Christianity - What has happened, anything?

I've hesitated before launching into this, but recent exchanges with a member here (a tired exchange, I'll admit - see, if interested, Mein Kampf thread) have prompted me to pose this, and so I guess I'll dive in.

The recent passing of Tammy Faye Bakker prompted me to watch the Eyes of Tammy Faye. I found myself, much to my surprise, much moved by this lady's story. She was easy to laugh at, and whatever the breakdown, her and her husband lived sumptuously off the money of sincere believers. But, after all is said and done, I am left with the conclusion that she died an authentic person, whose heart probably sat, more or less, in the right place. More Christlike, for instance, than Jerry Falwell and his ilk, who, in my view, have so seriously perverted what I know of Christ's message as to make it unrecognizable, at least as it comes from their mouths.

In short, my view: Christ's message is the apotheosis of love. Agape, selflessness, judgelessness, and the very heart of compassion. I believe that something profoundly wrong has happened to that message in the United States. I invite sincere dialogue from everyone, believer, non-believer alike. What is Christ's message?

(I disclose that I write as an atheist who believes Christ's teachings have much to offer the world).

 

These virtues got nothing to do with Christianity. I believe every man/woman has these voices inside him/her and the desire to be good but unfortunately a lot of time it takes looking in to the face of death before he/she can hear these voices.

 

Bumping an old thread, and I'll take the ding for it, because I think it's timely. Sarah Palin is the darling of the religious right, and that movement is in my view antithetical to both Christ's message, and to the Republic. Rob, if you're watching, this has been something of my concern for some time. The above is some of why, on the former concern. Invite any and all to jump in.

 

They have everything to do with REAL Christianity - they may have nothing to do with the churches/religious organizations claiming to be Christian.

 

I think gworld was trying to say these ideas are not exclusive to Christianity, and he believes these feelings are innate to all (or at least most) humans.

Northpointaiki, I generally agree with your assessment of Christ's message. However, I also do not think this message is unique to Christ. I think these ideas most likely appeared in Eastern philosophy many centuries before their canonization in Western religion. It's also interesting to note that a careful study of Christianity shows that the overall themes preached by the religion has changed significantly over time. Christian writings from the time around it's inception actually show Jesus' message to be much more similar to that of say, the Buddha, than it is now.

 

I agree, Damian. The more I've investigated comparative religions, the more astounding it is they share so many principles. (Not astounding, really - the older I've gotten, the less surprised I've become by a plenitude of Jungian synchronicities - another thread, I suppose).

No, I'm speaking more to what I see as a perversion of the historical Christ's message; really overbroadly, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" has become "Blow the fuckers away in the name of righteousness" and "hang 'em high, boys!" I don't get it, not at all.

 

christ's massege is a good wonderful massege, but it has been changed by wrong people.

 

Ah, well, I do have a few ideas about that transition. First, though, this is not a new perversion. Religion has been used as justification for atrocities for as long as we've had religion. And it doesn't matter *which* religion (with the possible exception of Buddhism), they are or have been used for this purpose. I personally feel religion has always been used as a form of population control. When religions were created, most people were not literate. They had to rely on the words of their religious leaders for god's truth. Those in power are typically adept at increasing their power, so religion became a natural outlet for them to do so. The crusades are a prime example of this behavior.

Now, even though more people are literate than ever before, most of them still don't personally read their bible. They still tend to rely on the cherry picked passages and interpretations of their minister, preacher, pastor, whatever for their beliefs. I am of the opinion that, when cherry picked, the bible is vague enough to divinely validate *any* belief system. Cherry pick a few passages from the Old Testament, and it's easy to see where this, "Blow the fuckers away in the name of righteousness", mind-set comes from.

 

I think this is true of almost any belief system, especially one that has a book that acts as the central source of the doctrine; a book that will always be highly interpretable.

That's why, although you see many "laws" in the bible that are as ridiculous as the laws in the quran, you don't see as many christians(these days, they've certainly had their time in history) adhering to those "outdated" laws. Why? Because culture has an influence on how the doctrine is interpreted and vice versa.

Monotheistic religions especially, seem to often be used as just tools of their followers for both personal and/or societal/national gain or to further promote personal and/or cultural biases, and also just for control.

