Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi
Religion, as we know it, may be a sham. But, before you lunge or laugh at that statement, let me explain. To begin, the canonical teachings of Jesus, on which the Christian religion thinks it's based, are not the whole picture. Since no one can appreciate anything that's unfocused, let's focus it and then live it, if we're going to live it at all. And, I truly believe fervently we need Christ more today than at any other time in the world's history. Fortunately, He's here just as much as our need is for Him.
I know that's a wake up to anyone who has been reading Tiger Lilies, but Tiger Lilies has never advocated religion per se. It has rather called for universal enlightenment, some of which is found in most religions and is in all human beings as an a priori condition. Enlightenment requires a sound and liberated mind to begin with. So, I have offered thoughts on what has enslaved us and thoughts on how to break free of that inner enslavement. Human enlightenment seems to always have been an illusive dance between shadow and light, cast from within another dimension, another reality, while at the same time calling for compassion as our guide - a compassion for ourselves, individually, and collectively.
If compassion is a religion, then it may be a reflection of a deep and powerful truth, far more powerful than any religion could ever be. It doesn't steal your soul. Rather, it opens the door of your heart to eternity, something religion offers but too often doesn't deliver.
Tiger Lilies is based on what I believe are the real teachings of Jesus. For the mainstream that may sound heretical, but there is sufficient sound evidence that the Gnostic Christian teachings and writings offer the world a very different, and important, understanding of what Jesus really taught. So, I've maintained what I have come to believe are the authentic teachings of Jesus as the Son of God.
Adding to that understanding, is one that He is a fully realized Son of God, and fully enlightened, as the Buddha was. While he stands apart from us, He is also always drawing us closer to him, opening the path to truth, enlightenment, total immersion in the Oneness of universal eternality. He does not need our worship. He does not need our sacrifice, nor does God. He wants us to take possession of our own minds and lives. He wants us to honor ourselves, and when we are ready, to open our minds and allow our hearts to breathe in the Holy Spirit which is the substance of creation itself. Nothing is more powerful or life-giving.
When we worship in the old way, we give our power away, including our self determination, our psychological underpinning, our own owned interpretation of life itself. We become subordinated. Many of the saints of antiquity, who followed the old religion, died giving their power away to a God who did not require it.
Jesus always wanted us to take back our power from the false power brokers. It was everything he hoped we'd understand. He knew the way and wanted to show us how to become whole, strengthened by that wholeness, and empowered by a personal integrity. Rather than the rigidity of an old religious moralistic legalism that demanded subservience to a religious law, just because disobedience meant punishment, He called us to an individualistic integrity stemming from a self determination built on knowing and honoring yourself that can only come at that point of authentic freedom from outside controls. It's something like, "Know yourself, honor yourself; know your boundaries, honor your boundaries; love yourself, love each other."
When you are whole, you are strong; when you are strong, you can love; when you can love, you can forgive and heal yourself and the whole world. When the whole world is moving as one, it will dance with God in a way that I can't even imagine, but truly and earnestly hope for.
But, there is a single, mind-blowing thought I want to leave with you here.
Christianity as we know it has led to a ritualistic practice based on the wrong idea that Jesus was "the lamb of God," a sacrificial victim placed on the cross to absorb and absolve us of our punishment for our sins. This terrible idea comes from another terrible idea, which is that we are born sinners. What a sad state of affairs. Why would God create sinners?
So, Christianity is a victim-based ideology. The more pain, the more gain. The more you suffer, the more you liken yourself to Jesus, it suggests. Martyrdom was and still is the cornerstone of the faith. However you want to define martyrdom, it is based on the idea that you give yourself away to a more noble cause and in the giving of yourself away you gain eternal life, regardless of the pain. So, during the Middle Ages, you went to be burned at the stake. In the Roman era, you were ripped apart by lions or tortured in other unimaginable ways - that's until ISIL came up with some new ways.
And, that brings me to another terrible idea. ISIL terrorists are gaining recruits based on the same ideology, as wrong now as it ever was. The terror inflicted on the world recently in Paris, is an outrageous mirror to us of what we always believed ourselves, only packaged differently. Why else would someone blow himself up in a suicide vest? As we react to ISIL's terrorism, let's look at how we've terrorized our own minds for these past 1600 years, as Christians.
You can say, "Oh that was a long time ago. We don't put people up to burn anymore. We don't kill in the name of religion anymore."
Are you sure about that? As long as the over-riding ideology of the faith, which I maintain is an error made by the Church Fathers around AD 325, and cast in stone in the Nicene Creed, is based on a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus' death (crucifixion) was about, then we are upholding a victim-based, heroic belief in martyrdom which is identical to the idea that is fueling ISIL.
We are looking our own false religion right in the face of every radical Muslim terrorist.
Again, I'm not saying authentic Christianity is false. I'm saying this pivotal belief, which also keeps the mainstream away from a full communion with the divine, is based on a huge error, an error so big and so malignant that it has created an inflamed planet theologically and ideologically.
So, back to Jesus. His last words to us were, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
I think that's where I begin and where I leave off. "Father, forgive us all - Christians and Muslims - because we didn't know what we were doing." But, now we do. Where do we go from here?
(Continued tomorrow)
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