The church is a one-off thing, which can’t be copied. It has been ruined, at least in the West – I’m not sure about the Eastern Church. I get the feeling that I’m missing something there. I can’t at present see us forming anything similar, because, as you say, the world is full of conflicting voices. The special role of the church, despite all its faults, was that it unified many people for quite a long time under common values, until the schisms started taking place. Postmodernity has us confused and in pieces. A new nationalism contributes to that as well.
I do think that all the world’s religious traditions share metaphysical truths, and that all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has some common origin. Which is where we need to go if we want to achieve some kind of unity. The question is whether it is something internal in the body, or external in the world, or somewhere in between? The archetypes seem common to all societies in some way or other, at least that is how I read Jung. This is probably a result of experience, but how is it passed on? We all have basically different experiences with people but end up with similar dreams and truths.
In the end I think that a modernized “church” that is able to understand the diversity of traditions as different roads leading to a centre, where we can all gain from our diversity, instead of seeing each other as a danger to one’s own beliefs, is the only way ahead. It also means that we need to understand that none of us has the ultimate explanation, but each tradition is an attempt to gain direction based on their unique experience, and that direction is towards each other. If the message of reconciliation and compassion is at that centre, we have a chance.
I agree with all that Bob. I find myself outside of all formal churches. As I have said elsewhere, to me Christianity is a spirit to be lived in. It’s the spirit of Jesus. To practice Christianity is to live in the spirit of Jesus and to enact that spirit in the world. It is entered by accepting love and forgiveness toward yourself. It is a spirit of love and forgiveness toward everyone. No membership in an organization is required. No one is excluded.
As you say, it puts you right with yourself and then shows you people who are the same, and asks why you shouldn’t be right with them as well. The situations in which the church places people, the Catholic Church in its rejection of so much or the Evangelical in its militancy against so much, undermine that love and forgiveness and make it bravery to hold on to that spirit.
I think that the Christian spirit is something unifying, it reaches out to people, supports them, helps them, and loves unconditionally. If we could find a way to come together to embody and demonstrate that, we would be a lot closer to the Church of Christ.
Only if u don’t cherry pick the testaments and throw the bath water out with the baby.
What we’d rather do is attribute all the morality demonstrated in religious life\living to naturally evolved behaviors that can be explained in terms of what works to increase group survival, rather than to the dictates of some imagined creator that rules by divine providence (when he’s not wiping out entire civilizations).
In fact we’d venture to say that not only is any religious interpretion of all this as unnecessary as it is confused, but it is (or at least can be) also downright dangerous.
Here lemme explain. Take joe. Joe’s a great guy and he’s a Christian. But he’s not a great guy because he’s a Christian. Rather, sometimes great guys become Christian because a wide range of human behaviors and habits that facilitate strong, effective social interaction - general good will - is ‘reverse-attributed’ to the christianity practiced, and believed to be the origins of the disposition allowing that kind of behavior.
In other bad news, there is no more significance to calling yourself a Christian than there is to calling yourself a Bobbyian and copying what the guy named Bobby who lives down the hall does.
And wut I don’t understand is why - if you absolutely have to pick a god - u don’t pick Prometheus. He’s the indisputable badass of the whole fucking pantheon and prolly the most important one to man’s spiritualization of purpose. For one thing, his defiance characterizes better than anything else, man’s age of enlightenment and turning away from god. In a sense he’s the last god, because he banishes the gods by giving man fire and liberating them from the god’s tyranny. Bro there’s all kinds of critically important and empowering symbolism in that dude’s myth. Who even compares? He’s the ultima-archetype.
Find a promethean near u and b like him instead, Bob.
Whilst I agree that there have been too numerous ways in which religion and the church have failed, the way you are describing what you’d like to do is not working. The church is waning, but nothing is moving in to take its place. In fact, that is what has been seen to cause a meaning crisis with a moral vacuum resulting in mental health issues. Since the beginning of the enlightenment, we haven’t seen too many non-religious movements that have motivated people to join together in achieving higher moral goals, in fact were there any? Instead, there are new ideologies like wokeism causing even more division.
On the other hand, the church and diaconal social welfare policies have driven the building of hospitals, and care homes for the old and disabled at a time when it wasn’t profitable (especially in Germany, where I am). There are relatively new companies, like the Planetree Project that were doing good things in America, but people don’t seem to do things just because its good. Profit drives much of it today, whereas in the past it has been devotion.
The fact remains that these great guys may be attracted to an organisation gives ample space for “a wide range of human behaviours that facilitate strong, effective social action”. It would be good if they could find that space anywhere, but they usually can’t. I have known these great guys who have chosen non-Christian organisations and struggled with the profit orientation having priority over social action, even though the long-termed effect would be profitable.
Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where an eagle daily tore at his liver, great.
