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The words of
Jesus
"The
spirit of God is upon
me; God has
appointed me to preach
God's word to the
poor; God
has sent me to heal the
brokenhearted and to announce
that the captives shall be released and the
blind shall
awaken, that the
downtrodden shall be
freed from their oppressors, and that God is ready to give Life to all who come to God."
"Come to me, all you who are
weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls. For my
yoke is easy and my burden is
light."
"Heaven can be entered only through the
narrow gate! The
path to
spiritual corruption is
broad, and its gate is wide enough for all the multitudes who choose the way of
spiritual corruption.
The gateway to Life is small, and the
way is narrow, and only a few ever
find it."
"This is the first and greatest
admonishment:
Love
God with all your
heart, soul, and mind.
The second most important is similar:
Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
All the other
admonishments and all the admonishments of the
prophets stem from these two
laws and are fulfilled if you
obey them. Keep only these and you
will find that you are obeying all the others."
"Do not worry about
things - food, drink, clothes, for
you already have life."
"Humble men are
fortunate for God's word
is given to them.
Those who grieve
are fortunate for they shall be comforted.
The meek and lowly are
fortunate for the whole
Earth belongs to them.
Content are those who long to be
just and good, for they shall be completely
satisfied.
Content are the compassionate and merciful, for they shall be shown
mercy.
Content are those whose
hearts are
pure, for they shall
see God.
Content are those who strive for
peace they shall be called the
sons of God."
"Beware of
false teachers who come. You can detect them
by the way they
act, just as you can identify
a tree by its
fruit. Different kinds of
fruit
trees can quickly be identified by examining
their fruit. A
variety that produces delicious
fruit never produces an inedible
fruit. And a tree producing an inedible fruit
can't produce what is good. So the
trees having the inedible
fruit are chopped down and
thrown on the fire. The
way to identify a
tree (or a
individual) is by the type of
fruit produced. Not all who
sound religious are. They may refer to
me as 'Lord,' but still won't find the
Kingdom of God, for the decisive
question is whether they live by the
Law of God ."
"Why
worry about the small
things in the
eye of a brother when your eyes can
not see ? Should you say, 'brother, let me
help you get the small things out of
your eye,' when you have no
vision ?' Hypocrite! Remove the blinders from
your eyes, then you can see to help your
brother."
"Woe to the creatures which see and know not what
they see,
which stand and know not upon what they stand."
- Tract
Hagiga, Chapter II translated by Michael L.
Rodkinson
Lift now the lid of the jar of heaven.
Close those
eyes that see only faults,
Open those that contemplate the
invisible.
-Rumi
"A farmer went
out to his field to sow grain. As he scattered the
seed on the earth, some of it fell on a footpath and was
trampled on; and the birds came and ate it as it
lay exposed. Other
seed fell on shallow
soil with rock beneath. This seed began to grow, but soon withered and died for lack of
moisture.
Other seed landed in thistle
patches, and the young grain stalks were
soon choked out. Still other fell
on fertile soil; this
seed grew and
produced a crop one hundred times as large as he had planted. If anyone has
listening ears, use them now!"
"If, as my disciples , you give even a cup of cold
water to a little
child, you will surely be rewarded. All
that is now hidden will some day come to
light. If you have
ears, listen!
Be sure to put into practice what you hear. The more you do this, the more you
will understand what
I tell you."
"Who ever heard of someone
lighting a lamp and then covering it up to
keep it from shining? No, lamps are mounted in
the open where they can be seen. This illustrates the
fact that some
day every
thing shall be brought to
light and made plain to all. So be careful how
you listen; for whoever has, to him shall be
given more; and whoever does not have, even what he
thinks he has shall be taken away from
him."
"Ask, and you will be given what
you ask for. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the
door will be opened. For
everyone who asks, receives. Anyone
who seeks, finds. If only you will
knock, the door will
open."
"0 God thank you for
hiding the truth from those who
think themselves so
wise, and for revealing it to little
children."-Jesus of Nazareth,
Jesus' spoken
word as related in the
New TestamentChristian sacred text
"Modern New Testament scholarship has shown that we
know far less
about the
historical
Jesus than we
thought we did." - Karen Armstrong
The New Testament
did not fall out of the sky a complete
book.The
books of the
New Testament were not all written at the same
time, were not necessarily written in the order
they appear nor were they even originally written in the same
language.
All Christian
documents in existence from before the 4th
century are on papyrus.
Since papyrus is fragile, only
fragments of these works have been
preserved.
Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th
century all documents had to be copied by hand, a laborious process that invited
all kinds of variations: misspellings, altered wording, grammatical corrections, stylistic
improvements, insertions, omissions, etc.
No two New
Testaments written before the 15th century are identical. 20th
century versions of the New Testament are
primarily based on parchment uncial codices of the 4th through the 9th century.
Many of the earliest of these, like Sinaiticus, have undergone extensive
"correction" by later scribes. Many New
Testament versions have marginal notes added by
other scribes. These marginalia
were often copied into the main text of later
versions.
In the Codex Bezae, penned in the 6th century, the
left hand page is the Greek and the
right hand side is Latin. As many as
nine correctors worked on the manuscript between the sixth and twelfth century.
A passage - "All things came
into being through him; and apart from
him nothing came into being. What has
come into being in him is
life. And the life was
the light of
humanity."
In the Codex
Washingtonensis, sometimes called Codex Freerianus, penned in 5th to
7th century, paleographers have deduced that the original scribe corrected some
of his own errors. He was followed by another who made revisions. Finally,
two later hands made a few additional
changes.
Codex Washingtonensis is variegated in its
representation. It is conjectured that the exemplar or a
distant ancestor that the scribe
was copying from was one that had been pieced together out of
fragments of several manuscripts.
Therefore, readings
representative of all of the major text types
can be found in this manuscript.
A passage - "All
things came into
being through him; and apart from him no
single thing came into
being. What has come into
being in him (is or was)
life. And the life was
the light of
humanity."
The Codex Alexandrinus, penned in the 5th
century, is largely an Alexandrian witness, it belongs to the Byzantine family
which is the oldest example in the text of the
Gospels.
A passage - "All things came into
being through him; and apart from him no
single thing came into
being. In him was life; and the life was the
light of
men."
A later Codex
666, 12th or 13th century reads as follows:
A
passage - "All things came into
being through him; and apart from him no
single thing came into
being that has come into
being. In him was life; and the life was the
light of
men."
Corrected passage -
"All things came into
being through him; and apart from him no
single thing came into
being. What has come into
being was life
in him; and the life was the
light of
men."
