Breaking out of Western Christianity's Belief Control

[just me]

Those that seek truth in the world as we see it, will never understand the truths we are meant to understand. To not acknowledge the existence of a spiritual world, is to study sciences and old thinkers that study what they can prove or what they can see. This leads to a mostly one-sided study, the answers of which are made up based on sight.

Those who live in this world must admit there is much we cannot understand through sight. Some "great" thinkers have categorized everything they cannot view scientifically to be part of the mind. To understand truths, one must study spiritual things in the spiritual world. If they avoid this, they are doing nothing more than leading others astray with their close-mindedness. Is not true understanding somewhat spiritual in itself?

 

[sprinkles]

Those that seek truth in the world as we see it, will never understand the truths we are meant to understand. To not acknowledge the existence of a spiritual world, is to study sciences and old thinkers that study what they can prove or what they can see. This leads to a mostly one-sided study, the answers of which are made up based on sight.

Those who live in this world must admit there is much we cannot understand through sight. Some "great" thinkers have categorized everything they cannot view scientifically to be part of the mind. To understand truths, one must study spiritual things in the spiritual world. If they avoid this, they are doing nothing more than leading others astray with their close-mindedness. Is not true understanding somewhat spiritual in itself?

I agree, I just don't think Christianity is the only way to achieve this.

 

[Skarekrow]

Legitimization Under Constantine

From persecuted minority to official imperial religion -
what caused this extraordinary reversal for Christianity?

THE PATH TO VICTORY


​

Shaye I.D. Cohen:
Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University

The triumph of Christianity is actually a very remarkable historical phenomenon. ... We begin with a small group from the backwaters of the Roman Empire and after two, three centuries go by, lo and behold that same group and its descendants have somehow taken over the Roman Empire and have become the official religion, in fact the only tolerated religion, of the Roman Empire by the end of the 4th century.

That is a truly remarkable development, and a monumental historical problem, trying to understand how this happened.
Of course, pious Christians have no doubt about how or why it happened: "This is the hand of God working in history." And the Christians of antiquity already made this very point; the fact that Christianity triumphed is proof of its truth.

For historians, that answer, while maybe correct on one level, on another level it is not entirely satisfactory.
We historians would like to find other explanations for the triumph of Christianity and indeed, ever since Gibbon wrote his famous history, historians have been trying to understand what it was exactly that pushed Christianity to the top.

I can't fully answer that question myself, but we can clearly identify various stages on the path of Christianity to its ultimate victory. ...
In its first stage, Christianity begins not as a religion, it begins rather as the movement of people around a single charismatic teacher or preacher, it's hard to know what noun to use exactly.

I would call him a holy man who attracted a crowd of disciples who followed him and his various wanderings as he did his healings, as he did his teachings.

But this holy man winds up in Jerusalem and winds up executed by the authorities, probably as a trouble maker, somebody who's best off dead, rather than alive because alive who knows what may happen?

He's a threat to the social order.
He's best off executed.

This is how Christianity begins.
It very rapidly turns into something different.

What began as a kind of ratter-tag assembly of followers of a holy man turns into what we might call a Jewish sect, a group of Jews which now has interpreted the life, teachings and death of its holy man somehow as having cosmic significance, as having meaning for all time, not just for the specific moment, but somehow affecting God's relationship with the Jews and ultimately with the whole world.

... This then is a Jewish sect or a Jewish school, which you might say is the next stage in the development.

After that, the next stage may be represented by Paul, who then takes this Jewish school, this Jewish philosophy, this Jewish sect, and now says that the teachings of this sect are such that the entire map of the world needs to be redrawn, so that we now no longer have the simple dichotomy of Jews and gentiles and we no longer simply have a Jewish school arguing with other Jews about interpretations of law and theology.

We now have, Paul says, a new map of the world.
Our teachings have within them the secret to understanding the new cosmic order.

So that the old distinctions between Jews and gentiles are now obliterated.
They have been supplanted by a new and truer and more wonderful and more beautiful map in which we have a new Israel that will embrace both Jews and gentiles, all those who now accept the new covenant and the new faith.

This is Paul, who in his teachings has the beginnings of what we might call the breaking out of Christianity [from] Jewish social setting.
...
This of course takes place gradually over the next several decades well into the 2nd century....
It doesn't happen everywhere all at once, in the same way.

It's a complex, protracted process.
And we must allow for variety; the place of Christianity, let's say in the year 100 CE, may not be the same in Egypt as it is in Judah.

It may not be the same in Rome as it is in Asia Minor.
We have to ask ourselves constantly - How did the Christians see themselves?

How did the Jews see the Christians?
How did the gentiles see the Christians?

How did each of these groups understand the other and how they fit into the larger society?
And the answers may not be the same.

There's no guarantee that the Christians and the Jews necessarily looked at each other in the same way at any given moment.
We have to allow for a wide variety of opinions.

But the tendency, nonetheless, I think is very clear: Christianity is becoming less "Jewish" and is turning into something new and different. ...
For some Christians, this never happens.
They can't bring themselves to say that God has thoroughly redrawn the map of the cosmos and has taken them out of the Jewish world and pushed them out into the stage of history.
...
Other Christians, of course, disagree with Paul on exactly how to read this new map and exactly what it means, and most importantly, where do the Jews fit in now, those Jews who are "being left behind."
...
But, in any case, the Christian church itself was now emerging as a new, independent group by the middle of the 2nd century.
...
The second century of our era was the age of definition before Christianity.
Now that it realized it no longer was Judaism, or no longer was a form of Judaism, it had to figure out, well then, what is it exactly?

What is Christianity?
What makes it not Judaism, what makes it not Jewish?

How is it able to somehow at one and the same time hold on to the Jewish Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, and still not be Judaism, and still not be Jewish?

