The most prolific version of Christianity is the Roman model, the one that took root in Europe and then spread to the Americas, the antipodes and other areas of the globe that came under European influence. It’s based primarily on two volumes of writing: the four canonical Gospels and the letters of the supposedly reformed Saul of Tarsus who claimed to have had a ‘vision.’
I assume I don’t have to write loads of tedious stuff on why those four Gospels permitted by the early Church are a highly unreliable source of historical fact. It’s been pointed out often enough that there’s nothing new about the Jesus story, that everything from the virgin birth to the miracles to the crucifixion and resurrection appear in older traditions. This leads to the credible suspicion that Jesus of Nazareth was just one of many religious zealots wandering Palestine in the first century, and that much of what’s written about him in the received canon amounts largely to a manufactured myth. As for Saul’s vision, who knows? Was it a vision, a dream, a hallucination, some other form of mental aberration? The fact is, we can’t know, any more than we can know who Jesus really was, where he was really born, what he really taught, how he really died, etc, etc. There are even those who’ve studied the subject carefully, and seriously question whether he even existed at all. I think he probably did, but let’s be clear about one thing because this is what’s important.
The Christian religion is founded on one foundation and one only – the doctrine of Redemption. It requires of its adherents that they believe three facts:
1) That mankind is born in original sin as a result of the Fall in the Garden of Eden.
2) That Jesus was the one and only avatar who willingly took human form and offered himself for sacrifice.
3) That in so doing, he somehow absolved the human race of its inherited guilt so that they could rejoin God the Father.
The keystone here is original sin. Without it, there would have been no reason for Jesus to make the sacrifice. To put it another way, anyone who doesn’t accept the doctrine of original sin has no reason to regard Jesus as the Christ, or any justification for calling themselves Christian. And if you don’t believe me, ask any theologian. I heard a Christian bishop say the same thing recently. His words were ‘Without acceptance of original sin, Christianity as a religion has no validity.’ Quite.
Well, I don’t believe in original sin, I don’t believe that Jesus was an avatar, and the notion that his ‘sacrifice’ somehow provided absolution never made the slightest sense to me after I reached a sufficient mental age to give the matter serious consideration.
But of course, if anybody does choose to believe these things, who am I to suggest they shouldn’t? After all, I believe in fairies on no more tangible a basis than people choose to believe the Jesus story. It’s just that I don’t go around turgidly pushing it in everybody’s face and claiming it to be absolute fact. Neither do I encourage the committing of assault, torture, genocide and a range of other depravities in the name of fairies, as certain elements among the proclaimed followers of Jesus have done, and continue to do, in his name. For more on that, read this. (Those brain dead bigots of the Bible Belt sure know how to praise the Lord and pass the pitchforks.)
I could go on, but I won’t. All I’ll say is this. I respect the celebration of the equinox because it’s part of a natural cycle. I respect the celebration of Beltane because it makes a certain sense to both the rational and metaphysical elements of my make up. Easter means nothing to me at all.
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