Actual Christianity

To begin with a simple pro-tip: making an observation about someone is not the same as judging them. If a person is a convicted criminal, it is merely factual to acknowledge them as such. Judgment enters the picture the moment intent shifts—when the goal becomes to diminish another person, to assert superiority, or to elevate oneself or one’s group above others. Any posture of hierarchy, any climb onto the proverbial high horse, signals the ego at work. This is why the Jim Crow era in America remains so profoundly troubling: a culture that defined itself—then and now—as a “Christian nation” openly embraced a doctrine of superiority that ran directly counter to the very teachings of the figure it claimed to follow. And it persists. Much of this sense of religious dominance stems from a misinterpretation of language in the gospels, particularly the verse that says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” For centuries, this line has fueled the belief that Christianity alone holds the key to truth, while in reality, Jesus was not positioning himself as a cosmic gatekeeper stationed at a toll booth to monitor the flow of souls into heaven. If reading those words contextually and spiritually he was pointing to a universal path of transformation, embodied in him but accessible to all, however, as with the rest of Jesus teachings, you absolutely cannot read much of his teachings literally as he taught consistently in metaphor, allegories and other figurative language. God, who is love, is not playing favorites with humans, that would make him just as tribalistic as egotistical humans. We already know his words were not intended to be literal as we have innumerable amounts of evidence of Non-Christians achieving this state of ego transcendence and accessing their oneness with the universe within. They were not Christians. Enlightenment aka accessing the kingdom of god (the universe) within has been realized across humanity by Buddhists, Hindus, mystics, and even those with no formal religion at all. The insistence that such transcendence is exclusive to Christianity is not born of truth but of ego: the desire to feel superior, to cling to the idea of a chosen status. Nothing reeks of ego more than an insistence that God is only on your team. This is further compounded by the fact that Christianity, as practiced today, has become so entangled in ceremonial distraction and theological convolution that very few of its adherents embody the enlightened state Jesus described. In other words, the institution claims to have the only correct map, yet its travelers rarely seem to reach the destination. Instead, the promise is deferred: “Not now, but after you die.” To complicate matters, modern Christians often recoil at words like enlightenment, ascended consciousness, or ego, as though vocabulary outside the official lexicon invalidates the experience itself. But truth is not confined to a club. The irony is that the supposed “clubs” are illusory altogether: there is only one. Humanity is that club, bound together in and by the universe itself. As Jesus taught, the kingdom of God—the infinite reality of oneness—is not found in sectarian boundaries or tribal claims of superiority. It is within us all.

Sadly, we live in a society where judging others superficially has become second nature. We casually judge and label people we find unattractive; ugly, trashy, slob, geezer, fatty, etc often without a moment’s pause or a single thought about our own flaws or qualities. On a related note, it’s become normal to walk past the homeless and hungry without empathy, dismissing their situation with callous assumptions as if they somehow deserve their suffering, never stopping to consider the countless, complex reasons that may have led them there. This is also a judgement in which our egos insist on separation between us via declaring our superiority to others in our consciousness rather than an embrace of our oneness and unity when observing them. We’ve been conditioned by a beauty-obsessed culture to evaluate others superficially. But instead of participating in that toxic reflex, we must train ourselves to catch ourselves in the act and respond differently. Choose to earnestly affirm the inherent beauty in everyone. Recognize that we are all radiant children of the universe, reflections of the same divine source, equally beautiful, equally worthy. We are not separate. We are one.

It is spiritually healthy to affirm within your consciousness that you are neither superior nor inferior to any of your fellow human beings. Every thought of superiority, no matter how subtle, arises from the ego, the very root of all human suffering. When any knee-jerk judgment arises, replace it with a declaration of unity: They are beautiful and equal to me. They are my brother, my sister. We are one in the eyes of the universe. I accept my oneness with all humans I encounter, and with those I may never meet. I ask the universe and the Holy Spirit to dissolve every illusion of separation, for such divisions are merely projections of the ego.

It is striking and troubling to hear people claim we are a “Christian society rooted in Christian values” and then in the same breath speak with judgment, cruelty, and contempt. This hypocrisy should compel us to reflect deeply. We must catch ourselves in the act of judging, and with increasing self-awareness, begin to unlearn these harmful habits. Only then can we begin to walk the path that Jesus actually taught, a path of compassion, humility, and love. Each time we resist the impulse to judge and instead choose understanding and empathy, we take a step closer to recognizing our shared humanity and our deeper unity with the universe itself. Through conscious effort, self-awareness, and empathy, we can begin to shed the toxic habits that separate us and instead live in harmony with the truth: that we are all part of the same divine family.

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