Your post resonated with me. I was baptized Catholic, but have always (from a young age) had an issue with how religion played out in real life. Even as a child, I was struck by the hypocrisy of many of the faithful. I've also always mistrusted authority and the "narrative" to the point of being a loaner. I am easily turned off by those who espouse a party line, even when the idea aligns with my belief. Thank you for sharing this!
I think that the creator must love you very much, Tessa, and smile when you find the courage to hit 'send' and let it rip. Thank you for all that you share from the heart of your soul ... blessings of health, love, and strength to you all the rest of your life.
Thank you Sharon!! You comment made me feel very good, and I think the Creator really loves us all, it's our job to accept it and accept all the help as well.
Writing from a secular land of a thousand brands ... uh ... 'gods'. But among a very few spiritual people too, I resonate with the possibilities you raise, and ease them a warm silence akin to what thieves share in the night ... but with the Platonic ideals of what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful.
Mixing metaphors, we may never reach the promised land ... or maybe we're all carrying a piece of it inside. And if I am very quiet and attentive, I might catch a glimpse now and then .... in those empty spaces between your words, the pregnant silences between paragraphs.
I wish you the power to persevere, truth to guide you, and love as the process and the destination.
Thank you Tessa. I was shocked at what Santa had stuffed in my stocking this morning ... a warning that my naughty list was exceeding my good, and a bunch of typos to remind me that sooner or later, bad sight would win the footrace with sentiment. 🙃
A little extra coffee in my coffee might help that. For now. Expect lots of typos to come. Have a fantastic New Year!
Just woke up Xmas morning to correct those embarrassing typos, and discover yet a new gem to read in you. I'm glad I could tickle your funny bone — and to tell the truth, I'm kind of tired of that 'land of a thousand gods' thingy ... just playing into the hand of Exotic-Orientalism that Japan Inc. has played so well for so long. It took me decades to realize they are pretty much the same as the rest of us — though a bit more standardized and regimented and regulated by questionable (to be charitable) institutions for my taste.
I think this is right - Archbishop Vigano on a group call a few weeks ago made so many accurate observations but then said our redemption could only come through his brand. I thought this is inevitable because it is what he believes and one should make allowances - and that people can think in parallel while not believing exactly the same thing in the same way. Also, it is not at all my experience that adherents of any religion have any monopoly on goodness, and goodness seems to be separate from any specific religion. Skip a few weeks and Vigano is Tweeting (!!!) that there is a deep church like the deep state, and the present Pope has to do as he is told, or else. You also put me in mind of Kazantzakis’s Christ Recrucified - the last paragraph
“Priest Fotis listened to the bell pealing gaily, announcing that Christ was coming down on earth to save the world. He shook his head and heaved a sigh: In vain, my Christ, in vain, he muttered; two thousand years have gone by and men crucify You still. When will You be born, my Christ, and not be crucified any more, but live among us for eternity.”
Once also I had a similar conversation with the last Archbishop of Canterbury but three (a much better man than the present globalist bureaucrat) asking him why those specific events were more significant than the many recurrences, and I think he admitted to not knowing (it also turned out he’d lived through great horrors in the Second World War). I admittedly at the time was busy trying to be clever rather than wise.
Thank you, John, and your words are very important!!
I missed Archbishop Vigano's presentation (that I was very much looking forward to but then something came up). Then I read one of his talks and I almost shared it with great joy and passion mid-talk but then came across the "exclusivity clause" and felt wounded and very disappointed that such a great man of such tremendous courage none the less believed in the right to dominate for HIS theology. I think that once we, as a human family, confront that inner tyrant in every way, will be a beautiful time, and no more great resets. And the reason I wrote that blog post was to invoke thinking about this very complex matter.
I tried to talk to priests when I was a teen, asking them questions I didn't understand. Every time, they were giving me dogma. It didn't help my quest. And even so, in all the complexity of all this, we are to love one another (when the other person is sincere and not trying to deliberately trick) and forgive each other's mistakes, I think. While being fully grounded in what is true to us. All sounds lofty but I don't know how else to do this....
