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Christ, Christians, and Christianity

  
  

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Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
19:55 / 20.06.02
I originally had an obscenely long post, but it ended up being erased. So here is the slimmed down version...

These three things have had wildly different meanings for me throught the past five years or so. Like a lot of people, I went through the "Christians are weak-willed fools unwilling to look at reality in it's barest form, and Christianity is a tool used by hypocrites to maintain control over the herd" phase. It didn't help that I was going to a Protestant Christian highschool in the southern United States, with all sorts of rules and social structures to rebel against.

Truth be told, I felt kind of cheated. I had been a Christian my entire life without ever realizing what it meant, and without questioning it. Now I realized that I had spent all that time going to mass and learning the scripture only to discover that I didn't believe a word of it, and that no one seemed to be able to answer what were to me simple questions. "What is grace?" "If God created me, why am I not good enough for him unless I become his servant?" "So Christ died for us. Big fucking deal, he's God, he could do it again and again if he wanted. Why is it such a bid deal?" "Why are half the answers on the Bible test 'Christ's Blood'?" Lord, I was so sick of hearing the phrase "christ's blood". It had lost all meaning to me. So had the idea of Christ's sacrifice. Who cared? I never knew Christ, the guy I thought he was turned out to be my grandfather, and when he died, so did Christ to me. And since grandpap never came back from the dead...

So I became an atheist and decided that Christianity was an outdated institution that would not survive another hundred years. But atheism was too lonly for me, so I couldn't do that much longer. Thankfully, I stumbled across some zen poems in my literature book, and decided to pick up the recommended reading, Alan Watt's The Way of Zen. I loved it (even though I grasped maybe a fifth of it. Of course, I thought I understood the majority of it...). I got into Buddhism and Taoism, which was good, because it got me meditating.

I soon graduated, and that summer was an important one, spiritually speaking. I met a nice young lady who played a Shamz Tabriz to my Rumi. In this girl, I saw all the attributes that been Buddha's alone previously. There is no room to tell you how just meeting someone like that will drastically alter your perception of things. That entire summer was great. I had money, a car, lots of friends, a drug hookup, a spiritual guide, and a "lady-friend" (read: "friend that I would often fornicate with"). I was happy. I grew up a lot, I suppose, spiritually speaking.

I went off to college, and went through the worst parts of my depression. It was extremely rare for me to feel anything at all beyond mild irritation. Little to no emotion at all. And the strange thing is, when you don't have things like emotions clouding your vision, you see both more and less than someone with normal seratonin levels. I could see everything in the cool light of reason and logic, even things like reason and logic.

At this point, I had lost a lot of my anger towards Christianity and Christians in general. It was probably more because of the fact that I didn't feel anything at all anymore, but then again, my views on Christ changed significantly. He had some good ideas. He was no Buddha, but he had some good ideas. It was also around this time I got into occultism and a bunch of other stuff, including The Invisibles. I was also doing a lot more drugs. In this state, I formulated my anti-belief structure.

After feeling really miserable for a year and fucking over my educational career, I decided to seek help for my depression, and ended up on medication. I had previously been set against the idea of medicating myself, but at this point, I was so tired of being numb all the time I had to do something. And I'm glad I did (note: if you think you suffer from depression, for god's sake get help. It won't just go away on it's own). I began to have normal emotions again, after a year and a half of not feeling anything, and that will do strange things to you. I was kind of anxious about whether or not my anti-belief structure would hold up in my new condition. It both did and didn't, and I don't have time to go into how right now. I'll just say that some things made even more sense, and some things got a lot more confusing (as one would expect).

Which is where I am now, roughly. I've been on this medication since January, and I'd like to share my thoughts on what Christ, Christians, and Christianity are to me now.

Christians: this is easy. They're just people. Some people need a moral structure, a guide. And I can now see the attraction of believing that someone will love you forever, who is willing to forgive anything and everything if you just ask. And if this person is God incarnate, well then, all the better. These people are not fools. Yes, Christians have done a lot of bad shit throughout history, but so has every country or orginization ever created. Big fucking deal. They're just people.

Christianity: This one is a lot harder. I don't buy into it, mainly because I don't believe I have a soul to be saved. And if I did have one, I'm not going to pass off the responsibility on someone else. I'll do it myself. But here's a weird thing: I used to never like the idea of being a servant to anyone, especially God. But these days, the idea of being a servant to anyone, even God, doesn't repulse me. I can see the attraction of it, of being a supremely dependable servant. At this point, I'd much rather be that than the master of the house, who would be nothing at all without the hired help. Servant and Master is just another duality to be swallowed.

Christ: This one I still don't know about. He's no longer an amalgamation of St. Francis of Assisi (sp?) and my grandfather. Read Salinger's Franny and Zooey for the best description of Christ ever published. I can't do it justice here, but I'll give a broad outline. Yes, Christ was all about love. I'm sure if you looked into his eyes, you would see infinite patience and compassion. But you would also have just as much of a chance of seeing a "I'm sick of this shit, it's time for some table flipping" kind of light.

I realized one day about a year ago that if I met Buddha on the road, I would ask him "help me become like you", but if I met Christ, I would ask "Please, make everything like it should have been. Make it all better." I didn't give it much thought at the time, but I suppose that paints a good picture of my thoughts on both of those guys. That's not the case now. These days, I think that if I met either, I would just want to walk a bit with them. Maybe have some pie. Maybe a game of darts and a few drinks.

I don't know what Christ is to me. Not a saviour, not a master. I want to say "friend", but that's so cheesy. More like a brother, I suppose, which is even more cheesy. The concept of a sacrifice means so much more for me these days...I don't know if He actually died for my sins, but I get the feeling that He would if I asked Him to. Which is cool, you know? That's what friends do for each other. Sometimes it sucks ass, like having to drive three hours in the middle of the night to bail someone out of jail, but there's no question of whether or not it's going to get done.