He may have taught humans agriculture and all the arts of civilization and stole fire from the gods and gave it to them, but that doesn’t actually compete with the Sermon on the Mount.
There’s no cherry picking going on here. Nothing of history is being thrown out. There’s no denial of evolved behavior. Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as human freedom? Cuz on that point I’m going with the phenomena of freedom as experienced. In what system of values do you stand to make your judgment regarding all religious values are dangerous. The nihilism devoid of meaning that drives people to mass murder is rather dangerous too.
Who claimed that calling oneself a Christian results in being a great guy? No one here.
Just like with Christianity it depends on how the myth is interpreted. Fire can stand for technology. Technology has improved our lot as human beings in many ways. But humanity is also using it to destroy the planet. And the threat of nuclear war and outcome of technology hangs over us. So it’s no panacea. It needs to be encompassed by a higher vision of values if we are not to destroy ourselves with it. Where is that going to come from? Evolution? That process is too slow. If it comes it’ll have to be a matter of cultural evolution. And whether that can happen remains to be seen.
Incidentally, the interpretation which sees Jesus as a god walking on earth is an error. The story of the temptations of Jesus illustrates his true humanity. Serious temptation presupposes desire for that by which one is tempted. Like Adam and Eve, Jesus, as fully human, stood between innocence and guilt.
“Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where an eagle daily tore at his liver, great.”
That’s because Zeus’s bitch ass got all mad because prom wuz teaching folks how to survive and shit.
“but that doesn’t actually compete with the Sermon on the Mount.”
You lost your mind dude prom would kick Moses’s ass any day.
In other words “My god can kick your god’s ass.” Brilliant argument! 
Incidentally the “Sermon on the Mount” was not a reference to Moses.
Actually, if you read the Bible … Elijah and Moses were the teachers of Jesus, Jesus even said it himself.
And who the fuck am I? The teacher of all of you.
Wait u mean Jesus did the sermon on the mount? Wtf. My whole life I thought that was Moses. Well what’s the one where Moses got the commandments? He was up on a mountain wuddint he? That’s why I wuz thinking ‘mount’.
Anyway if I shot a porn I would call it ‘Sherman on the Mount’ and the protagonist’s name would be Sherman.
I appreciate the scholarship on this. It’s clear that you’re the most serious in building an argument here. Though Felix has something to offer he is, Im afraid, entirely tied by his wish that Christianity could be absolved of all its perversities. which it cannot. Just like nazism cant be ‘reinvented’ and suddenly be decent, Christianity cant just all of a sudden be something separate from what it has done to people - thats just what it is, its legacy, and forever will be. It has all the cruelty and of the Roman empire but added to that, a belief in itself as being innocent. So it is the most dangerously violent religion earth has seen. At the very least Islam, which is almost equally violent, doesnt quite have that pretense of being innocent, it knows itself as descendent of a warlord and respects itself as such.
It is due to Islam that knowledge of the Greeks has survived. Through Alexander, those writings were exported, gratefully kept and built on in Asia, and after the worst of Christianity was over in Europe, Islamic scholars came to Venice and such cities to share the old classical treasures.
That said, I think the age of spinoffs of Judaeism is sort of spent. I dont see great things coming for the two big monotheistic faiths. I just see that the Jewish god has delivered on his promise, and the others have not.
Fixed Cross–perhaps your personal encounter with professing Christianity was too negative for you to ever see what I see. There are people within my circle of family and friends for whom that’s true and who consequently don’t see what I see. In fact, most of them don’t. Maybe none of them do. So I’m not surprised. I don’t try to persuade them of my vision. I love them as they are.
I’m the mote of dust in Jesus’ eye.
Christianity is actually an offshoot of Hinduism (the Vedas). Gandhi said it himself after reading the Bible, “why change religions when everything in the Bible is already in the vedas?”
You people think I’m insane. That’s fine.
My ‘satanist’ side is actually a great defender by accusing god.
It helps people out a lot more than Hinduism or Judaism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or Sikhism combined.
I will say this and you need to understand it:
You are completely innocent if you are ignorant.
This bears repeating:
Sin is consent violation. That’s all it is. Some are worse than others. It must be understood that every being in one way or another is having their consent violated. That means that existence itself is sin.
That’s a big load off your shoulders folks.
How do you live a ‘good’ life?
You give existence the middle finger and violate consent as little as possible.
Life viewings are a real thing. You will be judged.
Where does the buck stop?
With people like me. People who say “ha! Blasphemy? Fucking, they can’t even tie their moral shoe laces, give them a break”
Blasphemy is only a concept starting with Judaism. That’s where it came from. The one sin that lasts forever. You know what a guy like me did?
I came along and said, actually, karma is just a reputation system… you don’t have to have that loaded Jewish gun held to your head every second.
That’s my grace to you.