Thursday 12 May 2016

Christ and the Church

  The nature of humanity is imperfection. That is a sad truth, but truth none the less, that is based on the fact that as a race, we make mistakes, we give in into lesser feeling like anger or hate and we are unable to control ourselves from them, we exert violence on one another and unfortunately the list goes on and on. That is the essence of our imperfection. It is not due to our bodies, that will eventually fade away, or due to our appearance, but due to our characters, who even though contains positive aspects, also contains negative, that leads us to poor choices (e.g. revenge in the place of forgiveness). Like us though, nothing on this material world can be categorized as perfect. But what about God? If we assume that God exist (i recommend you to read my relative article about it, at http://theoryofhope.blogspot.ca/2016/05/the-nature-of-reality-and-godreality-is.html) then He must, by definition be perfect, or he will be no God at all. This means, that if God is not an all loving, all good, merciful, just and fair entity, which has no jealousy or hate or anger etc inside him, then He must by definition not be God, He must be an entity, that instead of praying to Him, we should rebel against Him.
  So, following logic, since God is all about love, then He must not have forsaken humanity. As a result, His ''word'' must be globally known and there is a specific name for the ones and also the organizations, that claim to be bringing God's will, towards humanity. They are named religions. But since humans are imperfect and God is perfect and therefore His ''word'' must also be perfect, in the sense that it is all about love, good etc, can humans truly understand it or follow it? The answer is no. Humans and religions, throughout history are twisting at a certain degree the word of God, in order to get their way. Meaning, for example, if God's ''word'' is all about love and peace, how would humans made wars in the name of God? If Christ, preached about being humble, then how would the Pope be leaving in a palace, and how would the church have a ridiculous amount of wealth? The same goes for all religions. People, misinterpret the ''holy texts'' of every religion, because they are perfect and humans are imperfect. In my above mentioned article, i make my case, that all religions have twisted on some degree the ''word'' of God, and since God is unique, meaning that they can be no two or more different ''Gods'' or religions right at the same time, the untwisted part of every religion or spiritual dogma, must be the same. And if someone is to study all religions and dogmas, he would discover, that by ignoring the obvious human part of their teaching, they all speak of an all loving, perfect, peaceful and fair God, and not only.
 In this article though, i wish to write only about Christianity, about the preachings of Christ and how the church throughout the centuries has corrupted them in some degree. At this point, if some of you, my readers, are rigorous church believers, consider to yourselves, that church is a man made organization, and humans make mistakes, so it just might be possible, that some of the things you have been taught about God and Christ, since you were a child, might be wrong, due to priests, simply having not understand the meaning of them. So, if you wish to discover, with the use of logic and not blind faith, if some part of God's word have been corrupted, since there must be nothing greater that learning the true intentions of God, stick with me, through my following articles. Plus, believing a lie as a truth, especially about God, is worth spending time to uncover. Of course, i will force no one to agree with me, but in case i am indeed right about the things i am going to say to the following articles, you should spend the time to read them, just in case, someone was lying to you (intentionally or not) since you were children and if you do not agree with me, feel free to debate me. I am open in every discussion, since by putting my beliefs under examination, i can always be as certain as possible that i am on the right side and by avoiding intellectual conflict, all i do, is to blind myself, to the right or wrong information i am about to receive and deprive my self from learning something new, that could potentially be true. Now, for my non Christians readers, even if you do not believe in the divine nature of Christ, you can not deny his significance as a historical figure or the wisdom of his teachings, that a whole religion was based upon.