By the 2nd century before
the birth of Jesus, it was often
necessary for the readings in
the synagogues to be interpreted from
Hebrew into Aramaic. A later Talmudic injunction by Rabbi Simon
ben Gamaliel said that Greek was the only
language into which the
Torah could be accurately translated.
The Septuagint was the Greek
translation named 'according to the
seventy' for the group of Hebrew scholars that
translated the
Old Testament into Greek. The Septuagint found
widespread use in
Hellenistic culture as well as Jerusalem
which had become a cosmopolitan
city.
Several factors finally led most Jews to abandon the Septuagint including: the fact
that Greek scribes were not subject to the same rigid
rules imposed on Hebrew scribes; that
Christians favored the Septuagint; and the gradual
decline of the Greek language
among Jews after most of them fled from the
Greek-speaking Roman Empire into the
Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire when Jerusalem was
destroyed by the
Romans.
The early Christian
Church continued to use the Septuagint, since most of its
earliest members were Greek-speaking and because the Messianic passages most
clearly pointed to Jesus as the
Jesus in the Septuagint
translation.
When Saint Jerome started preparation of the Vulgate
translation of the Bible into Latin he started with the Septuagint.
Scribes of
the New Testament, also written in Greek,
quoted from the Septuagint
frequently, though not
exclusively, when relating prophesies and history from the
Old Testament. Even when Latin,
Syriac, Coptic, Armenian and other
translations appeared, the Septuagint continued to be used
by the Greek-speaking portion of the Christian Church.
The Eastern
Orthodox Church still prefers to use Septuagint as the basis for
translating the Old Testament into
other
languages, and the Greek Orthodox
Church (which has no need for translation) continues to use it in its
liturgy even today. Many modern Catholic translations of the Bible, while using the Masoretic
text as their basis, employ the Septuagint to decide between
different possible translations of
the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear,
corrupt, or ambiguous.
The Greek of the Septuagint has many idioms and
phrases based on Hebrew, and the grammatical phenomenon
known as
attraction is
common there. Some parts of it
have been described as "Hebrew in Greek words".
However, other sections show an
ignorance of Hebrew idiom, so
that the literal
translation provided makes little
sense. The translators usually, but not always, employed one and the same Greek
word for one Hebrew word whenever it occurs. Thus the Septuagint can be called a mostly
concordant translation. However, as
in most translations of any literary
work, often more than one Hebrew
word gets translated into one and the same Greek
word, removing some nuances from the
text.
In terms of its importance to the
culture, art,
and life of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate
stands supreme. The Vulgate
Bible is an early 4th century
translation of the Bible into Latin made by
Saint Jerome under the direction of
Pope Damasus I and the
Council of Rome ordered by the
imperial Roman
Emperor Theodosius I in 382 AD. The
Vulgate takes its name from the phrase versio vulgata, "the
common version", and was written
in an everyday Latin used in conscious
distinction to the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which
Saint Jerome was a
master.
The bedrock of
imperial Roman Catholic Christianity is
Saint Jerome's monumental
work, the Vulgate, which was used to
unite the remnants of the
Roman Empire in Western Europe for over a
thousand years from its dessimination after the Council of Rome to 1530 AD when
Martin Luther
translated the Bible into
German.
Early attempts to render
translations into vernacular tongues
were invariably made from the Vulgate, as it was highly regarded as an
infallible, divinely inspired text.
Even the translations
produced by Protestants, that sought
to replace the Vulgate with vernacular versions
translated from the original
languages, could not avoid the
enormous influence of
Saint Jerome's
translation in its dignified style
and flowing prose.
The closest equivalent in English, the King James
Version, or Authorised Version, shows a marked
influence from the
Vulgate in the vigorous rhythm of its
prose and
poetry.
The Vulgate was
designed to be both more accurate and easier to
understand than its
predecessors. The Vulgate was the first, and for many centuries the
only, Christian Bible
translation that
translated the
Old Testament directly from the
Hebrew original rather than indirectly from the Greek Septuagint.
Saint Jerome was
responsible for at least three slightly different versions of the
Vulgate. The Romana Vulgate was the first, but it
was soon replaced by later versions except in Britain, where it continued to be
used until the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Next was the Gallicana
Vulgate, which Saint Jerome produced a
few years later. It had some minor improvements, especially in the
Old Testament.
The Hispana
Vulgate is largely identical to the Romana Vulgate except for the
book of Psalms, which Saint
Jerome re-translated from the
Hebrew for this version.
The Latin Bible used before the Vulgate is
usually referred to as the Vetus Latina, or Old Latin
Bible, or occasionally the Old Latin
Vulgate.
The Old Latin Vulgate remained in use in some
circles even after Saint Jerome's Vulgate
became the accepted standard throughout the Western
Roman Catholic Church. Some Gauls or
Celts continued to prefer the Old Latin Vulgate for centuries.
This Old Latin Vulgate was not
translated by a single
individual or
institution, nor even uniformly
edited. Each
book varies in quality of
translation and style. The Old
Latin Vulgate Old Testament books
were most likely
translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew.
The Clementine Vulgate is the one most familiar to
Catholics who have
lived prior to the reforms of Vatican
II .
Over the course of the Middle Ages, the original
Vulgate of Saint Jerome had succumbed
to the inevitable changes wrought by human error in the countless copying of
the text in monasteries across Europe.
There were efforts to purify the corrupted text,
notably by Alcuin of York in the early 9th century during the reign of
Charlemagne. This correction was the basis for the Paris edition that was
widely disseminated among the clergy in northwestern Europe.
Though the advent of printing greatly reduced the
potential of human
error and increased the consistency and
uniformity of the text, even the Vulgate
as produced by Gutenberg was not entirely without
mistakes as the several editions of
the first printed work varied one from the
other. After the
Reformation, when the
Church of Rome strove to counter the
attacks and refute the doctrines of Protestantism, the Vulgate was
reaffirmed in the Council of Trent as the sole, authorized
text of the Bible. To reinforce this declaration, an
attempt was made to standardize the spelling and overall
text of the Vulgate out of the countless
editions written during the Middle Ages.
The actual first manifestation
of this authorized text was sponsored by
Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), known as the Sistine
Vulgate, but was soon repudiated with the advent of the next
pope, Clement VIII (1592-1605) who immediately
ordered a new edition.
This Clementine Vulgate of 1592 became
the standard Bible
text of the Catholic Church until the 1960s, when
worship in vernacular languages
was permitted.