 

Ok, I'm really glad to see this thread because this is something where I feel I've just recently found the root of the problem.

First off, I'm a Christian, was raised fundamentalist Christian, always will be Christian, but I've also always been rebellious and questioned everyone. Also, I've always known there is something very wrong with the way Christians treat other people, including myself, and have always wondered why it's so hard for us to really love one another when it says right there in the Bible that it should come naturally to us.

I think the point when I decided I really needed to figure out what is wrong with us was something like 10 years ago when I was at Balboa Park in San Diego and they had an exhibit in the museum of around 20 or so actual torture devices that were used during the inquisition. I'll never be able to forget what it felt like to stand there and look at those things in person. I won't get into the details of what was on exhibit... you can google it if you're not squeamish. I had to walk out and get some air so I didn't throw up.

Anyway, so the first thing you realize when you research all this is that they really thought they were helping these people who they were torturing. Just like Islamic extremists think that they're helping people by creating a more "pure" society. Except in the Inquisition their rational was that if they tortured these people bad enough to make them convert and repent of their sins, they would be saving them from a life of eternal torture. So it is always a means to an end. You can probably even see how people would say to themselves "oh man, I feel terrible making this person suffer, but I'm doing it for their own good", so then maybe they even allow themselves to derive some pleasure out of it, because to them, they're the ones having to do this dirty work just to help these sinful disgusting people.

Now days it's not quite so physical or blatant, but you still can't hardly go anywhere without being reminded that you better watch out for going to hell for all eternity when you die, so now it is more of a psychological torture that we put on the world in the hope of scaring them into repentance.

You have to understand though, that now days we aren't doing this out of a desire to control society (at least most of us), but out of what we feel is a sincere desire to help people avoid eternal hell.

This is where I believe the root of the problem lies. When Christianity was just beginning, there was no teaching of eternal hell, except for one small school which happened to be the one that the Roman Empire supported when they realized they weren't going to get rid of the Christians and were going to have to make a compromise, but that compromise was in the form of mixing in the Pagan concept of Eternal hell if you weren't a good person, and then taking control of the Religion through the Catholic Church. They even went as far as including that bias into the Latin, then English translations of the Bible, but the word for eternal hell is never used in the original Greek and Hebrew. When you take everything in context, and understand the words behind the words, it ends up meaning something like a temporary earthly punishment that comes from our sins, but actually ends up making us a better person once we've been through "hell".

There is so much more to it, but it is all freely available to study now days, and if anyone wants me to help them, feel free to PM me.

To sum up my point though -- when a person believes in a god who only loves them under certain circumstances, they are not going to be able to really feel love for anyone else. It's more like love with just a hint of poison in it, but the longer we live that way, the more toxic it becomes.

It is my firm belief that if Christianity had rejected the idea of eternal hell this whole time, we would have no reason to have tortured people all this time, and there would be almost none of the problems that seem to plague our churches. Of course we'd still be human, but at least we wouldn't have this conflicting "crusader" mentality. It goes against everything that Christ stood for, and I believe it is the "anti-Christ" that was spoken of in the gospels as if it were just about to happen... and when you think about, it really did. I'm also almost convinced that there is not going to be any end of the world in the sense that everyone seems to accept from things like the "Left Behind" series. It sounds to me more like in the Gospels they are talking about what was just about to happen and effectively "end" true Christianity until there was a return to what Christ really taught (the second coming). I'm still studying this though, so I have many questions myself.

That's about the extent of my rambling for now, but I appreciate the opportunity to vent some of these things that I've just recently been discovering.

Just one more note though: The reason why Christianity isn't supposed to require all of these "outdated" laws, is because we believe that when Christ died and rose again He took the punishment for our sins, so we no longer have to make continuous animal sacrifices like in the Old Testament. This sacrifice that God (in human form, but still sinless) made, seems almost pointless though unless you realize that EVERYONE was made blameless and worthy of heaven through that one sacrifice, just as EVERYONE was made unworthy through Adam & Eve.

This is why it is different then all the other Religions where their god does not sacrifice himself for them as an example of true love.

