New Generations Walk with Jesus

By Dorian Scott Cole

Most new generations won’t step foot in a church, so how do you minister to them? By understanding their needs. The church is for people, but we too often think people are there to serve the church. This and other things push people away. Young adults not only don’t find what they need in churches, they have a no tolerance policy for the nonsense they see in churches.

Some think the time of the church ended, but possibly we just don’t understand what new generations think and need. For example, LGBTQIA+ can be a bridge too far for many churches, but it could also just be cultural, and Jesus didn’t think much of traditions.

This book is intended to generate discussion to let you get to your own answers, through a discussion guide with questions relevant to new generations’ needs.

Newer generations feel unloved, alone, lost, stressed, and are searching for a deeper spiritual connection that they don’t find in the church. This book draws on fifty years of the author’s quest to understand religion and spirituality, and his work with many denominations. It provides a deep analysis of pressing questions.

For example, Jesus talked almost entirely to Jews about a New Covenant and Good News. Only after his death did he send his apostles to non-Jews. Are Christians bound by Jewish Law? What is sin for Christians? Jesus said he is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and people should worship in spirit and in truth. What did he mean, and who were followers of “The Way?” Is true worship what new generations are seeking?

“Everyone is going to Hell,” is another idea rejected by New Adults. Judaism had no doctrine of Heaven and Hell. This book explores the ideas of Heaven and Hell and where they came from.

New adults looking for a deeper spiritual connection can explore spiritual and spiritual growth in this book.

Dorian is a researcher, former pastor, and author of:
Ontology of God: The Voices of the Ancients Speak. A survey of religion development through the time of Jesus.
The Prophetic Pattern: Discussion Guide for Ancient and Modern Prophecy. Is the Apocalypse at hand? The two secrets no one talks about.
Preparing for the Future of Work and Education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorian Scott Cole
• Release date: Mar 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005420925

Dorian Scott Cole

Dorian Scott Cole is a professional communicator, with education and experience in writing, engineering technology, psychology, religion, radio announcing, acting, and movie and TV production, having had full careers in several fields. He worked as a senior development analyst for Writers Workshop, L.A. He teaches writing and acting in independent settings, and has written VisualWriter.com since 1996. He is the author of several Web sites, and produces entertainment videos through his company, Movie Stream Productions. His production series, STL Comedy, included 22 professional actors, and 10 writers. Dorian lives near St. Louis.

Book preview

Part 3 – Sin – Believe Jesus – Give it a break

13. The Wages of Sin is Death - What Is this sin thing? Should it go away?

The never-ending legalities

Adam and Eve – where it all started

The new covenant

Summary

Discussions Questions

14. What Is sin?

Sin and the new covenant

Summary

Discussion Questions

Are all sins equal?

Discussion Questions

15. Sexual Morality?

Sex in the Bible era

Dominant civilizations views of the era

Homosexuality

Apostle Paul

Do things change?

Summary

Additional research

Discussion questions

16. Sin and the Church of the Future?

Part 4 – Being blessed

17. Blessings Sermon - Becoming what we think

What does the word blessing mean?

Studies on wealth

Relationships

We are what we think

Gratitude – a grateful attitude – is recognized as very important to health and relationships.

Closing

Discussion Questions

Part 5 – The mission of the church

18. The New Covenant, Good News for Christians

The Good News, The New Covenant

God is impartial to nations and religions – love is the highest and most important ideal for all

Discussion Questions

19. Has the time of the church ended?

What does a church have to offer?

The need for community

Some major needs that my wife and I have noticed are

The characteristics of churches that thrive

Discussion Questions

20. The spiritual kingdom and the church

God speaks through the spirit, but how?

What is the spiritual world?

The spiritual experience

How do we create space for the spiritual in our lives and for others?

Getting people engaged involves three things

Discussion Questions

References for this chapter

21. Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Growth is an experiential process

Praxis (practice, experiential, action, as distinguished from theory or knowledge.)

Realization – exploring the mind of God, the boundlessness of love

Process

Result

Discussion Questions

References for this chapter.

Part 6 – Working With New Generations

22. Working With New Generations

Not the answer

The answers, and discussion questions

23. Can You Get Your Mind Around the Love of God?

Every civilization goes through stages of development. Everyone believes in God. Everyone is loved by God. Only we make exceptions.