I feel like this has been painfully obvious to everyone except me sometimes, and other times I wonder why people who claim to be Christians don't ever take the time to just sit and consider what Christ's teachings really meant. I'm not a Christian, I'm still a Zen Buddhist-Neo Pagan (or "Discordian", for short), but I think more about Christ than most people I know. I may even become a Christian again, when I learn Ancient Greek and Hebrew. But I won't do that baptism shit, I've got nothing to answer for, and I don't think Christ wants another servant. But get this, a master depends on his servants, right? Christ depending on me for support. Trippy. Something to think about, anyway.

So, who is Christ to you? What are Christians? What is Christianity?
 
 
Shortfatdyke
20:26 / 20.06.02
first of all, i'd just like to say 'phew!'. quite a post!

i'm not a christian. never have been. i find organised religion pretty foul. saying that, i've had two major revelations in the last couple of years, one of which is totally relevant to what you're asking. i was looking at a painting, which i actually didn't find inspiring at all, but the title was 'christ appearing as a bunch of flowers' or something like that and as i read it i felt the ground just *move* underneath me and suddenly it was like another dimension had opened up in the world. i was hit with a ton of information/knowledge and the best way i can describe it was knowing that there was *more* - but that it was not god/christ in any way or form that i had ever been told or read about. i am trying to figure out more of what it (and the first revelation i had) meant, but since then i've begun learning about magick and the runes, and would say that i was now definately a pagan. i'd always had leanings in these directions, but, for example, with the pagan thing about everything having a vibration - well i can almost *see* it now.

christ can mean many things.
 
 
Jack Fear
20:46 / 20.06.02
The Christ is bigger than men have made Him out to be.

Human beings have been remaking God in their own image since time out of mind, ascribing to Him their pettiness, their partisanship, their prejudices. And it defies simple logic that a God who is All could partake of any of that.

The way to serve the Christ—as He Himself pointed out—is to serve humanity. If we think of "Jesus" as an entity in and of Himself—if we think of Him as sitting on a celestial throne somewhere, separate from the mass of humanity—well, then, obviously He doesn't need your service: He's the King of Heaven and He's got himself a pretty sweet deal.

But we cannot properly consider the Christ without considering humanity as a whole. That is why the Incarnation is important: as God partakes of human nature, so too humanity partakes of God-nature. Jesus Himself was quite explicit about this.

Jesus qua Jesus may not need another servant, but humanity does. If you would serve the Christ, serve humanity: conversely, if you serve humanity, you serve the Christ whether you mean to or not.

Christianity—following the way of the Christ, offering yourself in service and sacrifice to others as He did—is not the comfort that many people have made it out to be: it is a challenge, a daily struggle.

Our every day is a miniature Via Dolorosa, our every good deed a tiny crucifixion. And every time we think we couldn't possibly give of ourselves again—and then manage somehow to give of ourselves again—is a tiny Resurrection.

As above, so below.

I'm not a trained theologian by any means: but this all seems terribly obvious to me.
 
 
gozer the destructor
20:56 / 20.06.02
I was raised a fundementalist Christian from birth. Lasted 17 years and was then excomunicated for commiting a number of 'sins'. After leaving this organised religion I started to read all the books that had been kept out of my reach, mainly because they taught opposing opinions to what I was told Christ taught.

My opinions have changed radically over the last 8 years and continue to do so, unlike the 17 years I spent being told what to believe. There is a lot of evidence that Jesus existed but the story is now so embelished by opinion that I think it should be read allegorically, it also seems more revlevant as a parable.

I think Christ must have been a pretty cool fella to hang with, obviously well educated and had his own opinions that he was prepared to stand up and be counted for (dare I say a revolutionary!)

The thing is, there are a lot of other people I have read about as well who make me feel amazement and wonder when I read about their exploits (and just like the big J they don't claim to be the son of god!). The strength of the human condition is sometimes awe inspiring and this is more of a spiritual revelation to me than any time spent in a so called house of god.

As an anarchist I consider myself a slave to no one but I have always considered myself to be in need of more education, I gues we replace our idols when we see their flaws and see their flaws the older we get.
 
 
Seth
22:13 / 20.06.02
I'm a Christian. The more I think about what the word actually means, the more I think it's actually a pretty bold assertion, and one that not a lot of self proffessed Christians can back up... it's one of those nouns I'd like to rewrite in order to give it major connotations of process. I was raised in a charismatic denomination, and as someone who occasionally has half a questioning brain wrestled with my faith and myself a lot. These days I think I'd be pretty gnostic to the casual observer. I know a lot of Christians, and they vary from some of the most adaptable, accepting, wise, and strong people I've met to people who aren't any of those things. Funny that, them being just people.

Christ is an utter mystery to me. Read the Bible in a certain way and it seems a lot like a hypersigil: God makes humanity and enters His own fiction/Humanity makes god and enters Their own fiction. He is the focal point of change (I should get a tattoo saying "Do not suppose I came to bring peace." He certainly hasn't brought me much peace: I spend a lot of braintime sorting through several thousand years of bizarre conundrums while trying not to live in a state of constant tension). I meditate on Christ in me, on me in Christ. God be in my head, and in my thinking.

Christianity is a broad and complex beast. Maybe it just needs to lose some weight and simplify its thinking a bit.
 
 
Grey Area
22:29 / 20.06.02
First: Echo to sfd's "phew!"...although I'd use "Whoo...".

Personal Religous Background: I wasn't raised in a religious family, my parents choosing to let me make up my own mind after choosing to have me baptised a Lutheran Protestant. In a way, my parents portrayed both sides of the fence, with my father being non-religious and my mother very much so. I chose to undergo confirmation and the religious instruction that implies, but renounced my faith shortly afterwards, mainly because of similar reasons to Johnny O...I didn't get straightforward answers to what I considered staightforward questions and the community as a whole did not practice what they preached, mainly in terms of charity and goodwill.

Overall, I have personally taken the lessons I received onboard and distilled them down to a basic premise: Try and do right by yourself and others as long as no-one else gets hurt in the process. That's what I believe everything Christianity (and in fact most organised religions) try and teach us. I just choose to live according to it without the additional bells & whistles (and big stick and carrot) religion attaches to it. At the end of the day, you should try and be a good person and "serve humanity" as Jack Fear put it. Whether you want to place this behaviour within the framework of an organised religion is up to you. Some people need the direction religion and other followers of that religion provide.

