Post No. 3,377 - neochristianity vs. Christianity: a clarification

I have collated a fair bit of what I have written about neochristianity vs. Christianity at https://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2015/05/neochristianity-christianity.html, but I have realised there is an additional point I wish to add, one which applies to other faiths as well. 

First, a key part from the above definition is: 

“I’m going to begin this by explaining that I make a strict division between:

neochristianity, in which group are those who have become rigid and unforgiving and covered with facades and all those who are greedy for power or materialistic influence, or abuse children, or in any way set limits or qualifications on Love,

and 

Christianity, in which group I classify people who follow Christ's two simple laws, about loving one's neighbour and loving Deity. (The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an example of a genuine Christian, IMO)”

There is another way of viewing this, I have realised: 

• neochristians put their energy into either 
• performative (pretend) demonstrations of “love” of their Deity; 
  or 
• genuine “love” of their Deity, but without any (or without any genuine) observation of the other part of the key commandment, which is genuine spiritual love (agape) of people; 

• those who are genuine in their faith, whether that be Christianity or some other faith, put their energy where their Deity puts it - so: 
• people, in the case of genuine Christians as their Deity loves the world/people so much he sent his Son;  
• the natural world, and people - who are a part of the natural world - in the case of Pagans.  

So ... if you’re wondering to determine how genuine someone is in their faith, consider: 

how closely does what they put their energy/“love” into match where their Deity/Deities put their energy/love? 

Just a thought ... 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Post No. 1,174 - An Opinion on One Theological Aspect of neochristianity

Quite a few years ago, a media commentator (i.e., a professional) was profoundly upset that I had referred to “the Old Testament” in something I wrote (not on this blog). This very upset professional said there was no such thing – in his words, “that was the Hebrew Bible” . . .

Now, I was raised as an Anglican (until I escaped in my teenage years), and I’ve known and discussed aspects of Christianity/neochristianity with friends and others I’ve known through most of my life, and everyone agreed that, for better or worse (can’t think of anything that fits the “better” category right now, but it may be there . . . maybe the lesbian relationship :) ), the Old Testament was accepted as being one part of the neochristian Bible. Furthermore, although some of the books in the various traditions overlap (see here – and here, for interest), there are differences between the neochristian Old Testament and Judaism’s Tanakh (I keep tending to write “the Torah”, but that’s just the first part of the Tanakh: I’m not going to get into either much, as I know very little about Judaism).

The commentator may have been upset because the context was same sex relationships, and I suspect he was in favour of accepting same sex relationships, but was deeply and genuinely distressed that some neochristians used the Old Testament to justify (maybe even to try to dignify . . . ) their  homophobia.

In any case, he was wrong about the Old Testament not being a part of neochristianity – but so are those who try to use the Old Testament (I’ll cut that to OT).

Now, there are a range of rebuttals to those who try to use the OT to justify homophobia, such as:   the comments were taken out of context (e.g., they were actually about prostitution),   the translations were flawed (this is, as I understand it, a particular issue around the King James version, owing to Jimmy’s [yes, that’s right, I have no respect for a homophobe who caused massive suffering] paranoia over witches which apparently led to “caster of bad spells” being changed to witch),   etc  - incidentally, on such matters, albeit a slightly different focus, I thoroughly recommend the book that Gavin Andrews wrote for the Pagan Awareness Network: “Paganism and Christianity” (Smashwords, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9871536-0-9; this is an ebook, and it appears to be no longer available – my apologies: I’ll see if I can find a source, but anyone who is interested could contact PAN or Smashwords).

There are a wide range of problems as a result of continued deference to the OT – including the inconsistency of picking and choosing which parts are to be accepted and which aren’t, and the appalling promotion in the OT of things like murder, rape, slavery, etc (as a starting point, you could refer to this, or maybe here – there isn’t any really good discussion on this set of problems that I could readily find).

Now, if you wish, you can read summaries of the “official” neochristian views on the OT here and here, but, in my personal opinion, I though Christ had resolved the matter quite clearly by saying “I bring you a New Testament”, and then simplified the Old Testament laws into two – both based on spiritual love (of neighbour, and Deity).

I guess that’s too simple for some people.

Or maybe the problem was it didn’t allow people to hold on to their power structures . . .

There’s another problem here, and the main one I wish to comment on: fear.

As a kid, I saw people fall over backwards / fall over themselves / tie themselves in knots / add any other sayings you consider fit, while they were trying to justify how the god of fear in the OT could be the God of Love in the New Testament.

