INTRODUCTION God establishes earthly authorities (Romans 13:1). Pilate’s authority was therefore from God; Jesus stated so. It is foolish and useless to do spiritual warfare with principalities and powers since they are being established by no one else but the … Continue reading
RECOGNIZE AND DEAL WITH THE DEMON OF RELIGIOUSNESS
Religion is an organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to create meaning to life or traditionally to explain the origin of life or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, they tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.
Many religions may have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, holy places, and scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a deity, gods or goddesses, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture. Religions may also contain mythology.
[A quote from “How God changes your brain” by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman BallantineBooks.com Page 141]
Unfortunately, as far as the brain is concerned, negative speech has a stronger effect than positive speech. Negative remarks and memories are more strongly encoded in the brain, and they are the most difficult memories to eradicate. In fact, simply being around negative people will make you more prejudiced, because listening to negative opinions can easily undermine your positive opinions about virtually anything. In essence, our brains are designed to mimic the emotional expressions of others. Not only does this allow us to feel what others feel but it causes what is known as “emotional contagion,” a universal neurological process whereby subjective feelings are transferred to other people and spread through social groups. So how fast does it take the brain to react to another person’s emotion? When you see an angry expression, it takes less than one second for the brain to respond with fear.