Brave Christian Worship

As I experience Christianity in France, it is different from what we experience in other nations, be they catholic or protestant.
Wherever it is held as a reverence of a masculine aspect of Godhead, it is truly failing. But where it is the reverence of the Virgin, somehow the whole spirit of it is different.

This is the palace of the popes in Avignon.

Note its order of rank.

A massive golden Mary towers over the stone, crucified Jesus.
It is not proper for men to revere a martyr as the god above them. It can only leads to an increase of despair, as it has done. There is nothing a martyred man can give another man, he can only take, their sympathy, their heart even - their souls -
but Mary does not ask anything, nor does she compel the sort of horror-inspired apprehension christians typically mistake for piety or faith, she inspires genuine compassion, as well as courage.

The opposite of what the martyr himself inspires; he makes people tremble in the marrow of their bones, become desperate for the chance to subject themselves - Kierkegaard is honest about this, though confused as he thinks it is actually the only path man can take.

This main inspiration caused by the western mainline of the religion, terror and self-mistrust, is why it has been adopted as the only legal form of worship by the Caesars, and then by the powerful Kings of the European Middle Ages who in its name persecuted all that was brave and self-respecting in Europe.

The high level christian inner feuds of the 1300s manifesting in Avignons Mary-worshipping papacy directly followed the extermination of the Cathars who knew themselves as bons hommes, bonness femmes, rather than as sinners.

Can it ever be noble to adhere to a religion that acquires its adherents by threat of violence, and hell?
Can it ever be more than collaboration with a cruel tyrant?

Is not the very fact that such threats are implicit in christianity a sure warning of its questionable divinity?

But the Virgin is divine, that stands to no objection.

Jesus was a worthy dude, in his way, no doubt, he gave an example some people have no choice but to follow when they see it -
but his pathos is not universal.

Ill say that again.

Jesus’ pathos is not universal.

I think that the appeal of Christ, even though he died a martyr, is the story of his death having made a difference that the “powers that be” hadn’t reckoned with. In killing Jesus, a new hope was set free and empowered the forces for good, symbolised by the resurrection. Easter is the celebration of this hope over death and a celebration of the power of God. Paul even celebrated the cross as a skandalon and an affront, comparing it to the iron snake of Moses, that the Israelites had to look upon to overcome the poison of the snakes that were set amongst them – by God.

This makes it clear that our destruction is the will of God and the cross is to be seen as the antidote. A far cry from the “God is love” statement, indicating that he is only love to those who accept the cross as the remedy to his wrath. That means, that the wrath of God is what everybody is getting, unless they believe in the redemption through the cross.

It is clear that this caused problems, not only amongst the Gentiles and the Jews, but even amongst those who considered themselves Christians. Today, I’m sure that this isn’t clear for many Christians and is played down in the churches.

Thats actually a really powerful interpretation.

Damn Bob thats harsh.

Kind of adds to my point though doesnt it?

“Jesus’ pathos is not universal”

Sure it is, but because you’re mythologizing the guy you make this whole thing more intriguing that it really is.

The guy was a normal dude who happened to become an exemplar of all those virtues that have evolved out of and from cooperative human group behavior over a hunerd thousand years.

Er’body got a little Jesus in em. And er’body got a little Nero in em too.

For Jew-God, death is the solution to every problem.
Death and plagues and curses and demons.

This is why my God is the Oversoul.
It creates much souls to inhabit reality.
It did not produce the bible,
nor is it bound to Judaism.
It is a true creator.

If you take into account the historical process since Jesus, it seems quite apparent from my point of view, that people felt that they were heading for some kind of hell. There was always talk about the end of days and numerous rulers have been associated with the antichrist, so life hasn’t been always pleasant. The early Christians were even sure that they didn’t have to marry because the end was nigh. It was Paul who ended up making a collection to support the Jewish Christians, who had sold everything and lived a kind of communism and after a short time realised that they had been a little presumptuous. Later, there was even a strange keenness to be martyred that the Romans didn’t understand, but if you believe that everyone is going to hell and that your premature death could save you, perhaps it makes sense.

Of course, two thousand years on, with everything getting better (at least statistically), and religion being pushed out by the enlightenment, we tend to look on these ideas and wince. People start cherry-picking the Bible, and we end up with the cuddly God that loves everyone. There is no more talk about the bodies coming out of the graves when the fanfare is blown, although there still are the rapture movies. The Gospels provide us with a certain amount of solace, the sermon on the mount is rid of the uncomfortable parts, and the difficult parts of Paul’s letters are pushed to one side. The church in Europe is more of a moral authority, but the scandals are more of a sexual nature rather than the cross. In Germany, it is interesting that more and more women are becoming protestant pastors, turning God more into a divine Mother than the wrathful father.

