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=> what Jesus might have meant...

what Jesus might have meant...

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Friday, July 14 2006, 4:33:38 (CEST) from 201.145.20.85 - dsl-201-145-20-85.prod-infinitum.com.mx Mexico - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

The Gnostic Bible. No one can be sure what Jesus really said or did. Certainly he wouldn’t recognize his church if he returned today. What could his message have been that anyone would have wanted to follow him? Surely the promise of waking up after death and living forever is more a curse than a blessing. While laughing at the 70 virgins Islam promises, Christians haven’t been able to do much better at filling out the details of their heaven. In fact, as Mark Twain points out, there isn’t anything in heaven a Christian enjoys doing on earth. But let’s say that, like the parables, the notion of life everlasting was designed simply to appeal to the kinds of people Jesus dealt with in order to get them looking. For a harassed populace ground to nothing on earth and cut off early in life, such a promise makes the things you have to do to earn it worthwhile. The Jews had troubles enough. To lay before them an even harder rule to follow, without offering some great compensation would not appeal to many. What makes one suspicious is that the Romans became Christian. Something, obviously, had already gone dreadfully wrong. No sooner did they adopt this religion of peace and love than they set about killing Christians, far more than the Pagan Romans ever had.. Until then and for the first 300 years or so, there were all sorts of interpretations of what Jesus meant to say and which was the correct way to follow his precepts. But at the Council of Nicea, the Roman emperor Constantine ordered the gathered bishops to put together one binding set of rules and interpretations…then the Romans set about killing or jailing anyone who disagreed…ever so slightly. What was suppressed at that council, offers a clue as to what Jesus might have said and meant…because it should come as no surprise to anyone that the bloody Romans would hardly have taken his correct meaning to heart. What they fashioned from the bits and pieces they could use was another emperor…a dictator of people’s private lives and very souls. And to make it clear, they called him by the same name used for the Emperor, Pontifex Maximus. As near as I can make out, the Gnostics believe that the message of Jesus was that each person has their god within them and it is their duty to find it…and for that, no priest or church is necessary. It is a personal god, not ready/made and cut to fit for all ages or for all people. People should pay their taxes and obey laws…but spiritual matters were for their own private use and development. If this is true, one can understand why the Romans wanted no part of it to survive. The Romans thrived on order and sameness…requirements for such a vast empire as they had. Such individualized seeking about was not for them. Much later, during the Reformation, when Christians again wished to interpret the words of Jesus for themselves, the Roman Church, this time, went ape shit all over again, as the emperors had, and Protestants were butchered as if they were beef. If the message of Jesus was that god was between only you and him with no need of any intermediary, then I can understand people being attracted to it. They had enough of priests already and kings and emperors were only growing in numbers. The idea that a harassed soul could look within to find its personal divinity and spark of uniqueness would be appealing as well as a relief. So, I have no doubt there were willing converts…and if indeed there were evangelists, then it was this message that they spread…that your god is within you…seek it out. Instead…what came to be was people telling you that your god must be theirs…or else. Which is still pretty much the method. The Romans had a different interest in making Christianity their national, imperial religion. Any religion that told people to be meek and humble..to accept life without complaint…to bank on rewards in an afterlife…rewards that would be greater the more you suffered and endured on earth…rules that forbade stealing or lying or murder and adultery…such rules backed by divine sanction and promising heaven or hell as rewards and punishment must have made Constantine say, “Why didn’t I think of that myself”. The key to all this was that the people were made, from infancy, to believe that men spoke with god and thus could relay his wishes to them…men also empowered by him to punish and reward, not only on earth but up in heaven too. This was contrary to the Gnostic belief..and I have to believe, also contrary to what Christ would have wanted. Under no circumstances did he come to strengthen the hand of Rome…which is what happened when the Romans adopted Christianity. It was a little late for the Western empire centered in Rome, but the Eastern Byzantine Empire was able to endure for another 1200 years, till the Ottomans came. Not bad. But even in Rome, though the emperor lost power, the pope, his alter ego, became as powerful, if not more so and even more wealthy than emperors had ever been. To this day, 1700 years later, the church in Rome exerts its influence and rakes in its pence. Christ’s original message may have been appealing. But the message of the popes and their messengers was dreaded and feared by all who came in contact with them….Christ’s gentle presence or the words of personal seeking surely attracted many people…but this all ended when the Romans made a franchise of his religion and changed its meaning to suit their empire…from that day forward people had to be beaten and murdered into Christ. The Church downplays this so long as it can stick to the time before there were eyewitnesses…but in Africa, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea as well as many island nations, the real record of how people were “converted” is written in millions of gallons of innocent blood. Our own loopy Church of the East may have gotten the message right, as they claim. But the end result doesn’t seem to be to their liking. They seem not to have heard the entire message..which was that the things of this earth do not count for seeking after personal godliness…Christ promised them just what they got…they believed in his teachings and they paid the price for it. It seems that no matter how ready you are to heed the call, there are that many more people who will trample over you as you look within. It was in the cards that “true” Christians would suffer, truly. We can see today the embarrassing spectacle of our “true” Christians having to hide among and beg assistance of the “false” Christians…the Romanized ones who learned a kick-ass Christianity whereas we learned the get-kicked kind. Christ’s kind of Christianity works if you are willing to pay the price. Hardly anyone is or ever was. Even Jesus tried to back out towards the end. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic: what Jesus might have meant... pancho - Friday, July 14 2006, 4:33:38 (CEST) Re: what Jesus might have meant... Dalale - 07/14 19:56 Re: what Jesus might have meant... pancho - 07/15 00:13

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