There is a lot we don’t know. We don’t even know what we don’t know.

Why? For God so loved the world

Discussion Questions

Counterpoint – in all fairness

24. Jesus’ missions

Author’s Notes

About the author, his books, and connections

Connect with Dorian Scott Cole

Part 1 – Jesus’ Missions

A radical change to Judaism

Not the end of Judaism

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says, but what it means. – Umberto Eco

This book is intended to generate discussion, and presents a point of view. It doesn’t pander to any denomination. Not all chapters will be interesting to all. For example, Chapters 2, 3, 13, and 14 are history intended for an audience that likes history. For an easier read and study, skip the chapters you find uninteresting.

Chapter 1: Jesus Missions

From this chapter about ancient Judaism, you can look for answers to discussion questions about context as applied to Biblical interpretation, and the repercussions of different views.

My religious views are not much different than the new generations of today, like Millennials and Generation Z. Gen. Z won’t step foot in a church. Like me, they reject a lot of Christianity as not reflecting Jesus, and reject the church for a lot of nonsense and other good reasons. The hate, endless arguments, inflexibility, judgementalism, and exclusiveness, are a bridge too far. They aren’t Christlike and can’t represent a God of love, and young adults recognize this.

My early religious experience was with the United Methodist Church in a rural community. Each year they had a different pastor. They would decide it was time for revival and in would come a hellfire and brimstone preacher to talk to us about the joys of Hell.

Next year would come a pastor who spoke softly about love. There was a major contrast of thought there. A loving God sends his children to Hell for minor infractions, such as not knowing Jesus? Yikes! Many of them took to heart: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction. - Proverbs 1:7, (NIV)

I thought that wisdom would be a great thing to have, so I went for it. I had no idea how painful it is to get wisdom. It comes from experience and study. I’m still not wise except to know that wisdom comes at a price and the more I know the more I realize I don’t know.

By age seventeen I rejected the idea that God sends so many people to Hell, no matter how many times the preacher screamed it at us. This just wasn’t consistent with a God who loves his creation. God is bigger than me, and I wouldn’t send people to eternal torture. I decided I would risk Hell to find the truth. I rejected Christianity for a few years to get my head straight. It still isn’t straight – tilted by around 10 degrees, but I now know more than I did: God is love.

So I began the quest to unravel religion and understand the truth. It’s been a long journey to get past the mirage of things well-meaning people throw at you that disguise the truth and protect what they believe. I ventured into New Age stuff, then Fundamentalism. After a year of Fundamentalism, I again rejected the Hell and Damnation they preached as not the purpose of a loving God. I could clearly see the destructive impact it had on them, and how it isolated them from the very people they were supposed to be an example to.

I went to a state college, one with minimal religious doctrine, and became a pastor in a major denomination. But I don’t identify with or teach any denomination’s doctrine. Having been associated with Fundamentalist, Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian PCUSA, and ecumenical initiatives, I’m now a United Methodist again, at least for now. With most denominations I’ve been involved in ministry and growth initiatives.

I’ve worked with wonderful people in all of them. We are too quick to demonize people who don’t agree with us.

I learned through college and years of independent study to consider several different kinds of context for understanding religious literature that came from 2000 to 3200 years old.

I kind of identified with people in the Bible, having been raised on a rural farm in the 1950s and 60s, where my WWII Veteran father thought the hard way to do everything was the right way, partly because it wasn’t the Army way. I often used a scythe to harvest grain and weeds. Especially weeds.

Farmers eat three huge meals a day because they work hard. This is a bad habit to get into if you don’t continue farming. You can’t break the habit and never lose weight.

Much later, armed with better ways to extract the truth from Scripture, I started an online ministry with well researched articles.

Wonderfully, we have a much greater knowledge of those ancient times today due to archaeologists, greater access to Jewish thought, and a huge amount of knowledge available online. We are much better able to understand ancient literature. For example, the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah have been found, and evidence in the ashes is they burned in around 1200 BCE. (BCE means before the common era, notably the birth of Jesus. CE means common era, notably after Jesus’ birth.)

I can say without reservation that, having investigated and written about the nature of God and the development of major religions through the time of Jesus, I have discovered the God of love, and that he is all pervasive and open to all. But you find what you look for. If you look for a god of hate and hellfire, and if that’s what resonates with you, then that’s what you find. The question is, why does one or the other resonate with people?