The Nova Vulgata is currently the
official Latin version published and
approved by the Roman Catholic
Church. The Nova Vulgata was commissioned in 1907 by
Pope Pius X of the Benedictine Monastery in Rome, though many decades would pass before it
would be completed. The main difference between the Nova Vulgata and the
Vulgata Clementina is that it takes account of the modern textual
criticism of recent years and in places reflects the changes in such
texts as the United
Bible Society's critical
text.
There are also a number of changes where the modern
scholars felt that
Saint Jerome had failed to grasp the meaning
of the original languages.
The Nova Vulgata does not contain those
books, found in some editions of the
Vulgate, that are considered apocryphal by the
Roman Catholic Church -- for example
the 3rd and 4th book of Ezra.
Its spelling also reflects a more Classical leaning than the Renaissance
spelling of the Clementine edition.
The Nova Vulgata has
not been widely embraced by conservative Catholics, as it sounds unfamiliar
compared to the Clementine, a fact
common in the
history of the Bible as new
translations attempt to supplant
older, more familiar ones.
The Stuttgart Vulgate published by
the German BibleSociety (Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, Biblia Sacra
Vulgata, seeks to reproduce the
original, pure Vulgate
text that Saint Jerome would have produced 1,600
years ago.
The Stuttgart Vulgate attempts, through
critical comparison of important, historical editions of the Vulgate, to
achieve the original text, cleansed of the
errors of a millennium and a half's time. The main critical
source for the Stuttgart Vulgate is
Codex Amiatinus, the highly-esteemed 8th century, one-volume manuscript
of the whole Latin
Bible produced in England, regarded as
the best medieval witness to Saint Jerome's
original text.
Depending on your point of
view, one of the
beauties or one of the problems with the
Bible is that, by carefully picking
and choosing your passages, you can get anything you want out of it.
Using passages from the canonical gospels, scholars,
theologians, and lay alike have ‘proven'
that Jesus was a pharisee, an
Essene, a revolutionary zealot intent on
overthrowing Roman
occupation, a
Kabbalist mystic, a Marxist, a supply-side
Republican, and even a
Taoist. (Of course
others have also found passages to
repudiate all of these assertions.)
Over
time, as we all
know, everything decays or becomes
corrupt. This would have been the case with
the original writings about Jesus.
The written texts that now
exist were not written by apostles of
Jesus but rather were copies of
texts of Jesus' teaching.
We have no
way of knowing exactly what changes were made and
what was added to the original texts dealing
with Jesus but
research suggests that the original
texts were simply the statements and sermons of
Jesus which were later elaborated
upon.
Many, many men spent their entire
lives REFINING? the
religion which we now call
Christianity. There was much debate about who wrote what and what
was true as
opposed to what was
heretical even in the first century after
the birth of Jesus. The process of
selection and status gradually evolved, and even the Bible itself tells us that what we
currently have is not the full story or
a complete image.
Within a
century, at least one generation removed from the
living
Jesus, the first great challenge
arose with the groundswell of gnostic
thought threatening to undermine the
still-entrenching catholic ‘orthodox'
church.
Gnosticism is
ultimately a religion of
redemption -
wisdom of truth gained through the coupling ofexperience with
knowledge.
Clement of Alexandria
used the term ‘gnostic' to describe
anyone who had penetrated deeper into the mysteries of
Truth.
The
gnostic universally heralded
Jesus as the one who brought this
knowledge of the
Truth.
Titus Flavius Clemens,
Clement of Alexandria, succeeded his mentor, Pantaenus, as head of the
catechetical school at Alexandria to
become the intellectual
leader of the Christian community in
Alexandria, Egypt for the last two decades of the 2nd century after the birth
of Jesus.
Titus Flavius Clemens emphasized the permanent
importance of the use of philosophy to
understand the relation between
knowledge and
faith. As
faith involves a comprehensive
knowledge of the
essentials, knowledge allows the
believer to penetrate deeply into the
understanding of what he
actually believes and by so doing
perfect his
faith.
In order to attain the
"faith of
knowledge," to find the
Truth, which is so much higher than
the mere "faith of conjecture," or
simple reception of a truth on authority,
philosophy is permanently necessary.
Faith of
knowledge, the
Truth, is the foundation of
enlightenment. Against
those who professed esoteric
knowledge and that the
Truth was all that was needed Titus
Flavius Clemens argued correctly that a moral
life was the test of real
wisdom. Against anti-intellectual pietists, Clement
of Alexandria championed the ideal of
spiritual enlightenment. Titus Flavius Clemens
characterization of the real Christian as an
intellectual whose
life is a moral example for
others
influenced the
development of the monastic
ideal.
During
the persecution of Alexandrian Christians, Titus Flavius Clemens found refuge
in Jerusalem. Titus Flavius Clemens was succeeded at Alexandria by his
brilliant protégé, Origen.
The
Roman Catholics attempted early on to
stamp out any train of thought, to
destroy any branch and any
text of the Christian
religion which did not strictly adhere to
Roman Catholic dogma.
After the
gnostic confrontation and until the
Reformation, the
Roman Catholic Church was the
overwhelmingly dominant
force in Christianity. The rigid,
entrenched mentality of
Catholic orthodoxy must be taken into
account in any reasonable examination of the Christian
religion.
God is supernatural (outside of
nature); God is
three-in-one, (the
Father, the
Son and the
Holy Spirit); God requires humans to worship him as a
human
Emperor (descended
God) on Earth is
worshiped; that something called the soul
(which exists outside of
nature) is condemned by God
to a place called hell unless one
believes in and follows the
religious dogma
of whichever sect or cult one has joined or been born into; that to some,
belief in their sect or cults
religious dogma
guarantees one a secure position in the nether realm of
heaven; that to
others good works and belief are necessary to gain admission to
heaven, and that to still
others good works, belief and a following of
religious law is the only way to gain admission to
heaven.
The Roman
Catholic Church needed then and needs now to control the information made available to the
public about Jesus. Without a uniform religion the
Catholics
realized they would
lose control of adherents. It was from this
Roman Catholic Church that the
ultimate lists of approved, canonical, and heretical texts issued.
Even
within what is now the
Catholic Church there has always been
dissension.
The Synoptic Gospels, Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark
and Gospel of Luke, order of creation was
debated and revised.
The Gospel of John was considered
heretical and was added later.
Revelation was considered
heretical and then added later.
The first commentary made on the Gospel of John was
by the gnostics Ptolemy and Heracleon, as
quoted by Irenaeus and Origen. The
Gospel of John is a highly
intellectual account of
Jesus' life which would have required a
good level of education and was penned by John the
presbyter (priest) as
opposed to John the Apostle who was an
uneducated fisherman. John the presbyter penned Revelation as
well.
