Does Christianity have a future?

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.