I don't look down on Christians because they follow an organised religion. In fact, sometimes I envy them because they seem to have a ready source of answers with which to qwell their more existentialist anxieties, answers that I am unwilling to accept. Christ as a moral example is a good one to follow, but my opinion is that, just as with every morality, you should take it in moderation and not inflict your view as being more "right" upon another who may not share it.
 
 
Saint Keggers
01:55 / 21.06.02
The early Christian text are very much like budhism.

http://www.goodnewsinc.net/othbooks/thomas.html
 
 
Hieronymus
02:02 / 21.06.02
Has anyone read Spong's New Christianity? I tried to start a thread ages back on its striking call to fundamentally change Christianity and how it approaches the world and itself. Jack Fear's comments are a nice summation of it.

Personally I've always been a backseat fan of the early days of Christianity and Christ's 'love thy neighbor' core of teaching. And even fundamentalism has guided where I landed spiritually. I ended up finding the Dharma path as a reaction against living deep in a fundamentalist city (the number of Baptist churches here comprises 6 pages of the phone book in small print) and seeing that while Christ preached stepping outside one's borders and giving love unconditionally, Christians sometimes varied in their understanding of how to go about that. I had to find a worldview that was firm in its humanity and compassion and I owe that to the heart of Christ's message still residing in me and the wackiness of born-again preachers being so completely perpendicular to that sometimes.

It's truly a fascinating and breath-takingly benevolent faith.... when it's not being manhandled by human beings.
 
 
SMS
03:28 / 21.06.02
Discotheque is referring to a thread here on Barbelith entitled “A New Christianity.” There are some excerpts on this thread and a link as well. (Note to moderators. There are two of these threads.)

I grew up in a liberal Methodist church. This mural hangs on the wall in one of the hallways. As you can see by the responses, some people like it, and some people don’t.

Sin
I have a conception of sin, but I don’t know how many people think of it in a similar way. It may be so far from the Christian idea of what sin is that I should not even give it the same name, but I do have some justification. The word sin was originally an archery term, being a unit of distance from the bull’s-eye.

This combined with my somewhat liberal notion of God led me to define sin as an injury to one’s soul. Equivalently, sin is that which moves the state of your soul further from the “best” state. Keep in mind that I use this definition primarily for myself, so the meaning of “best” is a bit ambiguous. One sin is “worse” than another is if it causes the soul more damage.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to tell if anyone else is sinning at any given moment or with any given action, and it is often difficult to tell if you yourself are sinning. One who commits the same sin every day will certainly find his soul desensitized to the problems he causes himself. One example (probably a bad example, but it is simple) might be the acts of a serial killer. If I have already murdered twenty or thirty people, I probably cannot feel the effects of the next one on my soul.

As far as whether I have a soul to be saved, well…. I’m not even sure the soul is a religious concept. It’s more of a psychological concept. Not having a soul = Not having a psyche.

Salvation
I have a concept of salvation despite generally not believing in an afterlife. What it means to be saved, and what it means to be forgiven are shaped by what it means to sin in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like Jesus was a Buddha. The similarities between Christianity and Buddhism are many.

Some of the Christianity’s questions are too vague to answer.
--Was Jesus the Son of God?
--I don’t know. What does it mean to be the Son of God? In what way is he a son? I think that might be a better question to ask.

--Can you be saved by letting Jesus into your heart?
--I would be willing to bet that two people talking about letting Jesus into their hearts are not talking about the same thing.



My views on organized religion are positive. In some ways, I have trouble with the concept. I consider any religion organized if it passes from one person to another person. How it’s organized, and how well it’s organized is a different matter.

We have a number of images of Jesus.

Jesus
Jesus Christ
The innocent infant
The theological child
The humble carpenter
Hanging on the cross
Risen from the dead
The rebellious Jew
The anointed one
Rabbi

I like them all. I don’t think the historical accuracy of it will have much effect on my spiritual life.

The most conservative Christians I know are the people I’d trust with my life.
 
 
Yagg
05:27 / 21.06.02
I could go on all day and all night about this. I'm very happy to see this thread, because this has been a major matter in my life lately. Synchronicity, for sure!

Let me try to keep it short: Christianity has a bad name. Because most of today's "Christians" are followers not of Christ, but of their Church. In the early days after Christ, there were MANY forms of Christianity. One form became dominant. If you read more of the early apocryphal writings, you find an entirely different religion. Actually, you will find MANY different belief systems. And if you look at that whole picture, you think of the Pope and Jerry Falwell and so on, and you see that they have VERY LITTLE to do with what this Jesus Christ person is reported to have said. The various Churches have become monolithic and godlike themselves. Men have learned to convincingly speak for God. Well, they've had 2000 years of practice!

Althought I hadn't been Christian in well over ten years, I recently stumbled into Gnostic Christianity and thought, "You mean there's a NAME to what I've come to believe? And it leads back to Christ, whom I'd forgotten about?"

I'm still shaking my head. But I am, once again for the first time, a Christian. Just NOT a member of any Christian CHURCH. But the understanding I have of the whole thing now is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. After my moves thru Wicca/Paganism, Discordianism, Chaos Magick, Azathoth/Cthulhu, etc....It's like seeing a movie you know, only the characters all have entirely different dialogue, changing the entire meaning of the movie.

Didn't Jung talk about making peace with the religion you were brought up in?

Anyway, what a great thread for me to run across right now! Thanks, 'Lithers. You read my mind, which is the whole idea, isn't it?
Hmmm.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:17 / 21.06.02
Moderator hat: If this thread shows no sign of developing into a discussion, and remains a series of autobiographical musings followed by vague statements about either the Church or the Good or My Journey to Self-Knowledge, it will probably be moved to the Conversation.