Christian writers before 150 years after the birth
of Jesus do not generally refer to
any document (including the canonical gospels) as their
source for
Jesus' sayings. The
Synoptics were originally anonymous, and decisions of authorship came
about in the 2nd century based on legend.
1st century Christianity and Judaism was practiced primarily as an oral
cultural tradition.There are several references to
the "words of
Jesus". Early collections of
Jesus sayings are more than likely,
fragments still
exist. During this period of
human
history writing down long drawn out
stories was not the standard procedure
while writing down the sayings of the Buddha,
Confucious or Lao Tze was the standard procedure.
The Gospel of Thomas, which was
discovered less than a century ago,
is evidence that such collections originally did
exist.
The
idea that the Greek gospels are based on
primitive collection of sayings (Greek: logia) goes back to the very first
commentary on the gospels. Early in the 2nd century after the birth of
Jesus, Papias reported that Matthew
compiled the logia of Jesus which
others
interpreted as best
they could. Papias penned, a 5 volume commentary on the sayings of
Jesus from the accounts of second
generation church leaders, entitled an
Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord.
The Exposition of the
Oracles of the Lord to this date provide the earliest record of the
composition of the gospels. Papias' work is
among the many texts claimed to be
known to ancient Christians that were
destroyed by the
Roman Catholic Church.
From a
fragment from the Exposition of
the Oracles of the Lord by Papias we learn that;
Papias affirms
that he received the sayings of the apostles from those who accompanied them,
and he moreover asserts that he heard
with his own ears Aristion and the presbyter John. Papias mentions them
frequently by name, and in his
writings gives their traditions. Papias
relates other miraculous deeds, stating that he acquired the
knowledge of them from oral
tradition.
Papias also relates
that he had received a wonderful narrative from the daughters of the
Apostle Philip in Hierapolis. Papias relates that a dead man was raised to
life in his day. Papias also mentions
another
miracle relating to Justus, surnamed
Barsabas, how Justus swallowed a deadly poison, and received no
harm, on account of the
grace of
Jesus.
Papias set down
other
things as coming to him from
unwritten tradition, strange parables
and instructions of Jesus - and
some other
things of a more fabulous
nature. One of these predicts that a
millennium after the Jesus'
resurrection from death, when the personal
reign of Jesus will be established
on this Earth. Papias moreover
hands down, in his own writing,
other
narratives given by the previously
mentioned Aristion of Jesus'
sayings, and the traditions of the
presbyter John.
Papias has given in the following
words regarding the Gospel of
Mark:
"And the presbyter said this: Mark having become the
interpreter of
Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order
that he related the sayings or deeds of Jesus. For he neither
heard
Jesus nor accompanied Him. But
afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions
to the necessities, but with no intention of giving a regular
narrative of
Jesus' sayings. Wherefore Mark made
no mistake in thus writing some
things as he
remembered them. For of one
thing he took especial care, not to
omit anything he had heard, and not to
put anything fictitious into the statements."
With regard to the
Gospel of Matthew, Papias has made the following statement:
"Matthew put together the oracles in the Hebrew
language, and each one
interpreted them as
best he could. The same writer used proofs from the First Epistle of
John, and from the Epistle of Peter in like manner."
Papias
also gives another story of a woman
who was accused of many sins before
Jesus, which is to be found in the
Gospel according to the Hebrews.
This
fragment of the Exposition of
the Oracles of the Lord by Papias translated by the Reverend Alexander
Roberts and James Donaldson. Excerpted from Volume I of The Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Reverend Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors); American Edition
copyright © 1885
History is a
chronicle of a conflict that is written
by the winners of the conflict.
In the first few
centuries, there were a number of conflicts over which direction the
Roman Catholic Church would take. The
earliest was Paul, a
Hellenized Jew or
Talmudist, versus James, the
brother of
Jesus, also
known as James the Just. The
followers of Paul won, so it is no surprise
Paul's writing dominates the
New Testament and that
Paul is portrayed by
other gospels, Luke and Acts, in a
glowing light.
{On his way to crucify
Christians Paul was struck down by the realization that, even though his sword
arm was strong, he would be unable to fulfill the role of the Talmudic Messiah
and slay all those who chose not to comply with his
vision of a perfect world. Paul
suddenly realized this was a physically impossible endeavor. So Paul abandoned
the idea of conquering
the world with the sword and set out to conquer
the world through the spirit by having the various
Christian sects conform to vision of a
perfect world.}
This form of Christianity is called
Pauline Christianity and mirrors
Talmudism or
Hellenized Judaism on many levels.
Modern scholars believe that
Jesus preached mainly to
Jews as Jesus was
baptized by John the Baptist whose
opinions he would have shared. James, as
leader of the Jerusalem Church, taught
both Aramaic and Greek speakers whereas Paul,
as the 'Apostle to the Gentiles,' made the teaching of
Jesus relevant and interesting to
the polytheistic gentiles, Hellenized
Jews and Talmudists.
In order for the fledgling Christianity to gain
attention in the popular culture, the
religion had to obtain certain
characteristics common to the
other
gods and religions of that time. In
the 4th century the 'official' form
of Christianity, basically Pauline
Christianity, was protected by
Constantine, and formalized, as
"Nicene Christianity" at the Council of Nicaea, 325, and was finally authorized
by imperial sanction in the
Theodosian decrees of 391 in both the Eastern
and Western Roman Empire.
The
Gospel of Thomas was one of the gospels that did
not make the final cut and is a collection of over one hundred statements made
by Jesus. Although it is
known to be a corrupted text, as it was transcribed from Greek to
Coptic, about half of the sayings have direct parallels to sayings recorded in
the canonical gospels, and much of the other half can be linked
theologically to the rest of the
New Testament.
The
existence of the Gospel of Thomas has been
known to scholars since the origins of
Christianity, but no copies were known to
have survived any of the
puritanical purges. The
work is mentioned by the early
Roman Catholic Church fathers in a
negative context.
Throughout the text of
the Gospel of Thomas,
Jesus offers numerous
ways to attain the
kingdom of heaven. This makes
redemption a personal
thing for the
reader and bypasses the need
for a priest or an organized church
hierarchy.
Around 233,
Origen, mentions the Gospel of Thomas on a list of Coptic gospels. In 1952 it
was established that Papyrus 1 and 655 were also
fragments of the Gospel of Thomas.
