IN DEFENSE OF THE CHRIST: WHY JESUS WOULD DISOWN
CHRISTIANITY
BY SHAWN PATRICK
THORNTON
- A BOOK SUMMARY -
Most Western religions are monotheistic in character. They believe
in a God who is separate and apart from mankind. Eastern religions
however are often pantheistic and believe that the spirit of God
and the spirit of man are one and the same. That, in fact, all
reality is one with God. However, virtually all mystics, no matter
what their religious background, report a pantheistic, mystical
experience of being one with God. Thus, it is much more meaningful
to relate pantheism to higher spiritual experiences than to the
Eastern portion of the world.
Eastern religions generally develop their pantheistic view due
to their founder having an experience of oneness with God. Such
an experience usually comes in two phases. First, Spirit baptism
where they receive head knowledge of their oneness with God. Then,
Nirvana which is the actual realization of that oneness. Buddhism
is an example.
Christianity started out with two main views. The Gnostic Gospels,
discovered only recently in Egypt in 1945, tell us that a number
of primitive Christians, who called themselves "Gnostics,"
were pantheistic. Their writings indicate that many of them had
experienced knowledge of oneness with God (Spirit baptism). In
addition to head knowledge of oneness with God Spirit baptism
is also a form of ever expanding spiritual illumination which
causes a greatly enhanced understanding of spiritual matters.
Some of the Gnostics may even have realized Nirvana, or may have
learned about it from Buddhism. They referred to this special
knowledge as "Gnosis." Gnosis and Spirit baptism are
one and the same experience and have the same meaning. These early
Christians believed that Christ was a human being just as they
were and that he had experienced oneness with God in the same
way that they had. There was no "mystery" as to his
nature. They understood that if a person is one spirit with the
eternal God that they did not become one at a point in time. That
they have eternally been one.
However, Spirit Baptism (Gnosis) does not come easily, as this
author knows from personal experience. No spiritual formula or
set of rituals can produce it. The Wind of the Spirit of God blows
where it will, when it will, and only when a person is ready.
Accordingly, the majority of early Christians felt left out because
they were not Spirit baptized. Thus they were easily convinced
by the leaders of the Orthodox Church that no such "secret
knowledge," or Gnosis, existed. This battle went on for the
first two hundred years until Orthodoxy, with its easy membership
requirements and assurances that Gnosis was a spiritual illusion,
won out.
The book explains that the reason that the Orthodox Church leaders
and their followers had not experienced Gnosis was that they had
drifted away from St. Paul's doctrine of salvation by faith alone
to a form of Jewish legalism, or salvation by works of law (being
good).
A classic illustration of the Spirit baptism process is Martin
Luther. He had been a member of the Roman Catholic Church whose
theology teaches that one must obey God's Laws to be saved. When
Luther finally rejected the Church's legalistic teachings and
believed St. Paul's writings, that salvation was by faith alone
and that believers were free from the Law of Moses, he experienced
Spirit baptism. The reason for this is that Spirit baptism is
by definition head knowledge of oneness with God. And since all
humans break the Law of Moses regularly, in thought or deed, believers
in that law cannot access their intuitive knowledge that they
are one with God ( be aware that God is present at all times)
until they can believe Paul's teaching that they have been freed
from Mosaic Law. And, "that where there is no law there is
no sin"; that, "all things are lawful to me, but not
all things are helpful." Until then it is much more comfortable
for them to have a separate God up in the sky who is not around
when they "sin."
Mystics are aware that belief in any type of divine law is a
spiritual trap. One must be separate from God in order to be under
his law. Law requires a lawgiver and a separate person who is
under that law. And, if one is separate from God they can be punished
and sent to a Hell. However, if the person is one with God for
them to go to Hell would require God to join them! And, God would
hardly put his own spirit under law. Thus mystics also believe
that the Biblical stories about Moses getting the Laws from God
must be myths. And accordingly, that as long as one believes that
they are "under the law of God" they cannot understand
that they are one with God. And, since most Western religions
teach law and punishment they effectively block Spirit baptism
and its resultant spiritual progress toward the actual realization
of oneness with God. And a person would hardly pursue the realization
of oneness (nirvana) unless they first had head knowledge that
they are one with God, via Spirit baptism.
The book points out other major problems with Christianity.
The most serious of these problems is that the whole of Christian
"salvational" doctrine rests upon a single alleged Genesis
promise of God to Abraham, that salvation is a free gift. The
Old Testament says it was made to Abraham and his descendants.
St. Paul however alleges that the promise was made to Abraham
and Christ. And says further, "that if a person be one with
Christ they too are heir to the promise," whether Jew or
Gentile. St. Paul needed to make this biblical change to create
a way for Gentiles to be saved. It was also necessary to explain
why God gave the Law to Moses after promising that salvation was
a free gift. Christ had not come yet!