This was one of the major questions confronting Christian thinkers, writers, church leaders in the second century.
This was the great age of Christian diversity, sects, schools, heresies of all kinds, confronting Christian thinkers, and it was only in the second century that we begin to see the emergence of what we might call an orthodoxy, or something that might simply be called "Christianity" in a kind of uniform body of doctrines and text, that is to say, the New Testament.

The New Testament as a collection of texts is a product of the second century, as the church figured out which books are sacred, which books are authoritative and which ones are not.
...
By the third century of our era, we have something called Christianity with its own sacred books, its own rituals, its own ideas, but this is the great age of confrontation with the Roman Empire.

The third century, of course, the great age of persecutions, where the Roman Empire now wakes up and realizes that there is something new, and from their perspective, sinister, afoot in new groups that are threatening the social order and ultimately the political order of the Empire.

And the Roman Empire was correct.
The Romans correctly intuited that the victory of Christianity would mean the end of the Roman Empire, the end of the classical world.
...
We often think of persecution, of course, in a Christian perspective.
We see it as heroic martyrs confronting the might of Rome, which is true.

And the martyrs are indeed a wonderful spectacle and do present a wonderful demonstration of Christian faith.
That is certainly true.

By the same token, we must realize that the Roman Empire was doing what all bureaucracies do.
It was trying to protect itself, trying to perpetuate itself....

The Romans tried to beat down Christianity but failed.
By the fourth century Christianity becomes the state religion and by the end of the fourth century it is illegal to do any form of public worship other than Christianity in the entire Roman Empire.

There is a great mystery in how this happened -- how such an extraordinary reversal, that begins with Jesus who is executed by the Romans as a public criminal, as a threat to the social order, and somehow we wind up three centuries later with Jesus being hailed as a God, as part of the one, true God who is the God of the new Christian Roman Empire.

There is a remarkable progress, a remarkable development in the course of three centuries.
...
It's hard to understand exactly how it happened or why it happened, but it is important to realize that we have a progression and a set of developments, and that Christianity by the fourth century is not the same as the Christianity that we see in the first or even the second.

CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION

One of the most surprising Christian heroes in the entire tradition, I think, is Constantine.
He is, first of all, a successful general.

He is also the son of a successful general and at the head of the army at the West.
And he's fighting another successful general, struggling for who is going to be at the top of the heap of the very higher echelons of Roman government.

What happens is that Constantine has a vision.
Luckily for the Church, there's a bishop nearby to interpret what the vision means.

Constantine ends not converting, technically, to Christianity, but becoming a patron of one particular branch of the church.
It happens to be the branch of the church that has the Old Testament as well as the New Testament as part of its canon.

Which means that since this branch of Christianity includes the story about historical Israel as part of its own redemptive history, it has an entire language for articulating the relationship of government and piety.

It has the model of King David.
It has the model of the kings of Israel.

And it's with this governmental model that the bishop explains the vision to Constantine.
In a sense Constantine becomes the embodiment of the righteous king.

And once he consolidates his power by conquering, eventually, not only the West, but also the Greek East where there are many more Christians [who are] concentrated in the cities, which are the social power packets of this culture, [he] is in this amazing position of having a theology of government that he can use to consolidate his own secular power.

And it works both ways.
The bishops now have basically federal funding to have sponsored committee meetings so they can try to iron out creeds and get everybody to sign up.

CONSTANTINE'S IMPERIAL CHRISTIANITY

One of the first things Constantine does, as emperor, is start persecuting other Christians.
The Gnostic Christians are targeted...and other dualist Christians.

Christians who don't have the Old Testament as part of their canon are targeted.
The list of enemies goes on and on.

There's a kind of internal purge of the church as one emperor ruling one empire tries to have this single church as part of the religious musculature of his vision of a renewed Rome.

And it's with this theological vision in mind that Constantine not only helps the bishops to iron out a unitary policy of what a true Christian believes, but he also, interestingly, turns his attention to Jerusalem, and rebuilds Jerusalem just as a righteous king should do.

But what Constantine does is take the city, which was something of a backwater, and he begins to build beautiful basilicas and architecturally ambitious projects in the city itself.

The sacred space of the Temple Mount he abandons.
It's not reclaimable.

And what he does is [to] religiously relocate the center of gravity of the city around the places where Christ had suffered, where he had been buried, or where he [had] been raised.

So that in the great basilicas that he built, Constantine has a new Jerusalem, that's splendid and beautiful and... his reputation as an imperial architect resonates with great figures in biblical history like David and Solomon.

In a sense, Constantine is a non-apocalyptic Messiah for the church.
...
The bishops are terribly grateful for this kind of imperial attention.
It's not the western Middle Ages.

The lines of power are unambiguous.
Constantine is absolutely the source of authority.

And there's no question about that.
But the bishops are able to take advantage of Constantine's mood and his curious intellectual interest in things like Christology and the Trinity and Church organization.

They're able to have bibles copied at public expense.
They are finally able to have public Christian architecture and big basilicas.

So there's a comfortable symbiotic relationship between the empire and the church, one that, in a sense, is what defines the cultural powerhouse of Europe and the West.

A CHRISTIAN CAESAR

There's this sentence in the gospel about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.
Jesus said that in the context of a pagan Caesar.

Once Caesar is Christian, the things line up differently.
While bishops are religious figures and you don't have a figure like a bishop king, the way you have in Plato, say a philosopher king or something like that, there's a kind of theologizing of secular power and a secularization of episcopal power.

Somebody like Augustine functions as a Roman magistrate, as much as he is a premier theologian and religious figure.
...
[T]here's a beautiful mosaic in Ravenna, a city in northern Italy, which I routinely show my classes.
It's of a beautiful, very handsome, well muscled, beardless man.

He's dressed in a Roman officer's uniform.
And he's stepping on the head of a lion, and he's holding a standard.

And the standard says in Latin, "I am the way. The truth. And the life."
And usually my students can't read Latin and I say, "Who's this a picture of?"

