Dear Friends:
I normally write these blog posts in a stream-of-consciousness way; sometimes that comes out making a lot of sense to my readers, other times it does not. Today’s topic—one I have touched upon before—is too important to take risks with. I’m writing this in a word-processor, after which I will import it into our blog.
Christianity has come to us today, having struggled through a lot of obstacles. There were many gifted people—almost all of them men—who either recorded what Jesus said and did in his lifetime, or recorded what people remembered from what had happened many decades before. Certain things that have come down to us convince me, personally, though I am not a history specialist, that they were reliable. I was convinced, and still am, that Jesus was a real person (or, as historians express it, an historical figure) and I also believe more than slightly many of the stories in the gospels. I do not really believe the miracles; in fact I don’t believe them at all. The most important thing I do not believe is that Jesus claimed to be divine.
Millions of people do not believe as much as I do. If conclusive proof were shown me that Jesus could not have existed, I would not be greatly shocked, though I would be greatly disappointed. Like many other teachers and leaders, many of them in the East, Jesus taught that might was not right; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Moses’s morality) must be given up; and, most importantly, that the Jewish people must bring all people into the knowledge of Jesus’s teachings. Unfortunately, what we have now is that some of the established denominations, and free churches, are trying to spread a religion that is very much removed from the teachings of Jesus.
Of course, it was a long time after Jesus’s death that any account of his life and teachings were written down. We don’t know exactly how long after, and by whom, it was written down. It was almost certain that none of them were eyewitness accounts. They could be second-hand accounts; they could even be stories passed down four, five, or even six times.
There were around a hundred competing books, among which the early Christian leaders had to choose, to make up the New Testament. The winners are the books in the present New Testament. But there are many who believe that some of the best books, books that captured most accurately the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, were left out. (There are some sensationalized modern accounts of these books, and their contents, and the process of selecting the New Testament books. There are also, probably, more scholarly inventories of the books, those that were selected, and those that were rejected.)
Then, modern evangelists, both those from established churches, and more independent preachers who spring up everywhere, re-interpret the teachings of Jesus in a manner that they imagine makes sense to modern-day North Americans. In addition, they bend the meanings of the words of Jesus, as in the conventional gospels, in order to allow themselves to live lives that are very high on the hog; with private jet planes, and mansions, lifestyles that seem far removed from that of Jesus. Of course, we don’t know for certain that Jesus would have lived a simple life; all we have to go on are the four gospels we have. Perhaps the books omitted from the New Testament would say that Jesus longed to have his own limousine, but as far as we know, to live simply was a choice for Jesus, and he seemed not to have been forced into it.
For decades, the Church was content to provide guidance to its members—reminding them of the moral codes that Jesus described so carefully, in his parables. It (the Church) also provided comfort to its members, setting out comfortable rituals for births, marriages and deaths. Then these independent religious leaders came along, and they set out to enrich themselves, by exciting their audiences, in person, and on radio and television, and by holding out vague promises that, if they give their money to the leader, they would earn miraculous piles of money, from the generosity of god, and the holy spirit, and what have you.
They were, some of them, so convinced of god’s approval of them, (or that god’s approval was not necessary for their hoaxes) that they began to prophesy, and speak in tongues. The woman who said the prayer at Donald Trump’s inauguration, later, just before the 2020 elections, prayed that god would smite Trump’s enemies with a rod of iron. She repeated the phrase “smash them”, or something similar, close to a dozen times, and the audience shouted Amen.
What will happen?
Many of these prophets predicted that Trump would win the 2020 election easily. The GOP election experts, and Trump’s other advisors, told him that the election was in the bag, provided Democrats stayed home, fearing COVID infection, and as many states as possible were pressured to disallow mail-in ballots, and as many polling places as possible in which African-Americans and minorities would vote were closed down, polling times were narrowed—no longer from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., but for much shorter times, and ballots that were mailed were not counted after Election Day. But these decisions rested with the states, not the Federal Government, and the states chose to allow many of these arrangements that Trump wanted to get rid of.
After all the counting, including ballots that the Trump campaign did not want counted, was done, the election was close, but not anywhere a landslide as Trump and his friends expected. In fact, Biden and the Democrats had anticipated a landslide, and they did not get one either.
So what about the so-called prophets who predicted a landslide for Trump?
They have the unenviable task of explaining to their faithful that something went wrong. Without stooping to mock them, we cannot help but observe the result of their hubris, and watch whether they cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes, like the prophets of old, or whether they double down, and predict some dire consequence on the Democrats, for making The Lord look foolish. In fact, the Lord presumably knows better than to interfere with the self-government of humankind; rather it is these false prophets who have humiliated themselves.
Why do people need to have these self-appointed charismatic leaders feed them lies? Why can’t people believe simple, cold logic? Why must they experience this fevered propaganda every Sunday? Why do they reject science, while soaking in all this magic? For me, and for many like me, magic was merely entertainment. But now, superstition really rules the lives of these people. Why?
