Does Christianity have a future?

This article is an abridged version the last chapter in my book What I Have Written first published in 1999.

There are two models of Christianity within the church: the traditional redemption model and the spiritual “creation” model. The creation model is a shift back towards a more “gnostic” approach. A major shift from the physical to the spiritual took place with Vatican 2, but this may be too little too late. Vatican 2 is shorthand for the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed by Pope Paul VI in 1965.

Having preached physicality throughout its history, the Christian church now has the problem that Western society has become hung up on physical existence. If it cannot be bought, sold or possessed, it has no value.

There are many people who are becoming dissatisfied or disillusioned with a purely physical existence and are seeking spiritual answers. But why would anyone seeking answers to help them satisfy an inner need turn to a religion that only has promises of future life with a God who is somewhere “out there”?

How can a religion that has no inner life itself offer any relief in a physical world?

As a religion, Christianity can offer no more than another set of physical rules to follow, making life even more repressive than it currently is. Does anyone genuinely seeking spiritual answers really need to hear that they are nothing but a poor sinner?

For this reason, I do not see a future for Christianity in its present form.

The Christian church is supposed to be built on the teachings of Jesus but actually negates the teachings of Jesus. If the Christian church is to avoid extinction, it must turn to the teachings of Jesus as its basis of being. It must dismantle its hierarchy and turn the church over to its congregation. The church must learn to guide and help practitioners towards an understanding of self and personal responsibility.

That understanding can only come from free will and from within. We can help one another, but ultimately we must do it ourselves by our own free will and for no other reason than that we want to. In order to survive the Christian church would have to turn to the “heretical” thinking it has brutally suppressed for 2,000 years.

Was Jesus the legitimate King of the Jews? There are two accounts of the lineage of Jesus through Joseph in the Bible, the first in Matthew and the second in Luke. They give different lineage but both lead back to David. An interesting point is that Luke continues the lineage of Jesus past David to Adam, and then to God.

19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
20 This title then read many of the Jews; for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.
22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written. (John 19, KJV)

Jesus was not crucified because of any claim he made to being the Messiah, but because his birth and his teachings made him a political liability to the Pharisees. Jesus, King of the Jews, preaching the exact opposite to what the Pharisees (and later Christianity) stood for. Pilate knew that Jesus was king of the Jews.

Seeing Jesus as a political figure does not diminish his stature one little bit; it increases it. When seen in the context of the times, the teachings of Jesus take on a whole new and vibrant meaning.

Jesus did not come as the lamb to be crucified to atone for the sins of the human race. Jesus did much more than that. Jesus, through his teachings, gave us the means to save ourselves; he gave us the means to become conscious of our humanity. He taught us personal responsibility. Jesus taught that our “salvation” was entirely our own responsibility.

The truth to me is that we have hierarchical structures in religion and in other areas because we have not, in the past, accepted that we are responsible for ourselves, and have been actively discouraged from doing so.

It is not Jesus who is irrelevant in our lives today, it is Paul’s Christianity. I hope that the human race can come to understand the difference.

Jesus, Son of God? Jesus, king of the Jews? Jesus, the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies? Does it matter?

Is the human race going to continue arguing about what happened 2,000 years ago? What happened last year? What happened yesterday? And then plot revenge and war to “right” a “wrong” that is only a figment of our limited thinking? Does it matter?

What does matter is what is happening now. We cannot change the past, or even judge it. We can accept responsibility for what is happening now, and change it if we want to.

Throughout history there has been a continuous thread of gnostic thought kept alive by individuals who may not even be recognised as gnostic.

The teachings of Jesus before they were “christianised” appear to be gnostic. Much of the works of William Shakespeare are gnostic. Hamlet lays out similar principles to Jesus. Frank Herbert may appear to be a writer of cheap science fiction, but he continually interweaves gnostic thought into his stories. The problem is not that we’ve not be given everything that we need to know in this life, but that we haven’t heard.

