Evolution of Christianity (Cont)
I’m going to abandon the Socratic method on the issue of the evolution of Christianity. Attempting to lure you into my way of thinking by asking just the right questions now seems rather sneaky and disingenuous. Instead, I’ll simply lay out my position up front and then respond to comments, issues, complaints.
- The Christianity of today is markedly different from the Christianity established by the writers of the New Testament.
- The God of Jesus’ time and the writers of the New Testament was a God with attributes that most Christians would not accept today (a far more human God, both physically and emotionally, than Christians generally assume today)
- The path from the Christian God of 100 AD to 2009 AD is defined purely by human interpretation and intervention in religious concepts (e.g., Papal decrees, Martin Luther, John Knox, etc.)
- The only explanation for the difference is that man, through interpretation, decree or warfare, has changed it
- If this is the case, then the God of today is a man-made fabrication, based on the God of Jesus’ time but reinterpreted and translated over time
- This does not assert that the God of Jesus’ time is man-made (something for a different discussion), only that today’s God is man-made
Comments
Lori, I'm not sure I understand the statement that Christianity is disconnected from real life either. I'm not sure that the way it's used makes it germaine to the topic either.
I'm not asking you to immediately give up your faith. I'm simply trying to get people to step back from it for a minute and see what it's made of. What is it really that they have faith in?
It relates to what you said about Christianity's God being (or becoming) man-made over time. I expanded on that and noted that nowadays, what we have are these expressions of what early Christians felt. Because we have these concepts and images that they gave us, we don't look any further. Over time, we've changed them according to what we think they should look like...but because we don't sense the thing we're trying to describe directly...our changed images and concepts become disconnected from reality. Does that make sense?
This is not to say that Christianity is disconnected from reality for everyone. It only is when the person stops on the surface and doesn't look for real connections to experience and life. When they don't understand that dogma is an expression of truth, not truth itself. And actually, this happens *a lot*.
Lightandstorm, your comment requires that I sit back in my chair and stare into the distance to try and understand what you're saying. Interesting . . .
But so many people miss this level. They cling to what their idea of truth is and in the meantime disown the inner meaning of their religion.
I believe that, even though they spoke in terms of beings and places in relation to eart, etc...the early Christians grasped this inner meaning. Over the years, Christians have become caught up in defending the surface meaning, thinking that without that, Christianity is worthless.
I think it's even gotten to the point where people hold up dogma that actually runs counter to the inner message. Or, they just interpret dogma or hold political convictions that also reveal their lack of understanding of their religion.
It's sad, but to be honest, it's understandable.
Let's take a big one. Christ's death and resurrection. Most Christians believe a theory that suggests Jesus became a substitute for us and took the punishment for our sins, and so if we believe in him and what he can do for us, we will get to Heaven. See how the events are something that happened long ago, disconnected from the present, and the consequences are something distant in the future. None of it really gets at our experience right now.
But, there is an alternative way to understand it. Not that they are mutually exclusive, but another level upon which to look at things. Christ shows us a unique example of what to do when confronted with suffering. Do not fear. Remain open and welcoming, to everything. When you welcome death (suffering, the bad things that you cannot avoid), you conquer it.
I don't have time to finish this comment, but I will tomorrow. :)
If you would like me to point to more examples, let me know. :)
Lightandstorm, I've read your post and believe you are unwittingly helping me make my point. Your interpretation of heaven and hell, God and Christ, is not mainstream Christianity. (I'd dare you to read your post at a Pentacostal church--not that they're mainstream, but they do represent a branch of Christianity.) Nor do I believe that it's anything like what the early Christians believed. That's fine . . . except here's the rub. You're advocating for a sort of Christianity that's largely of your own conception. You've pieced together ideas from here or there or on your own into a metaphysical universe that could likely be stamped as yours and yours alone. On what authority have you changed the principles of Christianity established by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD? The many different types of Christianity practiced today only vaguely resemble the Christianity established back then. How did it change? By Papal decrees, political intrigue, reformation, creation of denominations, individual interpretation like yours. No particular divine inspiration on any of those, yet they fundamentally changed the way we look at our concept of God so that today we no longer think God resides in a heaven physically just above the air and above our flat earth that is physically above the physical location of hell. That's a pretty big change and it's all man-made. Just like your beliefs in your post.
Beliefs are definitely man-made. The difference I was hopefully trying to point out is that some beliefs are made from divine inspiration (aka, experience of the holy, intuitive knowledge of authenticity/truth, connectedness to reality and life) and some are based of other people's inspiration and hence disconnected.
As for my beliefs vs the early Christians, well there were definitely some groups that thought more along these lines (although, they didn't end up winning in the end). That, and I was trying to get at the underlying meaning, the things that inspired the concrete, surface beliefs, because they didn't come out of nowhere. Christianity is largely a reaction of Christians to Jesus's death. It's how they learned to cope with the failure of a movement they thought would change the world. In trying to make sense of it, they touched on some very important, perhaps archetypal truths, and these things made it into their writings and images.
However, I definitely don't think they would agree with me flat out, that's for sure, so I do get your point. :)