And they guess, "The Roman Emperor."
But it's not.

It's a picture of Jesus.

Harold W. Attridge:
The Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament Yale Divinity School

EUSEBIUS ON CONSTANTINE

Who is Eusebius?

Eusebius was the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine in the 4th century, and he played a very active role in church politics at the time.
He was at the Council of Nicea, which was the first major ecumenical council.

And he had contact with the Emperor Constantine.
So he was a very prominent figure.

He's most important to us, however, as the first church historian.
He wrote several things during his long and active lifetime including a history of the martyrs of Palestine, a collection of prophetic texts.

But the most important work is his ecclesiastical history, which describes the development of the church down through his own period, and then the persecutions which took place in the first decade of the fourth century.

And finally the vindication of the church with the accession of Constantine and his rise to supreme power.
...
Eusebius is, first of all, valuable as an historian because he preserves a large number of sources that are not available in other forms.
He clearly has an axe to grind and that axe has to do with the the status of Christians and their relationship with the imperial authorities.

Constantine, whom Eusebius describes later in "A Life of Constantine" and also in an oration on an important occasion later in his career, is a magnificent ruler endowed by God with wisdom, insight and a divine mission to vindicate the church and to bring the church and the state into unity.

And so Constantine is viewed by Eusebius as a figure of God's will in human history.

And how does Eusebius portray Constantine?

Constantine would have been conceived by Eusebius and portrayed by Eusebius in magnificent terms.
And you have to understand that Constantine, when Eusebius portrays him, is someone who had just achieved total domination over the whole of the Roman Empire.

And he was a figure of commanding stature, of commanding power and authority, a figure who by the year 324 had no rivals within the Roman world.

And so clothed in imperial garments and radiating the splendor of the sun, he appears in the portraits of Eusebius in some ways as a quasi-divine figure.
...

COUNCIL OF NICEA

What exactly was the Council of Nicea?

The Council of Nicea, which took place in 325, was a response to a crisis that developed in the church over the teachings of a presbyter, or priest, of the church in Alexandria.

And his teachings suggested that Jesus was not fully divine, that Jesus was certainly a supernatural figure of some sort, but was not God in the fullest sense.

His opponents included a fellow who came to be bishop of Alexandria, Anthanasius, and the folk on that side of the divide insisted that Jesus was fully divine.

The Council of Nicea was called to try to mediate that dispute, and the Council did come down on the side of the full divinity of Jesus.
It all boils down to one iota of difference.

And the debates in the 4th century about the status of Jesus have to do with the Greek word that exemplifies the problem.
One party said that Jesus was homo usias with the father, that is of the same being or substance as the father.

The other party, the Arian party, argued that Jesus was homoi usias with the father, inserting a single letter "i" into that word.
So the difference between being the same and being similar to was the heart of the debate over Arianism.

And the Council of Nicea resolved that the proper teaching was that Jesus was of the same being as the father.

Who called the Council of Nicea?

The Emperor Constantine was the moving force in the Council and he, in effect, called it in order to solve this dispute.
He did so because at that time he had just completed his consolidation of authority over the whole of the Roman Empire.

Up until 324, he had ruled only half of the Roman Empire.
And he wanted to have uniformity of belief, or at least not major disputes within the church under his rule.

And so he was dismayed to hear of this controversy that had been raging in Alexandria for several years before his assumption of total imperial control.

And in order to dampen that controversy he called the Council.

Allen D. Callahan:
Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School

IMPLICATIONS OF CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION

Did Constantine confer real benefits on the Christian church?

The benefits of imperial patronage were enormous.
There are a lot of questions about the profundity of his conversion experience, since he still seems to carry on pretty much like a pagan, even after the vision on the Milvian Bridge.

But I think all those matters are matters of the apologies that are written for Constantine afterwards.
What's important is that he signals a kind of detente that's reached between the church as a force to be reckoned within imperial society and the Roman state.
...
I think that these were two projects in which a lot of people were very, very heavily involved, and they are on a collision course with each other and some kind of resolution has to be accomplished by somebody, otherwise they're going to destroy each other or compromise each other's integrity.

And so, Constantine is a historical point man with respect to the relation of the Roman state to the growing Christian movement as an institutional force in late antique society.

What benefits does he confer, practically?

There's an imperial underwriting of pilgrimage and pilgrimage sites, and so a lot of money goes to refurbishing those pilgrimage sites that exist and making them bigger and better and even greater and grander attractions, and creating pilgrimage sites where none existed previously.
...
[This] sends a kind of cultural shockwave to the entire society.
Now, pilgrimage is a very important activity among Roman elites and others who now identify themselves as Christians -- to go to the holy places and see the holy things.

Christianity becomes another kind of institutional force after this detente, so to speak.
...
From the beginning of the Jesus movement, there was always the problem of negotiating the proper relation between the members of the movement, who owed their allegiance to a different Lord, and the powers of the state -- the state which, incidentally, killed Jesus.

[There is] the story of the coin that's produced for Jesus and they say, "Shall we pay tribute to Caesar?" and Jesus says,"Well, show me a coin. Whose face is on it? Caesar's. We'll render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's."

[This is] Jesus' famous non-answer to the question of that relation between the Jesus movement and the powers of the state.
In early Byzantine political ideology, after the detente between Rome and Jerusalem, after the so-called conversion of Constantine, it's possible to have two thrones set side by side.

In one, the emperor sits.
The other is left empty because there, Christ, the ruler of the world, is presumed to be reigning and the emperor is seen as a vice-regent of Christ.

This resolution, this answer to that nagging problem, is possible after Constantine's [conversion].

How complete and how sincere was Constantine's conversion?

[To answer that] is absolutely impossible.
This is one of the worst abuses of arm chair psychology in the historiography of early Christianity.