Generally, people identify with their peers and tribe. They have attitudes borne of experience. These are very influential in people’s views of religion. Yeah, I’m a communicator and psychologist (not the clinical kind). Having studied this deeply for 30 years, I know how things work. I get it.

I don’t pretend to speak for God or anyone who represented God. Nor do I pretend to tell you what to believe. That’s between you and God. I don’t spend my time thinking about God all day, or how other people should live. I spend most of my time living, enjoying this life and my family, and trying to make a contribution to this world, having formal education and experience in a number of fields.

Along the way I’ve studied and written about the development of the major religions of this world up through the time of Jesus, been a pastor, written about the meaning of prophecy, and written extensively about Christianity. I’m a Follower of Jesus, or Follower of the Way. Call me a theologian or a despicable idiot, you’re probably right, but my hope is that I can dispel some traditional nonsense and inform you about the God of Love I’ve come to know through history and personal experience.

Ideas come from somewhere - context

Ideas develop a life of their own. We see ideas we like and latch onto them, and often lose all context. They become tradition. An example is, I can also say without reservation that for most of Judaism’s ancient history up to the time of Jesus, there was no official doctrine of people having an immortal soul and going to heaven or hell. ¹ The source of these ideas probably came with the Greeks who invaded Israel and Judah around 300 BCE and who worked hard to spread Greek culture and religion. Babylon may also have had an influence a couple of hundred years earlier than the Greeks, but we can only suspect.

1. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Jewish Encyclopedia. https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8092-immortality-of-the-soul

Israel and Judah were on major trading routes, and there were major trading centers in them. Trade imports both products and ideas. For example, some of the earliest trade in Ancient Sumer, where Abraham was from, was for eye shadow from Turkey, 3000 BCE, as if women weren’t mysterious and alluring enough.

Zoroastrian Dualism in Iran may have been an influence as well as the Greek and Roman influences since there is no official doctrine in Judaism of a fight between God and Satan, only the idea of an adversary, and this belief developed over time.²

2. Satan (adversary). Jewish Encyclopedia. https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13219-satan

Certainly, the Egyptians had a belief in eternal reward and punishment, as did the nearby Hindu religions. We simply don’t know how the idea of Heaven and Hell came into Judaism. Possibly by popular demand – the grave is a cold, lonely, deeply unpopular place.

By Jesus’ time, these ideas were present in some Jewish literature. So Jesus had to address these ideas. He was very strict about the Torah (first five books of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, AKA Law), and these ideas are not in the Torah, except for the adversary. They are somewhat more present in later literature developed by the Rabbis after Jesus’ time in the Oral Torah, a book of traditions of the fathers. So Jesus expounded somewhat on concepts that the Jews were likely very confused about because there was no official teaching.

It’s kind of like Near Death Experiences (NDEs) today when people are clinically dead, see the other side and come back with a new perspective on their life and purpose and tell of things they can’t accurately describe. Christianity doesn’t have an official doctrine about these things. There’s no Jesus to put it into our official doctrine.

In Jesus’ day the ideas of immortality, Hell, and Heaven were new to Judaism, just like widespread knowledge and acceptance or denial of NDEs are today. These ideas circulated widely and were part of the Pharisee beliefs and of the Essenes. The Sadducees rejected these ideas. Jesus had to address them if he was to speak with authority.

Some in later Christian history, like Dante (Dante’s Inferno), amplified these ideas about Hell, talking about several levels of punishment. But these are not found in the Bible at all. They’re

just very imaginative. You have to wonder why people teach this. Do they find the idea of others suffering somehow salaciously delicious or tartly revengeful? Do they have they no love and tolerance for other people and their mistakes? Fine line: you cross this line you go to Hell, no exceptions.

Let’s explore these ideas a little to help understand context, just for an intro to topics in this book. One type of context is that Judaism had no official teaching on immortality, Heaven, Hell, or anything beyond the grave. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one never ending dirt nap. In contrast, there are some today that teach that everyone who is not a Christian, especially their kind of Christian, is going to Hell – all of the entire world. How did this wildfire start and spread?