One reason
I can think of a single possible reason for this desperate clinging to miraculous and mystical causes for events and phenomena. It is that scientific causes are complicated.
For instance, very simple people can be taught that getting too close to someone who is infected with the Corona Virus may infect them, too. Then we were informed that glass and metal surfaces could be covered with virus, and the virus could be alive for many hours, even days, so that we needed to wash our hands carefully. This was not so hard to understand, so people began to wash their hands frequently, or use those alcohol-based hand-cleansers.
Shortly afterwards, we were told that, in close quarters, moisture droplets containing the virus could be breathed out by infected persons and be floating in the air, and could be easily inhaled by uninfected people. In fact, we were told, this is the main mode of transmission; the glass surfaces were a smaller risk.
You can easily imagine that those who had a limited scientific background would get exasperated at the complications of these explanations. What next, they must have thought, would the virus come down the chimney like Santa Claus? To them, these complex descriptions of the infection mechanism sounds fanciful and far-fetched. But that God listens to his favored religious “leaders”, and chooses to cure the sick if he is satisfied by the piety of whoever is praying does not sound far fetched at all. If you jump in water, you will get wet, is fine. If you stay unmasked in a closed room with infected people for several hours, you will get infected: that seems very hard to believe. It requires belief in a number of scientific facts. If one can only believe in two scientific facts at a time, a dozen scientific facts, all operating at once, is probably hard to take.
Far-fetched theories
Unfortunately, people who are in the habit of accepting mystical effects from their religion, are probably also conditioned to accept complicated theories of contagion, and mind-control. As far back as the last century, there were those who suspected that the fluoride that was added to water to help prevent tooth decay, was a plot to make children more obedient. I myself have seen no evidence for that, but water being so basic a necessity, many localities chose to discontinue addition of fluoride rather than have their residents die of thirst.
There are some who disbelieve that the Moon Landing took place. Because the TV series with spaceships, etc, looked so convincing to them, it was an easy step for them to suspect that the moon landing was completely staged. Then, there are those who suspect that all sorts of childhood inoculations cause autism. Unfortunately, little is known of the causes of autism—and for several diseases, including fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, and so on—that it is impossible to dispel this belief. Some others suspect that there are tiny microchips in the vaccine fluid, which broadcast various pieces of private information of the infant to the Federal Government, and that is a reason they give for refusing to have their children inoculated.
This last belief can be countered. Certainly, chips can be created that are very small. I don’t know whether they can be made small enough to be injected, but suppose we accept that as possible. The problem is: where can this information be stored? Many of us are familiar with the problems with running out of space on our phones. How much worse would it be to have to store minutely detailed information about every inoculated infant? And worse: how hard will it be to look for the information of a specific individual? Or search through the enormous data set for the particular kid whose record has such-and-such a feature? The information (if it exists!) is probably stored randomly; it would be far too much trouble to structure it. Searching unstructured information is a huge task; it is like looking for a word in a dictionary that is not in alphabetical order. Now, all these problems with surveillance of infants could be solved by the Federal Government—provided they devoted all their time to this problem, and nothing else. They could not keep an eye on foreign computer attackers, or antifa, or Jewish lasers, or anything else.
Christianity
Though I do not believe in the Christian miracles and mysticism, and the saints, and the Virgin Mary, or anything like that, my moral thinking is very Christian in almost every way. It therefore is particularly painful that these charismatic preachers, with their jets, and their mansions, and their talking in tongues, have hijacked a system of belief with such an admirable moral code, and perverted it for their selfish purposes. For myself, and for those in my family, we do not need the endorsement of an established “Church” organization; we don’t need an external moral compass. We certainly don’t need external moral compasses with magnetic fields that are so wonky, as those of these preachers. Honestly, the planet cannot support a lifestyle for very many that has such a large carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, the followers of these independent “preachers” have bought into the concept of Rewards in Heaven. I never felt that I needed a reward for doing what seemed reasonable to me. Lots of modern, born-again folks look longingly for those rewards, and taint the label of Christianity in the process.
So far I have not written about racism. I’m not going to, today; Jesus addressed the whole issue in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and I don’t need to add superfluous commentary to that.
Though these false prophets have hijacked the copyright of the Christian label, there is nothing to prevent us from following the Christian code of conduct privately, no matter how incensed, or even merely indignant we are at the abuse of the teachings of Jesus, as we have come to know it, even if it is via pathways that have been “modified” by the early church. The picture that traditional teachings have painted for us shows a Jesus that is very believable. Not believable enough for a historian, or a historiographer, what ever that is, but a personality amazingly coherent, despite the potential distortions of the signal. It is as though some radio source at the fringe of the Milky Way was beaming a tune to us, and despite all the distortion of all the crazy pulsars on the path of the signal, we can still hear and enjoy the tune. It is not that it is a miracle; it is that the personality of Jesus was so simple, admirable, and convincing, that even the oral tradition of the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, remains remarkably coherent. I think it is time to embark on a program of passive resistance, in our own homes, among our own friends, against this commercialized version of what we called Christianity.
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