So, let's perhaps go back to the original questions that caused Johnny O to renounce his faith. F'r example - Christ, according to Hoyle, died for you. At various times the view that as he died he was a being of pure flesh (and thus his death was everything a "mortal" death would be) or of pure spirit (and thus his death was nothing like a normal man's death)) have been declared heretical, with the idea that he was flesh and spirit both becoming orthodox. How do you understand this idea? Is the point of expiatory sacrifice the dying, or the being dead?

The obvious response, of course, is that it wasn't the death that was Christ's sacrifice; it was taking on the wrath of his father for the sin of all humanity, to be abandoned by God *entirely* at the moment of death. I'm sort of surprised that nobody at Johnny's school managed to throw this one up. Would it have made a difference? Is such an idea even comprehensible to men and women who live without the constant presence of the numinous or divine at our shoulder?

Because, you know, some of the ideas of Christ are, if wildly derivative, rather interesting...
 
 
The Natural Way
09:39 / 21.06.02
My Father's an ex-catholic priest - he left the church during the late sixties, amid much kerfuffle and broo-ha-ha (he was one of a bunch of promising new theologians the church was rather fed-up to see go - the whole thing even became a minor scandle in the press), pissed off to Sri-Lanka and became initiated as a Sufi - and has since immersed himself within every tradition going and harbours a particularly strong affection for sacred geometry and the liberal arts. Hailing, as I do, from this "confused" religious background, my conception of christianity has always been, well....a bit esoteric (which is obviously something I share with loads of posters on this thread). I tend to think people's resentment towards christianity stems from horrible personal trauma at the hands of the church (my Dad's exoerience of catholicism completely) and an incomplete understanding of the christian path: the kind of bastardised, Sunday school bullshit our culture feeds us every Christmas.

An interesting thing: I was chatting to Dad about about Jesus the other day, and he reiterated the similarities between Christ's life and those of other, famous God-men and pointed out that with Jesus, as opposed to Buddha et al, what was really important wasn't so much the teaching, but the life itself - it's shape and the various degrees of initiation represented by its different stages. Suddenly I got a clearer understanding of what the church means when it insists its adherents partake of the life of Christ and the mystical/transcendental cosmology that informs it.
 
 
Rev. Orr
09:54 / 21.06.02
Y'know, Haus, I can't see this being as big a problem if people were just saying "and then i conjured the avatar of horus and he told me i was bearing the anima of a wandering star people so now i can read minds and scry the future and stick my cock in the ear of people hundreds of miles away (psychically)". Maybe move it to Magic if you want to keep the Head Shop free for reasoned philosophy only without any elements of faith or discussion of the unknowable. I'm sure the confessional elements of personal spiritual journeys are just a preamble and an attempt to own up to peoples bias and viewpoints.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:00 / 21.06.02
Half of the Head Shop is *about* faith and the unknowable, and you are correct in thinking that manifesting Horus (too, too knowable) would go into the Magick. But so far we have had a page of "preamble" and almost nothing of any weight or worth that was then picked up by anybody else in the rush to tell us how they too are like Christians, but cleverer. At present this is a series of monologues, and thus not suitable for a discussion forum.

I am not threatening to move it (I don't have that power), merely observing that it is possible that more than one moderator is likely to. At the very least one might change the title to "My experience of Christ, Christianity and Christendom", and run it alongside threads which actually go somewhere.

Oh, and fancy a coffee?
 
 
Rev. Orr
10:39 / 21.06.02
OK, coffee is now in da haus.

Re: the point of the sacrifice of the Christ. One of the more interesting aspects of the incarnation its attempt to bridge the divide between the experiential and the unknowable, the human and the divine. An omnipotent and omnisicient deity is so far beyond the level of our understanding, other than in concept and yet chooses to assume human form and die, presumable achieving some purpose beyond immortal curiosity. If Jesus was entirely human, then he becomes a role-model, an exemplar or a teacher only. The metaphysical aspects of the 'sacrifice' are nullified and he must be seen as a martyr, no more and no less. If he is entirely divine, then he cannot have truly died and so that too reduces the concept of sacrifice. It's clear why an established, Established or institutionalised church would dislike such interpretations, but for me, the middle path raises the most questions.

If God as we understand hir is capable of the division that we allude to with the Trinity concept, and this occured to create a Jesus who was at once both human and a part or incarnation of the divine, then we open up the possibility of his life as sacrifice. Moving away from the simplistic notion that the death of one man, however horrific, somehow in an unspecified mannar wipes out all sins throughout human existance, might allay some of the discomfort or imposition that many people feel when this format is thrust upon them. I'm not trying to convert anyone just agreeing that it can be pretty offensivly portrayed whether you believe it or not. If this Jesus allows an otherwise all powerful God to experience all aspects of mortality then this is far more likely to affect the relationship between humanity and the divine in a longer lasting process than half a day on a cross. Why experience only death? The sacrifice then become this limiting and experiencing (although it may be plain wrong to argue that an omniscient being cannot learn but can experience the new).

If this sounds all too 'Last Temptation of Christ' then I apologise but entering a reality you have created must alter the nature of that reality (and now I'm chanelling 'Cool World') and that is how am groping towards a rationalisation of the incarnation.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:59 / 21.06.02
But the point isn't necessarily that he died, it's that he had to die without God. It's like...take "Paradise Lost". One of its big things is that damnation is that you have to live outside the love of God. That's what Hell actually is - "which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell". You spend your entire existence as a part of the divine, always knowing that you partake in infinte love, and at the very moment when your human form is at its weakest and most suffering, that love is replaced by, quite liderally, the Wrath of God.

You're thinking of the crucifixion as a blood sacrifice - the spilling of life as the repayment of a debt, but I'd suggest that another Greek sacrificial tradition is more apposite. The Athenians used to take two people annually, name them Pharmakoi, and drive them out of the city, in the belief that they took the anger of the gods for the city's previous year's impieties with them. The persecution and death of Christ could be seen as similar, taking on the weight of original sin, not paying for it.

