
Having figured out how beliefs work, lots of things became crystal clear. So much so that I know I’ll spend the rest of life detailing what those things are, but time is running short because the top transactionalists are hell-bent on making every prophecy in Revelations come true. They literally believe that they can pre-empt the return of Christ. According to their interpretation of Revelations, Jesus returns to undo and repudiate everything he stood for! It’s only logical that Evangelicals will participate in nuking the cities they hate to prove their point: believe like they do, or suffer the consequences. This is exactly what the Pharisees did back then. They oppressed their fellow Jews and then blamed them for the problems that they helped create. Their solution is the same as it ever was: do this thing like we tell you to, and all will work out. If it doesn't work out then, clearly, you didn't follow our instructions to a 'T'. And then a new condition will be placed and its failure will be upon you. And once again they will make their money. This is why the most recent iteration was called ‘plandemic’.
Rather than get caught up in the things I cannot control, I choose to believe that Love will win out. Love is the very thing transactionalists and Evangelicals will never promote because it is diametrically opposed to transactional morality. The chasm that Jesus describes is the chasm between shadows and their objects, between Love and Morality. If there were no separation between the two, there would be no shadow, just Love itself. However, it is one’s belief in morality that causes one to not to recognize Love’s shadow takes the form of morality, and that morality is not the real thing.
Love is.
How transactional beliefs work. Image: Robbie Sproule from Montreal, Canada