The dreamer wants to hear what God is saying — the religious person thinks they already know.

So, God, tell me about Religion.

What sort of religion?

All sorts, any sort, whichever sort you want to speak about. I was thinking about organised Christian Religion, but you decide.

Let’s speak about them all.

They’re all so different though.

Actually, they're not. They’re almost identical in many ways.

You mean like how Catholic and Anglican look very similar?

No, I mean like Christianity and Hare Krishna, or Buddhism and Mormanism. All organised religions have strong similarities.

That ought to annoy a lot of people! Most religions think they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Exactly. But in truth, almost all religions start out in the same way.

Are you sure??

Yes, you need to understand how religions start – they become religions when the rules and customs of the organisation overpower the dream.

The dream?

They all start with much the same dream before they become rule-bound organisations that seek to control their members…

Just before we get to the dream, why do religions want to control people?

The need to control is a key attribute of the father of religion.

Oh dear.

A religion feeds on its members, it dies without members, the more members, the healthier the religion – but dreams on the other hand only need one dreamer – and the dream never feeds on the dreamer, the dreamer feeds on the dream.

So when does the dream become a religion, and why?

A dream is strangled by religion when the organisation's expectations – attendance, financial contributions, beliefs and customs – are talked about more often than the original dream. The group no longer serves the dream, they serve the organisation – big or small, it has become a religion.

Ok, so if dreams so often become religions, what’s the original dream?  

 The dream is always to touch me in some way, it starts off well but goes astray along the way

Every religion starts with the dream to touch you?

Almost all of them, yes. A dream to rise above the natural and touch the supernatural. A dream to hear what I am saying and not what men say I am saying. A dream so powerful it becomes more important than anything else to the dreamer.

John Wesley, The Buddha, the Apostles, Francis of Assisi, Ghandi, Luther – they all had dreams to touch me, dreams so powerful they were prepared to give up everything for them – and because their dreams were so powerful, others were quickly captivated by their dreams too.

Where are we going with this? I wasn’t looking for a history lesson.

I’m just explaining how religions have always happened, the same thing is happening all over again today.

Happening today?

Yes, there are always people dreaming of a different way to touch me, and there are always others trying to turn that person’s dream into an organised movement, look at your super churches…

Good grief, they’re not mine!

A turn of phrase; super churches are an example of how religions start – a man or woman believes they know a better way to touch me, their dream becomes so important to them that they give up everything to follow it.

If they have enough personal drive, and are persuasive enough, others follow them and the next thing you know you have a church, or a group of churches all built around that dreamer. Pretty soon the organisation overpowers the dream, and presto that church isn’t just a group of people sharing a dream anymore, now it’s an organisation.

And organisations become religions. New buildings, new songs, new rules about conduct and thinking and money. It’s happening here in New Zealand all the time. The bigger and more powerful the organisation, the more they forget their original dream to touch and hear me.

But, God, people in those super churches believe their churches are the very opposite of religion.

That’s nothing new, it’s the need to be right. There are people in every church, big or small, who believe their beliefs are right and others are wrong. That’s because they’re no longer listening to the dream, they’re listening to the organisation –– dreamers want to learn what is right, organisations believe they already are.

PS: DEAR READER — Two Tips to make it easier to have your own back and forth conversation with God.

TIP # 1: Write out your question to God and then, don’t wait for the answer to come, start writing trusting God to supply the answer as you write.

TIP # 2: Remember it’s a conversation, not a subservient prayer. Yes, sure, you’re talking with God, but it’s a conversation. So, just like you would in a conversation with any other friend — when you’re not convinced by what you hear you should most definitely challenge it.

If you think you’ve made up what you’ve written, you should write something like, ‘God, I think I made that up’, then write what comes next. Do that again and again until you feel in your gut, no matter how unlikely it seems, that what you’ve written really is God. TEST THE SPIRITS AND ASK AND KEEP ON ASKING. Both are things that the apostles and Jesus made clear are very important.

The reason I publish these conversations with God is he seemed to say that anyone reading them would be able to see that if someone as mixed up as Mark Holloway could have a back and forth conversation with God ( like a friend ), then surely they could too.