Vigano called Francis a non Catholic pope. He was trained as a priest and this is shocking. He's not Catholic. And he calls Francis pope, then ignores him.
He should say, Francis is a Non Catholic Non pope. Then he would be free to ignore this wretch
Thank you Tessa for such a beautiful and inspiring message. Your posts have really been a great help in keeping me motivated by my love for others. Your warnings to always be aware of the tyrant in the mirror continue to influence my actions. I do not respect the evil actions of the predators but I try to remember that their souls are also on a journey and I do believe and respect that. Merry Christmas Tessa and know that I sincerely appreciate your work.
Fine words Tessa. You're bang on the money. The universe is indeed made of love. I love the final picture and would caption it with SANTA KLAUS ISN'T COMING TO TOWN. Merry Christmas to you !!
spot-on. Tessa. one-size-fits-all spirituality is just as useless as one-size-fits-all medicine.
and thanks for the clips from last year. just as sick and funny now as they were then.
i think that if we are present and choose to be on the side of the angels - whatever or whoever the angels may be in our own practice - we can start the big shift. 2023 is going to be epic and infinitely grateful you are leading the way! merry xmas!
Thank you, dear Tessa, for sharing your thoughts here. For me, as a very recent widow filled with despair, I believe it was the Holy Spirit Who visited me and reminded me that Christ had stamped out death. It was
a great and sustaining gift that spoke of pure love. This is the message. A very loving and blessed Christmas to you! Athena
Dear Athena, thank you!!! I initially misread your comment and responded with the best of intentions to something you didn't say. I apologize! I emailed you to clarify. Merry Christmas and love to you and yours!! xoxo
As someone who became a Christian recently, somewhat to my surprise, I see where you're coming from, but I also see a trap being set.
The problem with this reinterpretation of Christ is twofold, I think. Firstly, you are rewriting what the gospels have said Christ taught, which was not simply to 'love' and to 'do whats right', but to live in alignment with God's will. How do we know what that is, though? How do we know, indeed, what is 'right' and what 'love' means? these things aren't inherent in us - different cultures and individuals have very different ideas about them.
The Christian answer is that we follow Christ. We don't do this because he was a nice, wise man - we do it because he was God himself, in human form. This is the meaning of the 'brand.' It's what Christ said he was, and what the disciples believed he was. Right from the beginning, the church has taught this - the truth of the Trinity. They didn't do this because of a 'brand' or because they wanted 'power' or had just made it up. For centuries, Christians were persecuted and repressed for witnessing this. They continued to do so because they all believed its truth.
So if we're going to rewrite Christ's teachings and his followers beliefs 2000 years later, we have to be honest about the fact that we are rewriting history for our own ends.
The second danger, I believe, is that this new interpretation of the faith - Christianity without Christ, and with all the hard bits taken out - is actually just modern individualism. If we are concerned about Great Resets, consumerism and the like, we should understand that this 'new' variant of Christianity fits it perfectly well. It's individualism. Whereas true Christianity does indeed start with an understanding that all of us - including all Christians - are 'sinners.' To 'sin' is to walk away from God and into the self - which is what Adam and Eve did. To follow Christ (the second Adam) is to follow God's will instead of our own.
How do we know what that will is? A Christian believes that Christ taught it, because of who he was - somebody unique. Hence that 'brand.' Anyone can dump the brand, of course - but not a Christian.
Paul, I am very happy and flattered to see you here. Since this is a topic of such intimate importance, I will respond properly in a day or two, with love and admiration for you, with intellectual integrity, and, most importantly, with complete love and respect of the spirit. I am smiling ear to ear since it's a very challenging opportunity but also very important. I was born to figure it out and find good words, and discussing it makes me happy, and I know that both you and I can agree or disagree or change our intellectual minds and do it gracefully. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
Thanks Tessa. It's impossible for me to resist engaging, I'm afraid ... not in the spirit of desiring a battle, but of understanding reality, and also of defining our understanding of it.