I'm not sure the mindset of abandonment is actually recreatable without the sense of constant numinous proximity that certainly infused Greek and Roman thought...
 
 
grant
15:27 / 21.06.02
The scapegoat is a Hebrew tradition that's older than the Greek Pharmakoi, I think. (So the priests told me.) Put the sin on the goat and drive it out or burn it alive.

That abandonment thing is an interesting point; I've often pondered the "Eli, eli, lama sabacthani" line, and come up with something close to that, but not quite that exactly. My understanding was more that He was expressing an act of descent into full humanity, in order to die as we do, alone. Which is not entirely the same thing, but by no means the opposite.
Your version certainly makes the "descent and conquest of Hell" idea fit a bit more seamlessly into the whole concept of the Passion.

------------

Kegboy: The early Christian text are very much like budhism.

More than just the early texts: any of the writings by and about mystic saints like St. Theresa and St. Francis of Assissi will ring bells. Veils drop, and a connection is forged through Christ with every living being. Not at all dissimilar from the experience of the Buddha, plunging past Mara into the union of every living thing.

What I find interesting is that Buddhism *seems* much better at cultivating this mindset than Christianity. I'm not sure if it's the practice of meditation, or just the fact that any Buddhists I come across are either converts, missionaries or foreigners, and thus not representative of the Buddhist mainstream. (Were the Khmer Rouge Buddhists? Or had they abandoned that for Maoist Communism?)

---------------

The theme of "servitude to Christ" seems to be the main one worth examining in this thread, though. The idea of serving the servant... an infinite regression of service, maybe. When done a certain way (I won't say "correctly," although it's what I personally think), it sure seems like a good way to explode the concept of master-servant relations altogether. "I exist for your benefit as you exist for mine, and we exist for theirs...."
It's also the crux of most people's resistance to the church. I will not serve your corrupt hierarchy. I will not serve your evil delusions. I will not serve.
And back to Milton....

--------------------------

I was ordained in the Universal Life Church back in college. It's an interesting, dogma-free denomination. The central tenet is freedom of belief, so church members believe a wide range of things. The founder, Kirby Hensley, did have some interestingly heretical beliefs about Jesus, though, which he would share in his mail-order pamphlets.
He separated "Jesus Christ" out into two beings, an evil one and a good one. The evil one corrupts people and is a puppet of Satan (He called this one "Jesus"), and the good one, (Christ) is the savior of mankind.
There's some of his thinking here and here.
Hensley was a self-taught former Pentecostal from the backwoods of North Carolina, so there's not a lot of polish on the thoughts, but the double-Christ thing seems really *familiar,* like an old idea he somehow stumbled on.

There's a Gnostic belief in the "twin" Jesus, and the trickster Jesus, and the idea of "docetism" - that there was an ordinary guy, Jesus, who somehow got infused with the Christ spirit - and that the spirit was divine, while the body was mortal.

This kind of thing may be looking for dualisms where there aren't any.

The idea might be more instructive (read: useful) as an analogy for psycho-spiritual structures within the Self - a map for discovering that gentle divinity that is at first perceived as Other, but then integrates itself to the whole persona.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:45 / 21.06.02
The scapegoat is a Hebrew tradition that's older than the Greek Pharmakoi, I think. (So the priests told me.) Put the sin on the goat and drive it out or burn it alive.

Yes, Grant. But Jesus wasn't a goat. At least, not to my knowledge.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:29 / 21.06.02
Interesting idea of the "twin Jesus." Intersects at odd angles with something I've been pondering, examining my notions of the Christ cf. the notions expressed in this thread.

When I think about "Jesus," and about "Christ," I'm thinking about two different things. And actually I don't think much about "Jesus" at all.

Jesus the man—or even Jesus the Son of God—is nowhere near as important to my belief system as the abstract concept of the Christ, the model of sacrifice and service, the Platonic form of which the Christian is called to be a shadow. Further, I would posit that an overemphasis on the person of Jesus can be a distraction.

Back to Johnny's post, at the top of this thread:
... if I met Buddha on the road, I would ask him "help me become like you", but if I met Christ, I would ask "Please, make everything like it should have been. Make it all better."

If I remember correctly, though, if you do meet the Buddha on the road, you're supposed to kill him. Because attachment to the person of the Buddha is, like all attachment, a distraction form the business of enlightenment.

Just so, I think, with Jesus.

To think of the Christ in the abstract—Christ as a way of life, as a verb almost, rather than as an individual—I'm neatly sidestepping the old theological trap of "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord." To me, it doesn't matter if this "Jesus" person was truly the son of God—doesn't matter if he even existed at all: the paradigm of the Christ, and the way in which it calls us to live, is the point—not the man.

It also puts the responsibility squarely back with me: rather than looking at Jesus as some kind of superhero who's going to come down from the sky and "make it all better," I try to follow the model. A lot of Christian sects are very hung up on the person of Jesus; it's a cult of personality. (Or of worshipping images, which is of course verboten.)

As SMatthewStolte points out, there are a lot of different images of Jesus to choose from: but I'm really not interested in any of them at this stage of the game. To make sense as a concept, the Christ has to be an Everyman, a man without qualities. God incarnate not as a man, but as capital-M Man. Humanity.

So the whole question of his existence, or of the cultural function he fulfilled to people in a particular time and place and culture, seems moot to me: it's a blind alley, because the Christ is not tied down to the specific cultural signifiers of Roman-occupied Palestine in the First Century: the Christ is timeless and transcendent, present in all times and places. present here. Now.

If I met Jesus on the road, I probably wouldn't have anything to say to him.

But I do meet the Christ on the road, every day of my life. In you. And you. And her over there. And you.

And so do you, if you're looking for Him.

More later, maybe, when I can frame it more coherently.
 
 
Thjatsi
18:07 / 21.06.02
I was raised as a Christian. However, I was forced to reject that religion when my beliefs couldn't hold up to any of the arguements made by a non-religious friend. This left me without anywhere to go, so I switched over to Deism. After a while, I realized that Deism was only slightly easier to defend than Christianity, so I made the move to Agnosticism.