First, to need salvation one must believe that they are separate
from God. A person whose spirit is one with God's hardly needs
"salvation." Their spirit is already eternal. Second,
most scholars consider the Book of Genesis as a myth. A snake
reasoned and talked, man was created instantly about 2000 years
before Christ, the world was created in seven days, etc. And,
if the promise to Abraham is only a myth then Christian salvational
theology totally collapses!
Another serious problem is the Christian concept of God's love.
In the Christian view God sent his only son to die for the world's
sins. In the pantheistic or mystical view there were no separate
persons for Christ to die for since all men are one with God.
And, since there is no law there can be no sin. In the final analysis,
God, who Christians allege to be a loving father, demanded the
cruel death of his son in the name of divine justice. This is
a perversion of the concept of love. Since when can love not simply
forgive and relinquish its pound of flesh? The Judeo-Christian
belief that God requires sacrifice for sin, and that therefore
revenge is an appropriate component of justice, has supported
a cruel and barbaric criminal justice system in the West for thousands
of years.
Chapter Five of the book provides an extensive analysis of the
Judeo/Christian philosophy of justice, much of which came from
the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. The
Pentateuch's notion of justice was to protect society and to take
revenge upon the offender. Moses belief that there must be revenge
(punishment) for wrongdoing has colored the meaning of Christ's
death for thousands of years. It has also led to cruel judicial
practices such as capital punishment today, and in the Middle
Ages drawing and quartering, boiling in oil and pulling humans
apart with horses. All to balance the scales of God's justice.
Certainly a particular person's right to freedom must be weighted
against society's absolute right to protect itself from materially
harmful behavior on the part of that individual. But it is quite
another thing to state that society has the right to punish (take
revenge upon) wrongdoers. Any truly equitable allocation of revenge,
by the nature of things, assumes that the person determining the
particular amount and type of punishment, also be fully aware
of the amount of personal moral culpability that the moral actor
possessed at the time of the wrongdoing. Considering the fact
that modern science cannot explain why a person performed a specific
act, at a certain point in time, how can a judge, or a jury, make
such a determination? The problem is that no one, including the
moral actor, fully understands the biological and psychological
forces that were limiting that moral actor's ability to make a
totally free moral choice. Even if they did what constitutes a
truly fair punishment for each type of offense?
Another major philosophical problem one has in justifying the
judicial notion of punishment is that there is no scientific way
to determine an objective definition of social wrong doing. Defining
social wrong doing is always a subjective determination. For instance,
if fundamentalist Christians were in control of legislation then
sex before marriage might well constitute a crime.
In the final analysis the right of any criminal judicial sanction
stems solely from the right of society to protect itself from
a particular individual. The book concludes that a protective
custody/educational type of justice, with the intent to rehabilitate
the offender whenever possible, is the only truly moral and civilized
form of justice.
Christians sometimes argue that, even after taking into account
the brutality of the Crusaders and the cruelty of the high priests
of the Inquisition, that a pagan society would have been more
dehumanizing. While it is impossible to be sure whether a purely
secular society would have been any less physically brutal than
Christianity was, it is possible to conclude that a purely secular
society would never have taught young, intellectually defenseless
children, that they could be tortured forever in a Hell, for normal
human sexual acts, or simply for disobedience to alleged Church
authority. The book concludes that the mystical view of organized
Christianity (as well as of Islam, Judaism and similar monotheistic
religions) must necessarily be that it has been a scourge upon
humanity. The physical brutality of Christendom, however, amounts
to almost nothing when it is compared with the billions of hours
of unnecessary tortured guilt and fear that it has inflicted upon
mankind. No secular society, no matter how ferocious, could have
accomplished this.
Finally, the book contains chapters on religious fundamentalism,
on Spiritual Confusion Anonymous, a Twelve Step spiritual program
that can help deprogram religious fundamentalists. There is also
a chapter on theoretical physics that supports the mystics' subjective
spiritual experience of oneness, chapters on Zen, the mystics,
the Gnostics, the way to and nature of Nirvana, Christian sexual
morality and the authors own spiritual experience. And, a chapter
demonstrating that the Roman Catholic Church has had to change
an allegedly infallible doctrine and that the Catholic Church's
sacramental system and theology will actually prevent Spirit baptism
and real spiritual progress.
--S.P.T.
link
to website
Shawn Patrick Thornton's
next book, Zen and the Art of A.A.'s Twelve Spiritual Steps,
is expected to be available in late 2005.
Cougar WebWorks 
