I was always taught that there was one way to understand God, one way to understand Jesus, and one way to understand all the ins and outs of faith, and anyone who believed differently than that one way was destined to be sent to hell for all of eternity.
This one way, I was told, was handed to us from Jesus …
God gave it to Jesus (God gave it to himself, since Jesus is God?).
Jesus gave it to the Apostles.
The Apostles handed it to the church fathers.
The church fathers gave it to the priests.
… And by a mighty movement of God, that “one way to believe” made it’s way to you and me some 2,000 years later.
The “one way” I was taught to believe is (more or less) that Jesus is the Son of God and that entry into heaven requires one to believe in him, to accept him as Lord and Savior because he took the punishment that you and I (as sinners) rightly deserve. This, I was told, is the Good News, this is the Gospel, and this is the message that must make it to the ends of the earth for anyone who doesn’t believe like this will surely spend eternity in the worst imaginable distress and discomfort.
But then I started to wonder.
What would happen if I wasn’t born in Middle Class North America where there’s a Christian Church on every corner?
What would happen if I was born into a remote village in India? Or Africa? Or China?
Wouldn’t I be a product of that culture just as I’m a product of my (mostly Christian) Middle Class North American upbringing?
There are roughly 43,000 religions in the world and so if I don’t belong to “Christianity”, but one of the other 42,999 … does that mean that I’m going to hell?
Even if I demonstrate the ways of Christ more so than a Christian who labels him or herself “Christian”?
And than I started to wonder …
What if there were other ways to believe?
What if early “Christians” believed other things?
Why were some “Christians” deemed heretical?
And who said they are heretics?
Was there a rulebook?
Or a law book?
Who said what interpretation was right and that all others were wrong?
That led me to people like David Brakke, Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, and others, and what I discovered is that (indeed) there were MANY, MANY different ways to think about God and Jesus and all the things in the early days of Christianity and that the “orthodox” tradition was given power by Constantine and other powerful emperors who wanted a religion where everyone was on the same page.
Why?
It’s hard to build a powerful system when everyone thinks differently, but if everyone aligns into one way of thinking and one mindset, it’s much easier to control the masses.
And so as this “orthodox” tradition became more set in stone, the churches who aligned with it were given money from the Empire whereas the churches who didn’t align were thrown to the wayside to fend for themselves.
Some of those churches were burned to the ground.
Some of the congregants of those churches were killed.
All of them were deemed “heretical”.
The reality is that what you and I have been told is “orthodox” and was handed down to us from the hands and mouth of Jesus … it simply isn't true. Many groups claimed to follow the teachings of different Apostles and although they all had some similarities, they all had many, many differences as well.
It’s OK to think differently, friends. That’s my point. It’s OK to not toe the line, it’s OK to wonder if there’s a different way to understand Jesus and the Bible and all the things - you come from a long, long line of believers who dared to challenge the system … so go ahead, and challenge it.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that there’s only one way to believe - it isn’t true.
Peace.
Glenn
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