Constantine continued to behave like a pagan well after his so-called conversion.
It didn't stop him from killing people.

It didn't stop him from doing all of the kinds of unsavory things that Roman emperors were wont to do.
But again, I think from an institutional perspective, the change that was inaugurated by, let's say, the re-orientation of his personal commitments...signaled the reconfiguration of relations between institutions in the late Roman Empire.

When we go farther than that, we go to Eusebius and other apologists for Constantine and we know what they really want to do.
They want to put his best face forward even if they've got to put a lot of makeup on it.
...
We understand Eusebius' motivations, but I think the real important thing there is that conversion experience, how we understand that that particular individual signals something for the culture and the institutions of late antiquity and that's the most important aspect of that one single conversion experience for us.
...

Holland Lee Hendrix:
President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary

CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION

Constantine's conversion to Christianity, I think, has to be understood in a particular way.
And that is, I don't think we can understand Constantine as converting to Christianity as an exclusive religion.

Clearly he covered his bases.
I think the way we put it in contemporary terms is "Pascal's Wager" -- it's another insurance policy one takes out.

And Constantine was a consummate pragmatist and a consummate politician.
And I think he gauged well the upsurge in interest and support Christianity was receiving, and so played up to that very nicely and exported it in his own rule.

But it's clear that after he converted to Christianity he was still paying attention to other deities.
We know this from his poems and we know it from other dedications as well.
...
But what's important to understand and appreciate about Constantine is that Constantine was a remarkable supporter of Christianity.
He legitimized it as a protected religion of the empire.

He patronized it in lavish ways.
...
And that really is the important point.
With Constantine, in effect the kingdom has come.

The rule of Caesar now has become legitimized and undergirded by the rule of God, and that is a momentous turning point in the history of Christianity.
...
To appreciate the remarkable dramatic evolution that had occurred in so short a period, one might counterpose the image of Pliny and his courtroom under the Emperor Trajan -- sending Christians off to their execution simply for being called Christians -- to the majesty of Constantine presiding over the great gathering of bishops that he had called to resolve particular questions.

The Imperium on the one hand being used clearly to extinguish a religious movement.
The Imperium on the other hand being used clearly to undergird and support a religious movement, the same religious movement in so short a period of time.
...

L. Michael White:
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin

AN IMPERIAL JESUS

The transformation of Christianity over the first 300 years of its existence is really a profound one.
What started out as a Messianic claimant or a political rebel, a victim of the Pax Romana, by the time of the conversion of Constantine becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire.

And even then, that's not a simple transformation.
It would take another hundred years before most of the Roman world really converted to Christianity.

But still, with the conversion of Constantine, it's a very significant change and the change is one we can see in several stages.
What is originally a movement oppressed by Caesar because it's a competitor, eventually becomes a cult of...the Lord Christ, by the time we get to the late first and early second century.

With the conversion of Constantine, however, it becomes an imperial religion.
Now, Jesus had been transformed into the Lord Christ of Heaven and Constantine, the emperor, ruled in his name.
...
The imperialization of Christianity can be seen in some of the monuments of Rome itself where imperial ideology and symbolism, the trappings of imperial grandeur, are brought into and overlaid onto the Christian tradition itself.

This is probably seen as well as anywhere else in the apse mosaic in the Church of Santa Podenziana at Rome.

Here, we have what looks at first to be a very traditional scene from the gospels: Jesus is seated in the middle of his apostles flanked along either side of him.

It looks very much like a kind of Last Supper scene, and yet you notice that there are two women seated behind, and they look like very noble Roman women.

It's probably the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, also flanking the apostles.
But then you look closely and you realize that this Jesus looks differently from what we had seen previously in the iconographic tradition of, say, the catacombs.

Jesus is in a very elaborate, expensive toga, seated enthroned in an imperial chair.
...
This Jesus looks like the emperor himself, and here he sits enthroned in front of a very elaborate cityscape behind.
And it's not the city of Rome, it's the new imperial city of Jerusalem.

Behind him, we see Constantine's Church of the Holy Sepulchre that had only recently been completed in Jerusalem itself, and behind is the rest of the new city of Jerusalem, rebuilt for the first time, significantly, after it had been destroyed in the first revolt.

So, Constantine's imperial patronage of the church is reflected in a variety of ways in the rebuilding of Jerusalem, in the establishment of Christian monument, in the place of Christianity in Rome, and one more way: in the presentation of Jesus in his disciples.

Now they look like the Roman aristocracy; they are a part of the mainstream of Roman society.
This is an imperial Jesus.

 

[Skarekrow]

Interesting...

Religious Trauma Syndrome:
How some organized religion leads to mental health problems

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.
When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior–my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.”

I knew they were quoting the Word of God.
We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away.
By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt.

The problem wasn’t just the bulimia.
I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure.

My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did).
But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God.

It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area.
She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries.

This combination has given her work an unusual focus.
For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised.

Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold — A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology.

Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine.
Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

A few years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences.

When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.”

One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”
Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation?

What is religious trauma?
Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

I asked her.
Let’s start this interview with the basics.

What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group.

The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately.
Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you.

Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.
But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage.

The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context.
As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse.
Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of
1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin
2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and
3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many.
One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety.

People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas.

Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology.

One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights.
She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that — the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

​

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW. I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

​

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning.
In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation.

A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.)
This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship, and there is a group organized to oppose their incursion into public schools.

I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins.
Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.
I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

​

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.”

People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness.
I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.”

The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today? Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

​

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong.
Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

​

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.
​

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.
Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back.

What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily.

The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert.
This is because they have no frame of reference — no other “self” or way of “being in the world.”

A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors.
“True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all.
If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring.

They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts.
Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion.

These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal.
I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma.
This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment.
(More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse.
When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover.

They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more.
But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling.

If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church.
One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait…That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!
​

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages.
People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty.

