What was in the water last night? There were three excellent diaries, all recommended, on the way Fundamentalist Christians are shaping our world. The first is a personal account by redmcclain of a visit to a mega-church, and the scary behavior of both its pastors and parishioners, entitled
"Six Flags over Jesus".
The second, a chilling report by jhuston about a Splinter Cell style Dominionist video game where the player assumes the role of a Christian foot soldier blowing away all non-believers, called "Mega-church minister linked to paramilitary video game".
I came away from these two diaries thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with Christians?"
Then I read the third, Walt starr's
"No appropriate quote? Just make one up!", a collection of quotes falsely attributed to the Founding Fathers which artificially advance the argument against the separation of Church and State.
I found this thread in the comments.
Which led me to this link.
I clicked it, and it was there that I found Jesus.
The link took me to a well-written essay about The Jefferson Bible. Apparently, one of our most important Founders, Thomas Jefferson, spent an evening with a penknife and pasted together his own version of the Biblical Gospels. What ended up on the cutting room floor was all the stuff about the Divinity of Christ (i.e. the Virgin Birth, Lazarus, even the Resurrection). What stayed were the teachings of Jesus. The Parables, the Sermon on the Mount, all of the things Jesus taught about treating one's fellow man made it into Jefferson's abridged version.
I bought the book immediately, as well as The Gospel of Thomas. Interestingly, this Gnostic Gospel shares remarkable similarities to Jefferson's personal Bible, besides the handle of both authors.
We now know "Doubting Thomas's" Gospel also includes no mention of the Divinity of Christ, a step Jefferson would take almost two centuries before this text was even discovered. It only concerns itself with the teachings of Jesus, and his philosophy of personal morality. The Holy Roman Empire quickly suppressed the book, favoring instead the Canonical text's assertions that the path to salvation was through a Divine Christ.
True epiphanies come in multiples, and the next one hit me like a ton of bricks.
The problem with Christianity, as practiced today, is it is supremely selfish. It requires no personal accountability or sacrifice (like some administration I could name). All of that passed to Jesus when the Romans nailed him to the cross. All one needs to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is to ask forgiveness from God (in Jesus' name, despite the fact that, according to them, Jesus is God). Kill someone (or thousands of some ones)? All one needs to do is ask for clemency from Jesus and Eternal Bliss awaits. For Fundamentalist Christians, the book of personal sins in Heaven is written in Etch-A-Sketch.
All of this creates a group of people whose only concern and motivation is getting into this Kingdom. Missionaries, Evangelicals, their only true concern is their ticket into Heaven. They only do the "work of God" to appease him, so that they might acquire their own idea of seventy-some-odd virgins, a goal they won't see until they're dead! Who gives a shit how they leave this world behind them? They're going to God.
The horrible thing is they've created a self-fulfilling prophesy for themselves. A sizeable chunk of the world population live only to inherit the afterlife, making the world progressively worse and worse, and this decline becomes proof of the impending return of Jesus, The Judge.
Moreover, it's no wonder they want to speed along this process. I would too if I thought Salvation was just on the other side of the Apocalypse.
This is all ass-backwards. Jesus never meant his teachings to be a guide to get to Heaven. He was trying to give us a guide for creating Heaven on Earth using one simple rule:
DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD UNTO YOURSELF!
Thomas the Disciple, Jefferson (and, to a lesser extent, Immanuel Kant, creator of the Deontology philosophy) understood this. They understood that Jesus was just trying to teach us to treat the poor well, to be tolerant of others, to love our enemy.
None of this is easy. It defies our very nature. The simple route is to hang the sins we do onto the "Lamb of God," a sacrifice which requires absolutely none. That is why the early Church attempted to destroy the Gospel of Thomas.
In anticipation of my new Amazon purchases arriving, I began reading the complete Gospels, something I have never done. I've skimmed them, but never actually read them. I wanted to know exactly what Jefferson excised. It wasn't ten minutes before I came to my favorite passage in the entire Bible, on which I was previously familiar but never appreciated as I do now. I leave you with The Book of Matthew, Chapter Five, Verses Three through Eleven:
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
I think the true Christians have been persecuted enough.
UPDATE: To be clear, I was being overly broad, as MLDB points out in the comments, when I said this:
The problem with Christianity, as practiced today, is it is supremely selfish.
I should have said "...as practiced by the Fundamentalists in redmcclain's diary." I apologize.