When my Sunday School teacher tried to re-present the very clear wording around fearing the god of the OT as “fearing not doing the right thing”, child me started to wonder whether they knew what the hell they were talking about . . .

The doubt wasn’t helped by the attractive notion that hell wasn’t really a bad place, it was just that you were stuck in a place with a deity you didn’t worship - sorry, “adore” - the same way as everyone around you . . . sort of like an eternally boring party.

As I wrote, attractive . . . but it didn’t gel with the clearcut, hardline, vicious god of fear in the OT.

Fortunately for me, I’ve evolved spiritually beyond the old but immature religion I refer to as neochristianity, and no longer have to worry about trying to resolve such koan-like contradictions. (I also have other concerns, such as original sin, but that can wait till another post . . . maybe.)

Give me BPM, my Spiritual Guides, my Patron Deities, and freedom from dogma and guilt, and freedom to think and be psychic any day – and twice on Sundays.

Post No. 577 - "Gnosis: "The Lost Gospels" “ by Anglican priest Pete Owen Jones, and the rise of neochristianity

I've had the time to now do some further critiquing of "Gnosis "The Lost Gospels" “, by Anglican priest Pete Owen Jones, which ends with an admission that if neochristianity hadn't gone down the particular paths it did - despite evidence that other gospels exist and women were not marginalised originally - it would not have become a widespread religion.

In the first 400 years after Christ lived, apparently there were 20 or more gospels - including the Gospels of Peter, which claimed Jesus had never died, of Philip (according to which Mary Magdalene would have been hailed as the first Pope), and another that infant Jesus had caused a teacher to wither on the spot for reprimanding the child. "In fact, if any of the other texts had wound up in the New Testament, Christianity today would have looked very different ... or perhaps, it wouldn't have survived at all." These other texts, lumped together as 'the Apocrypha', were discarded as heretical around four centuries after the dates attributed to Christ, but Rev. Pete says one can't understand origins of the neochristian Church without considering them.

If we consider, then, the Gospel of Thomas (starting at about 18 minutes), we find a document which claims that understanding the esoteric sayings of Christ would lead one to immortality, as opposed to the neochristian view that Christ's resurrection is what matters, not knowledge.

This claim of immortality was re-interpreted as 'salvation', rather than immortality (which I consider we all have anyway – at the level of our Soul), and was then - officially - discarded on the grounds that salvation should be open to all Christians (through the intermediary roles of the priesthood, no doubt - although that doesn't get a mention ... ).

Well, putting aside the argument about whether or not people NEED 'salvation' (and whether, if they do, it must be through Christianity), you don't teach kindergarten students University maths, and I am quite comfortable that having to evolve until one is capable of comprehending some truths is a fact of life, just as one needs to (or should!) be well tested before being entrusted with power. Again, you wouldn't give a toddler the power to launch nuclear weapons. I think the bunch of blokes who made this decision actually missed the whole point about personal growth (which can perhaps be summarised as mature vs. immature, rather than ‘good’ or ‘evil’ – especially when ‘evil’ is interpreted as “non-compliant with a particular bunch of rules’).

I also found the notion that possessing knowledge was attributable to just a few, an elite, somewhat disturbing, but that probably DID reflect those times when very few people were educated, compared to now, when many people in the West get at least a basic education (something which should apply to everyone in the world, including all women and particularly including the Third World). That, to me, is more an argument about the need for adequacy of education rather than throwing out knowledge - and isn't a more loving response to spread and make accessible basic education, rather than promote a world view wherein it is OK not to be educated because you can still somehow be saved from a supposed inherent blame that one is alleged to have? (I'm glad I'm a Pagan, and therefore don't believe in the neochristian sin thing ... Did Christ say anything about that? Might look it up ... one day. I think Pelagius' approach was more correct and true to Christ’s message.)

The other reason Rev. Pete gives that the Gospel of Thomas was not accepted by the neochristians was that Christ's resurrection after suffering gave strength (hope?) to those experiencing persecution in the 3rd and 4th Centuries. He states that it was ‘well known’ that the Gnostics were not prepared to die for their faith. Well, leaving aside arguments around courage, who was persecuting whom and why, discarding the Gospel of Thomas in favour of Gospels which promote a preparedness to die would promote a more aggressive proselytising  and thus we have the violent spread of neochristianity, as opposed to what would have been a gentler spread of a Christianity aimed at improving people and the world. So, yes, Rev. Pete is right: discarding the Gospel of Thomas did lead to neochristianity as it is now, the violent religion of the Inquisition, the Massacre of Verdun, child abuse in institutions and other horrors.