Some have written to me to express their relief:

There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.
​

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training.
Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings.
Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth.

With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world.
Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy.
The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits.

Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals.
They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes.

They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule.
More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism.

An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology.
I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome.

I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it.
Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma.
More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults.

It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other.
The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help.

For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference.
I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim which has monthly conference calls.

An organization calledRecovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups
Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them.

Before that, they were healthy?
No, before that we weren’t noticing.

People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves.
Professionals had no awareness or training.

This is the situation of RTS today.
Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic.

People are already suffering.
They need to be recognized and helped.

 

[just me]

?
If a person does not see things spiritually, is he not blind?

 

[AJ_]

?
If a person does not see things spiritually, is he not blind?

Thank you for sharing this thought. Literal and spiritual are completely different concepts. Stories that are interpreted literally or simply historically, have no real significance to an individual’s personal experience. The miraculous stories recounted in the Bible are attempts to put spiritual, 5-D experiences into human language, which will be ripe for misinterpretation. When we’re able to step away from literal interpretation and see how certain stories can apply to one’s life, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. No single religion has a monopoly on The Absolute, all have their own shades and descriptions of glimpsing eternal truths.
Every single person has their own internal compass of right and wrong, in their own heart, even if they are exposed to no religious teachings.

**********************************

Aten – Atman – The Eternal Sun in the Heart
http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritua...spirituality/akhenaten-worshipper-sun-surely/

It seems to me quite a common view of Amenhotep, later Pharaoh Akhenaten, that he was a “worshipper of the sun.” The notion seems to have arisen because he performed a worship of the Sun in the morning.

But surely he was not a simple sun worshipper. Surely something much deeper was intended by his words and deeds, something that may have escaped us.

National Geographic quotes him as saying:
“Oh living Aten, who initiates life…. Oh, sole god, without another beside him! You create the Earth according to your wish…. You are in my heart, and there is none who knows you except your son.”

It is said that he spoke these words as the Sun rose. But was he a worshipper of the outer, physical Sun or the inner, spiritual Sun, that is ultimately God?

Oh living Aten, who initiates life.
The Upanishads, which predate Akhenaten, say that “the whole universe came forth from Brahman [God] and moves in Brahman [God]”?

Oh, sole god, without another beside him!
Sri Shankara: “Brahman alone is real. There is none but He.” Surely what Akhenaten is saying is that only God exists; there are not two, but only One. “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord thy God. The Lord is One.”


You create the Earth according to your wish.
Says Shankara: “Brahman is the cause of the evolution of the universe, its preservation and its dissolution.”

You are in my heart.
Does He not reside in the heart of each being as the Immortal Self? Sri Krishna declares: “The Lord lives in the heart of every creature.” Or the Upanishads: “The Supreme Person, … the Innermost Self, dwells forever in the heart of all beings.”
There is none who knows you except your son.

Where is the difference between saying that “there is none who knows you except your son” and saying, with Jesus, “no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son.” This same Son, this Christ, this Pearl of great price and treasure buried in a field — is not this the immortal Self, the Son of God?

Akhetaten….
When Akhenaten says, “I shall make [the royal city of] Akhetaten for the Aten, my father, in this place,” is he referring to his earthly father or to his Heavenly Father, whom he revered?

The rising of the Sun….
I do not believe that Akhenaten worshipped the physical star we call the “Sun.” However, if you look at the Sun, it exactly resembles, I am told, the sight of the Self in enlightenment. It is the most obvious symbol for the experience of enlightenment of all symbols that I can think of. It itself is no appropriate thing to worship; it is a metaphor for the Self, the Prince of Peace, the Atman.
Other sages who worshipped the “sun”

Here are other examples of enlightened sages using the sun as a teaching device, as, in my opinion, Akhenaten did. They also are not “sun worshippers.”

When we hear Sri Ramakrishna, let us recall that he was talking to a circle of very precocious spiritual aspirants, unlike Akhenaten who was probably talking to people around him who understood little of what he was saying. Probably unlike Akhenaten, Sri Ramakrishna was an avatar, who descended with what he called his “merry band” of special souls.

Paramahansa Ramakrishna
As long as you live inside the house of maya, as long as there exists the cloud of maya, you do not see the effect of the Sun of Knowledge. Come outside the house of maya, … and then the Sun of Knowledge will destroy ignorance.

Bodhidharma
In the body of mortals is the indestructible buddha-nature. Like the sun, its light fills endless space. But once veiled by the dark clouds of the five shades [the five shades refers to the five bodily coverings of a mortal], it’s like a light inside a jar, hidden from view.

Sri Krishna
When the light of the Atman
Drives out our darkness
That light shines forth from us,
A sun in splendour,
The revealed Brahman.

The Upanishads
As the sun, revealer of all objects to the seer, is not harmed by the sinful eye, nor by the impurities of the objects it gazes on, so the one Self, dwelling in all, is not touched by the evils of the world. For he transcends all.
Yung-chia Ta-Shin
The Inner Light … knows no boundaries,
Yet it is ever here, within us,
Ever retaining its serenity and fullness.

There is a unity among the sayings of these enlightened sages. Are they not all describing, in different words, the same one ultimate Reality, a Reality known perhaps to Akhenaten?

I suggest that the inner Sun, the Buddha-nature, Brahman, the Supreme Self is what Akhenaten knew, just as Bodhidharma knew it, Pseudo-Dionysius, Plotinus, Apollonius of Tyana, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, etc. It is hidden from most men; it is seen in the experience of enlightenment.

Enlightenment and the Trinity of Levels
Akhenaten’s statements in his poem to the Sun are those we might hear from any enlightened sage we may investigate. Yes, of course, only he could communicate with the Aten. Only an enlightened individual can “know” God. Another name for “enlightenment” is “God-realization.” Those who are enlightened KNOW God.