I'll look forward to reading more. It is of course the ultimate topic. I don't think it's an intellectual matter - that's one reason why the arguments are so fierce. It's a matter of the heart. But always good to engage with sincerely, for that reason.
Meanwhile, I addressed some of it in my later essay (not precisely what you are saying but an adjacent topic of importance. Not sure if you saw it, it gets to it somewhere mid-essay (it's a long one, one of those essays about the "meaning of life and where we are now" :))
Tessa does not say Jesus is not the Christ. She says Jesus did not intend to start a new institutional control system. Jesus was the most God-conscious person who existed in the flesh - a way of putting matters along the same lines as Friedrich Schleiermacher who was the foremost Protestant theologian during the European Enlightenment and took up the challenge of understanding the Christian Faith in the light of the Enlightenment and Modern Science - and hence Jesus is the Christ. But Jesus did not announce or claim a monopoly on Christ-consciousness and one of his first interpreters - the writer of the Gospel of John - argued that he intended to open the way of divine awareness, attachment and empowerment to others who followed his words and practices, dwelt in the divine and became 'branches' of the 'vine'. The indwelling Spirit - characterised by love, joy, peace, gentleness and so on - was to be the 'measure' of the spiritual authority of sovereign souls who followed the way of Christ not conformity to external rules or worldly or even ecclesial authority. This message was reaffirmed after more than 1400 years of the turning of the words of Jesus into a control system by the Christian mystics of the Renaissance including Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. In more recent times Thomas Merton from within a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church also affirmed this position. It is notable that this also made Merton a peace campaigner in the perspective of the Cabal's wars of his day including the 'Cold War' and the wars in Southeast Asia and Central America, The lack of prophetic Christian voices in the context of the current wars of the Cabal including Yermen, Syria, Ukraine, and North Korea is a powerful indicator of how far the institutional Church and most theologians and priests are from the original message of the founder and 'Prince of Peace'.
Paul, can you say more about this? Do you mean it's not true that Jesus' words and actions were not co-opted by worldly powers in order to control people?
The notion of 'Christ-consciousness' is meaningless. 'Christ' is Greek for 'Messiah', and 'Messiah' is a Hebrew word referring to a specific Jewish prophecy which Jesus of Nazareth, according to Christians (though not Jews) fulfilled in the most shocking way. This comment is a mash-up of post-modern rewrites of what the Bible actually says and what the Christian church actually taught, and Christians like myself find this kind of fast-and-loose claim frustrating to say the least. I don't suppose it would be attempted with any other religion.
The whole notion that the church exists to 'control people' is similar in my mind. It does not. Certainly Christianity has been terribly abused in places and times, and some churches have been part of that abuse. But the church itself - the real church - witnesses Christ. If you can find the real church, you will see that. I wish people would look into it before firing off in this way.
Paul, a quick question to make sure I understand your words correctly. Are you saying that my post is a "mash-up of post-modern rewrites of what the Bible actually says and what the Christian church actually taught," or some other post? if you are talking about mine, my post is about what I consider pure relationship with the divine, it is not intended to be based on any dogma. It is fact a stance against holding dogma over one's relationship with the divine.
Doesn't the very idea that Christ was unique lend itself to individualism? When Christianity is quite obviously a montage of interpretations of this unique individual, from the very first? In a culture of collectivism, Christianity might do better to view their faith as part of a collective philosophy, which is closer to logical reality.
What is 'a culture of collectivism' - and what might your 'collective philosophy' be? Why do you see that as an improvement on each individual human being marking out their own destiny?
I'm sorry, but I thought that the following was a criticism of individualism - "The second danger, I believe, is that this new interpretation of the faith - Christianity without Christ, and with all the hard bits taken out - is actually just modern individualism."
I guess I misunderstood. Personally I think that modern individualism fuels capitalism and that some form of collectivism might be an alternative closer to our true nature. This doesn't erase individual expression, but removes it from the driving wheel on this careening bus. But I digress.