Jesus talked about the common topic of the day: Hell. He said it was like being tossed into the garbage, or being cast into outer darkness, or being in a lake of fire. Sometimes he was quite certain some leaders would have difficulty escaping that fate, but only the leaders, who he called hypocrites and vipers.

What Jesus was talking about is people who knowingly hurt others, never seek forgiveness, and never try to follow a better way of life even though the law is within them. Hell isn’t a physical place, it’s a condition of the soul – a soul that is tortured by the pain and isolation of what they have done. There is always forgiveness if they will seek it, and if they can accept it.

Forgiveness. God remembers their lawless behavior no more. Well, Jesus had a difficult time convincing some of them, especially the Sadducees who ran the Temple and politics. For them nothing went past the grave, the cold, lonely grave. I guess if you live your life as a hypocrite, the grave is a happier place.

It’s rare that any of us meet someone like this kind of person who loves hurting others. In later chapters this kind of sin is described more fully from Judaism. Most people realize they are hurting themselves by what they do to others, and change. I once met a person who said he once was a horrible liar. I asked him why he changed. He said it was because he realized he was hurting himself. More often than not, compassion and awareness that hurting others hurts ourselves gets our attention and we change.

John Newton, author of the very famous song, Amazing Grace, was involved in the brutal 18th-century slave trade. The work was horrific and cost many human lives. Newton himself was known for mocking faith and for his wild behavior. During a violent storm in which he tried to prevent the ship from going to Davy Jones Locker, Newton realized the real shipwreck was him.

Newton realized he had hurt a lot of people. He became a pastor of a small church and later wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. ³ Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. (…) How precious did that Grace appear the hour I first believed.

3. THE STORY BEHIND ‘AMAZING GRACE’ Prison Fellowship. https://www.prisonfellowship.org/2017/04/amazing-grace-2/

God’s love and law is in all of us. The apostles tell us this. We understand how we have hurt others because we have empathy. The pain of hurting others usually gets our attention and compels us to change. We almost always know when we have hurt others, feel bad about it, and threatening us with Hell is kind of redundant – we’re already there with one foot or both feet.

Many people suffer from trauma and other psychological problems, and it affects their personality. They don’t willingly choose to hurt others, but they can’t not. It isn’t their fault. Even people who don’t have a sense of empathy for others (often called psychopaths) usually don’t do things to purposely hurt others. They sometimes don’t even know that they do. This is another type of sin that will be explored in a later chapter.

What we know from experience, especially the experience of the last 200 to 300 years with the advent of evangelicalism, is that talking to people about Hell doesn’t work. Yes, fear is a huge motivator, but when you motivate people with something that repels them, you don’t know which way they’re going to go. It’s like pushing a rope. Try pushing a rope – it simply becomes a tangled mess and goes nowhere. But if you motivate people with something that pulls or attracts them, like love, they move toward that.

This idea of fear drove me away from the church, just like it has driven many away. People who learn the religion of fear, spend their lives in fear and teaching fear to others. This is not the way to live that Jesus taught. Jesus taught us to live in love.

Fear can interrupt processes in our brains that allow us to regulate emotions, read non-verbal cues and other information presented to us (…) This impacts our thinking and decision-making in negative ways, leaving us susceptible to intense emotions and impulsive reactions. All of these effects can leave us unable to act appropriately. ⁴

4. Impact of Fear and Anxiety. Louise Delagran, MA, Med. University of Minnesota. https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/impact-fear-and-anxiety

This was a hell of a conversation to start a book with. But it demonstrates some contextual interpretation of the Bible. These contexts were: What did Jesus have to address that wasn’t present in Judaism. What does a teaching do in people’s lives? Sometimes it’s simply better to choose a different teaching if you want to be effective. In time, spiritual growth culls the useless from the positive, for most of us anyway.

You can make the Bible say anything you want. But what does the Bible mean in context? Especially in the context of a God of love. Are we so cynical and hard hearted that we can’t wait for others to be punished? What works today, a wrathful God who wants to torment people for eternity, or a love letter from God? Most assuredly people have steadily been refusing fear since 1900, and at this point, Millennials and Generation Z absolutely refuse it. The God within us doesn’t recognize that God.

Love is the guiding standard of Christianity.

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

– Matthew 22: 37-40 (NIV)

"And now these three remain: faith, hope