United Liberty
The Cult of Christianity
Sun, 04/04/2010 - 11:14am | posted by United Liberty Guest
The following was written by Jeff Sexton at SWGA Politics and has been reposted here with his permission.
Christianity was founded roughly 2,000 years ago on the shores of a big lake in the Near East that still exists today – the Sea of Galilee. It has its roots in a small town that still exists today in present-day Israel – Bethlehem. Its foundation was made permanent a city of much strife for thousands of years both before and after – Jerusalem.
It started out as a small sect of Judaism that most in its day found humorous at best, blasphemous at worst. A small group of fishermen, tax collectors, whores, and other assorted scum of the earth claimed to have met the Messiah, and that he taught that to live, you must die. He claimed he was God, a claim that makes him (paraphrasing CS Lewis here) either a liar, a lunatic, or LORD.
The Messiah had already drawn large crowds during during his life, but that was nothing new for the era. “Messiah”s of various forms had been rising up for hundreds of years before this one, gaining large crowds during their lives, only to die (usually by execution) and have their names be forgotten in the annals of history.
No, two things made this Messiah different: 1) After his extremely brutal -so brutal that he was no longer recognizable as human- and extremely public -so public that people from thousands of miles away saw it first hand- execution, he was seen by thousands living and breathing, with barely a scar on his body. 2) Because of this resurrection, this Messiah continued to draw large crowds after his death.
But 2,000 years later, his followers have devolved to where many of them – perhaps even most of them – have lost sight of the true Jesus Christ of Nazareth and what he did.
Christianity has become a cult.
You see, Christianity today worships itself over the reason it exists – Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Today, Christianity represents a multi-BILLION dollar per year sub culture. You’ve got “Christian” dang near anything you can imagine, from soap to candy to billboards to dating agencies, and that’s not even counting the wildly popular Christian media, including Albany’s own Sherwood Productions. Many Christians today get so lost in this subculture, they make themselves unable and unwilling to reach outside of it – in violation of what they call their “Great Commission”:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Bringing this into the political sphere (finally, more than 400 words into this post!), can someone please point out to me where Christ says in the above passage that Christians should use government to spread their message or force people to do what they think should be done?
You want to talk about an “individual mandate”?
The Great Commission is one that many Christians – on both sides of the political aisle – forget about completely.
Christ never said to use government to force people to not buy alcohol on Sundays. He never said government should dictate who can marry each other. He never said that government should provide for the poor, the sick, and the needy.
No, on those last three in particular, He said that WE (the individuals) should help them. WE should reach out to them and show them Christ in us. Not government stealing our money to do our job, but us doing our job out of the kindness of our hearts, in service to Him.
Christ did not come to establish a new set of laws – He came to fulfill the ones He was born into, thereby abolishing them once and for all.
No more laws about how far you could walk on the Sabbath. No more laws about what you could and could not eat. No more laws about who you could marry. No more laws about what was “clean” and “unclean”. (Modern equivalents: No more laws about mowing your lawn on Sunday. No more laws restricting alcohol sales on Sunday. No more state-sanctioned marriage – of ANYONE. No more safety laws, of ANY form.)
Christ came to “set the captive free”.
The Cult of Christianity wants to twist that, pervert it into something it is not.
The “evangelical Christians” (typically Republicans) want to pervert Christ’s message into the very same religious dogma that the Pharisees of Christ’s day represented. The very same law that bound the people of Christ’s day and reminded them daily of how depraved they were, with no hope of genuine redemption – ever. The “social justice Christians” (typically Democrats) want to pervert Christ’s message into a mandate that government must make everyone absolutely equal, so that there are no sick, needy, or poor among us.
God’s greatest gift to humanity, the one that necessitated Christ coming, was Free Will. The Cult of Christianity doesn’t like Free Will though, because people can do things it doesn’t like – including marrying “other” people or being “greedy”.
God wants Free Individuals. The Cult of Christianity wants a Nanny State.
Free Will is messy. It really is. But it is how God created us, in His Image. Only two beings in existence have this ability – the Creator, and His Image Bearers.
It is a complete travesty that the very people who should be proclaiming this the loudest have instead devolved into a cult.
The Cult of Christianity.
Amen!
I hate to bust people’s bubbles, but this isn’t a modern problem. It goes back centuries, ever since any sort of church was established. It’s been religious dogma that had to be fought against to make divorce legal, to keep alcohol legal and, now, to let people define marriage on their own terms, whether they’re gay, straight or whatever. Contrary to all of the “personal savior” talk, organized religion is rarely personal. It’s just now mixed with commercialization (BibleMan action figures) and some of the most powerful government authority in human history. Not a good combination.
“Philosophy, despite the best obfuscatory intentions of philosophers, occasionally seeps out of the ivory towers and informs our lives.”
http://voxday.blogspot.com/
Who needs Christianity?
Or the Western European culture it inspired in light of the options:
“The practice of human sacrifice is on the rise in Uganda, as measured by ritual killings where body parts, often facial features or genitals, are cut off for use in ceremonies. The number of people killed in ritual murders last year rose to a new high of at least 15 children and 14 adults, up from just three cases in 2007, according to police. The informal count is much higher — 154 suspects were arrested last year and 50 taken to court over ritual killings.