  Christ's preachings, according to my previous statements, must have been perfect, in the sense that He talked only about love, forgiveness, mercy e.t.c and one by studying the 4 gospels, can confirm that, even though there are a lot of Christ's parabolas, meaning stories with symbolic connotation, that is hard to understand. In order for me to not get out of context, i will deal with the allegoric meaning of them, in other articles and i will focus here, on His non symbolic statements. On the other hand, church in order to do the crusades, the holy inquisition e.t.c must have corrupted and twisted these teachings, either by misinterpreting them, or by inserting non so holy or wise texts in the holy bible and embodying them into the religion or even, by simply ignoring them. So, by a quick comparison, Christ said on Luke 9:50 that ''whoever is not against you is with you'', and that we should follow Him only if we so choose, plus no where in the bible He forced anyone to follow Him. Instead, the church baptize us when we are children. OK someone might think, that does not sound so bad or terrible and it has its practical applications. Then how about, what the church did to non Christians? When Columbus discovered America, with the blessing of the church, Christians destroyed, slaughtered and enslaved  the natives in the name of God, in order to Christianize them, meaning to bring them into the path of the merciful God, by enslaving them. How many wars have been done throughout the middle ages, with the support of the church, or better said, how many wars have been done, due to the church? Is all the blood that was spilled, in the the name of God, God's doing? Of course not! God should not be blamed for the actions of man. But how exactly would the church manage to eradicate all those tribes and cities in America, Africa, Asia and do their ''holy wars'' for example the crusades, if they had not corrupted the words of Jesus, who said on Mathew 43-48 “43''You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' 44"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45''so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? "If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?48"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.''? Christ also said on Mark 12:31 ''love your neighbour as you love your self, no other commandment is greater than these'', yet the church burned people alive, tortured people and don't even get me started on the atrocious crimes they did on the first centuries of its creation, to the followers of the old religions e.g. the ones who followed the ancient Greek religion. I will only mention Hypatia of Alexandria the philosopher who was publicly murdered at 415 ac for not following the religion of love and light, by having her skin peeled of her body with stones. Yeah, by now everyone should have noticed at least a minor difference between what Christ said and what Christians did, who obviously believed that they were doing God's work, by following the not so holy teachings of the church. Even further, Jesus said on Matthew 19:21 '' if you want to be perfect, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow Me. ''. The Pope obviously did not get the memo in his palace and so must have the rest of the church, that has acquired tremendous amounts of money, throughout the years. I recommend you to read the book ''The Vatican Billions'' by Avro Manhattan. Moreover, the orthodox dogma says ''Πίστευε και μη ερέυνα'' which literally translates to believe and do not search, but has the meaning of believe and do not question, while Christ said at John 5:39 "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me.'' If i continue like this, i can write a whole book, which far exceeds the capacity of this article... Gandhi one time said, ''I like your Christ, but i do not like your Christians''.
  But when did this whole turn, from love to hate, happened in the religion? The answer is that it happened throughout history, by various priests and Popes who wished to change the religion to fit their agenda (e.g. Filioque), but the primary twist happened during the first centuries after Christ, during the establishment of the church and their dogma. More specifically in the firsts ecumenical councils, which is practically a meeting of all high priests and bishops, where they decide which dogma is the right one and abolish all other dogmas and their believers as cults. You may find summarizing information about them at the following web page http://oodegr.co/english/dogma/synodoi/oik_syn1.htm or simply by googling it. In this meetings, where they decided what is the official position of the church going to be on religious matters, or simply put, what the people are going to believe in, they accepted which Christian documents are going to be considered  sacred and which not. So, they embodied in the newly formed religion of Christianity, not only the loving preachings of Jesus, but literally also an other religion, the ancient Hebrew, which is not only about love and also some less than wise texts, by Saul, or more commonly known apostle Paul. One, by reading through the old testament will know a God, that is cruel, and has nothing to do with love or justice. For example, during the great exodus, when the Pharaoh forbidden the Israelis to leave Egypt, God sends a plague in order to kill all the first born sons of the Egyptians. Furthermore, the God of forgiveness Christ talked about, decides to wipe off the map, 2 cities (Sodom and Gomorrah), turns the wife of Lot into stone, for looking at the city during its destruction and  all over the old testament, God appears as a bloody entity, who murders, kills and slaughters people and if i were write about each of the monstrosities described in that book, this article would last for ever. For a list of the victims of God in the old testament see http://www.view-pdf.com/ViewPDFFile.aspx?file=http://www.htmlpublish.com/newTestDocStorage/DocStorage/5bd9a62f24794d24bef29f9fae9db8da/OTG.pdf or for a more complete list check
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.ca/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
while note, that if you read all of the old testament, you will discover that God's evil actions exceeds far more than killing. Moreover, science tells us, that things like creation, Noah's Cataclysm and others, did not really happened, because of the proven beyond any reasonable question, evolution. But enough with the old testament. Let us see what Jesus had to say about it. Christ, said on Mathew 43-48 “43''You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' 44"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45''so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven''. Apparently Christ is having a disagreement with his Father presented in the old testament who says  'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.'. But, if one finds it to be no big deal, he should wonder which God did the Jews believed in and called him Father? Obviously the one described in the old testament. So, lets see what Christ said about it on John 8:41-48 41 You are doing the works of your own father.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.. Hmmm that sounds curious. It appears that the primary relation Christ had with the Jewish religion, is that he was born in Israel.