I like to think of myself as a hopeful agnostic. I don't see any evidence that there is a god, but I really hope that one exists anyway.

I had another paragraph devoted to the incorporation of epistemology and religion, so The Haus wouldn't be forced to move this thread. However, it came off as arrogant and potentially offensive, so I removed it.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
18:45 / 21.06.02
i was looking at a painting, which i actually didn't find inspiring at all, but the title was 'christ appearing as a bunch of flowers' or something like that and as i read it i felt the ground just *move* underneath me and suddenly it was like another dimension had opened up in the world.

I had a similar experience when I saw a painting of Jesus laughing (He looked a lot like Bob Marley).

If I met Jesus on the road, I probably wouldn't have anything to say to him.

Not even a "thank you"? I don't think I would be able to help myself.

Jesus the man—or even Jesus the Son of God—is nowhere near as important to my belief system as the abstract concept of the Christ, the model of sacrifice and service, the Platonic form of which the Christian is called to be a shadow. Further, I would posit that an overemphasis on the person of Jesus can be a distraction.

I have a really hard time seperating the two. Maybe I just need more time to look at it all. This is all quite new to me.

But I do meet the Christ on the road, every day of my life. In you. And you. And her over there. And you.

Me too. And that's what makes "the person of Jesus" so interesting, because He is those people, and all of us too. I can't pull apart the concept of sacrifice and service away from the...i dunno...the "kind of guy" Christ was.

The obvious response, of course, is that it wasn't the death that was Christ's sacrifice; it was taking on the wrath of his father for the sin of all humanity, to be abandoned by God *entirely* at the moment of death. I'm sort of surprised that nobody at Johnny's school managed to throw this one up. Would it have made a difference? Is such an idea even comprehensible to men and women who live without the constant presence of the numinous or divine at our shoulder?

See, they never even went into that. The message was "Christ died for your sins, and you should be damn thankful for it, because his blood cleaned you". What does that mean to a bunch of ninth-graders? We had no clue what the implications were, and no one ever bothered to try and explain it to us. And not because we didn't ask, either. I'm not sure that many of the teachers had any idea what it meant. I know one or two did, and I wish I knew it then, just so I would have had someone who I was positive knew what they were talking about.

I've got a lot more ideas to put out here, but I gotta go to work.
 
 
Abigail Blue
19:05 / 21.06.02
< unrelated >I realize that this is a thread about Christianity but, as a Buddhist, I feel the need to interject a few things.

The whole 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him' thing is often used as a generalization of Buddhist philosophy. I'll give you that attachment isn't encouraged, what with it being one of the causes of suffering and all, but that quotation implies a world-view of separation that is a gross oversimplification of Buddhist thought.

Much like the Old and New Testaments, Buddhism has two major sets of sacred texts, and two very different religious traditions based on these texts: Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism (Also known as Lesser and Greater-Vehicle Buddhism). Hinayana Buddhism is based on the early teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, which take the form of dialogues between the Buddha and his 'disciples', wherein the students ask questions and the Buddha answers them.

Shakyamuni then gathered tons of followers together and announced that he was about to give them the complete teachings, which had not been given before because none of them were at a level of development where they would be even be able to conceive of the questions that he wanted to answer. He then taught what is known as the Lotus Sutra, which is the central text of Mahayana Buddhism. There are, of course, 50 million different sects in each of those two traditions…

The "detach yourself from all things, renounce your families and spouses to devote yourselves to the business of Enlightenment" branch of Buddhism is of the Hinayana tradition.

The gist of the Lotus Sutra is that we ALL have the potential to become Buddhas (ie, enlightened beings), not just monks and nuns, and that we don't have to leave our homes and families and sever all attachments in order to do it. Although, if you want to sever all attachments, that’s okay too.

My point is that Buddhism isn't all Zen, and that there is such a thing as 'engaged Buddhism'. There are, in fact, many branches of Buddhism which advocate involvement in the world as a means of working towards world peace and Enlightenment for all human beings. (Daishonin Buddhism as just one example). It’s sort of like lumping all Christian traditions together just because they revere the same text. I think we all know that Catholics and Baptists are very different fish indeed…

To get back to the original point of this thread, though, my problem with Christianity stems from the fact that most of the forms of Christian worship focus on the fact that God is outside of us, and that Jesus, far from being an example of the fact that any human can attain Christhood, is held up as a special case. It’s still considered blasphemous, to a lot of Christians, to suggest that Jesus’ purpose was to remind us all that the kingdom of God is within us, ie. That we all are God right now.

My other problem is that I don’t trust the sources. The New Testament was written by the apostles, who were men who hadn’t reached Christhood. Prime example of this is Paul/Saul who took the opportunity to make up a whole bunch of laws which had nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings. (Women should be seen and not heard, convert everyone and kill those who won’t sign up, etc.) In discussing this with a few priests, I was told that the apostles were chosen precisely because they were ordinary men, not Enlightened beings, and were symbolic of the broken body of Christ. I can see their point, but that still doesn’t justify to me what I see as a corruption of the teachings of Jesus. If you’re looking to find God, listen to someone who has realized that they are God, not someone who hung around with them…
 
 
Jack Fear
19:30 / 21.06.02
Thanks for the clarifications, Abigail.

And I fully agree with you on distrusting the sources: that's entirely healthy. Even if you read them in the original Greek or Aramaic, as Johnny proposed in the top post, there's still a whole world of misunderstanding that can go on.

Even if we accept that scripture is truly divinely inspired—that is, that it is truly the Word of God revealed to Humanity—we must keep in mind that God, like anybody else, was playing to an audience—and we are not the audience for whom that Word was intended.

That is: Scripture is the Word of God as revealed to a particular group of people in a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular culture. And were God revealing his word to us, today, in a 21st Century industrial/information society, He might express Himself very differently than he did to a load of Bronze Age nomads.

It's not the inevitable distortions of translation that make it hard to glean the truth from scripture: it's the change of context. After all, Shakespeare was writing in something pretty close to our modern English, but can you read him without footnotes?