I define enlightenment as an event in which we perceive, in a sudden discontinuity of knowledge, a spiritual reality beyond this material dimension. It could be a glimpse of one of three realities, which Christians call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and Hindus Brahman, Atman, and Shakti.

Rearranging this order and using generic terms, it could be a glimpse of the Child of God (the Son, the Atman), God the Mother (Holy Spirit, Shakti), or God the Father (the Father, Brahman). These three levels have been called the Transcendent (Father), the Phenomenal (Mother), and the Transcendent in the Phenomenal (Child). Enlightenment could also be of a level of Reality beyond these three.

Enlightenment opens up communication with what Hindus call (interestingly, given Akhenaten’s use of the term Aten) the Atman, which Jesus called the Prince of peace, the Pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field (of the body), the mustard seed, and the leaven that leavened the whole loaf.

Having seen the Light of the Christ or Atman, we put aside all desires for anything else than to fully experience it and find that meditating on it (or pursuing some other spiritual practice) makes that discrete point of brilliant light (the Child) turn into a light that suffuses all creation (the Mother) and thence to a light that utterly transcends creation (the Father). We’ve found the treasure buried in the field. We’ve sold all that we owned and have bought field and treasure.

Does any enlightened master, apart from Jesus, support this conjecture that knowing the Christ or inner sun leads to knowledge of the Father or transcendent sun? Here’s medieval mystic Jan Ruusbroec on the subject:
“In the abyss of this darkness in which the loving spirit has died to itself, God’s revelation and eternal life have their origin, for in this darkness an incomprehensible light is born and shines forth; this is the Son of God, in whom a person becomes able to see and to contemplate eternal life.

“It is Christ, the light of truth, who says, ‘See,’ and it is through him that we are able to see,for he is the light of the Father, without which there is no light in heaven or on earth.

Zoroaster called the inner sun “Fire the Son of God.” Look at the misunderstanding which surrounds him. A scholar as wise as Sir Leonard Wooley can say, misunderstanding Zoroaster’s description as many Egyptians probably did Akhenaten’s, that Zoroaster worshipped “embodied fire.” “Fire the Son of God” is not embodied fire and it’s no different from the inner sun that Akhenaten may have seen.

Here are other examples of the use of a fire metaphor to describe the inner sun, Christ, or Atman. Biblical prophets called it a “firebrand plucked from the burning” and “the fire … ever … burning upon the altar” of the heart. Modern masters have called it the “divine spark buried deep in every soul.” Krishnamurti called it “the Star.” His description of his enlightenment is very compelling. Perhaps it may have happened to Akhenaten the same way.

“I sat crosslegged in the meditation posture. When I had sat thus for some time, I felt myself going out of my body. I saw myself [with the inner eye] sitting down with the delicate tender leaves of the tree over me.

“I was facing the east. In front of me was my body and over my head I saw the Star, bright and clear. … There was such profound calmness both in the air and within myself, the calmness of the bottom of a deep and unfathomable lake. Like the lake, I felt my physical body, with its mind and emotions, could be ruffled on the surface but nothing, nay nothing, could disturb the calmness of my soul. …

“I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters at the source of the fountain of life and my thirst was appeased. Never more could I be thirsty, never more could I be in utter darkness; I have seen the Light.

“I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering…. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.”

It is this “incomprehensible light” which Akhenaten attempts to make known to Egyptians who do not know it. This light of the sun, seen in the first experience of enlightenment, opens up and becomes a transcendent light, in a further, more transformative experience of the Father. The Son proves to be the truth, the way, and the life – the doorway to the Father, with which it is one.

I have said that all enlightened sages know the same thing. Let me end with a quote from Sri Yukteswar Giri, on the unity of religions.
“There is an essential unity in all religions; … there is no difference in the truths inculcated by the various faiths; … there is but one method by which the world, external and internal, has evolved; and … there is but one Goal admitted by all scriptures.”

Summary
To summarize, I submit that Pharoah Akhenaten was an enlightened man, who had knowledge of the Heavenly Father through mystical insight, as did all the world’s saints and sages. He had this experience, as they all did, when the Inner sun of the Self arose, not on the earthly horizon, but on the inner horizon of the heart.

That first mystical vision led him eventually to Aten, the Father. The religion that he initiated, which was overthrown after his death, was the worship of the same Heavenly Father that all mystics and masters through eternity have reverenced.

Seeing him in this way eliminates the difficulties inherent in casting him as a mere worshipper of the Sun and restores to him his true accomplishment: he fulfilled the purpose of life — to realize God. That his contemporaries did not give him his due is unfortunate.
But, with the benefit of thousands of years of spiritual learning, we have the opportunity to set that unfortunate circumstance straight and give Akhenaten his true place in history, along with such other enlightened mystics as Solomon, Socrates, Jesus, and Buddha.

**************************************

So where is this inner sun? The Egyptians believed it was in the thymus gland, the Hindus believe it is in the Heart Chakra (the thymus gland), whose deva or angel is Isha (possibly a precursor to Issa or Yeshua?) – a higher, pure version of our material selves.

[video=youtube;J9FSv2CV6Zo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9FSv2CV6Zo[/video]

[video=youtube;MrRKicFZn7k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRKicFZn7k[/video]

 

[just me]

A person can be right in his own heart and still be wrong, and vice versa.

 

[Skarekrow]

Heavy Metal Lyric or Bible Verse?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/heavy-metal-lyric-or-bible-verse#.ktM83Y7bN
​

 

[Skarekrow]

I found this interesting.

[video=youtube;PIqmZBVVH0c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PIqmZBVVH0c[/video]​

 

[sprinkles]

Heavy Metal Lyric or Bible Verse?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/heavy-metal-lyric-or-bible-verse#.ktM83Y7bN
​

Man. Those verses are more metal than actual metal.

 

[Skarekrow]

Man. Those verses are more metal than actual metal.

