07-03-2008, 12:04 AM
Rise of the Dragon:
The Monster of Orthodox Christianity
The Church began as a Fellowship in the Living Christ.
Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy.
Then it moved to Rome and became an institution.
Then it moved to Europe and became a culture.
Finally it moved to America and became an enterprise.
The religion that we call Christianity would not be recognized by Jesus were he to return to this earth today. This religion, identified as one and the same with Western culture, bursting at the same seams with complex theologies, riddled with organizational complexities (especially in Catholicism), and saddled with contradictory and bizarre doctrines is an abomination to the simple religion that was promoted and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. How easily do we forget that Jesus did not come to found a religion at all. The mission of Jesus was to reveal God and emphasize our relationship to God (spirituality) and to each other (morality). The summation of the religion of Jesus was in the Great Commandment, simply expressed as “Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul and your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself”. There wasn’t anymore to it than that. Jesus himself was born, lived and died a Jew. While frequently at odds with the religion of his birth, there is no real evidence that Jesus seemed intent on pushing the boundaries-at least not in the statements which can be traced more definitively back to the historical Jesus. Jesus frequently broke religious laws in favor of the Higher Law of Love, and rarely showed much interest in the “mechanical” aspects of his religion, except when it was compliant with the Higher Law. True, there is also an aspect of his religion that was a sort of post-Judaism universal religion but this also cannot be reconciled with most of what know today as orthodox Christianity.
The above quotation represents one of my favorite sayings regarding the evolution of the Christian faith. By reading this it is very easy to see how Christianity evolved. It began as a simple practice of living out the relationships of the Great Commandment-a community dedicated to love and service of God, each other and mankind, in the Spirit of Christ (which I believe was so-named for two reasons: First because Christ’s spirit lived on following the Resurrection event, infusing and strengthening his followers; and also because this intense spiritual existence was so strongly associated with Jesus during his lifetime). I do believe that Jesus intended to found a community of sorts during his lifetime, but it wasn’t really a church so much as a group of people united to following his teachings and embodying them in their service to the world. This was the “religion” Jesus had commended his followers to embody: The Apostles were entrusted with making all people disciples of the Great Commandment, the Way, the Truth and the Life that he had so completely embodied in his life. Jesus was no philosopher or systematic theologian, he displayed a deep contempt for the corrupt political, economic and religious systems symbolized by the Roman Empire, and displayed a general detachment from the world. When asked what one needed to do to be saved his answer was simply “To obey the law”.
Most unfortunately this was not enough for many people. Jesus had barely been gone before his message was corrupted. In this regard I share a common view with Thomas Jefferson that beginning with the Apostle Paul it was a downhill path of obfuscation, distortion and corruption that turned the faith of Christ into the monstrous behemoth of orthodox Christianity, a virtual “dragon” of sorts if I may use a biblical metaphor. Orthodoxy was often called the “worst enemy” of Christianity by early Unitarian ministers and I generally share this perspective. Orthodox Christianity is not “evil”, but it is a distortion of what Jesus taught. What we call Christianity is not real Christianity. It is a hodgepodge of bizarre concepts, slanderous doctrines, corrupt institutions and foreign influences that have buried the true message of Jesus. The above quote shows the most disturbing steps: In Greece the early Church Fathers began with some good ideas and new understandings to the faith but with time they overly intellectualized their faith. It was from this era that gave birth to some of the doctrines about Christianity that, once entrenched, could never be removed (specifically most of the metaphysical ideas of Christianity). This first step, however, though it clouded some aspects of the original message, would not have been enough to be the downfall in and of itself. In fact, it brought a fresh dosage of intellectualism to the faith, provided new perspectives on such matters as life after death, and represented an era of great free thought in the faith.
It was when Christianity was formally adopted by Rome that an irrevocable shift took place. Rome, the very same oppressive regime who, along with the elite Jewish leadership, carried the blood of Christ himself on its hands, reversed its policy towards the infant faith-but at a cost. In adopting the followers of Jesus Rome merged Christianity with paganism, institutionalized the faith (leading to the rigid hierarchy of the Catholic Church) and stifled the free thought of the Era of the Church Fathers in favor of one of rigid obedience to a politically decided orthodoxy. In a heartbeat Christianity was unified-but by a means which destroyed that which Jesus had sought so hard to create. When the Church was relocated primarily into Europe it was merged with Western Culture-hence the term Christendom, hence America’s confusion with being a “Christian nation”, hence the idea of Christianity as a “white man’s religion”. Finally, of course, both in Europe and in America, came the transactional aspect of Christianity: The quoi pro quo of salvation, the indulgences, the idea of being “born again” to escape the wrath of hell. From these roots came the forms of evangelical Christianity we know today that are little more than “Get out of Hell Free” cards, the televangelism, and the new underground subculture of Christianity. From Paul who couldn’t see past his rigid Judaic faith in some areas to the emperors who wanted political expediency to the poisonous ideas planted by theologians such as Augustine, these were the founders of orthodox Christianity…NOT Jesus Christ.
Orthodox Christianity may not be the “Dragon” spoken of in the book Revelation, but the fundamentalist aspects of this religion-especially in its rigid Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant forms-bastardized the faith of Jesus, replacing it with one of rigid creeds (absent from the words of Jesus), rituals (something Jesus generally exhibited disdain for) and hellfire and brimstone. Where was the One God for all humanity whom was known in many ways-through heart, head, spirit and action? Where was the idea of all people being God’s children, the idea of a universal kinship of humanity? These had been cashed in for a religion of power. Unitarianism and Universalism, whether explicitly Christian or not, in their pure, theistic forms, are the rightful successors to the faith of Christ. This, indeed, is Christianity, if we mean the religion taught by Jesus.