Outside the Camp

Dear friend, wel­come to my web­site and blog!

About the Author

My name is Anthony Math­e­nia and I am a dis­ci­ple of Christ, hus­band, and father. I cur­rently work for an envi­ron­men­tal com­pany as an office man­ager. I enjoy writ­ing and in addi­tion to keep­ing this blog I par­tic­i­pate in National Novel Writ­ing Month. I like cook­ing for oth­ers (but not doing the dishes). My favorite meal to make is crispy pork tacos with fresh guacamole.

This Blog cov­ers spir­i­tual top­ics from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. My pas­sion is Jesus Christ. I believe that he is the Word of God and the Truth. I am not a mem­ber of any denom­i­na­tion, reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, or “local church”. I do greatly enjoy fel­low­ship with my broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ, but in my expe­ri­ence reli­gion tends to inhibit this rather then pro­mote it.

My per­sonal reli­gious back­ground is that I was raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesss. After being born again in 2005 my eyes were grad­u­ally opened to the Truth of God’s Word. This new birth caused me to reeval­u­ate the the­ol­ogy, prophetic inter­pre­ta­tions, and reli­gious prac­tices of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses which I now con­sider to be false.  As a result of this change, I was expelled from the reli­gion, labeled “apos­tate” and worse. This was true to Jesus’ words of the price of fol­low­ing him. (John 16:2)

Since seper­at­ing from the Watch­tower orga­ni­za­tion I have dis­cov­ered that I’m not alone in dis­cov­er­ing a rich spir­i­tual life out­side of orga­nized reli­gious insti­tu­tions. Apart from for­mer mem­bers of the Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gion, I have been blessed to find other believ­ers that are seek­ing to return to the sim­plic­ity of purity of the early Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tion — to wor­ship­ing God with spirit and truth. (John 4:23)

About this Blog

Dur­ing the time when I was being dis­fel­low­shipped from the Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gion, I drew much com­fort from the Word of God as recorded in the scrip­tures. One par­tic­u­lar verse that I con­sid­ered was from Hebrews 13:13 where we are encour­aged, “There­fore let us go forth to [Jesus], out­side the camp, bear­ing His reproach.” It is from there that I have cho­sen the blog name, “Out­side the Camp”. I feel that it describes my sit­u­a­tion and also the that I’m not writ­ing from the per­spec­tive from any reli­gious denom­i­na­tion or institution.

In as much as my back­ground is with Watch­tower orga­ni­za­tion I will occa­sion­ally write upon top­ics of inter­est to cur­rent and for­mer mem­bers of the Jehovah’s Wit­nesses reli­gion. How­ever, the pur­pose of this blog is not sim­ply to be a run­ning cri­tique of that denom­i­na­tion, or any denom­i­na­tion. I feel that time is best spent speak­ing about the Truth instead of tear­ing down falsehood.

My goal in writ­ing any of this is not to draw peo­ple after myself, but rather to point them toward Jesus. To that end, my arti­cles are for the pro­mo­tion of Jesus Christ and the build­ing up of the body of Christ. I occa­sion­ally will present mat­ters of Bible and Chris­t­ian stud­ies. My inter­ests there are var­ied but I really enjoy review­ing Chris­tian­ity as prac­ticed in the first few cen­turies after Jesus’ min­istry. In my per­sonal faith I tend to have more ques­tions than answers but I am happy to know the answer, Jesus. 

Revi­sions & Corrections

I’m con­tin­u­ally learn­ing new things and reassess­ing my cur­rent beliefs.    Some of my ear­lier posts have some­what of a Jehovah’s Wit­ness view­point, if not in thought, in ter­mi­nol­ogy and jargon.   While some of my thoughts were imper­fect I do feel that as a whole they dis­played the heart of the Lord to an extent where they are still ben­e­fi­cial.    On occa­sion if I feel the need to go back and make a cor­rec­tion to an idea that I believe to be false, such a cor­rec­tion will be noted in the com­ments.    This is the only way I know to keep things hon­est while still try­ing to sin­cerely avoid pro­mot­ing error.    In addi­tion I have kept pub­lic my pre­vi­ous blog, which I used up until the time I was dis­fel­low­shipped from the Jehovah’s Wit­nesses. I did so as a tes­ta­ment, not so much to where I am, but the path I have taken in the event that this would be help­ful to those tak­ing a sim­i­lar journey.

Pub­lish­ing Schedule

My arti­cles tend to go long by blog stan­dards so I’m gen­er­ally unable to update more than once a week – usu­ally on a Saturday/Sunday.  Some­times I will break a longer arti­cle up into mul­ti­ple parts to allow for weekly pub­lish­ing.    While I enjoy writ­ing for this blog at times I have taken a break to care for other mat­ters.    If you don’t see me updat­ing please keep me in your RSS feed as I will resume when my sit­u­a­tion allows for it.

A Word About Money

This blog is not “mon­e­tized” in  har­mony with Jesus instruc­tion to “give freely”. (Matthew 10:8)   I am not sell­ing any­thing (CD’s, videos, or books).  I’m not try­ing to get rev­enue from ads or refer­rals.  I am not ask­ing for dona­tions.  I am not pass­ing a dig­i­tal “col­lec­tion basket”. 

The excep­tion is my “Library­Thing” wid­get, which lists ran­dom books from my library and is linked to my Ama­zon account.   If you click through and placed an order I would receive a small refer­ral (around 15%).  I don’t expect any­one to do this but the small amount I would receive would be sig­nif­i­cantly less in com­par­i­son to the small sum it costs to host this blog.  

 Long story short, I believe that mak­ing money off of Chris­t­ian teach­ing is wrong, rob­bery, detestable and some­thing that I refuse to be a part of it.  (See arti­cle “Give Freely”)  I believe in giv­ing and if you so desire I would encour­age you to expe­ri­ence the joy of directly pro­vid­ing for the needs of some­one around you.

Bible Trans­la­tions

In per­sonal Bible study and read­ing I use a vari­ety of trans­la­tions; typ­i­cally, what­ever is handy. When quot­ing Scrip­ture on my Blog I will gen­er­ally use the The Holy Bible, New King James Ver­sion which is copy­right © 1982 by Thomas Nel­son, Inc. If the arti­cle has to do with Jehovah’s Wit­nesses I may use the New World Trans­la­tion of the Holy Scrip­tures which copy­right © 1984, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Soci­ety of Penn­syl­va­nia and Inter­na­tional Bible Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion. Used by per­mis­sion. All rights reserved. (By the way, I think that copy­right­ing and restrict­ing the use of the Holy Scrip­tures is a greedy, detestable practice.)

License for Use

You may freely dis­trib­ute the writ­ten mate­ri­als found on this blog, pro­vided you do so free of charge. I would request that no deriv­a­tive works be made. As a cour­tesy if you reuse this mate­r­ial please pro­vide a source link to the original.