 

Sacrifice should be giving of yourself. To sacrifice your best goat back in the old days was a big deal. A man who was murdered by the State 2000 years ago hasn't cost me anything. I personally believe that Jesus did not believe we needed to sacrifice to God anything. That God only wanted us to do right to one another and to the rest of creation as well. To be custodians of the world and not conquerors and slave masters to each other and the world. I also think Jesus was initiated into various mystery traditions, traveled to Egypt, and may have been a follower of Hari Krishna. So now you know I am a moonbat
I agree the introduction of hell was a major set back and entirely a ploy to control the people. So was the invention of Satan as God's enemy and I believe that has also been very damaging to the world. Blame Satan. See those people over there doing things we would not do? They are infested with Satan. They need to be cleansed or changed, Saved from the Devil inside of them by the followers of the Cross. For God to be ultimate he can have no opposite.
I went to a fundi baptist church most of my life. I saw the mentality involved in the adoption of a Holy Christian Warrior mentality. The hymns selected to promote it. The biblical stories showing God's chosen conquering their enemies with God's help. To promote oneself as the Righteous and others (non-believers) as the profane to be avoided or assimilated. Because they are out to destroy us with their immorality and because they are the Army of Darkness, the minions of Satans legions. All this harkens back to a sect growing up around Nag Hamadi who believed that they where the Sons of Light and they would one day have to fight a battle against the Sons of Darkness in which God would make them victorious. They got wiped out by the Romans.
Then there is the idea of Asceticism in Christianity and my opinion that it is misunderstood in Christianity. To a yogi it is the idea that seperation from the indulgences of the worldly are useful in clearing the way for spiritual progress, but (at least in the church I attended) it was stretched to the point that the worldy was considered evil and satanic. That such natural things as lust (not just sexual) where to be avoided at all costs and that any temptation to indulge in life was not just counterproductive to spirituality but Evil and Immortally Dangerous. My personal belief is that denial of the physical and worldly is just as counterproductive to spirituality and can indeed cause all sorts of psychological disorders in a Western culture that it might not in an Eastern one.
All that said, Christianity is changing for the better in my opinion. The Christian Right is trying to stop that from happening. Their reasons are their own, but the damage they cause to Christianity as a movement and to the nation as a whole is going to be their undoing.

 

earthfaze, I think you make some good points, and sound to me like less of a "moonbat" then a lot of Christians. Maybe that means I'm a moonbat though.

You brought up something important, so now I'm gonna have to find the historical evidence about whether Jesus was influenced by eastern religions or not. So far I am assuming that it is the other way around.

GP

 

It would take a whole book to dispel the misconception of Christianity, whether it be because of TV evangelists, jw's, mormons, solutionx or whoever....


Oh, wait, there is a book written for that!


Fire away, I just had to make the point, but I am betting someone will want me to one by one explain all of the misconceptions. If you are serious about it, do some reading.

 

Yeah you are correct. We are all delusional and only you understand the true nature of Christianity. That was your only point right?

 

I'm pretty sure I've read the book you're referring to. I thought it created more "misconceptions" than it dispelled.

 

Just read the bible, that should be the only source that you should use to find what "true christianity" is, not some other book or what you read on the forums.

 

If you read into my statement "dilusional" that is your own issue... lol

I don't know the "true nature of Christianity" but I do know (and getting to know) Christ.

So much of "Christianity" in the USA today is like the TV evangelist type - they really don't read the Bible.

 

Pretend the bible hasn't been bastardized by centuries of rewrites and the mere fact that a rough transliteration does not honestly reflect the original languages. Or perhaps take into account all the books not chosen for the bible yet clearly written by early Christian groups. But yeah the propaganda book should definitely make for a sound spiritual basis. Especially since half of it has been deemed obsolete by modern Christianity anyway. Do you have any idea how many different words were removed and replaced with He or God? Do you have any idea how many different words were replaced simply with the word hell? But of course this is all a tangent to todays Christianity which cares nothing for it's own history and seems to rest firmly on the concept of Jesus as God's intermediary and the ten comandments as the basis for all things right and moral in the world. Yup no room for debate there, just go buy a book right?

 

Can you give an example? Every time a muslim has brought this up they run to the next -but,but,but...

 

Do you use the King James version or the NIV? Do you think they read the same? That's just off the top of my head, I'll go do your homework for you and like Palin I will get back with something.