Gospel & Universe ⏯ Systems
Christianity 2.0
Then & Now - The Afterlife - Vain Philosophy
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Then & Now
Christianity has taken different turns in the last two thousand years, yet each of these has done little to mitigate its exclusivity. The Roman victims gave rise to the late Empire victimizers. The Greek philosophical structures and the Roman power structures of the Early Church set up the Medieval notions of spiritual and institutional hierarchy. The Reformation invested these Medieval structures in the individual, leading to ever-more internalized battles between God and Satan, and ever-more unbridgeable gaps between the saved and the damned. You could no longer simply be Catholic no matter your moral standing; your moral standing was a choice that separated you from the other moral choices made by others. The Scientific Revolution shook the foundations of Christianity, yet it also replaced the myths of Hell and Satan with a souless doctrine that would never be victim to any form of theogony, to any battle of the gods. The great threat to religion was no longer a mythic figure that could be defeated by a stronger demon or craftier spirit. Nor could science be contextualized out of existence by the professors of cross-cultural religion.
In the past, we fashioned our understanding of Jesus from scattered and inconsistent fragments. In the present, we can keep this same figure, yet refashion Him as a true embodiment of not just love and redemption, but also tolerance and inclusivity. This reborn figure, Jesus 2.0, offers eternal life to all who yearn for it, even to those who never asked for it. He offers it to those who believe in a blue Krishna, who look for truth in science, or who search for God in vain. The most universal religion doesn’t change with time and doesn't exclude those who have different points of view. Paradoxically, the most universal religion is the one you don’t have to believe in at all.
If Christians want to compete with science, then they need to learn one fundamental thing: truth is what it is, not what we make of it. The earth rotates around the sun, whether or not we believe it to be true. If God exists, He exists whether or not we believe in Him. If He is a just and merciful God, He won’t hide Himself from us and then judge us for not seeing. He won’t deny eternal life simply because we followed reason and saw that all professions of universal belief were relative to space and time, geography and history.
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The Afterlife
No one knows what happens after we die. Assuming for argument’s sake that we do have souls and that our souls are eligible for an eternal afterlife, there may well be an evaluation or judgment after our bodies die. Yet this judgment isn’t likely to be a test of former belief, at least not if one defines God as merciful and just. The test is more likely to be that of the Egyptian feather, which weighs the worth of the individual or the value of the soul. Or, if forgiveness conquers all, the judgment will be forestalled and we’ll be given a chance to redeem ourselves for all the things we did or didn’t do.
If there is a merciful and understanding God, then the afterlife will most likely be based on something that’s fair and yet also gives us the greatest latitude, the deepest chance for redemption. And what brand of mercy or understanding would deny eternity to those who put their faith in science or Krishna, or to those who hoped there was a God but had no honest way to convert hope into belief?
Why do we need to profess belief in a God we can't see or prove, just to be saved from annihilation or interminable wrath? If God is merciful, He will offer us eternal life whether we believe in Him or not. If, on the other hand, God doesn’t exist, then we'll enter oblivion anyway, even if visions of Heaven and Hell are floating through our brains until the very second we die.
There may well be other afterlife scenarios. Perhaps there’s a God, but He is in fact more wrathful than merciful. Such a God may smite us for not believing in Him. Or, perhaps more likely, He’ll smite us if we pretend to understand Him and judge those on His behalf. Even trying to utter His name might enrage him. In this case, all the preachers and doomsayers in the world will be tossed immediately into the fires they described so eloquently in their sermons.
As humans, we have an insatiable need to explain the universe in our own terms. Perhaps there is a God, but perhaps also after we die He turns us into something completely different, into something so alien to the Egyptian feather that we no longer recognize our old conceptions, flung into amber flux and strands of sentient pulse.
We can dream up all sorts of Gods and all sorts of afterlife scenarios. Why not keep dreaming them up, instead of pretending that one tradition got it right? One must keep in mind that this Judeo-Christian tradition itself had an evolution, and so it only eventually ‘got it right.’ It switched from seeing the afterlife as a grim underground semi-nothingness (like the Sumerian version) to a paradisiacal Garden reminiscent of the Egyptian afterlife (or the exclusive garden of Utnapishtim, the Sumerian forerunner of Noah). The Judeo-Christian tradition also switched from polytheism to monotheism, and from one God with three attributes (jealousy, mercy, and justice) to three holy figures unified in one God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost).
Some would say that this is just creating convenient rules for God, rather than God creating rules for humans. But isn't this what we, as humans, always do?
Looking into the history of religions, we can see that they change over time. This makes it impossible for rational people to believe that any one religion contains a universal truth for all time. The only religions which survive this winnowing of historicization are those that accept the notion that we are constantly evolving our understandings. These accept that we should refrain whenever possible to speak for God, to insist on a single Holy Book that is better than all the others, and that those who believe differently (or not at all) will be punished for daring to follow their own understanding. Many Christians already fall into this more liberal group: ecumenicals, mystics, and anyone who puts love over judgment, mercy over jealousy, and tolerance over dogma. Many Christians already believe in Christianity 2.0, and are ashamed at the intolerance and elitism that some still brandish as the hallmarks of Christianity.
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Vain Philosophy
Christianity 2.0 isn't threatened by other religions; it embraces them. To be a Christian 2.0 is to say something like, I believe in the idea of human love and tolerance as written about in the accounts of Jesus, and as may be written about elsewhere. One could be Daoist, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim and also be Christian 2.0, just as one could be Christian 2.0 and also be Daoist, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. Christianity 2.0 isn’t threatened by the openness of Daoism, which refuses to define God, the soul, or the afterlife. Nor is it threatened by the multifaceted nature of Hinduism and Buddhism, which both posit millions of worlds, enormous sweeps of time and space, and an afterlife in which one can be reborn in this or some other world. Nor is Christianity 2.0 worried about the severity of Islam, even though it has been the enemy of Judaism and Christianity since early Medieval times. Christianity 2.0 recognizes that all of these beliefs are speculative. All of them attempt to offer hope of unity and justice to an otherwise beleaguered species. Christianity 2.0 refuses to turn this hope into despair, further dividing the world and proclaiming that one belief is right while the others are wrong.
Christianity 2.0 gives up the game of defining God or predicting God’s intentions. It emphasizes the notion of the just and compassionate exemplar — be it a bodhisattva or Jesus 2.0 — who would save everyone who wants to be saved. Such Grace could occur in the present, sometime before we die, or at any time after we die. Neither bodhisattvas nor Jesus 2.0 are bound by time, and certainly not by anything as unpredictable as time of death.
In Christianity 2.0, belief is optional. This may sound outrageous, since belief has been the defining feature and the modus operandi of Western religion for centuries. Yet while belief may be a fine thing, it may also be a categorical error or self-delusion, as when people mistake what I think for what is true. It can also be used in a tyrannical way, as when people close theology to those who don’t make the same categorical error.
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