About Us

My background
In my youth I felt a certain urgency to understand the truth. I still do.
    
At one point, this led me to pursue a master’s degree in divinity at one seminary and to obtain it at another. I served various congregations as pastor over a period of 20 years.
     
Before, during, and after that time, I read the Bible.

I studied books on theology by Karl Barth and Jacques Ellul. They continue to inspire me.
     
I found the study of history compelling. I lived and traveled across the United States, Canada, and Europe to understand history better.
     
My understanding of the truth has grown as Jesus has freed me to share his truth, love, and vitality with others and has freed others to share these with me.
     
Most decisively, I've learned the truth through a decades-long relationship with Jesus Christ which he first established and has graciously chosen daily to renew with me.

Where we Christians and churches are today and what Jesus is calling us to do about it
 1. Jesus Christ sets us with him on the path of freedom which is based on truth and leads through love to eternal life.
Jesus Christ is the source, center, and goal of all freedom, truth, love, and vitality. Today he calls you and me to join him on the difficult path of freedom and from there to share the light of his truth, warmth of his love, and strength of his vitality with others as his witnesses. On each Lord’s Day, he especially wants to gather us Christians together in faith, build us up in love, and send us out in hope (as Barth put it).

2. Yet false gods continue to enthrall us with the path of power which is based on falsehood and leads through indifference to death.
Until freed by Jesus Christ, we humans were the unwilling victims and unknowing minions of powers of evil: Satan, false gods, and the Flesh. Throughout the ages and continuing today, our societies, cultures, and personalities have all been dominated by six particular false gods. To use their ancient Roman names, these gods are (1) Jupiter, god of politics; (2) Mars, god of war; (3) Vulcan, god of technology; (4) Venus, goddess of sex; (5) Pluto, god of money; and (6) Bacchus, god of consumption. Because the Romans believed that these gods lived on Mount Olympus, we may call them the Olympian gods. We may call the religion structured in terms of them Olympianity.

Olympianity is the world’s oldest, most popular, yet least recognized religion. It is the religion of power. Power is always based on falsehood: lies, yes, but mainly illusions. It demands indifference to Jesus Christ, other human beings, and God’s good creation. It always ends in despair, destruction, and death.

History’s greatest expression of power is today’s Global Technological System (GTS). The GTS is the most powerful achievement of the six conventional yet false Olympian gods and their most challenging counter-creation to God’s good creation. In our blind devotion to the Olympian gods, we humans have been working most diligently in constructing their GTS since 1750 with the beginning of the Technological Revolution in England.

Based as it is on power, the GTS is parasitic. All powers of evil—Satan, false gods, Flesh—have no vitality of their own, get none from God, so must suck it from us and from other humans and creatures through us. The GTS is their best means yet for doing so. Each day it grows more inescapable and yet requires the corruption of all global societies and cultures, the systematic exploitation of billions of human beings, and the destruction of God’s good creation.

Worse, the GTS is collapsing. The parasite has grown so large that it is killing the host. Its collapse began in 2008 and has been accelerating ever since. It will soon get unimaginably worse.

3. Even Christians have fallen under their spell.
Because the GTS is the greatest work of our devotion to the Olympian gods, it is all about power not freedom, falsehood not truth, indifference not love, and death not life. It intentionally seeks to control, limit, and destroy all faithful witness to the freedom, truth, love, and vitality of Jesus Christ. In this way, the GTS is meaningless.

Sadly, the six destructive gods and their meaningless GTS largely dominate Christians and the Church. We blindly devote ourselves to them and it. We absurdly cooperate with them in the destruction of our own witness to Jesus Christ. We enthusiastically yet foolishly renew their spell over us daily through our own addiction to Olympian media of communication (especially television).

4. But Jesus Christ is calling us to join him as prophetic witnesses in breaking their spell beginning with his Church.
Thanks be to God! Jesus refuses to let us go. Today he is calling you and me to join him as prophetic witnesses. He is blessing us with words of truth which, when shared by us with others, will be used by him to break the Olympian spell under which his churches currently labor. He seeks to free us, as Christians and churches, from the destructive Olympian gods and their parasitic, collapsing, and meaningless GTS.

5. Use this website to strengthen your prophetic witness to Jesus Christ for the good of his Church and praise of his name by:
(a) Getting much closer to God.
(1) Read, meditate on, and apply the Bible daily. The Bible is the clearest witness to Jesus ever written. Jesus still prefers to speak to us today through its normative words. We express our love for him best by daily reading his book with open minds and joyful hearts.

