Contents Updated: Thursday, March 02, 2000
Modern Christians claim that these earlier "Christians" were unsophisticated people who did not understand the bible message. It is a popular lie of the church, used even of the original disciples of Jesus who had to be discredited to allow the make-belief Christ of the gentile church to be built. The Christian bible includes the Old Testament which is murderous, obscene, immoral and intolerant. Women are the enemies of men and God commands witches to be killed; rapine and child abuse is sanctioned by God; the menfolk of defeated people are put to the sword at the command of God and the women and children taken as slaves; homosexuals are wicked; noble kings murder rivals for their wives and patriarchs sleep with their maids; there is only one God!
The modern Christian ignores much of this. "Don't do as I do, do as I say!" is the slogan of the Judaeo-Christian God. He says we must love one another, so that is what modern Christians preach. And homosexuals? Well, that's another matter. Communists or Muslims? Naturally, they are the "Evil Empire" and must be destroyed. Yawn! Why go on?
Why are many of the most intolerant, prejudiced, bitter and dissatisfied people among us bible-bashing Christians? Why do they not want to love and forgive, as they are supposed to? One can only deduce that Christianity appeals to people like this—people who want the approval of God to be obnoxious to everyone else. If they only wanted to kill each other, perhaps we could all sit back and let them get on with it, but some Christian somewhere wants to kill each one of us, Christian or not, for some reason.
Like the originators of their false and synthetic religion, they see the world as fighting a battle between Good and Evil. They are Good and everyone else is Evil. Pagans were tolerant of each other's religions, and even of Atheism. Religious wars in Pagan times were unknown and impossible. There were wars and savagery even then but all gods were respected. The Roman cult of Emperor worship for most people was no different to modern Christian Americans swearing an oath of allegiance before the American flag. The first Christians would have seen this as idolatrous.
Return to Religion is the perpetual call of a disintegrating society. But those who make the call in our society never stop to consider whether a religion which is split into innumerable sects, which is based on blatantly contradictory holy texts, and whose supreme god has a history in those texts of unthinkable cruelty cannot be the religion to turn to because it propagates the faults they seek to correct.
Indeed, the fact that so much of the teaching of the son of God, who is really God himself in his aspect of the Saviour of sinful humanity, is plainly ignored by Christians—including professional ones—can hardly be expected to put the fear of God into sinners, if that is what is thought to be needed. Sinners today are educated enough to see that priests and preachers ignore whole chunks of the New Testament on the grounds that it does not apply to the modern world. They will turn and say: "You do not believe a great deal yourself, do you?"
In crisis people seek odd solutions. A new pseudo-Christian cult has begun to grow in the last 20 years—the cult of Elvis.
Elvis Presley was a poor white boy blessed with good looks and a good voice. He became the focus of the newly promoted musical style called rock and roll after Southern black slang for vigorously sexual activity. Elvis made the most of this, moving his limbs about provocatively for the time which was the mid-fifties of the twentieth century and created a sensation. He became the first and perhaps the best known rock and roll idol before killing himself with excess food and drugs at the young age of 42 in 1977.
Elvis worshippers delight that their god has been among them and his friends and assistants now vie with each other to come up with new proofs of his divine awareness. He is identified as a latter day incarnation of Christ or an equivalent avatar of God and if the church does not canonise him there is little doubt that his cult will become another rival to Christianity.
What people really want is a new ethics, yet we have been taught always that ethics were brought down from Jehovah by Moses on tables of stone. The implication seems to be that without the commandments of God no one would ever be good. But even Paul the Apostle knew that people could be good without commandments. Paul attributed it to faith, but we can be sure that there are plenty of people, perhaps even a majority, who are good without any religious blackmail or threats.
Today, despite the lack of interest of most people in western society in Christianity, we are obliged by convention to put up with its continuing excesses. It has even become fashionable for scientists, led by Steven Hawkin, to talk about god, to give their screeds a cache of mystery they do not need. History is seen only in terms of Christianity even by those who neither understand Christianity or Paganism. Football managers claim to be "Christian" then employ mediums and start spouting about reincarnation! A liitle girl is savagely murdered by a pervert and who is first to appear on TV—the local vicar assuring his flocks that God is still with us! 95 per cent of people are not church goers but do we get a Pagan, Muslim or even Atheist view? Not a chance. The media pretend we are still all Christians.
The later history of the church was often that of movements to re-assert what were considered the original ascetic priciples of Christianity—a return to Essenism. From time to time Christians see that they have slipped from the original Essene ideal and demand to return to it. The Protestant revolution tried to re-establish the original Essene values of Jesus—direct access to God by reforming or abolishing the priesthood and setting up a kingdom of God or theocracy obliging everyone to think the same way.
The idea of equal access to God led to social equality, democracy and ultimately secular communism. At an earlier date Mohammed had similar ideas certainly culled from Christians of the Nazarene sect who had escaped Roman oppression by going into the desert. Reversions to pre-Christian forms continue. The Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons all emphasise the Old rather than the New Testaments.