The Gospel of Thomas
was never cannonized and was found to be heretical because it encourages the
reader to
think for himself! Origen was the most prolific and
influential Christian writer prior to the legalization of Christianity by
Rome. Origen was responsible for the
intellectual
triumph of
Catholic Christianity over the
gnostic and pagan cults of Christianity.
Origen distinguished between different
types of biblical interpretation,
historical, moral and spiritual, and argued that biblical works
were primarily theological
compositions.
This created real
problems of
interpretation at
the historical and
moral levels and because of this
Origen was
condemned as a
heretic by the
Roman Catholic Church a century after
his death. (see
lost in translation)
The Roman
Catholic Church has always fought against those who would use the
path of
knowledge to attain the kingdom of
heaven; claiming that the
path to
heaven lies in unquestioning
faith in precepts and pronouncements of
the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This
is also true of many of religious
sects.
The First Council of Nicaea,
held in Nicaea in Bithynia, convoked by the imperial Roman Emperor Constantine I in 325,
was the first ecumenical conference of bishops of the
imperial Roman Catholic Church, and
resulted in the first uniform Christian
doctrine.
With the creation of the
Nicene Creed, a precedent was established for
subsequent 'general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops' (Synods) to
create
statements of
belief and canons of
doctrinal orthodoxy - the intent being to create unity of belief for the whole of Christendom.
One purpose of the council was
to resolve disagreements in the Church of Alexandria over the
nature of Jesus in
relationship to the
Father; in particular, whether
Jesus was of the same or merely of similar substance as God
the Father.
St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first
position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arian controversy
comes, took the second. The council decided against the Arians overwhelmingly.
The council also decided in favor of
celebrating the date of the Christian Passover on the first Sunday after the
first full moon following the Vernal
Equinox.
The First Council of
Nicaea was historically significant because it was the first effort to
attain consensus in the fellowship of Christ through an assembly representing
institutionalized Christendom. With
the creation of the
Nicene Creed, a precedent was established for
subsequent general councils to create a
statement of belief and
canons of doctrinal orthodoxy hoping to
create a textual
source that would unify Christendom.
The Council of
Rome which took place in 381 under the authority
of Pope Damasus I concluded with
Pope Damasus I issuing the following
decree:
Now, indeed, we must treat
of the divine Scriptures: what the universal
Catholic Church accepts and what she
must shun. The list of the Old Testament begins:
Genesis, one
book; Exodus, one
book: Leviticus, one
book; Numbers, one
book; Deuteronomy, one
book; Jesus Nave, one
book; of Judges, one
book; Ruth, one
book; Kings, four books;
Paralipomenon, two books; One Hundred and Fifty Psalms, one
book; of Solomon, three books:
Proverbs, one book;
Ecclesiastes, one book;
Canticle of Canticles, one book;
likewise, Wisdom, one
book; Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), one
book;
Likewise, the list of the
prophets: Isaiah, one
book; Jeremias, one
book; along with Cinoth, that
is, his Lamentations; Ezechiel, one book; Daniel, one
book; Osee, one
book; Amos, one
book; Micheas, one
book; Joel, one
book; Abdias, one
book; Jonas, one
book; Nahum, one
book; Habacuc, one
book; Sophonias, one
book; Aggeus, one
book; Zacharias, one
book; Malachias, one
book.
Likewise, the list of
histories: Job, one book;
Tobias, one book; Esdras,
two books; Esther, one book;
Judith, one book; of
Maccabees, two books.
Likewise,
the list of the Scriptures of the New and Eternal Testament, which the
Holy Catholic Church receives: of the
Gospels, one book according to
Matthew, one book according to
Mark, one book according to
Luke, one book according to
John. The Epistles of the Apostle Paul, fourteen in number: one to the
Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Ephesians, two
to the Thessalonians, one to the Galatians, one to the
Philippians, one to the Colossians, two to Timothy, one to
Titus one to Philemon, one to the Hebrews.
Likewise,
one book of the
Apocalypse of John. And the Acts
of the Apostles, one book. Likewise,
the canonical Epistles, seven in number: of the Apostle Peter, two Epistles; of
the Apostle James, one Epistle; of the Apostle John, one Epistle; of the
other John, a Presbyter, two
Epistles; of the Apostle Jude the Zealot, one Epistle. Thus concludes the canon
of the New Testament.
The remaining
writings which have been compiled or been recognized by heretics or schismatics
the Catholic and Apostolic Roman
Church does not in any way receive; of these we have
thought it right to cite below a few which
have been handed down and which are to
be avoided by Catholics as they are
considered apocryphal Firstly we confess that the synod of Sirmium
called together by Constantius Caesar the son of
Constantine through the Prefect
Taurus is damned then, now and forever.
The Itinerary in the
name of Peter the apostle, which is called the nine
books of the
holy Clement; the Acts in the name of
the apostle Andrew; the Acts in the name of the apostle Thomas; the Acts in the
name of the apostle Peter; the Acts in the name of the apostle Philip; the
Gospel in the name of Mathias; the Gospel in the name of Barnabas; the Gospel
in the name of James the younger; the Gospel in the name of the apostle Peter;
the Gospel in the name of Thomas which the Manichaeans use; the Gospels in the
name of Bartholomew; the Gospels in the name of Andrew; the Gospels, which
Lucianus forged; the Gospels which Hesychius forged; the
book on the infancy of the saviour;
the book of the nativity of the
saviour and of Mary or the midwife; the book which is called by the name of the
Shepherd; all the books which
Leucius the disciple of the devil made; the
book which is called the Foundation;
the book which is called the
Treasure; the book of the daughters
of Adam Leptogeneseos; the cento on Jesus put together in Virgilian
verses; the book which is called the
Acts of Thecla and Paul; the
book which is called Nepos'; the
books of Proverbs written by
heretics and prefixed with the name of holy Sixtus; the Revelation which is called
Paul's; the Revelation which is called
Thomas'; the Revelation which is called Stephen's; the
book which is called the Assumption
of holy Mary; the
book which is called the Repentance
of Adam; the book about Gog the
giant of whom the heretics assert that after the deluge he fought with the
dragon; the book which is called the
Testament of Job; the book which is
called the Repentance of Origen;
the book which is called the
Repentance of holy Cyprian; the
book which is called the Repentance
of Jamne and Mambre; the book which
is called the Lots of the Apostles; the book which is called the grave-plate
(?) of the Apostles; the book which
is called the canons of the Apostles; the
book Physiologus written by heretics
and prefixed with the name of blessed Ambrose; the
history of Eusebius Pampilii; the
works of Tertullian; the works of Lactantius also known as Firmianus; the works
of Africanus; the works of Postumianus and Gallus; the works of Montanus,
Priscilla and Maximilla; the works of Faustus the Manichaean; the works of
Commodian; the works of the other
Clement, of Alexandria; the works of Thascius Cyprianus; the works of Arnobius;
the works of Tichonius; the works of Cassian the Gallic
priest; the works of Victorinus of Pettau;
the works of Faustus of Riez in Gaul; the works of Frumentius Caecus; the cento
on Jesus stitched together from
verses of Virgil; the Letter from Jesus to Abgar; the Letter of Abgar to
Jesus; the Passion of Cyricus and
Julitta; the Passion of Georgius; the writing which is called the Interdiction
of Solomon; all amulets which are compiled not in the name of the angels as
they pretend but are written in the names of great demons.
