Breaking the Silence on Bigotry

This episode takes an unflinching look at the state of freedom in America, highlighting pressing issues of bigotry and the necessity of mutual respect. We discuss the implications of Christian nationalism in our governance and contrast it with foundational American values.

• Navigating feelings of anxiety and unease 
• The conflict of bigotry and the pursuit of rights 
• Examining the rise of Christian nationalism in government 
• The importance of diversity and understanding in society 
• Unpacking love and its role in building better communities 
• How to create a future of mutual respect and acceptance 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 2:28 Navigating Personal and Global Changes
• 3:58 The Struggle for Equal Rights
• 6:18 The Reality of Government Control
• 8:13 The Importance of Diversity and Understanding
• 10:48 Love and Responsibility in Society

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:59

Welcome everyone. I'm Richard Ravenbrook. Welcome back to another episode of Finding Our Way Home. You know, the last 30 days has been a pretty rough one, hasn't it? It has been filled with anxiety and depression, with feelings of uneasement to anger and frustration.

Speaker 1: 1:29

It's not only are we going through a change personally, spiritually, not only is there a shift, but we have these situations going on around the world. In our country, it seems like bigotry and racism. We have states that are literally removing people's rights as we speak, removing people's rights as we speak, forcing women, forcing them to do whatever they will with their bodies. We have governments that are reneging and backing out of their treaties and deals, betraying one another, where sometimes it feels, like right now, that we don't even know where we're going. We don't know where we're headed. Everything, seemingly, has changed, and not for the good. But yet I see on social media, I see so many people still in support of a man that I just can't. There are no words to say. There's no words that can possibly understand how people can support what is happening right now. No religion, no opinions, no, anything can give any kind of value, how you put that, any kind of power to their opinion, any kind of substance because, especially here in the United States, even our pledge says freedom to all, but we see that that's not true. We've seen it years ago with everyone, from Native Americans to our Afro-Americans, to whoever it may be, martin Luther King Jr and his. They had to march over and over and over and fight just to receive their rights. Now we have gay rights and trans rights and and they too are having to fight for their basic human rights in this country, a country that has promised and vowed from day one to be.

Speaker 1: 4:34

That's what it was all about was freedom, freedom to choose, freedom to live as you chose to live, that no government would tell you how you had to live, what religion that you had to be and what you would do within this life of yours. But look around. That's not true. That's not reality. That's not reality in this country and it hasn't been this reality for years. Trade. We have been brainwashed to believe that we serve the best country in the world and that we have the only freedom in the world. But people that's not true, only people that have never been anywhere else believe that. Why do you think they remove things like citizenship and classes like that from school, because they don't want you to understand, just like the current administration right now is trying to make changes, thinking that the president has the ultimate authority of what and how to determine a law. But don't we realize that we have three branches of government? And no, our president doesn't have the sole authority Of how a law is interpreted or how a right is interpreted.

Speaker 1: 6:17

Our country has literally fallen apart. Fallen apart not to a form of socialism that helps people, not a form of even communism, but we are falling under a government of only rich white men that use terms like Christianity to control the people. It has nothing to do with religion, it has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with control these men and Christian nationalism. The only reason it do with control these men in Christian nationalism, the only reason it exists, is control, because it controls women and it controls all those that they don't understand and they don't like, and it puts them away in a little box where they don't have to mess with them. They don't talk about freedom, because the only place that they have, or the only people that have, freedom are the ones that fit within their narrative, and that is white, straight men and women. No one else fits in with that category within Christian nationalism. But this is America, and men and women died to give us what we have today, this freedom, this diversity that we have.

Speaker 1: 7:59

And what is it where people are so scared of what they don't understand? You know, our problems in this country are not centered around gay rights or trans rights or anybody's rights. They're actually centered around those that want to strip people of those rights, because therein is the problem. We don't need to get rid of the ones that are asking for rights. We need to get rid of the ones that are trying to take the rights. We need to rid this country completely and utterly of bigotry and racism and any theology, any ideology that separates people on basis of anything other than character and how they live in society. I mean, are they a good person? Do they try their best to live in society at peace? If so, why do we harass them? Why do we try to hurt them? Why do we try to strip things from them solely because we don't understand? Or a book that we don't even know the author to can't guarantee who the author is that we know has had over 30,000 alterations was written by a gay man that wrote about demons and witchcraft. But we want to hold this book above all things and we want to suppress the people using that book.

