thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-10, Ian Burton-Oakes wrote:
this discussion has done more to strengthen my faith than anything I've done in a long time
Good, then here we go.
But all four Gospels are remarkably consistent on the essential touchstones of the story: Jesus grew up in Nazareth, was baptised by John, went into the desert, healed and preached, gathered 12 close companions and many other followers, went to Jerusalem, was arrested by the Jewish religious authorities and executed by the Romans, then rose again.
Because they had editors. If you start to cut into the historical period of most of the gospels, you find competitors galore as to what was going on with Jesus. The Bible is consistent because it is as much a political document as a religious one, a political document used to secure the place of a particular sort of Christianity.
And I am always, always suspicious of appeals to Christianity's virtues that rest upon its historical survival and wide spread existence. Both of those have a lot to do with its connection to imperial powers—powers that wipe out the spiritual world of those it takes over, leaving a vacuum for Christianity.
And let us not forget that a lot of that Christianity is syncretic—not 'pure' but mingling local spiritual traditions with the biblical ones. There is a lot more diversity to the Christian tradition than there is unity—and if you need evidence of that, sheesh, history if full of'em.
Inquisition anyone? People, including Christians, like to think that was all about attacking pagan witches. It wasn't—they were the innocent casualties. The inquisitions carried out across Europe were most frequently used to weed out Christians who weren't Christian enough for the inquisitors.
This is where the discussion of Christianity and the sword is never a red herring. Every spiritual faith faces the question as to how it shall relate to the sword. Time and again, though, Christianity has embraced the sword, not just literally, but in its evangelical discourse, the way in which it trains its missionaries to go to other places, tear down the existing spiritual practices by a number of subtle coercions (argument being only the most obvious) in order to 'make way' for Jesus.
Worse yet, unlike Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, it has systematically avoided thinking through that relationship. Individuals, yes, have made those steps, but there advances are left, with too few exceptions, unincorporated by the broad spiritual paths of the faith (Simone Weil is luminary for me in this regard—read her). So, worse then being of the sword, it uses the sword even as it is in the process of denying the sword. Jesus the Lamb washes their hands clean before they have even begun. How red with blood must that poor lamb's wool be now? With remarkable little sarcasm: look at it for Christ's sake!
And horrors of horrors, do you know how I have heard good Christians defend this? "It was all part of God's plan to bring people to the faith" or, as you have said, "I can't think of any belief system, religious or secular, that has not been used, sincerely, to justify brutality and oppression." Do you see the problem, do you hear it? Because if you cannot, if it does not trouble you to your very soul that your faith has been complicit in this, then your Christianity is worth less than nothing to me.
If you are so invested in tradition being an essential part of your faith, you cannot shirk this by pointing to other faiths. I'm not talking about any faith, but yours. Don't go telling me Joseph Smith rolled the lemonade stand down the street.