Of course, I would say this holds for 3rd century Sanskrit sutras as well as for Hebrew scriptures, and that any religion founded outside of living memory is practiced only in a debased form now...

But I'm okay with that.
 
 
Abigail Blue
19:41 / 21.06.02
Of course, I would say this holds for 3rd century Sanskrit sutras as well as for Hebrew scriptures, and that any religion founded outside of living memory is practiced only in a debased form now...

Ha, ha! Point well taken, Jack!

Would love to write more about the role/importance of Scripture, but have to run...Thanks, all, for giving me something to think about on the way home!
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
02:43 / 22.06.02
Prime example of this is Paul/Saul who took the opportunity to make up a whole bunch of laws which had nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings. (Women should be seen and not heard, convert everyone and kill those who won’t sign up, etc.)

Whoa now. Paul's letters to the various churches in Corinth or Thessalonia or whatever weren't really letters laying down a dogma. He was writing to a specific group of people, with a specific message in mind for those people alone. He didn't write a form letter and send it to eight or nine different churches. Some he was pleased with, some he was really displeased with, but "convert everyone and kill those who won't sign up" was never a suggestion to anyone/any church. I've also heard that many of the comments made on women's role in marriage in Paul's epistles did not actually originate from Paul, but were mysteriously put in when it was translated from Latin to English. Some people blame Henry VIII, but I'm not sure how true that is. This is why I want to learn Ancient Greek and Hebrew, so I can at least know I'm reading what was originally put down on paper. Or papyrus or whatever.

Of course, some of this leads back to Jack's comment about the scripture being written for a much different society than our own. Paul's letters go a step further in this idea, as they were literally written for other people, all of which are now long dead.

I never bought the idea that the scripture was infallible or anything even close. The argument made by my teachers came from 2 Timothy; that whole "all scripture is God-breathed and good for this and this and that". Which, as you may have noticed, doesn't hold up logically, as you are using scripture to prove the validity of scripture. Besides, I figured either all inspiration comes from God or none of it does.

The whole 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him' thing is often used as a generalization of Buddhist philosophy. I'll give you that attachment isn't encouraged, what with it being one of the causes of suffering and all, but that quotation implies a world-view of separation that is a gross oversimplification of Buddhist thought.

I'm not sure it implies a world-view of seperation, but rather the idea that looking for enlightenment in anyone but yourself is not a wise idea, as the only Buddha you need to get in contact with is yourself. I'm not sure where you see the seperation deal in it.
 
 
Yagg
03:09 / 22.06.02
"That is: Scripture is the Word of God as revealed to a particular group of people in a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular culture. And were God revealing his word to us, today, in a 21st Century industrial/information society, He might express Himself very differently than he did to a load of Bronze Age nomads."

First of all, it cracks me up to think of a "LOAD" of Bronze Age nomads. I can picture them being hauled off the truck at the warehouse with a forklift, all bound up in shrink-wrap with a shipping invoice attached... "Hey, Frank, we got another load of nomads here! Where we gonna put 'em?"

But seriously folks...When I was enduring 12 years of child abuse and mind-control bullshit called Catholic schooling, I remember one question we used to bring up that the teachers and priests never seemed to have a good answer for. It went something like this: We have these holy scriptures which are supposed to be divinely inspired. Human beings were "moved freely" to write them, we were told. Inspired, but not required. Ok, let's say we accept that. (I'm not sure we do, but we'll say we do.) "Why then," we would ask, "Don't we have NEW scriptures all the time? Why isn't there a Third Testament?"

Basically, the answer went something like "People continue to write about God up to the present day, but after Jesus, none of it is important. He was the final word." Which already doesn't make sense, what with Saul/Paul being credited with so much of the New Testament. All of his stuff was written AFTER Christ.

So the question I ask now is, who thinks God is still speaking to us through "inspired works," be they written, filmed, or recorded? I have a few ideas myself, in fact I have a pretty simple theory about it, but I'll save it. I've held the floor long enough.

Also, I wanna repeat an earlier question: I am fairly ignorant of Jung, but I've been told repeatedly that he believed one should "make peace" with the religion one was raised in. Just wondering about that. I'm sure someone here can enlighten my ignorance.
 
 
Seth
10:41 / 22.06.02
I haven't heard that Jung reference, but I'll look it up. I makes perfect sense in terms of his whole outlook, though: our childhood formative experiences coming back to bite us on the ass if we don't find some means of resolution or integration. Nothing stays buried.

Abigail Blue: I've heard a great many people who have voiced concerns with some of Paul's teachin, particularly on attitudes to women. This might go some way to redressing the "seen but not heard stuff:"

Another explanation seems more likely. Paul elsewhere affirmed women’s role in prayer and prophecy (11:5), so he cannot be prohibiting all kinds of speech here. (In fact, no church that allows women to sing actually takes this verse to mean complete silence anyway.) Since Paul only addressed a specific kind of speech, we should note that the only kind of speech he directly addressed in 14:34—36 was wives asking questions.19 In ancient Greek and Jewish lecture settings, advanced students or educated people frequently interrupted public speakers with reasonable questions. Yet the culture had deprived most women of education. Jewish women could listen in synagogues, but unlike boys, were not taught to recite the Law while growing up. Ancient culture also considered it rude for uneducated persons to slow down lectures with questions that betrayed their lack of training.20 So Paul provided a long-range solution: The husbands should take a personal interest in their wives’ learning and catch them up privately. Most ancient husbands doubted their wives’ intellectual potential, but Paul was among the most progressive of ancient writers on the subject.21 Far from repressing these women, by ancient standards Paul was liberating them.22

The link itself looks at references to women throughout Paul's writing.
 
 
SMS
02:41 / 23.06.02
Haus: Because, you know, some of the ideas of Christ are, if wildly derivative, rather interesting...

I’m not sure which ideas you’re thinking of, but I think some of the most interesting material comes from the Q source. Q sayings are scattered in the Bible, believed to come from the same early source. Radical ideas of Jesus like

Q
Jesus: Whoever does not hate his father and mother cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in my way will not be worthy of me.
and the business about plucking out an eye, if it betrays you, I think, is also from Q.