Speaker 1: 9:57

When your own Jesus said love your neighbor as I have loved you, when your own Jesus said love your neighbor as I have loved you, what does that mean? It means, even though you are full of mistakes, even though you are not even close to what would be considered holy or godly, I love you anyway. But we can't seem to do that to people, can we? When we don't agree with them, well, we love them. We just don't love them. But that's not what Jesus said, was it? The Old Testament God and the New Testament God are two entirely different gods, and I'll tell you that right here and now. And people will argue that fact. But if you look it up in your research, a lot of people will back it up Because it just doesn't fit. Have you ever noticed how the Old Testament God is full of wrath and jealousy and anger, but the New Testament is completely the opposite. It talks about what is love, but yet jealousy doesn't fit in with that. You know we have a problem with people.

Speaker 1: 11:26

How do we want to say this and you want to. You know you want to try to be at peace with all people. You want to create a system that honors all belief and all religions and traditions, to allow people to be who they are, because we all came from different places, we all had different cultures, and we need to honor that, we need to appreciate that, we need to respect that and the fact that we've all come together in this one country under one roof. Basically, and the fact that we've all come together in this one country under one roof, basically, we have to find a way to live in harmony with each other, and the only way we can do that is a mutual respect of each other, though we automatically understand that we're different. We automatically understand that our beliefs may not coincide or align with other people's beliefs, but they don't have to be. They don't need to be If we respect each other. You know, if we know that what we do offends someone, then why do we do it in public? Because we want to offend them or because we don't care if it offends them? Where do we go as a people when we begin to understand that we don't want to offend anybody and that's not in a weak sense, but in an honorable sense, because then we'll get to the point to where we're all living together in harmony, working together in harmony, understanding our differences but not letting our differences separate us, because we're not pushing each other's ideas and theologies and traditions on each other, we're not ridiculing each other and telling each other that I'm right and you're wrong, but rather we simply let be and let the gods handle the rest.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Just as Jesus said, love thy neighbor as thyself. How simple is that? I don't care what religion you are. If you believe that that man existed at one time or another and you believe that statement is true, then, regardless of whether you're a pagan, a witch, a Muslim or Hindu, whoever you are, if you believe that, following that phrase, that sentence, love thy neighbor as God loves you. How simple that is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You want freedom, don't you? You want the ability to choose, don't you? You want to live your life. You want to be able to live your life without ridicule, without persecution, without hate, without having to defend yourself or defend your beliefs. You just want to live and be in harmony with each other, with, with your neighbors, with your you know, your, your employees at your co-workers, your government officials.

Speaker 1: 15:08

But we've got so many people trying to play God, especially right now, christian nationalists trying to push our radical Christian agenda in our schools, like they have for centuries all over this world, when they came through and swept through and mass slaughtered millions, brainwashing people into believing that there was only one way to this so-called heaven. And that's absolutely not true. You know, christianity didn't get where it is because of its theology. It got to where it is due to violence and murder and oppression. Even here in the United States, christianity wants to claim that it is persecuted, but the very evidence of how many churches you'll find in every town and how many others that you will not Other religions For the most persecuted religion, the evidence doesn't show that. The evidence shows the direct opposite of that. It shows that Christianity is the least persecuted and the most tailored to they don't have to pay taxes A billion dollar business corporations that absolutely get through without assisting its own country within it, but yet wants to invade our laws with its beliefs, wants to invade our laws with its beliefs, wants to invade it, and a majority of what they speak about is irreverent and untrue, comes from mistranslated and misunderstood scriptures, and it's sad.

Speaker 1: 17:28

I come from ministry Before I deconstructed and became what I call the pagan preacher, which is simply a man that understands scripture but also has a heart for Mother Earth and of various magical practices. I'm an ominist. I understand that there is truth in more than one thing, that there is truth in many things, and if we look and we seek we can find them. A lot of people see the pagan preacher as a contradiction, but it's actually the very opposite. It is the perfect mix of spiritual truth, because I know that there's some truth within the book we call the Holy Bible, but I also know that there's many mistranslations and many stories that have been taken out of context. I also understand the truth within Hinduism, within Muslim or Islamic, the Buddhist. I can understand the truth in many philosophies, and that's where we need to go as a world, as a country. We need to stop pushing one ideology, one theology, especially one that has done nothing but destroy this world.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Look around us, look around at all the countries that what they once were, before they became Christianized, all of us were pagan. All of us served our own gods or we served God in our own way, in our own fashion. Even our Native Americans had the great white spirit, but they believed in that. Everything had a spirit. All life has spirit. We all come from somewhere different and we are different. We all have genetic markers within us, our races, and within those races we all had different cultures and different gods Living in different places. Take a moment and just think about what I just said. How many people have betrayed their own cultures? About what I just said how many people have betrayed their own cultures, have betrayed their own traditions and accepted the religion of the oppressors that we accepted, the religion of those that murdered and slaughtered our for a God of love People? We've all been lied to.