I see what you mean. No, I don't think you misunderstood, and I agree about individualism and modernity entirely. I don't like thr notion of 'collectivism' - that sounds like the USSR to me - but I like 'community.' I'd suggest that modern individualism stems from the protestant reformation, and especially Luther's claims. It's not Christ's uniqueness that created that but a modern turn.
It is true however that Christianity emphasises the uniqueness of the individual soul before God. How can anything else be true? How we go on to organise ourselves might be another question.
Thank you! I've had very similar thoughts over the past year especially, and have also been reluctant to express them, for fear of offending my "religious" friends. But I think it's important. I've cross-posted this. Thank you!
I’m with you totally. Thank you for your uncensored message. You are one of many of us who incarnated to bring back love.
Thank you, Karen!! Hugs!!
Thank you, Tessa. Big hugs back.
Your post resonated with me. I was baptized Catholic, but have always (from a young age) had an issue with how religion played out in real life. Even as a child, I was struck by the hypocrisy of many of the faithful. I've also always mistrusted authority and the "narrative" to the point of being a loaner. I am easily turned off by those who espouse a party line, even when the idea aligns with my belief. Thank you for sharing this!
I think that the creator must love you very much, Tessa, and smile when you find the courage to hit 'send' and let it rip. Thank you for all that you share from the heart of your soul ... blessings of health, love, and strength to you all the rest of your life.
Thank you Sharon!! You comment made me feel very good, and I think the Creator really loves us all, it's our job to accept it and accept all the help as well.
Writing from a secular land of a thousand brands ... uh ... 'gods'. But among a very few spiritual people too, I resonate with the possibilities you raise, and ease them a warm silence akin to what thieves share in the night ... but with the Platonic ideals of what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful.
Mixing metaphors, we may never reach the promised land ... or maybe we're all carrying a piece of it inside. And if I am very quiet and attentive, I might catch a glimpse now and then .... in those empty spaces between your words, the pregnant silences between paragraphs.
I wish you the power to persevere, truth to guide you, and love as the process and the destination.
Merry Christmas Tessa.
Merry Christmas, Steven!! Beautiful words. Thank you, and my best wishes to you as well!! xoxo
Thank you Tessa. I was shocked at what Santa had stuffed in my stocking this morning ... a warning that my naughty list was exceeding my good, and a bunch of typos to remind me that sooner or later, bad sight would win the footrace with sentiment. 🙃
A little extra coffee in my coffee might help that. For now. Expect lots of typos to come. Have a fantastic New Year!
steve
Land of a thousand brands, indeed! LOL!!!
Hello Pat.
Just woke up Xmas morning to correct those embarrassing typos, and discover yet a new gem to read in you. I'm glad I could tickle your funny bone — and to tell the truth, I'm kind of tired of that 'land of a thousand gods' thingy ... just playing into the hand of Exotic-Orientalism that Japan Inc. has played so well for so long. It took me decades to realize they are pretty much the same as the rest of us — though a bit more standardized and regimented and regulated by questionable (to be charitable) institutions for my taste.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you!
steve
Merry Christmas!
Tessa
I think this is right - Archbishop Vigano on a group call a few weeks ago made so many accurate observations but then said our redemption could only come through his brand. I thought this is inevitable because it is what he believes and one should make allowances - and that people can think in parallel while not believing exactly the same thing in the same way. Also, it is not at all my experience that adherents of any religion have any monopoly on goodness, and goodness seems to be separate from any specific religion. Skip a few weeks and Vigano is Tweeting (!!!) that there is a deep church like the deep state, and the present Pope has to do as he is told, or else. You also put me in mind of Kazantzakis’s Christ Recrucified - the last paragraph
“Priest Fotis listened to the bell pealing gaily, announcing that Christ was coming down on earth to save the world. He shook his head and heaved a sigh: In vain, my Christ, in vain, he muttered; two thousand years have gone by and men crucify You still. When will You be born, my Christ, and not be crucified any more, but live among us for eternity.”
