Within the Christian community we have devout believers and those who consider themselves to be “light.” The difference can be illustrated through their individual interpretations of the Bible. Devouts believe God wrote, or at least heavily influenced, the Bible and that its words are His direct communication. Lights don’t find the Bible to be that significant. So we have two groups:
God ⇒ Bible ⇒ Devout Christian
God ⇒ Light Christian
The difference leads to many questions. Are there two gods? Is one of these groups wrong? If you don’t believe in the authority of the Bible, can you still be called a Christian? And what about Jesus, do “lights” believe in Jesus?
Answers to these questions require a further definition. Since most “lights” could also be described as Christian comatose (not that committed to formality), we need another category for non-traditional interpretations. Let’s pick one example and call them alts. Alternative people believe the following:
- Jesus said and did a lot of great things.
- Jesus was a man, not God.
- Anyone can go to heaven, not just Christians.
- Some sections of the Bible are not in accordance with a good and loving god (and should be removed).
- Many of religion’s rules (like, no birth control or telling people what they can eat) are completely man-made and not in accordance with a good and loving god.
- There is no hell (so stop scaring people).
As you can see, alts don’t totally line up with strict beliefs nor do they side with deists who, seeing holes in Christianity, disregard religion completely. Alts regard the deist point of view as throwing out the baby with the bathwater since it ignores all of faith’s good parts.
The problem
Because alts are stuck between devouts (who run the church) and God-only people (who leave the church), they don’t have anyplace to go. They want religion, but not devout-style with all its rules and literal interpretations. Their version wishes to focus on the positive, deeper meanings in the Bible, not the contradictory stuff.
Jesus
Before Jesus, the majority of the Roman Empire believed in multiple crazy-assed gods with human-like personalities. Yes, the Jews had a better system but they were few in number and figured God was just for them.
Jesus, with his compassionate message of “love thy neighbour,” struck a chord with many that still resonates today. It’s a great interpretation of what we’re supposed to be doing on this planet. But to alts, it appears churches hijacked the message and bound it to regulations in order to control people. (There’s a shortage of fish, God says don’t eat fish.) In their mind, the Church jacked up Christ’s divinity (through rewrites of the Bible) for their own sake, and the logic became: if Jesus said it, God said it. And we’re the authorities on what Jesus said.
Churches built a condemnation-based society with rules on top of rules that alts believe is a crock. And alts are angered by the distortion churches and devouts have made to the real message of Christ. He was not a Christian supremacist, Christ loved everyone. He was not a condemner, Christ was about forgiveness. And Christ was not an egomaniac persecutor, he was a humble teacher. He isn’t Jesus Christ—Our Saviour, he’s Jesus Christ—Our Example. Turning him into a spokesperson to espouse a private set of motives isn’t just deceptive, it robs us of the Jesus to whom we should aspire.
The expression “Jesus died for us” says he gave his life to protect the message. If, once it became apparent these teachings were inflaming the establishment, he abandoned it only to move away, all of its meaning would have dissipated. So given the situation, he had to die for us. And the expression “Jesus rose from the dead” doesn’t mean he went up to heaven (like everyone is supposed to), it means the message continues to survive long after his physical death. And the instruction to “love thy neighbour” should never be forgotten.
Churches
Churches certainly deserve credit for their actions taken in the past because it isn’t easy managing the masses. And we must recognize the enormous amount of good churches have accomplished, everywhere. But maybe it’s time to rid the world of the conundrum and become 100% sincere. Isn’t it wrong that the Catholic Church forbids people to use birth control? Aren’t certain religious organizations wrong in outlawing certain foods? And more importantly, isn’t it silly to insist that God instructed us on any of this?
Conclusion
Christianity isn’t an “all in” proposition—you’re allowed to take only the good parts. The belief in a good and loving God still stands, but if you find something suspect, it’s okay to drop it. The Bible has some great passages like, the Good Samaritan or “let ye among you that hast not sinned cast the first stone,” but it isn’t a direct communication any more than what exists within any poem or a song. Divinity is everywhere. Not just in one book.
If alts are right about this, we’re left with two big questions: who is God? and what does He want from us? Alt answers are: there is a God, God is good, and life is an experience that gets explained to us at the end. But while you’re here, do what Jesus said and “love thy neighbour.”