Rev. Pete's comment that the Gospel of Thomas reveals that there were no fixed ideas at this time, a time of intense infighting, is further evidence for my view that most of what has come through from Christ's attempt to establish a religion of Love is, in fact, what I term neochristianity: what Christ wanted is what I term Christianity (and some people do hold to those principles, not all of whom claim to be Christian).

Incidentally, the sayings are described as being fairly ... ordinary, so it is of course possible that this document was just someone cashing in on the Jesus story, but I haven't seen a copy of a translation (yet) so can't say for certain.

This view point appears to be attributed to the Gnostics by Rev. Pete.

(For another interesting view on the Gnostics, see http://www.examiner.com/article/do-gnostics-believe-reincarnation, which includes, as part of an interesting and well-set out review, the following:

 The Gospel of Thomas has a passage that alludes to the potential of past-life recollection instead of simply breaking free of the Ouroboros after a person is Enlightened:

"When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will bear!"

It should be noted that since the Greco/Roman Gnostics were heavily influenced by Plato, reincarnation would have been almost a norm (as well as the pre-existence of the soul, predominant in all Gnostic traditions).

The doctrine of reincarnation became more standard and uniform with the medieval Gnostics.)

At around 26 minutes, we start to turn to sexism. Rev. Pete begins by describing the Roman Catholic Church’s restriction of power to men, which the Catholic hierarchy claims is because that’s how the Bible describes things. He then points out that in the Apocryphal Gospels of Philip and Mary and the Acts of Paul and Thecla, women were at the heart of Christ’s mission – particularly Mary Magdalene, who could have been was Jesus’ lover according to one interpretation of the Gospel of Philip (although other valid interpretations exist) - and took a central role in the centuries after Christ’s death, which is also supported by frescoes in the catacombs under St Peter’s. Their later exclusion by the Roman Catholic Church (and other churches) is something that fits my definition of neochristianity, rather than the loving aims of true Christianity.

At around 43 minutes, we move into the bitter debate over the nature of Christ. Rev. Pete describes the Gospel of Peter’s assertion that Jesus did not endure the human experiences of pain and death at the Crucifixion, and thus the concept that Jesus was both human and Divine at the same time (aren’t we all?) was a point of contention initially, and for perhaps three centuries, with some of the view that Christ’s apparent humanity was an illusion, and others that Jesus was a human – conceived through the sexual union of Mary and Joseph - ‘hijacked by God’ at Jesus’s baptism (which is closer to the view I had before I realised I was Pagan: that Jesus was the Son of God only in the sense that we ALL are Children of God). This is similar to Lobsang Rampa’s view that, at around age 30, Jesus underwent transmigration and Christ took over the body of Jesus.

At around 59 minutes, there is consideration of the view that some had that the Old Testament was not sacred, and Jesus’s Jewish origins would have been obliterated. (There was a media religious commentator who once claimed, in an email to me, that the Old Testament was ‘the Jewish Bible, and nothing to do with Christianity. Maybe he belonged to this particular lot of heretics ...) Mind you, Marcion’s view that there were actually two Gods (one God strictly just, the other God a protector against that God) is OK to polytheists. Marcion came to this position by comparing the New Testament to the Old, and noting the changes. I suppose this is consistent with Christ’s comment to the effect “I have brought you a New Testament”, and an overall message of Love, rather than rules and justice.

At around 71 minutes, Rev. Pete gets into how the orthodoxy of the neochristian church developed – for instance, the suffering of early Christians under the Roman Empire was apparently a key element, meaning documents which gave their suffering meaning, or described a way to some form of salvation (in my words, reward in heaven for hell on earth, rather than making life on earth better) were deliberately selected ahead of those that didn’t. Rev. Pete also covers the (flawed) attempts at determining authentic authorship (some of which was just: what has greatest public acceptance?), and one of the experts interviewed states that inclusion of the Apocrypha or failing to develop a single orthodoxy would have made conversion of the Emperor Constantine unlikely, and the church wouldn’t have become as widespread. The next three centuries after that had some at times violent suppression of anything that didn’t fit the official orthodoxy.