Once also I had a similar conversation with the last Archbishop of Canterbury but three (a much better man than the present globalist bureaucrat) asking him why those specific events were more significant than the many recurrences, and I think he admitted to not knowing (it also turned out he’d lived through great horrors in the Second World War). I admittedly at the time was busy trying to be clever rather than wise.
Thank you, John, and your words are very important!!
I missed Archbishop Vigano's presentation (that I was very much looking forward to but then something came up). Then I read one of his talks and I almost shared it with great joy and passion mid-talk but then came across the "exclusivity clause" and felt wounded and very disappointed that such a great man of such tremendous courage none the less believed in the right to dominate for HIS theology. I think that once we, as a human family, confront that inner tyrant in every way, will be a beautiful time, and no more great resets. And the reason I wrote that blog post was to invoke thinking about this very complex matter.
I tried to talk to priests when I was a teen, asking them questions I didn't understand. Every time, they were giving me dogma. It didn't help my quest. And even so, in all the complexity of all this, we are to love one another (when the other person is sincere and not trying to deliberately trick) and forgive each other's mistakes, I think. While being fully grounded in what is true to us. All sounds lofty but I don't know how else to do this....
Tessa, you are kind person. You've almost certainly never talked to a Catholic priest.
Vatican II was coming out party for a church mocking Holy Mother Church
Vigano called Francis a non Catholic pope. He was trained as a priest and this is shocking. He's not Catholic. And he calls Francis pope, then ignores him.
He should say, Francis is a Non Catholic Non pope. Then he would be free to ignore this wretch
Thank you Tessa for such a beautiful and inspiring message. Your posts have really been a great help in keeping me motivated by my love for others. Your warnings to always be aware of the tyrant in the mirror continue to influence my actions. I do not respect the evil actions of the predators but I try to remember that their souls are also on a journey and I do believe and respect that. Merry Christmas Tessa and know that I sincerely appreciate your work.
Thank you, William, and Merry Christmas!! xoxo
Fine words Tessa. You're bang on the money. The universe is indeed made of love. I love the final picture and would caption it with SANTA KLAUS ISN'T COMING TO TOWN. Merry Christmas to you !!
Thank you Paul, and thank you for your courage as well. Merry Christmas!!
So beautiful! And isn't it strange that thinking about, writing about, and feeling into spiritual matters is more radical than political anarchy?
Thank you Connie!!! And I think it is because all things come from the spirit world, and being in balance is what keeps us alive!! xoxo
spot-on. Tessa. one-size-fits-all spirituality is just as useless as one-size-fits-all medicine.
and thanks for the clips from last year. just as sick and funny now as they were then.
i think that if we are present and choose to be on the side of the angels - whatever or whoever the angels may be in our own practice - we can start the big shift. 2023 is going to be epic and infinitely grateful you are leading the way! merry xmas!
Thank you, you are always so kind!!! Merry Christmas to you!!
" do unto others as you would have done unto you "
Have a safe and joyful Cristmas with family loved ones.....in these times, we may just come to see where love really resides.....!🙏
Thank you, Grant!! Merry Christmas!!
Thank you, dear Tessa, for sharing your thoughts here. For me, as a very recent widow filled with despair, I believe it was the Holy Spirit Who visited me and reminded me that Christ had stamped out death. It was
a great and sustaining gift that spoke of pure love. This is the message. A very loving and blessed Christmas to you! Athena
Dear Athena, thank you!!! I initially misread your comment and responded with the best of intentions to something you didn't say. I apologize! I emailed you to clarify. Merry Christmas and love to you and yours!! xoxo
Merry Christmas Tessa! May the season be filled with love and joy! For what it’s worth - I agree with you!😊🎄☃️❤️
Thank you Riff! Merry Christmas!!
Christina Rossetti has an answer:
In the bleak midwinter
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RihuTtICxYo
Merry Christmas Tessa and happy-healthy-joyful-humorous life!