Speaker 1: 20:33

If you take anything from this podcast today, it's right now. Is we see it in the White House? We've got a Christian task force that wants to pray over the president. We want to put Christianity back in schools and prayer back in schools. We want to hand out Bibles and we want to do Christianity back in schools and prayer back in schools. We want to hand out Bibles and we want to do all these different things and we want to ban abortion completely and we want to tell women what they can do and what they can't do and we want to do. We just want to put things all the way back to where it was, back in the 1800s, where it's just white men that have the power, right?

Speaker 1: 21:06

No, we won't go back back in the 1800s, where it's just white men that have the power, right? No, we won't go back. We won't go back to that stone age mentality of ignorance. Those of us that want to move forward in enlightenment know that we can't go back there, that all that is done in within this world is destroyed, cultures destroyed, traditions, destroyed, lives, destroyed, entire countries. It's time to get back to our own roots, your roots, their roots. Get back to your roots, to who you are, know who you are and be determined within this country that we're not going to settle with that.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Going back to one religion, because this country says that we won't be based upon one religion, but that we will be based upon the freedom of religion, that all people have the right to believe or not believe as they choose. And that's what we demand and that's what we stand on. We stand on honoring our promises. We stand on honoring our treaties and our agreements. We do not betray those that we've proved, that we have promised to protect. If we vowed to protect you, we will protect you to our last breath. That is a true American.

Speaker 1: 23:07

In this country, I see that we've lost that. We've lost what it means to be American, because you can't be left or you can't be right to be an American, because to be left or right means that you want to hinder the other side, and freedom comes without hindrance. See, the only way you can be a true American is to be bipartisan and agree to disagree that we all have different thoughts and ideas, but our laws will be based upon a neutrality and a balance of what is right and wrong for all people, that we all have rights given to us by our creator, whether that be one creator, two creators or many creators. We all have that right to live as we choose and to believe as we choose, and we will accept nothing less. The united states of america is about freedom, the freedom to choose. We will not accept a government telling women what to do with their bodies. We will not accept a religion trying to tell women what is right and wrong with their bodies. We won't accept any religion telling us what is right and wrong within our own lives. We don't care if you believe that gay rights are wrong or if trans rights are wrong.

Speaker 1: 24:50

You can keep your religion within the four walls of your church or may it be closed down entirely. If you cannot respect the masses within this country and respect the differences within this country, then we don't want you in this country anymore. We want people that understand the word love, truly understand that word, truly understand that it what it means to walk beside somebody. And I'm not telling you that you have to agree with what everybody does, but what you agree on Is the right Of everyone to choose for themselves. That's it. Everyone has the right to choose For themselves, and if you don't believe that, you're not an American and you don't believe that You're not an American and you don't belong here, go somewhere else. That forces theology, forces one religion upon people, if that's what you choose, but that's not America.

Speaker 1: 25:59

Now I understand this podcast is it's supposed to be about spirituality, but this is spiritual Because this is a spiritual war. This is a war because all of us, even myself, that have deconstructed Christianity and its evil roots, of what it's become, and I see it trying to go back to that, and I see many people's lives in jeopardy not just rights, but lives in jeopardy. We have to stop it. This administration must be removed or stopped in some way, some shape or form. It has to stop these Christian nationalists. We don't want them in our government. We'd like to not have them at all. But remember, we're America and they have the right to believe what it is they believe. But we don't want them in our government, and our own constitution says that that we will make no laws based upon one religion. It will understand that religion does not belong in schools, it does not belong in politics. It belongs separate from this world, just like your own Bible says to be separate from this world.

Speaker 1: 27:41

So many of you Christians have one foot in the world and one foot in your church and don't know where you want to go. You want to play God. You want to tell people how to live and how to do things, because you think that God just can't do it himself. I guess you want to tell everybody that God's in control, but for some reason or another, he needs you to intervene. Guess what he doesn't need you at all. What God needs us to do is simply to shut up, simply to let people live. Look in your mirror. Focus on yourself. Focus on your own life, your own salvation, your own morality, your own mortality. Focus on you and whatever that may be. Just focus on you and let your neighbors focus on them.

Speaker 1: 28:45

But then we come together. We understand that some things are in common interest. Well, we all want to eat. Well, we all want to be educated. Well, we all want to be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. These are things that we can do together. Whether you're a straight man or a trans man, or a gay man or a black man or a Chinese man, it matters not. Let us gain some enlightenment. Let us understand love for what it is. Let us bring back the real America. Be blessed everybody, and blessed be.