So, in my words, the violent invasion of Europe by this Middle Eastern religion would probably not have happened, along with all the massive suffering caused thereafter by prejudices against women, the savage violence of the Inquisition and the twisted results of celibate priesthood may not have happened, if the neochristian church had been more open to what I would describe as Truth.

All in all, I am rather shocked by Rev. Pete Owen Jones rather easy acceptance of the decisions made around the Apocrypha, and the violent path that those decisions led to. Of course, I’m not an Anglican priest who is possibly struggling to comes to terms with flaws in his faith … I’m a pagan Priestess who has already been through a similar exercise over some of the flaws associated with Paganism … (On that, have a read of this post, which puts a broader perspective on Pagan concepts of Deity, perhaps.)

All told, I have to say this TV show is the best presentation in support of my contention that much of what we see now is actually neochristianity, rather than Christianity, that I have ever come across.

Rev Pete interviews experts in the various fields and reviews the archaeological evidence, and it is well worth a view if you’re interested.

As a final point, for more on this topic see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha#Gospels [2]

[1] BPLF = Balanced Positive (spiritual) Light Forces. See here and here for more on this.

[2] Please see here and my post "The Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2, although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather engagingly - to be the Earth edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr, Wéofodthegn 

(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear"; ... aka Bellatrix Lux? … Morinehtar? … Would-be drýicgan ... )

My "blogiography" (list of all posts and guide as to how to best use this site) is here, and my glossary/index is here.

I started this blog to cover karmic regression-rescue (see here and here), and it grew ... See here for my group mind project, here and here for my "Pagans for Peace" project (and join me at 9 PM on Sunday, wherever you are, to meditate for peace), and here for my bindrune kit-bag. I also strongly recommend learning how to flame, ground and shield, do alternate nostril breathing, work with colour, and see also here and be flexible. 

I am a Walker upon the Path of Balanced Positivity, seeking Spiritual Maturity.

• One size does NOT fit all.
• Don't be mediocre - seek to excel.
• Gnwmythr's Stropping Strap: Occam's Razor only works if  the simplest solution is actually recognised as being the simplest, rather than the one that best fits one's bigotries being labelled 'simplest'.
• Our entire life experience, with all the many wondrous and varied people, places and events in it, is too small a sample for statistical reliability about Life.
• May the world of commerce and business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.
• Ban the dream interpretation industry!
• A home is for living in, not feeling, becoming or being rich or a “better” class than others.
• Being accustomed to interacting via certain rules makes those rules neither right nor universal.
• Like fire to the physical, emotions to the soul make a good servant, and a bad master.
• Expertise at intimacy and emotional happiness is generally not the same thing as spiritual growth.
• Any person, male or female, who has neither a serious health issue, dependents nor an agreement about study. yet expects their partner to work to support them, is, spiritually speaking, little more than a parasite.
• The means shape the end.
• BPLF restraint of uncooperatives is NOT an opportunity for revenge or getting even - even unconsciously.
• As words can kill, the right to freedom of speech comes with a DUTY to be as well-informed, objective and balanced as you can be.
• My favourite action movie of all time is "Gandhi", although I've recently come across "Invictus" and might put that one in to that category. However, I loathe the stereotypical action movie - and, for similar reasons, I loathe many dramas, which are often emotionally violent, more so in some cases than many war films.
• All of the above - and this blog - could be wrong, or subject to context, perspective, or state of spiritual evolution ...

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger [people].

John F. Kennedy (who was quoting 19^th Century Episcopal Bishop Phillips Brooks)

Jesus loves you. Odin wants you to grow up.

(Facebook meme, according to John  Beckett)

We make our decisions. And then our decisions turn around and make us.

F.W. Boreham

Females, get over 'cute'. Get competent. Get trained. Get capable. Get over 'cute'. And those of you who are called Patty and Debby and Suzy, get over that. Because we use those names to infantalise females – we keep females in their 'little girl' state by the names we use for them. Get over it. If you want to be taken seriously, get serious.

Jane Elliott

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.

(based on writing by) Edmund Burke

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

Albert Einstein

We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we only borrowed it from our children

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. ... Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

Robert F. Kennedy 1968

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

John F. Kennedy

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do. (Often degraded to “Be the change you want to see in the world” – see here)

Gandhi

Tags: Christianity, discrimination, history, neochristianity, society,

First published: Tysdagr, 15^th July, 2014

Last edited (excluding fixing typo's and other minor matters): Tuesday, 15^th July, 2014