(okay, maybe a bit of sarcasm will be okay)
Thank you, Vaios!! Merry Christmas!!
As someone who became a Christian recently, somewhat to my surprise, I see where you're coming from, but I also see a trap being set.
The problem with this reinterpretation of Christ is twofold, I think. Firstly, you are rewriting what the gospels have said Christ taught, which was not simply to 'love' and to 'do whats right', but to live in alignment with God's will. How do we know what that is, though? How do we know, indeed, what is 'right' and what 'love' means? these things aren't inherent in us - different cultures and individuals have very different ideas about them.
The Christian answer is that we follow Christ. We don't do this because he was a nice, wise man - we do it because he was God himself, in human form. This is the meaning of the 'brand.' It's what Christ said he was, and what the disciples believed he was. Right from the beginning, the church has taught this - the truth of the Trinity. They didn't do this because of a 'brand' or because they wanted 'power' or had just made it up. For centuries, Christians were persecuted and repressed for witnessing this. They continued to do so because they all believed its truth.
So if we're going to rewrite Christ's teachings and his followers beliefs 2000 years later, we have to be honest about the fact that we are rewriting history for our own ends.
The second danger, I believe, is that this new interpretation of the faith - Christianity without Christ, and with all the hard bits taken out - is actually just modern individualism. If we are concerned about Great Resets, consumerism and the like, we should understand that this 'new' variant of Christianity fits it perfectly well. It's individualism. Whereas true Christianity does indeed start with an understanding that all of us - including all Christians - are 'sinners.' To 'sin' is to walk away from God and into the self - which is what Adam and Eve did. To follow Christ (the second Adam) is to follow God's will instead of our own.
How do we know what that will is? A Christian believes that Christ taught it, because of who he was - somebody unique. Hence that 'brand.' Anyone can dump the brand, of course - but not a Christian.
Happy new year.
Paul, I am very happy and flattered to see you here. Since this is a topic of such intimate importance, I will respond properly in a day or two, with love and admiration for you, with intellectual integrity, and, most importantly, with complete love and respect of the spirit. I am smiling ear to ear since it's a very challenging opportunity but also very important. I was born to figure it out and find good words, and discussing it makes me happy, and I know that both you and I can agree or disagree or change our intellectual minds and do it gracefully. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
Thanks Tessa. It's impossible for me to resist engaging, I'm afraid ... not in the spirit of desiring a battle, but of understanding reality, and also of defining our understanding of it.
I'll look forward to reading more. It is of course the ultimate topic. I don't think it's an intellectual matter - that's one reason why the arguments are so fierce. It's a matter of the heart. But always good to engage with sincerely, for that reason.
In the meantime, happy new year to you and yours.
PS: I also wrote about this recently at some length, exploring what the religion of the Machine might look like, if anyone is interested:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/god-in-the-age-of-iron
Hi Paul,
Trying to write a good response to you sent me on a journey. Thank you for the opportunity. :)
Here is part one. https://tessa.substack.com/p/epistemology
Meanwhile, I addressed some of it in my later essay (not precisely what you are saying but an adjacent topic of importance. Not sure if you saw it, it gets to it somewhere mid-essay (it's a long one, one of those essays about the "meaning of life and where we are now" :))
https://tessa.substack.com/p/chaos-agents-vs-love
Tessa does not say Jesus is not the Christ. She says Jesus did not intend to start a new institutional control system. Jesus was the most God-conscious person who existed in the flesh - a way of putting matters along the same lines as Friedrich Schleiermacher who was the foremost Protestant theologian during the European Enlightenment and took up the challenge of understanding the Christian Faith in the light of the Enlightenment and Modern Science - and hence Jesus is the Christ. But Jesus did not announce or claim a monopoly on Christ-consciousness and one of his first interpreters - the writer of the Gospel of John - argued that he intended to open the way of divine awareness, attachment and empowerment to others who followed his words and practices, dwelt in the divine and became 'branches' of the 'vine'. The indwelling Spirit - characterised by love, joy, peace, gentleness and so on - was to be the 'measure' of the spiritual authority of sovereign souls who followed the way of Christ not conformity to external rules or worldly or even ecclesial authority. This message was reaffirmed after more than 1400 years of the turning of the words of Jesus into a control system by the Christian mystics of the Renaissance including Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. In more recent times Thomas Merton from within a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church also affirmed this position. It is notable that this also made Merton a peace campaigner in the perspective of the Cabal's wars of his day including the 'Cold War' and the wars in Southeast Asia and Central America, The lack of prophetic Christian voices in the context of the current wars of the Cabal including Yermen, Syria, Ukraine, and North Korea is a powerful indicator of how far the institutional Church and most theologians and priests are from the original message of the founder and 'Prince of Peace'.