Children in particular are common victims, according to a U.S. State Department report released this month. The U.S. spent $500,000 to train 2,000 Ugandan police last year to investigate offences related to human trafficking, including ritual killings.
The problem is bad enough that last year the police established an Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce. Posters on police station walls show a sinister stranger luring two young girls into a car below bold letters that call on parents to “Prevent Child Sacrifice.”
The thing that struck me as most interesting about this is the fact that it comes so soon after the Western media was up in arms about Uganda’s anti-homosexual laws. Journalists are clearly more concerned about potential death sentences being meted out for criminal acts of homosexuality than they are about actual child murders being committed by witch doctors.
Now, some irreligious will quite reasonably declare a pox on both the Christian and pagan houses; the only form of child sacrifice practiced by secularists is abortion and the occasional collateral damage from mass vaccination. The problem with that perspective is that no matter what the 1950s science fiction authors believed, it is very clear godless secularism has about the same chance to be the cultural heir to Christianity that we had to be flying cars and living in undersea cities before the end of the 20th century.
As Chesterton, history, and demographics have all pointed out, when Christianity fails in a society, it is not going to be replaced by a lack of religion, but by a different religion. The more intelligent members of the irreligientsia would do well to ponder whether continuting to work towards that replacement is a wise policy or not.
It is also worth keeping in mind that Christians who are accustomed to fighting this sort of raw and undisguised evil are not likely to be as tolerant of open violations of Biblical morality as the average Western Christian.
Labels: Christianity
Comments (18)
The article fails to live up to the title. The word cult has a meaning …
Normally lead by a Charismatic leader who insists he along is correct; there is coercive persuasion in a cult; There is often abuse to members in cults by the leadership; Criticism by former members or people not allowed to leave and share information in some cases death threats http://www.xenu-directory.net/practices/threats.html
The use of the word Cult in the article only appears to be there only to serve as a pejorative.
“Christ did not come to establish a new set of laws – He came to fulfill the ones He was born into, thereby abolishing them once and for all.” Are we talking about Jesus or a made up God - Check out Romans 6 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+6&version=NIV - And yes Jesus does talk about hell.
“No more laws about how far you could walk on the Sabbath.” - The legalist of Jesus day added to the word of God. Which is an apostasy - Humans are still trying to do that today … http://thechristianworldview.com/tcwblog/archives/2694 “Why Moralism Is Not the Gospel — And Why So Many Christians Think It Is”
“God wants Free Individuals. The Cult of Christianity wants a Nanny State.” - Oh good grief does this guy think Obama is a Christian? And good old free willing use God’s name to curse America Jeremiah Wright!
Galatians 6:7 - Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Yes you are free to become an alcoholic - and reap a destroyed life. If one violates the laws of the state one will reap prison. If one sows charity, hard work and moral values, he will have a good life.
A nanny state which apparently the author, Jeremiah Wright and non-scriptural leftist church seem to think the church is about. Mocks God - Social Justice dictates everyman should have equal pay or every man should reap fruit. But is a man sows weeds, God makes weeds grow. A nanny state is a slap in the face to the first commandment - have no other gods before me. A made up God is another God.
The author seems to have a lack of understanding of the biggest demographic in the Bible beltway, those who Cline to their guns and bibles.
I have so many problems with this post:
“No, two things made this Messiah different: 1) After his extremely brutal -so brutal that he was no longer recognizable as human- and extremely public -so public that people from thousands of miles away saw it first hand- execution, he was seen by thousands living and breathing, with barely a scar on his body. 2) Because of this resurrection, this Messiah continued to draw large crowds after his death.”
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this is a true statement. It is extraordinarily unlikely that if Jesus existed at all he was a true Messiah.
“No more safety laws, of ANY form.”
What? I was with him until this statement. Safety laws help society by promoting commerce. If there were no safety laws I’d be extremely reluctant to buy hand tools, or produce, or packaged foods. Safety laws don’t have anything to do with religion. They help both consumers AND producers.
“The “social justice Christians” (typically Democrats) want to pervert Christ’s message into a mandate that government must make everyone absolutely equal, so that there are no sick, needy, or poor among us.”
Besides being false this is an oversimplification.
In the U.S., the people ARE the government. The government isn’t representing some monarch or dictator, it is supposed to represent ALL of us. For the most part it does a good job. The fussing and fighting in our representative democracy is how much the majority gets to decide what government taxes and what it pays for. This is why we have checks and balances so that the constitutional rights of minorities cannot be suspended by the majority.
Democrats (“social justice Christians” included), in general, would prefer to see more of taxpayer money go toward leveling the extremely uneven playing field in our society. Republicans (those who haven’t been completely corrupted by the religious right) recognize the important role of some social programs but, in general, want to spend more tax money on external defense and supporting commerce.
To those “libertarians” who believe that the role of government should be limited to ensuring the common defense and policing the streets, I say, “Define ‘common defense’.” Societies with large gaps between rich and poor are fundamentally unstable. It’s okay to proclaim that individuals should have the right to decide whether or not to support charity, but the practice is the problem. People play games. Most inherently understand game theory and game theory says there’s fundamentally very little payoff to philanthropy except for the very rich.
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