I know right…John must have been tripping balls when he wrote Revelations.

 

[just me]

???

 

[hardeeflag]

The true teaching of Jesus is that the kingdom of heaven is in you.

There is more truth in this simple statement than one can even imagine. I have long since given up on organized religion but I do follow Jesus and his teachings and the incredible deed he did for us, his friends.

I have been shown directly that what Jesus taught is true but I cannot ask anyone to believe me. I just know for myself and seen through the veil with my own eyes that yes, the basic truth that Jesus taught is true. He said that if one is born again you will have a river of life springing from your belly (John 7:73-38). Now go look at Revelation 21 + 22. If the New Jeruselem IS the bride and the throne is at its center and the river of life comes from the throne. Is not Jesus statement above a parable of the kingdome being inside you. See also John 17:23 as well a 1 Corinthians 12.

I was told in a dream to look when the Heavens will show the woman of Revelation 12. Go to Stellarium.org download the free program and put in the date at about 6 am Sept 23, 2017. This is the Feast of Trumpets. You will see the constellation Virgo over Jerusalem the woman clothed with the sun, the moon at her feet and 12 stars about her head. The King planet Jupiter gestates for 9 months prior to that in her womb before the king planet Jupiter exits. This even only occurred once before about 3 bc.

Matthew 13 in sower of the Seed, the word "seed" in Matthew 13:24 translates as "sperma" in greek. Also Matthew 1 says there are 42 generations from Abraham unto Christ. But if you count them there are only 41? A mistake? I think it is pointing to something that is going to be born into humanity and Rev 12 that thing. Some will give birth to a healthy baby some will have a still birth. Isaiah 66; Psalm 22...

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.... Romans 8:22


I can share many things but you wont believe me. The truth that this constellation alignment mentioned in the Bible Rev 12 is indeed showing up and at least is something physical to show those who dont beleive.

 

[AJ_]

[MENTION=10525]hardeeflag[/MENTION], thanks for sharing your thoughts.

First, it does appear that there are some descriptions of astrological phenomena embedded within some of the Biblical stories. This tendency or possibility, however, is not unique to Abrahamic traditions — many cultures and religions around the world describe astrological events either explicitly through careful study of celestial movements or implicitly through fantastic stories.

Secondly, it is not out of the realm of possibilities to believe that celestial bodies can have an impact on our reality or experience. Here is a time lapse of the rising of the tides at the Hopewell Rocks at the Bay of Fundy in Canada where the tide rises and falls by 45.6 feet:
[video=youtube;EnDJ6_XpGfo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnDJ6_XpGfo[/video]

If the ocean of the planet moves that much because of the alignment with the celestial body of the Moon, it would not only be naïve, but egotistical to say that astrological bodies have no effect on us when we are 75 percent water.

When it comes to new ages and cycles, according to the Mayan calendar, the previous cycle or age lasted from 3114 BCE until 2012 CE. According to Hindu mythology, the Kali yuga began in 3102 BCE (12 years off from Mayan) and will end in 2025 (13 years off from Mayan). At least in Hindu mythology, the Kali yuga is an age of darkness, it is the winter of our solar system, and will melt into spring. The fact that Hebrews may have their own dates is not shocking to me.

Here is a simple question: When does spring begin? You can go the scientific/astronomical route and say that spring begins on the day of the vernal equinox, which relies on Earth’s position to the Sun. You can say that spring begins when the moon is in a certain phase, or you can just say that the first day of spring is April 13 or 14 as they do with the festival of Sankranti in India. The difference is about 25 days out of a 365 day calendar, a difference of about 7 percent (just fyi - the difference in the Mayan and Hindu cycles is more like 0.2 percent). But when does it FEEL like spring to you? When you really feel spring for the first time can be much different than the calendar date — maybe nothing special happened for you at all on that date or maybe you even felt a glimpse of spring before it. The date is just a marker, the experience happens on its own time with you.

In my opinion, it is not out of the question to think that our solar system is coming back in line with the galactic plane, and that we are indeed coming out of an age of darkness. This is very different from prophecy. Is it prophecy to say that it will be warmer in May than it was in February if you live in the northern hemisphere? No - it’s just a fact. What is annoying is when people (those in power or people trying to capitalize on fear) try to take things that should be common knowledge and try to create prophecy and scare people. The fear age is over.

Article: Crossing the Galactic Plane and the Photon Belt

 

[Antinous]

"He certainly did not tell people of my kind to kill me if I decided to walk away from Christianity, either"

Luke 19:27

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

 

[Lark]

I dont think any of this is correct.

 

[just me]

"He certainly did not tell people of my kind to kill me if I decided to walk away from Christianity, either"

Luke 19:27

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

Prophesies can be difficult to understand, as they sometimes carry with them the weight of the spiritual and the physical.


Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

But those mine enemies,.... Meaning particularly the Jews, who were enemies to the person of Christ, and hated and rejected him, as the King Messiah; and rebelled against him, and would not submit to his government; and were enemies to his people, and were exceeding mad against them, and persecuted them; and to his Gospel, and the distinguishing truths of it, and to his ordinances, which they rejected against themselves:

which would not that I should reign over them; see Luke 19:14

bring hither, and slay them before me; which had its accomplishment in the destruction of Jerusalem, when multitudes of them were slain with the sword, both with their own, and with their enemies; and to this the parable has a special respect, and of which Christ more largely discourses in this chapter; see Luke 19:41 though it is true of all natural men, that they are enemies to Christ; and so of all negligent and slothful professors, and ministers of the word, who, when Christ shall come a second time, of which his coming to destroy the Jewish nation was an emblem and pledge, will be punished with everlasting destruction by him; and then all other enemies will be slain and destroyed, sin, Satan, the world, and death: of the first of these the Jews say (n),

"in the time to come the holy, blessed God, will bring forth the evil imagination (or corruption of nature), "and slay it before" the righteous, and the wicked.''

