G.K. Chesterton's Christianity & The Nightmare of The Modern World

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936) stood 6 feet 4 inches and weighed 290 pounds. During WWI he was asked by a lady why he was in London and not at the front fighting the Hun, to which he replied, "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am." Chesterton once told vegetarian George Bernard Shaw, "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England." Shaw shot back, "To look at you, anyone would think you have caused it".

Notes From a Q&A With Philip Jenkins, Author Of Lost History of Christianity

In The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins reveals aspects of the religion that are far from popular knowledge. If widely understood, this Christianity would show the televangelists in their limitations.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview with Jenkins. The full Q & A can be read at the link below them.

Religions really do die. We think of ancient religions like those of the Aztecs or Mayas, which had millions of followers, not to mention copious scriptures. Also, something like the Manichaean faith once stretched from France to China, but that is now extinct. The Zoroastrian religion is not exactly extinct, but it has gone from being a vast world religion to the creed of a few hundred thousand believers.

One thing that strikes me is how much a dead religion influences its successor - how for instance the old Christianity left its mark on the successor faith of Islam.

Finally, there is a major theological issue that nobody addresses, the theology of extinction. How do Christians explain the death of their religion in a particular time and place? Is that really part of God's plan? Or maybe our time scale is just too short, and one day we will realize why this had to happen. But as I say, nobody is really discussing these questions.

Also, this Eastern world has a solid claim to be the direct lineal heir of the earliest New Testament Christianity. Throughout their history, the Eastern churches used Syriac, which is close to Jesus's own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. Everything about these churches runs so contrary to what we think we know. They are too ancient, in the sense of looking like the original Jerusalem church; and they are too modern, in being so globalized and multi-cultural. Found at Belief Net.

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This has nothing to do with religion, but in these times of high unemployment, Hoofy and Boo offer tips to keep your job.

When Jesus Met Buddha

What would you say if you discovered that what you had been taught about Christianity is wrong? If you found out that the doctrine you learned as a child failed to acknowledge a part of Christianity that could undermine the teachings?

There is such a history, lost to orthodox Christianity.

First, though, consider the orthodox view.

I

Orthodoxy. When they die what happens to those souls who practiced their beliefs, be they Hindu, Buddha, Muslim, Zoroastrian, if they never had the chance to hear of the one truth faith, as proclaimed by Christian doctrine? They will be unable to enter the Christian heaven according to centuries-old dogma.

In comparison to Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI displays a conservative hard-line bent and has done so once again by making clear that strait is the gate to heaven and the faithful had better believe it.

He has set the path for the Catholic church today. The church holds to the unique role of Christ.

In an open letter to Italian politician Marcello Pera, Pope Benedict declared that "an inter-religious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible." Cultures other than those informed by Christianity are not equally valid, although Christians should hold conversations with them, according to the Benedict.

This view is not peculiar to Catholicism. Most Christian churches see Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and they believe it with missionary zeal, so much so that they must take their conviction to unbelievers in heathen lands. As we know, Muslims become outraged to see Christians trying to convert their people, and Buddhists are bemused, as well as amused.

To be sure, the Vatican does not see Mohamed or Buddha as demons. But it does fear modernity in which other faiths might mix with and dilute what it perceives as Christian truth. The church has a strong tradition developing out of Ancient Rome, and she has guided her flock through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance into the Twenty First Century. She has a long history as shepherd, one which she will never easily surrender.

II

The problem here is that Europe's is "not the only version of the Christian faith, nor is it necessarily the oldest heir of the ancient church. For more than 1,000 years, other quite separate branches of the church established thriving communities across Asia, and in their sheer numbers, these churches were comparable to anything Europe could muster at the time. These Christian bodies traced their ancestry back not through Rome, but directly to the original Jesus movement of ancient Palestine. They moved across India, Central Asia, and China, showing no hesitation to share--and learn from--the other great religions of the East. Something remarkable happened when evangelists for two great religions crossed paths more than 1,000 years ago: they got along." Christianity, for much of its history, was just as much an Asian religion as Buddhism. More at Boston Globe.

The Christian Church From Its Roots in Jesus Christ

Mind Shadows The Christian Church From Its Roots in Jesus Christ

Like it or leave it, Christianity erupted into history. Its growth was not glacial, not evolutionary. Various reasons have been given for the phenomenon. True Believers say God. Historians say Emperor Constantine. Whatever our view, we take the life of Christ for granted, without asking important questions about it. Some questions in the list below are obvious, others less so, but answers to each reveal stunning new information about Christ and help us empirically understand how his teachings became a religion.

Who was Jesus?

What do we know about his life and times?

What was the culture he grew up in?

Were his beginnings as humble as we have come to believe?

Why did he not preach in towns?

What was the Council of Nicea?

What was the compromise over circumcision?

Were the early Christians persecuted for their religion or for another reason?

What did Jesus actually say as distinct from what the Bible says about him?

The relatively recent discoveries of the Nag Hammadi scrolls add to his sayings. What do they add?

How did the Jesus Movement become a religion?

If you really want to understand the practices of modern Christianity as well as its roots and doctrines, you can find no better site than this one, so click here.

Also see What Did Jesus Look Like? 28 June 2005, for a forensic reconstruction of his face.

Losing Control

Losing Control

Control is the central issue in all religions. Loss of control delivers the adherent into God's grace, the bliss of nirvana, or satori. Thy will be done, whatever phrase it takes, is common to them.

Religious doctrines hold that the individual cannot choose this deliverance, but must depend on God's grace, or the happenstance of enlightenment. Man can do nothing to achieve it. Christianity, and the two main Eastern religions help an illustration.

Jesus said that nobody can earn God's mercy. St Augustine said God had preordained who would be saved and who, damned. The later Church taught God's grace comes like a thunderclap that the individual can do nothing about.

In Buddhism, all form arises out of emptiness; all emptiness completes form. The individual (as individual) can do nothing to discover his true nature, which is form and emptiness. It offers no threshold for its discovery, just as there is nobody to discover it. In Hinduism, all is divine play, or lila, which manifests as the world, but is like a puppet shadow show, fleeting, seemingly real, without substance to realize and, again, nobody to realize it.

Some years ago, Alan Watts wrote a book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, which title implies that virtue ensues from realizing the absence of control. The book, too, suggests gaining something in that Watts' implication is we have a better life by letting go of our need for security.

The desire for achievement is inherent in humankind. Yet, the paradox is that religion, or any spiritual seeking for that matter, has as culmination no achievement at all. Control is lost, that's all. But we can't even lose control if it is something attempted by us precisely because effort is involved.

A man stumbled over a cliff and fell. On the way down he grabbed the branch of a shrub and clung to it. Then he shouted to the heavens, Is anybody there? Please help me. He waited and got no answer. Then he prayed. Please, Oh, please. Is anybody there? Please help me!

This time he heard a voice. Yes, I can help you, but you must follow my directions exactly.

Yes, the man answered. What must I do?

Let go of the branch, the voice said.

There was silence. One second. Two seconds.

Then the man asked, Is anybody else there?

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