On the “Bible” page, I’ve listed over one hundred essays on a wide variety of biblical passages in biblical order. Use these essays to strengthen your own ability to discern the meaning and application of biblical passages. What is Jesus saying to you and your congregation through these biblical passages today?

Before reading an essay, read the corresponding biblical passage first. Develop your own understanding of it. Then compare your understanding with mine. Read other commentaries. Discuss the passage, and these various understandings, with at least one other prophetic witness. Develop a shared understanding. Then act on that understanding together. This last step is essential.

(2) Improve as a theological thinker. Fulfilling the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30) includes loving Abba with our whole mind. As Christians and congregations, we haven’t been doing that for some time. It is crucial we do so now. The Holy Spirit is enabling us to embrace this difficult task. Only in this way will Jesus, upon his return, find any faith on Earth (Luke 18:8).

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was the greatest Christian theologian of the 20th century: unsurpassed in his Christ-centeredness, biblical consistency, logical coherence, range, and depth. On the "Barth" page, I've listed summaries of dozens of sections from his monumental Church Dogmatics. Use these to strengthen your skill as a theological thinker. Then move on and read any of Barth's books yourself.

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) is the perfect companion to Barth. He shared Barth's theological point of view but, as a professor of law, history, and sociology, he supplemented it with what still remains, at this late date, the most incisive analysis of the GTS. Exercise your theological thinking by critically engaging the essays on the "Ellul" page. Being guided by Jesus Christ, through the Bible, with the help of Barth and Ellul would do us and our congregations no end of good.

"Topics" serves as a glossary for the most important yet unusual words which I use in my essays. It also lists essays on a variety of subjects in alphabetical order to make them easier to find. Use them to clarify your own witness to Jesus. Then develop a shared understanding of that witness with at least one other prophetic witness and live it.

(3) Enjoy a lively sense of history. History” is full of people, places, events, and works of creativity significant to Western Civilization. We rightly remember and celebrate all that was true, good, and beautiful in that history. We also rightly remember, as a cautionary tale, some that was false, evil, and unseemly. Understanding our past, both good and evil, helps us to witness more clearly to Jesus now. Forgetting our past, altogether as we do now, dooms us to the sterile repetition of Olympian devotion, destruction, and death as the parasitic, collapsing, and meaningless GTS so amply demonstrates.

Geography,” “Biography,” “Books,” “Visual Arts,” and “Music” provide ways of reflecting on the places, people, and creative works of our history from different points of view.

(b) Getting much closer to other church members through greater:
(1) Love. As Christians and participants in a church with other Christians, we need to significantly increase the strength of our relationships. We need to move from being a loose association of individuals, with very weak mutual commitments, to a strong community marked by mutual nurture and protection. As Jesus said, "All people will know that you are my disciples by your love" (John 13:35).

(2). Proximity. We also need to move much closer in proximity to each other--preferably within walking distance of one another and our meetinghouse. This is the only way we will be able to develop the closeness of relationship, and provide the mutual support, that are meaningful for us as witnesses to Jesus. It is also the best way, perhaps the only one, by which we can create any clarity of witness to Jesus as a distinctively alternative society based on his truth, freedom, love, and vitality.

(c) Getting much closer to the land.

Right now the GTS stands as a distinct counter-creation to God's good creation, imposes itself as our mediator with that good creation, all the while sucking the vitality out of it and us. Jesus Christ is calling us to draw much closer to the land, eliminate the GTS as mediator, and affirm our own vitality and that of the land by living in ways that nurture and protect all species and their habitats. In particular, Jesus is calling his churches to develop local food supplies adequate for feeding local populations. Local Christians and congregations should be able to feed themselves, and as many others as possible, from local sources.

(d) Developing a distinctively Christian way of living.
Each day every person is bullied, bribed, and deceived into walking with the false Olympian gods on their path of power which ends in death and damnation. Miraculously, and at the same time, Jesus daily frees us to walk with him on the path of freedom. He frees us to love Abba with our whole mind by reading the Bible, improving as theological thinkers, and enjoying a lively sense of history. He frees us to get much closer to our companion Christians in a local congregation. Finally, he frees us as congregations to get close enough to God's good creation to receive our daily bread from local sources.

Copyright © 2019 by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.