(n) T. Bab. Succa, fol. 52. 1.

Even to understand this commentary, there are many things that should be attributed to the better understanding of God's Word. You will read where God will never turn His back on His people. Yet, He corrects them when He deems it necessary. Same as a parent with children.

 

[just me]

I dont think any of this is correct.

Like your picture for your avatar, some things can get blown way out of proportion.

 

[AJ_]

The following article is one of the best overviews of early Christianity (Gnostic Christianity) that I've found and how it was corrupted and almost completely expunged by the Roman Empire/Roman Orthodoxy. It also lays out the similarities between this original Christianity and other schools of thought such as Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism and Taoism.

http://davidpaulboaz.org/Excerps_of_Mind/Gnostic_Christianity_The_Gnosis_of_Light.pdf

Here is one snippet:

The nondual Gnostic view of the human condition then, was very different from Christian Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy followed the dualistic Hebrew tradition of the Old Testament that sin separates humanity from God. Sin (hamartia), "missing the mark," is redeemable only through the agency of Jesus Christ. Gnostics however, viewed hamartia as ignorance (avidya of the Hermetic, Vedic-Hindu and Buddhist traditions). Hamartia or ignorance creates the suffering (pathos), that is forgetfulness or amnesis, unconsciousness or unawareness of the divine. The Gospel of Thomas warns that transcendental self- discovery involves much inner turmoil. Here Jesus criticized the magical view of "The Kingdom of Heaven" as a literal physical place. "The Kingdom is within you and it is outside you,. . . it is spread upon the face of the earth, and you do not see it." The Kingdom of Heaven then, is a state of contemplative mystical- transcendental enlightened Christ Consciousness. Human salvation and redemption, or liberation (apolytrosis) comes not through a future physical historical event–a paracletic Second Coming–but through the practice of the spiritual path that is the free will and choice of ego-transcending internal spiritual transformation within individuals.

"Who is it that seeks, and who is it that reveals?" It is not an external teacher said Jesus. Nor is it Jesus himself. “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the luminous spring that I have tended” (Thomas 13). The master/teacher only guides and mirrors the divine logos/Christos that is already present in the devotee/disciple. "The one who reveals" is the inner presence of the Christ Nature, the guru/teacher/knower within each human heartmind. The external master however, is necessary to guide the disciple to this realization. The master helps the student to "become a disciple of your own mind which is the father of truth" (Testimony of Truth Gnostic). "Each human being is a dwelling place and therein–at the spiritual heart–dwells an infinite reality, the source of the kosmos - yet it exists in a latent condition" (Simon Magus). How does one attain Gnosis? Zostrianos (Nag Hammadi) tells us that we must transcend physical desires, reduce the chaos of conceptual mind by meditation and mantra, receive the vision from the "messenger of light," and do not be discouraged along the way. (Compare with the Three Statements of Garab Dorje, Ch.IIX). Such a difficult interior contemplative path was not for the uninitiated masses. One who receives, then realizes through practice the true Gnosis of Light is "no longer a Christian, but a Christ" (Gospel of Philip, [Gnostic]). Such a one realizes, then demonstrates through compassionate conduct the inner “Gnosis of Light,” the Christ Consciousness that is the indwelling Christ Nature present in all human beings. "Orthodoxy on the other hand required only a confession of the simplest essentials of faith and celebrated simple rituals demanding a minimum of spiritual commitment.

 

[AJ_]

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
-Siddhartha Gautama

Link to the Nag Hammadi Library - the Gnostic Gospels:
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

Jung and Gnosticism:
http://gnosis.org/gnostic-jung/

Throughout the twentieth century the discipline of depth psychology gained much prominence. Among the depth psychologists who have shown a pronounced and informed interest in Gnosticism, a place of signal distinction belongs to C. G. Jung. Jung was instrumental in calling attention to the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic writings in the 1950's because he perceived the outstanding psychological relevance of Gnostic insights.

The noted scholar of Gnosticism, G. Filoramo, wrote: "Jung's reflections had long been immersed in the thought of the ancient Gnostics to such an extent that he considered them the virtual discoverers of 'depth psychology' . . . ancient Gnosis, albeit in its form of universal religion, in a certain sense prefigured, and at the same time helped to clarify, the nature of Jungian spiritual therapy."

In the light of such recognitions one may ask: "Is Gnosticism a religion or a psychology?" The answer is that it may very-well be both. Most mythologems found in Gnostic scriptures possess psychological relevance and applicability. For instance the blind and arrogant creator-demiurge bears a close resemblance to the alienated human ego that has lost contact with the ontological Self. Also, the myth of Sophia resembles closely the story of the human psyche that loses its connection with the collective unconscious and needs to be rescued by the Self. Analogies of this sort exist in great profusion.

Many esoteric teachings have proclaimed, "As it is above, so it is below." Our psychological nature (the microcosm) mirrors metaphysical nature (the macrocosm), thus Gnosticism may possess both a psychological and a religious authenticity. Gnostic psychology and Gnostic religion need not be exclusive of one another but may complement each other within an implicit order of wholeness. Gnostics have always held that divinity is immanent within the human spirit, although it is not limited to it. The convergence of Gnostic religious teaching with psychological insight is thus quite understandable in terms of time-honored Gnostic principles.
-Stephan A. Hoeller


“In 1916 Jung had seemingly found the root of his myth and it was the myth of Gnosis. I see no evidence that this ever changed. Over the next forty years, he would proceed to construct an interpretive reading of the Gnostic tradition’s occult course across the Christian aeon: in Hermeticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism. In this vast hermeneutic enterprise, Jung was building a bridge across time, leading back to the foundation stone of classical Gnosticism. The bridge that led forward toward a new and coming aeon was footed on the stone rejected by the builders two thousand years ago.”
-Dr. Lance Owens