There is also the blending of Christianity with Buddhism, and an increase of pastors, who encourage meditation alongside prayer and contemplation. It becomes obvious, the more one becomes familiar with Platon, that there has been more of his philosophy taken on in some cases than teaching from the Old Testament. It could be said that early Christians wouldn’t recognise the teaching of the church today, and that in some cases, they may even be repelled by it.

_
There comes a point in time, where others’ religiosity/beliefs, is no-one else’s business, but that person’s alone.

Why… after all these years, do you ask these questions/want to know?

Btw… don’t put all your Christians or Catholics in one esoteric basket, like your uneducated pal Pezer did… the uneducated f**k!

Is there a time when no questions are to be asked? Is a person’s beliefs only their own because they can’t reconcile them with experience?

Surely a discussions forum is the place to try them out …

That was for Fixed, not for you… if you don’t mind and pardon me.

Despite my apparent criticism of modern-day Christianity, which is really a criticism of the claim of continuity, which isn’t there, it is important that religion develops with humanity. I see religion/spirituality as an inherent aspect of humanity, and something that, if it isn’t pursued, warps into some kind of ideology. In the 20th century, we had so many deaths to lament because the spiritual aspect of religion was lost, and ideologies took their place, costing millions of lives.

I believe that it was Schleiermacher who said that we humans experience the things that happen, and we experience ourselves in the midst of them. And if we pay attention and are receptive, we experience something that in Christianity is called the “grace of God”. It happens in strange ways that are as varied as the circumstances in which we live. It is also not something we can grasp, and yes, sometimes we experience grace far from the organised religions or scriptures, in places we don’t expect it, or in circumstances we don’t think it is appropriate. When such things happen, the experience is at least on par with the accounts of God’s grace that we find in the Bible.

That is, organised faith often leads us astray, as does doubt when we are sick or when we fail, because we want something tangible, something predictable, something concrete. We think if we do this or that it must happen, but it doesn’t work that way. Grace is given, “the Spirit blows where He wills”, and we humans, when we experience it, long for it to happen again. That is why science fails to get it, and why organised religions harden and get dogmatic, because this aspect is missing.

There is a story in the Old Testament that describes this. The prophet Elijah is described as a religious zealot whose spiritual energy is seemingly endless, but then, all of a sudden, he feels alone and fearful. When Elijah climbs the mountain in search of his God, he is asked: What are you doing here? And after the cataclysmic storm, earthquake and firestorm and silence ensues, he hears nothing but a low whisper. But he knows what he has to do. I believe that Schleiermacher found the same calm and clarity in the hustle and bustle of his time that we often lack.

I believe that something spiritual started the whole Christian movement off, but in a short time it was lost to the masses, and the church tried to regain it by all sorts of measures. It was there, but it was in the places distant from Rome that it occurred, and the Christians who experienced it were lowly, humble people. Occasionally, it occurred amongst theologians who dared to speak up, but the church silenced most of them. In this way, Grace was shut out from the congregation and only single, sporadic cases occurred. Relatively recently, the church has allowed the letters and sermons of people, like Meister Eckhardt, to surface, and we have discovered other cases in other religions, which shows that it isn’t only a Christian experience.

This is brave Christian worship …

I have my doubts that anyone on this thread actually understands Christianity - although obviously Bob comes closest.

Christianity came about through the Jews.
Jew God kills a lot of guys.
He resurrected a hand full,
but man, the death tole.
Jew God is easily angered.
Angry gods demand sacrifices.
Aztex and Christianity are angry-god religions.

Christianity is the refuge of the coward. For those too scared to live life they can always wait for their reward.
If they were brave they’d all do something noble for which they would be crucified.
But they are all just weaklings, cowering under the graven images of their gods and heroes hoping to be not noticed.

This is a failure to understand history and the increase in oppression that was caused by Christianity.

I think that yours is the failure to understand what I am saying here. However, I can add to the statement.

Christianity was about believing in the cross as the redemption of sin and consequently from the coming wrath of God. Of course, if you believe that, then anything you do to try and make people believe in the cross can be regarded as saving them from a fate worse than death. That gave some particularly bad people an excuse to exercise their brutality in trying to force people to convert. The fact that this has absolutely nothing good about it was apparently lost to them.

Are you brave then? What is noble about what you do, and what risks do you take to do it?

“don’t put all your Christians or Catholics in one esoteric basket”

No mags no. They all go in the same esoteric basket. I’m sorry.