These and
those similar ones, which Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides,
Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who
suffered from similar
error, also Montanus with his obscene
followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the
Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius,
Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Jovianus, Pelagius, Julian of
Eclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of
Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic,
Lampetius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the
other Peter, of whom one disgraced
Alexandria and the other Antioch,
Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of
heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely
preserved, have taught or compiled, we acknowledge is to be not merely rejected
but eliminated from the
whole
Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church
and with their authors and the followers of
its authors to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema
forever.
"There is a certain power of immense and
ineffable Light whose greatness may be held to be incomprehensible, of which
power even the maker of this world is ignorant, and Moses the lawgiver, and
Jesus your master." - Simon Magus
It is extremely amazing
that ‘Christian literalists'
have ‘faith' and ‘believe' that the
books of the
New Testament are
pure as the driven snow, have never
been edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited, re-corrected
and corrupted by the very group that
Protestants condemn as a cult, the
Imperial State Religion of
Holy Roman Catholic Church of
scribes/priests/monks, management
and of course the chief executive officer, the
Pope.
"Catholics and non-Catholics alike need to
recognize the fact that the church is a human
institution, overseen by
men with
human
faults." - Michael Miyamoto
The truth is this:
If we
look at the New Testament as a
literal accurate account (like
network and cable news?) of what
actually occurred when Jesus walked
the Earth then we will fail to ‘see' the truth
within the
text.
Jesus'
original works were in words not in
writing. Many different men, with many different
opinions, wrote down the oral accounts of
the works, the
words and the life
of Jesus embellishing and refining
as they saw fit according to their own belief system, a
system unique to the
individual
believer.
With this
understanding we can
respect every
living thing that
God has brought into
creation for what it is: the
spirit of God animating
inanimate matter, life.
If you see
life as a horrible, ugly
thing then you have entirely missed
the message of Jesus'
word that
Jesus gave his
life to bring to you.
Jesus told us that the attitude we
have when living our lives is what saddles
us with our own personal hell or
showers us with our own personal heaven in
this life on Earth.
Redemption comes from
understanding one's own
weakness' and working to correct those
weakness'. Redemption frees the soul
in this life, right now, as opposed to some
mythical afterlife that has never been shown to actually
exist in reality.
In this
way we
learn to walk with
God, we learn to
feel ourselves holding the
divine spark of
God's love,
life, as a precious
thing never to be taken except as
required for basic sustenance.
Here follows many of the
sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of
Thomas: Jesus said,
"Those who know all, but are lacking in
knowing themselves, are utterly lacking."
Jesus said, "Those who seek should not
stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they
are disturbed, they will marvel, and
will reign over all."
Jesus
said, "I disclose mysteries to those who are
worthy of my mysteries.
Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what
is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that
will not be revealed."
Jesus said, "Do not
lie, and do not do what you hate, because
all things are disclosed before
heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden
that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain
undisclosed."
Jesus said,
"I have cast fire upon the
Earth, and look, I'm guarding it until it
blazes."
Jesus said, "I am the
light that is over all
things. I am all: from me all came
forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of
wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and
you will find me there."
Jesus said, "If you bring forth what
is within you, what you have will
save you. If you do not have that
within you, what you do not have
within you will
kill you."
Jesus said, "Images are visible to
people, but the
light
within them is hidden in the
image of the
Father's
light. The
Father will be disclosed, but
his image is hidden by his
light."
Jesus said, "I will give you what no
eye has seen, what no ear has
heard, what no
hand has touched, what has not arisen
in the human
heart."
Jesus said, "Love your friends like your own
soul, protect them like the pupil of your
eye."
Jesus said, "You see the sliver in
your friend's eye, but you don't see the
timber in your own eye. When you take the
timber out of your own eye, then you will see
well enough to remove the sliver from your friend's
eye."
Jesus said, "When you see one who was
not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your
Father."
Jesus said, "If the
flesh came into
being because of
spirit, that is a
marvel, but if
spirit came into
being because of the
body, that is a
marvel of
marvels. Yet I
marvel at how this great
wealth has come to dwell in this
flesh."
Jesus said, "Have you found the
beginning, then, that you are looking for
the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Congratulations to the one who
stands at the
beginning: that one will
know the end and will not
taste death."
Jesus said, "This
heaven will pass away, and the one above it
will pass away. The dead are not
alive, and the
living will not
die. During the days when you ate what is
dead, you made it come
alive. When you are in the
light, what will you do? On the day when you
were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
Jesus said, "I took my
stand on the
Earth, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk,
and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul
ached for the children of humanity,
because they are blind in their hearts and
do not see, for they came onto the Earth
empty, and they also seek to depart from the Earth empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When
they shake off their wine, then they will change their
ways."
Jesus said, "What you will
hear in your ear, in the
other ear proclaim from your
rooftops. After all, no one lights a lamp and
puts it under a basket, nor does one put it in a hidden place. Rather, one puts
it on a lamp stand so that all who
come and go will see its light."
Jesus said, "A
city built on a high
hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden."
Jesus said, "If a
blind
individual leads a
blind
individual, both of them will
fall into a hole."
Jesus
said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put
them under your feet like little children and trample them, then will see the
son of the living one and you will not be
afraid."
Jesus said, "The
Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of
knowledge and have hidden them. They have
not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so. As for you,
be as sly as snakes and as simple as
doves."
Jesus said, "Grapes are not harvested
from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit.
Good individuals produce
good from what they've stored up;
evil individuals produce
evil from the wickedness they have stored up in
their hearts, and say
evil things. For from the overflow of the
heart they produce
evil."
Jesus said, "From Adam to John the
Baptist, among those born of women, no one is so much greater than John the
Baptist that his eyes should not be averted. But I have said that whoever among
you becomes a child will recognize the kingdom and will become greater than
John."