Hi Michael, could you please expand on your point regarding Teresa of Avila and other mystics? I'm fascinated. Thank you!
None of this is actually true, historically or theologically. It is, however, the myth of modernity par excellence.
Paul, can you say more about this? Do you mean it's not true that Jesus' words and actions were not co-opted by worldly powers in order to control people?
The notion of 'Christ-consciousness' is meaningless. 'Christ' is Greek for 'Messiah', and 'Messiah' is a Hebrew word referring to a specific Jewish prophecy which Jesus of Nazareth, according to Christians (though not Jews) fulfilled in the most shocking way. This comment is a mash-up of post-modern rewrites of what the Bible actually says and what the Christian church actually taught, and Christians like myself find this kind of fast-and-loose claim frustrating to say the least. I don't suppose it would be attempted with any other religion.
The whole notion that the church exists to 'control people' is similar in my mind. It does not. Certainly Christianity has been terribly abused in places and times, and some churches have been part of that abuse. But the church itself - the real church - witnesses Christ. If you can find the real church, you will see that. I wish people would look into it before firing off in this way.
Paul, a quick question to make sure I understand your words correctly. Are you saying that my post is a "mash-up of post-modern rewrites of what the Bible actually says and what the Christian church actually taught," or some other post? if you are talking about mine, my post is about what I consider pure relationship with the divine, it is not intended to be based on any dogma. It is fact a stance against holding dogma over one's relationship with the divine.
No, not at all Tessa: I'm talking about the comment above which I'm replying to. Apologies for crossness! Sometimes it is hard to hold the line.
🗨 It is hardly likely that twentieth-century man is called upon to discover truth that had never been discovered before 🤷
~~Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, in the conclusion to Small Is Beautiful
Doesn't the very idea that Christ was unique lend itself to individualism? When Christianity is quite obviously a montage of interpretations of this unique individual, from the very first? In a culture of collectivism, Christianity might do better to view their faith as part of a collective philosophy, which is closer to logical reality.
What is 'a culture of collectivism' - and what might your 'collective philosophy' be? Why do you see that as an improvement on each individual human being marking out their own destiny?
I'm sorry, but I thought that the following was a criticism of individualism - "The second danger, I believe, is that this new interpretation of the faith - Christianity without Christ, and with all the hard bits taken out - is actually just modern individualism."
I guess I misunderstood. Personally I think that modern individualism fuels capitalism and that some form of collectivism might be an alternative closer to our true nature. This doesn't erase individual expression, but removes it from the driving wheel on this careening bus. But I digress.
I see what you mean. No, I don't think you misunderstood, and I agree about individualism and modernity entirely. I don't like thr notion of 'collectivism' - that sounds like the USSR to me - but I like 'community.' I'd suggest that modern individualism stems from the protestant reformation, and especially Luther's claims. It's not Christ's uniqueness that created that but a modern turn.
It is true however that Christianity emphasises the uniqueness of the individual soul before God. How can anything else be true? How we go on to organise ourselves might be another question.
Thank you! I've had very similar thoughts over the past year especially, and have also been reluctant to express them, for fear of offending my "religious" friends. But I think it's important. I've cross-posted this. Thank you!
Thank you, Bretigne!! xoxo