 How certain are you that what you have learned so far from the Church about religions is true? Because if you wish be a true Christian, you must follow Christ and His God, which apparently is not the same God as the one the Church speaks about. Christ's God, is the God of forgiveness, mercy, light, hope and love! So if you truly wish to obey the will of God, then listen to Mark 12:31 ''love your neighbour as you love your self, no other commandment is greater than these''. The majority of Christians i meet, have never read the bible, even though they claim to be devoted to God, because they go to the church one, maybe two or even seven times per week, but there, they only read specific passages, explicit chosen by the church, so that they may conform the religion to fit the churches official positions and doctrine. Instead, one should read the 4 gospels by himself and try to see the meaning of Christ's allegories and also, if he wished to confirm my previous statements, also read the old testament and compare it to Jesus' teachings.
 The essence of being a true Christian is not to just go to the church, or debate with people who believe in evolution, or giving a few dollars every now and then to Greenpeace, believing you did your share to humanity, but it is to love and help other people, to be modest and good and of course to apply Jesus; teachings. If one wish to make a difference, then he must follow an other path than the one the church suggest, one that it is filled with love, self-improvement and kindness, for the real problems do not lie with creationism or homosexual people, but lie ''within'' people and they have the form of negative emotions, like anger or hate, that drive people to do bad things. One also must see further and understand, that even though there is a notable difference between church and Christ, the majority of people that chose to become priests, did it for the right reasons, meaning to serve God and most of them do that every day, by helping people and teaching about love, or even in their own way and even though they represent an organization that is responsible for a lot of bad deeds, they deserve respect, for they are trying to make this world a better place, which is more than the average person can say for himself. Finally, i know that a lot of people have given up to Christianity due to the church, primary because they start reading the old testament, while a lot more, just blindly accept Christ, because they were born in a Christian family and have never bothered opening the New Testament to read. For the first group, since the teachings of the church, differ by a lot from the ones of Christ, you should give it an other try, primary because there are no better teachings than the ones of love and hope, while for the ones that are only baptized, but have never searched about the true meaning of being Christian, please read the 4 gospels.
 Summarizing, since Christ's teachings were perfect, in the sense that He only preached about love, kindness and salvation, humans being imperfect, in the sense that there is not only kindness inside us, but also hostility, twisted his words, in order to justify doing terrible things in God's name, or to manage to ignore their peaceful character, in order to exert violence on one another e.g. in order for the church to do the crusades, they preached that Arabs were the race of the devil. The primary distortion of the words of love, spoken by Jesus, happened during the first centuries after Christ, at the establishment of the Church, when at the ecumenical councils, the ''wise'' priests decided which dogma and which teachings they are going to be right or not. For example, until the first ecumenical council, the majority of the people who believed in Christ, also believed in reincarnation, a concept unknown to modern Christians. So, they inserted to the core of the religion, due to political and other reasons, a completely different doctrine, the Jewish religion, which represents a resentful violent God, different from the God of Christ, by embodying the old testament and the texts of Saul into the holy bible and also a few passages, where Christ says ''as it is written''. So, one instead of following the dogma of the Church, that although contains true preachings, that are caused due to the words of Christ, he should find out the true Christian dogma, by performing research of his own and as Jesus said "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me.'' but above all 'love your neighbour as you love your self, no other commandment is greater than these''.

                                                                                                             Andreas Sarchosis

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