Jesus said, "An
individual cannot mount two
horses or bend two bows. And a slave
cannot serve two masters, otherwise that slave will honor the one and offend the
other. Nobody drinks aged wine and
immediately wants to drink young wine. Young wine is not poured into old
wineskins, or they might break, and aged wine is not poured into a new
wineskin, or it might spoil. An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment, since
it would create a tear."
Jesus said, "If two make
peace with each
other in a single house, they will
say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and
it will move."
Jesus said, "Congratulations to those
who are alone and chosen, for you will find the
kingdom. For you have come from it,
and you will return there
again."
His disciples said to
Jesus, "When will the rest for the
dead take place, and when will the new world come?"
Jesus said to them, "What you are
looking forward to has come, but you do not know it."
His
disciples said to
Jesus, "Is circumcision useful or
not?"
Jesus said to them,
"If it were useful, the Father
would produce children already circumcised from their
mother. Rather, the
true circumcision in
spirit has become
profitable in every regard."
Jesus said, "Congratulations to the
individual who has toiled and
has found life."
Jesus said, "Look to the
living one as long as you
live, otherwise you might
die and then try to
see the living one, and you will be unable to
see."
Jesus said to her, "I am the one who
comes from what is whole. I was
granted from the things of my
Father."
"I am your
disciple."
"For this reason I say,
if one is whole, one will be filled
with light, but if one is
divided, one will be filled with
darkness."
Jesus said,
"Show me the stone that the builders rejected: that is the
keystone."
Jesus said, "Congratulations to those
who have been persecuted in their hearts:
they are the ones who have truly come to
know the
Father. Congratulations to
those who go hungry, so the stomach of the one in want may be filled."
Jesus
said, "The Father's
kingdom is like a merchant who
had a supply of merchandise and found a pearl. That merchant was prudent; he
sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl for himself. So also with you,
seek his treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm
destroys."
Jesus said, "Why have you come out to
the countryside? To see a reed shaken by the wind? And to see an
individual dressed in soft
clothes, rulers and your powerful ones?
They are dressed in soft clothes, and they cannot
understand
truth."
Jesus said, "Often you have
desired to
hear these sayings that I am speaking
to you, and you have no one else from whom to
hear them. There will be days when you
will seek me and you will not find me."
Jesus said, "If your
leaders say to you, 'Look, the
Father's
kingdom is in the
sky,' then the birds of the
sky will precede you. If they say to you, ' The
Father's
kingdom in the sea,' then the
fish will precede you. Rather, the Father's
kingdom is
within you and it is
outside you. When you
know yourselves, then you will be
known, and you will
understand that you are
children of the
living
Father. But if you do not
know yourselves, then you live in
spiritual corruption
and you are spiritually
corrupt."
"The Avatamsaka land is a product of our mind.
Whether we live in the saha world filled with suffering, discrimination,
and war, or whether we live in the Avatamsaka world filled with flowers, birds,
love, peace, and understanding is up to us. Our understanding of the cosmos is
a mental construction. All concepts come from our minds. If our minds are
filled with afflictions and delusions, we live in a world of afflictions and
delusions. If our minds are pure and filled with mindfulness, compassion, and
love, we live in the Avatamsaka world."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"Jesus was a decidedly nonviolent
man.
Jesus would have abhorred the
death penalty, a
government policy of which he himself was a
victim. The sad
truth about these unenlightened
times is that were
Jesus to
return today he would likely
meet the same fate at the
hands of his most
publicly fervent 'believers'." - John DeCure
"One thing ignored
by the religious right is the
grace exhibited by
Jesus.
Grace means second
chance, and
Jesus was a
beliver of second chances. Each and everyone
of us falls short in the
eyes of God, and
yet we all have the ability to become children of God
and experience
forgiveness. The
love of Jesus and his
grace are demonstrated
throughout the Gospels. Jesus is
not the God of the GOP,
big business or the
religious right.
Jesus is the God of everyone who chooses to have a
relationship with him.
Jesus wants us to have second
chances when we stumble or
fall. " -Gary Swearingen
Father Jon Sobrino is
a surviving liberation
theologist, part of a team of intellectual Jesuit
priests based at the University of Central America.
Father Jon Sobrino
was a close friend of Oscar Romero the archbishop of San Salvador who was
assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries in 1980.
Father Jon Sobrino
escaped death in 1989 when 6 priests, a cook and her daughter were slaughtered
by Salvadoran soldiers as he was out of the country at the time.
Fernando Saenz Lacalle, a prominent San Salvador member of Opus Dei,
has pushed the Vatican to silence Father
Jon Sobrino for several years. Opus Dei supported the right-wing governments of
Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet. Opus Dei's founding member
Josemaría Escrivá believed in
mortification of the flesh. Josemaría Escrivá's maxim on
suffering: "Loved be pain. Sanctified be
pain. Glorified be
pain!" Opus Dei is not what they appear to
be - see Opus Dei Awareness Network.
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, as head of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith led a drive to stamp out liberation theology as
it conflicts with imperial Christian
theology.
Father Jon Sobrino has been
silenced by the Vatican, he will not be
allowed to teach or write.
"In many ways Father Jon Sobrino exemplifies
the best qualities of what it means to be a Jesuit. He has consistently put his
skills as a very able theologian at the
service of the poor, and for this, the
rest of us in the international community are very much in his debt." - Father
Keith Pecklars, professor of theology at the Jesuits' Pontifical Gregorian
University in Rome
"It's time that
Americans concerned with
illegal immigration start questioning
our track record of befriending only the rich
and powerful of Latin America while its
wretched masses flood our frontiers." - Roger
Carasso
Jesus' message has always been a
message of tolerance,
forgiveness,
redemption,
salvation and compassion.
Jesus guarantees the
individual
salvation by loving God (who
granted every living
creature life),
allowing God's love to 'wash through one" cleansing the
corruption of the
soul and by living life
always mindful of God's
love as presented to
mankind by
Jesus.
On refuting a primitive and
simplistic notion of GodMost
people have a primitive and simplistic
notion of God.
Most
people have only a simplistic and
primitive understanding
of science.
Many intelleigent
people have spent a lot of
time thinking, debating and writing about something
mysterious and profound, this something is
usually referred to as "God." They are
thinking, writing and debating about
something far more elusive,
complex and
mysterious than the
great-white-father-on-a-cloud that usually
passes for "God".