There is the gnostic view that truth comes from within and those performing a religious service are simply those chosen to perform the service. They have no more or less rights, nor are they in any way closer to God, than the congregation. All are equal.

In orthodox Christianity, the process by which a priest becomes a priest assumes the proportions of being “called” to the service of God. The priest takes God away from the congregation and claims the power of God for himself.

This has always been a very tender point for orthodox Christianity. At every stage of history where orthodox Christianity seemed destined to reform or die this has been a central issue. It was a central issue in the 1500s, during the Reformation. The Christian church did make a “come-back,” but only through its usual tactics of oppression.

If they were forced to grant that all of us that have been baptised are equally priests, as indeed we are, and that only the ministry was committed to them, yet with our common consent.

But “Christ has not ordained authorities or powers or lordships in his church, but ministries.” The “despotic power” of the clergy over the laity was a perversion of the institution of Christ both because it deprived the laity of their own priestly rights and because it substituted juridical authority for ministry in the clergy. (Martin Luther, cited Pelikan, 1968)

There is a question that has never been answered in 2,000 years. Does Christianity exist for us, or do we exist for Christianity? Can an organisational structure take over freely-given public property and claim to have a copyright on it? Does the word of God belong to us all as freely as it is given, or is it reserved for the few chosen ones of organised religion? This is a question that will need to be answered if Christianity is to survive in any form.

A major problem is that Christianity is not a religion, it is a legal system.

The argument Jesus had with the Pharisees was about law. The Pharisees had a law for everything, and they administered the law. There was no spirituality in their law. They set themselves up as God’s legal representatives on earth, and if anyone wanted to contact God they had to go through God’s lawyers.

Not only did Jesus challenge the right of the Pharisees to act as God’s lawyers, he taught that if we wanted to seek truth, we could look within to find it. If the teachings of Jesus had been allowed to grow, it would have been the end of the Pharisees and the end of a legal system that separates us from God.

When Paul infiltrated the early Christian church, he imposed the Pharisees’ legal structure onto Christian thinking and converted Christianity from a religion following the teachings of Jesus into a legal system.

The basis of the legal system that is called Christianity is that God sent his son to earth so that we could crucify him, and that somehow made us free from sin. The murder of Jesus has been made legal because it was God’s will.

This basic form of Christian law says that we can do anything we like to anyone at any time under any circumstances, and provided we find a reason why we are right, we remain free of sin. This form of Christian law has infiltrated our society to the extent that the first reply that comes back if we question someone’s actions will be “I am right”; or “it is legal.”

The Christian lawyers have used this form of law throughout their history. The suppression of the Gnostics, the massacre of the Cathars, the banning of Wicca and the burning of “witches” where all legal according to the Christians. And because they have been legal, the Christian church remains free of sin.

The gnostic way is the opposite of the legal way. Think for yourselves, make your own decisions, and accept responsibility for your actions. In terms of living in this world, this means that I will decide what I want. What I want will not be imposed on me by a legal system that claims to be God’s lawyers.

If my actions cause harm, I am responsible. I cannot claim any legal dispensation to make me free of sin.

We can follow Christian law blindly without thinking in the mistaken belief that this will keep us free from sin, or we can think about what we are doing and desire to be harmless.

If I want to claim the right to think for myself and make my own decisions, it follows that I cannot interfere with the right of others to do the same. If I attempt to interfere with the free will of another person, I am causing harm to them and to myself. What is harmless can only be determined by the person thinking about his actions in the moment according to circumstances.

That is the basic reason why a religion cannot become a legal system and still claim any spiritual base. Anything that is not based on free will cannot be spiritual, it can only be the law.

What I would like to happen is for the legal structure of Christianity to collapse, and for Christianity to be re-born based on the teachings of Jesus free of any legal structure.

Since my understanding of the teachings of Jesus is that Jesus taught the gnostic principles of truth from within and free-will, this would mean a revival of Gnostic Christianity after 2,000 years of suppression.

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! For, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17 20 (KJV)