Abigail Blue: It’s still considered blasphemous, to a lot of Christians, to suggest that Jesus’ purpose was to remind us all that the kingdom of God is within us, ie. That we all are God right now.
This reminded me of a saying from the apocryphal gospel of Thomas.

Gospel of Thomas
Jesus: If those who lead you say to you, “See, the Kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.

The idea never made it into the Bible, but it was out there, in Christian teachings.


also, to address
Abigail Blue (nice name, btw): To get back to the original point of this thread, though, my problem with Christianity stems from the fact that most of the forms of Christian worship focus on the fact that God is outside of us, and that Jesus, far from being an example of the fact that any human can attain Christhood, is held up as a special case.

Without disagreeing with you, I would point to expressionless’ post
I'm a Christian. The more I think about what the word actually means, the more I think it's actually a pretty bold assertion, and one that not a lot of self proffessed Christians can back up...

The word means, to be Christ-like. Thus, although many Christians and many Christian denominations may hold Jesus as a special case, it does seem that Christianity provides the framework for thinking that there is a kind of Buddha-hood to be obtained. The difference between being God and being God-like is only substantial if you assume that both systems have essentially the same conception of God in the first place.
 
 
m. anthony bro
08:54 / 23.06.02
Jesus was not a Christian. hint. He was just a pretty sussed guy. I imagine that wasn't perfect, like when he was being crucified and he blurted out "my god, why have you forsaken me?".
But, given the times then, he was a one of a kind, and it's easy to see why a cult of pesonality formed around him. Was he the son of god? yeah, but then so am I, and so are we all, the way I see it, which means, the way I got it to make any semblance of sense.
The bit I wanted to answer was where Yagg asks "who thinks God is still speaking to us through "inspired works," be they written, filmed, or recorded?"
Yeah, I think he probably is. But, then
(1) who listens?
(2) what can he/she/it do? I mean, with free will, it can say "word up mofo", but can't make no motherfucka drink the water he's been lead to.
It does remind me of the idea of Jesus dying for our sins. Think about it, it makes sense. Jesus was basically the victim of a conspiracy, and was murdered. Murder is a sin. We, human beings did it. So, he died for one sin, at least. 'for' is a weird word to use though, but if you substitute 'because', then...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:09 / 24.06.02
...you get the some incoherently-argued, unsupported, faintly humanist mishmash, but with a different word.

OK, rewind. CS Lewis, if memory serves, said that to say "Jesus was not the son of God, but merely a *good man*, whose teachings are valuable despite not being divine" is intrinsically ludicrous, as he is being represented as performing miracles, rising from the dead and so on. So, either one assumes that the disciples were lying their asses off (or utterly insane), and thus that the paradigmatic value of Christ is undermined anyway, or that Jesus was not a normal man, by virtue of having superhuman and inexplicable powers, and as such the value of his teachings to those without superhuman powers is immeidately under question.

Can you really accept the value of the teachings of Christ without accepting the theological structure around him?

SMS: I said the ideas of Christ, not "Christ's ideas". The virgin birth, the dying god, the reforming hero...the semiotics, if you'd rather.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:55 / 24.06.02
But surely the main aspect of Jesus divine restraint was in accepting the crucifixion? It was a pretty horrific process and particularly so in his case, IIRC. Doesn't make him "just a man", I suppose, but you might think he got a taste of being less than divine.

Also, as an atheist, I think you can get something out of the New Testament without believing very much of it to be true. The parables spring to mind as reasonable morality tales as do some acts of Jesus himself - getting angry at moneylenders and such like. Of course, I am arguably missing the point by thinking of christianity as a collection of cute stories.

As to the whole servitude aspect, it is certainly one I have problems with. I am often approached on the street and told that "Jesus died and suffered for you!". To which my immediate reaction is to think that I didn't want him to and he should have used divine intervention to avoid the pain. I'm missing the point again, but I just don't feel that I'm helped by the son of god allowing himself to be tortured.

Also, the whole heaven and hell idea has always seemed a bit strange. The idea seems to be that while I have free will, I will nevertheless be punished with eternal and unspeakable suffering if I turn away from god. Moreover, this suffering is entirely regrettable and will be of my own making. I've been watching too many italian gangster movies, I know, but I can just imagine a Don explaining this sort of situation to a person he "loves very deeply".
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:14 / 24.06.02
From Haus...
"That is: Scripture is the Word of God as revealed to a particular group of people in a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular culture. And were God revealing his word to us, today, in a 21st Century industrial/information society, He might express Himself very differently than he did to a load of Bronze Age nomads."


Then Yagg asks...

"We have these holy scriptures which are supposed to be divinely inspired. Human beings were "moved freely" to write them, we were told. Inspired, but not required. Ok, let's say we accept that. (I'm not sure we do, but we'll say we do.) "Why then," we would ask, "Don't we have NEW scriptures all the time? Why isn't there a Third Testament?"

I think a reasonable answer is that perhaps His word is still being recieved and spread to the rest of humanity, but in a form rather different than that of the scripture.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:19 / 24.06.02
Jesus the man—or even Jesus the Son of God—is nowhere near as important to my belief system as the abstract concept of the Christ, the model of sacrifice and service, the Platonic form of which the Christian is called to be a shadow. Further, I would posit that an overemphasis on the person of Jesus can be a distraction.

Seriously, everyone needs to read J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Really just the Zooey half. It explains what I was trying to get across much better than I ever could. C'mon, read it already. You'll be glad you did.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:36 / 24.06.02
I'll read Franny and Zooey if you'll read some Flannery O'Connor, especially the novel Wise Blood and the stories "Parker's Back" and "A Good Man Is Hard To Find"...
 
 
Chuckling Duck
16:44 / 24.06.02
[B]Can you really accept the value of the teachings of Christ without accepting the theological structure around him? [/B]

Can you learn a valuable lesson about goodwill and giving from Santa Claus without believing in a fat man who squeezes down your chimney?
 
  

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