The oldest and best
universities were started by men who
wanted to use the gifts of knowledge and
reason that God had given them to better
understand the
Earth God had
created.
As human
beings we have had mutually shared emotional
experiences.
Emotions like compassion, empathy,
anger,
jealousy,
embarrassment,
happiness,
contentment have been shared by
humans since the dawn of
time.
One of these mutually shared
emotional experiences has been the
emotion of mystical spirituality - a ‘feeling' of
communion with
God.
The ‘feeling' of
communion with
God is a
common
human
experience that can not be fully
explained by logic or
reason because the
object, God, is
impossible for the
human mind to fully conceptualize.
Although
God may very well be
impossible to fully
conceptualize it does not follow that
God, therefore, does not
exist.
Compassion, peace
and happiness can be defined as
symbols of concepts but these
symbols of concepts do not allow
people to fully
express the range of
emotion they have
experienced.
To deny the
existence of compassion, peace
or happiness because they cannot be
accurately conceptually
symbolized and expressed denys the
memory of your own
experiences.
Our
inadequate and incorrect
conceptualization of
God stems from the fact that our
conceptual order is analogous to looking
from the apex of the cone of existence
towards it's base which is an infinite distance away because it
includes all of reality. The further from
the apex one gets the less of the base, all of reality, of the cone remains within the field
of vision.
We can only
understand what we have
a perspective on, the immediate
reality that surrounds us in our position at
the bottom of the cone. This is similar to the
way in which we can only
know the past, that which has occurred,
and not the future, which has yet to occur.
Reality, on the
other
hand, is analagous to the
perspective of viewing the apex
from the a position on the bottom of the cone. The
infinite apex of the cone of
existence reaches to the vanishing point
where God resides.
The ability to
describe the mystical experience of
seeing the apex, of
communing with
God, is dependent upon the ability of the
mystic to descibe that
vision conceptually through
metaphoric symbolism to
others whose base in
reality may deviate from that of the
mystic.
Every
religion that has ever
existed began based on the
mystical experience of seeing the apex of the cone, of
communing with
God.
In the attempt to convey an
experience that, in
truth,
can not be put into
words many mistakes are made.
Mystics, those that have seen the
apex, have difficulty in symbolically
conceptualizing that
experience and in
realting those symbolic concepts to
others.
Part of this
difficulty lies in the fact that we can easily realte experiences that have
material
reality - are tangible.
Experiences that have no
material
reality, that do not occur outside of the
self, have no mutually shared
conceptual symbology which can be used to
relate them.
This is one of the
reasons that God has been conceptualized by some as residing outside of
nature.
Due to this
conceptual inability common to all people to
be able to adequately
symbolize the
experience of
communing with
God we have a multitude of
religions that all claim to be the one
true religion.
Adherents lose sight of the
fact that God can never be
adequately described by any
individual as each of our
individual
perspectives is limited to the
section of reality we inhabit at the bottom
of the cone of existence.
God can not be
adequately described because we
each inhabit different realities at the
bottom of the cone of existence - they may
overlap but they can not be exactly the
same.
God will always remain a
mystery as we are unable to focus on the
apex of existence, the vanishing point,
where God's resides.
Martin Luther and countless
others have claimed that
people do not need an
intercessor to
commune with
God and yet religious leaders tell their flocks that they must
believe as the
religious leader says - because that is what
God wants them to do.
Religious leaders that claim a 'special'
relationship with God fall into the sin of pride - and
once they have they are no longer in
communion with
God which means they have no authority or right
to speak for God.
At this point
religion then becomes a way to get
people to live within a set of proscribed
laws or rules, accept hardships and even
sacrifice for the
religious leaders beliefs.
Religious adherents are ‘told' what to
believe by these
spritually
corrupt religious leaders as
opposed to having to
work out for themselves the cone of
existence and the
reality of God.
Religious dogma
has no place for critical thinkers.
Religious dogma
demands blind adherence to
professed conceptualization as
opposed to
communion with
God.
Religious leaders fear and discourage direct
communion with
God as, once this occurs, they can no longer
serve as intercessors.
Those that have been
blinded by an
incomplete and
inaccurate
conceptualization of
God use a natural
self-protective
mechanism that acts as an
emotional barrier to the
Truth. This
mistakenly causes them to hold onto a
conceptualization of
God that is false
and which actually acts as a barrier to
communion with
God.
Superficial
abstractions,
conceptions and
illusions only frustrate the
individual in the long run.
Many people
know, deep down inside, that
religious dogma
is a sham. They are told endlessly by spritually corrupt religious leaders that the only way for their children
to grow up to be moral is for them to
practice religion as if they
believed the dogma to be true.
This perpetuates a false
understanding of
God and of
humanities
relation to God.
A
compassionate God could never demand an
individual fallible
human to
conceptualize and ‘believe' in Him
in the exact same manner in which spritually corrupt religious leaders instruct an
individual to
conceptualize Him.
A compassionate God
would not condemn an
individual to
hell for failing to conceptualize God in the manner approved by
religious leaders.
God is compassionate or God would not have granted us
life.
God
could not be compassionate if the granting of
life was meant to punish us, if
living itself was
evil.
This is exactly what Jesus was
trying to get humanity to
understand.
If
you read the
words of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)
you see Jesus condemn ritual practices,
flowing robes and gowns or special priestly
clothing, public prayer, vain repetitive utterances, and the
religious leaders of his time which he
branded as insincere.
And
God's compassion
can be experienced by each and every
human.
To ‘feel' God's
pure unadulterated
compassion allows
joy and
contentment to permeate one's
life, making every
moment of
life worth living.
God's pure
unadulterated compassion provides
peace in troubled times, courage to move forward, and can turn
simple happiness into real
joy.
Jesus taught
humanity to accept
reality as reality is because accepting
reality as reality is as
opposed to how we
wish it to be is what opens our
hearts and
minds to the compassion of God
as shown by the existence of
life here on Earth.
An emotional breakthrough into
freedom occurs when one accepts the
uncertainty of life rather than ‘wishing' and/or ‘praying' that
life be different than
life is.
Jesus
life and teaching can be summed up in a sentence:
"Get along with each other, be kind to each
other, help the poor, improve
yourselves and your surroundings, give generously,
enjoy life and do not
worry, argue or
fight."
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This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new religious
ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification
of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due
to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion
aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason
which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no
church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to
develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of
reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the
human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in
detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to
their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate
crime.”
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary
the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking
system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of
America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of
self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization
is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a
gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously over
the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more
power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed
into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The
results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social
structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the
bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
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their writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational,
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